Owning Up To Bump Stocks

THOSE WHO BEAR ARMS, and those who are victimized by them, are more than likely quite familiar with "bump stocks", which are ingenious devices which, when attached to semi automatic weapons, use the recoil energy of a pulled trigger to hasten the trigger's next engagement, repeatedly, effectively converting the semi automatic into a fully automatic weapon, aka "machine gun". Machine guns per se were criminalized way back when, in the nineteen thirties, in response to the then ongoing war between purveyors of illegal alcoholic beverages and law enforcement during the era of prohibition, 1919-1933. Now, thanks to President Trump, a surprisingly flexible and relenting National Rifle Association, piles of cadavers, and public outrage, bump stocks shall, within ninety days, be either turned over to appropriate law enforcement officials, or destroyed in the privacy of one's own arm bearing home. Remarkable what can be accomplished, belatedly, by a shooting rampage directed from a high rise hotel downward upon a country and western concert. The number of these devices extant in the United States of Armaments is not known. What is known is that there are approximately four hundred million privately owned and operated firearms in America now, heavily concentrated in the hands of an elite few. What is known is that there are many bump stocks out and about. They can be manufactured with the aid of modern technology in what are known as 3D printers, and there is doubtless a goodly number of them, on that account alone. Plastic can be made hard as nails. Fondly I recall a conversation I had with an NRA member friend of mine in 1977, who confided with me that he would be more than willing to support any sort of gun control measure whatsoever, were it not for the fact that the proverbial cow, as it were, was out of the barn, meaning, that even if our government suddenly decided to round up all privately owned weapons, there would be far too many to round up, people would simply hide and hoard them, and that those hiders and hoarders would swear oaths to themselves to retain possession of their purely defensive weapons over their own hypothetically dead bodies. I had to admit, the man had a point. So why bother outlawing bump stocks now, at this late date? For theatrical appeasement of liberal do gooders, if nothing else. And really, there is nothing else. The cow is indeed out of the barn, and its too late to round it up. My conversation in 1977 occurred when there were a mere million NRA-sters, the year when the million members were taken captive by a right wing, pro gun junta advocating not merely gun safety but gun ownership and use. In captivity they remain today. Since the bump stock cow is indeed being hunted down and returned to the barn, why not apply this principle to, say, semi automatic weapons, to Saturday night specials, or, dare we say, to weapons at large, if, for no other reason, than eight children are killed each day in the U.S. of Ammorica by, you guessed it, the family firearm. And really, there is no other reason.