Letting Go Of Bump Stocks, Or Not

ON MARCH 26, bump stocks, those magical little monstrosities which turn an ordinary semi automatic weapon into a fully automatic killing machine capable of spitting out hundreds of rounds of ammunition per minute, will become illegal in the United States. Shockingly, but maybe not so surprisingly, Americans, seemingly unwilling to say good bye, are snatching them off the shelves of gun dealers by the tens of thousands, like day old donuts, black Friday super bargains, or as if they were going out of style, which in effect they are, not by their own choice. Heaven and hell only knows that the National Rifle Association and its millions of dollar donating supporters, the community so doggedly devoted to not only defense of the Second Amendment but nowadays to the advocacy of gun ownership and carrying for all good militia members and patriots, has done everything in its impressive power to prevent the bump stock ban from taking effect. The fact that it is nonetheless soon to become law is a tribute and a testament to two things: the power of the anti gun lobby, and the power of bump stocks themselves, which over the past few years have helped to mow down, at the very least, several dozen good people who were unfortunate enough not to have been armed with automatic weapons at the time of their untimely demise. In America, the power of the pro gun lobby remains undiminished, as witnessed by the fact that little to no gun restricting legislation has been passed in the U.S. in recent years, despite that fact that there is an obvious problem with guns in America, a problem exemplified by the fact that there is at least one mass murder in America every day, in which at least three people are gunned down in a single incident by a single assailant. There are so many mass murders that few of them ever make it into the national media, so run of the mill are have they become. The elimination of bump stocks from the legitimate market place and transfer to the black market place may be the beginning of a real effort to legislate gun violence out of existence in America, if it can even be done in a nation founded upon and nurtured upon violence. Or, it may not be. After march 26,, everyone, and there will be tens of thousands at the very least, who owns a bump stock will do so illegally. This raises the question: why? Exactly what is the reason why people are so intent on obtaining a piece of machinery which they know will soon be illegal, which in fact they are acquiring precisely because they know it will soon become illegal? In what way, precisely will illicit bump stocks be used,, if they are used at all? Several hundred rounds per minute seems like a bit of an overkill in taking target practice, don't you think? Or maybe there are those who are convinced that the bump stock ban will ultimately be repealed, and who want to be ready, waiting, and well armed, when it is. That might be the best explanation one can hope for, if there actually is an explanation for this ostensibly strange, counter productive, blatantly defiant law breaking behavior. Maybe those people, the born again bump stock buyers, believe that when the repeal is enacted, the waiting list for bump stocks will be so long that it will take forever to get one, while their manufacture ramps back up into action. Although somehow that explanation fails to logically ring a bell, it may have a kernel of truth to it, because we must assume that the people stocking up even as we speak are good, law abiding, well intentioned gun owning citizens, who, for some reason, are about to become formerly good, formerly law abiding but born again law breaking citizens. Mustn't we? For now, its the best we can hope for, considering the horrible nightmarish alternatives.