Everytown, Moms Demand Action Statements on Senate GOP Blocking Unanimous Consent for BUMP Act

WASHINGTON — Everytown for Gun Safety and its grassroots networks, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, released the following statements today after Senate Republicans blocked Senator Heinrich’s unanimous consent request to pass the bipartisan Banning Unlawful Machinegun Parts (BUMP) Act. 

This legislation would prohibit the manufacture, sale, and possession of bump stocks — devices that are designed and intended to convert semi-automatic firearms into machine guns. Senate Democrats made this request less than a week after the Supreme Court’s decision in Garland v. Cargill, which struck down ATF’s bump stock rule that the Trump Administration finalized in 2018, opening the door for these deadly accessories to be legalized once again in a majority of states across the country. 

“We’re thankful to Senator Heinrich and other gun sense champions in the Senate for taking action following the Supreme Court’s reckless ruling that put bump stocks back on the market,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “No matter what the gun lobby-backed obstructionists say, even Justice Alito recognized that Congress has the power to ban these deadly products. If this Congress won’t act on bump stocks, we’ll elect one that will.” 

“There is no reason that anyone should be able to own a bump stock –  the device used in the deadliest mass shooting in American history,” said Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action. “We know that there is strong bipartisan support for keeping these dangerous products out of our communities. Our volunteers are ready to demand that their Senators and Representatives correct the Supreme Court’s deadly decision.”

A bump stock is a replacement shoulder stock for semiautomatic rifles — AR-15s and AK-47s in particular — that drastically increases the rate of fire to mimic the rate of fire of a machine gun. These devices harness the recoil of a semi-automatic firearm to fire several shots in succession, mimicking automatic fire. 

The BUMP Act was first introduced by Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona in 2018 following the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history: the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 1, 2017, in which 60 people were killed and more than 400 were wounded. The shooter fired hundreds of rounds using semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks in mere minutes. The BUMP Act has been introduced on a bipartisan basis in the Senate in each Congress since. Similar bipartisan legislation, the Closing the Bump Stock Loophole Act, has been introduced in the House of Representatives.