ATF group rebuffs criticism over bump stock approval

By Daniel Terrill

A Slide Fire bump stock in action. (Photo: Slide Fire/Facebook)
The association representing current and former ATF employees has pushed back against critics blaming the agency for approving bump stocks.
The ATF Association said the agency “does not have the legal authority to regulate” bump stocks, which allow semi-auto rifles to mimic full-auto fire.
“The bump slide, and several other similar after-market accessories that increase the rate at which a shooter can pull the trigger, are engineered to avoid regulation under Federal law,” said Michael Bouchard, ATFA president, in an open letter last week.
“The notion that ATF chose not to regulate an item it had the authority to regulate is false. The law is very clear and it does not currently allow ATF to regulate such accessories,” Bouchard added.
The federal laws that regulates machine guns — the National Firearms Act and the Gun Control Act — define a machine gun as “as any combination of parts designed and intended for use in converting a weapon to shoot automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger,” Bouchard said.
Bochard’s letter was addressed to Congressman Carlos Curbelo, a Republican representing Florida, whose proposal to ban bump stocks has gained

Source: Guns.com