The National Rifle Association, which spearheads America\u2019s powerful gun lobby that has blocked all attempts to tighten gun laws for decades, has relented in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre and asked the government to review the sale of devices that allow weapons to shoot rapidly.<\/p>\n
NRA\u2019s announcement came a day after many Republican lawmakers joined their Democratic colleagues to call for a ban on \u201cbump-stock\u201d devices that allow non-automatic firearms to function like automatics. Some Republicans also conceded, in an equally significant shift for them, that there is a need to take a look at the devices and consider regulating them.<\/p>\n
It was a big step for the NRA, which has successfully blocked any attempt to change the country\u2019s infamously slack gun laws and that many believe are at the root of mass shootings (any incident in which four or more people are shot, dead or wounded). There have been 343 mass shooting this year, including six since the killing of 59 people in Las Vegas on October 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations,\u201d the NRA said in a statement, which was greeted around the US as a small but significant shift in the powerful organisation\u2019s position on gun reforms.<\/p>\n
Bump-stocks replace the standard wooden stock of a rifle on which a shooter rests a shoulder at the time of firing. Instead of absorbing the recoil, the bump-stock lets the rifle fire more rapidly than it was designed to, turning it into an automatic weapon, which is subject to stricter regulations.<\/p>\n
They have been reviewed and cleared for sale twice by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (known as ATF), the federal regulator. But the NRA said it was calling to \u201cimmediately review whether these devices comply with federal law\u201d.<\/p>\n
Twelve of the 23 firearms used by Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock, 64, were equipped with these devices that enabled him to shower countless rounds for 10 deadly minutes on unsuspecting concertgoers 400 yards below his 32nd floor room in an upscale hotel.<\/p>\n
Investigators, now led by the FBI, still don\u2019t have a lead on the killer\u2019s motives, and his girlfriend Marilou Danley and his relatives, including younger brother Eric Paddock, who has been an enthusiastic commentator for reporters, haven\u2019t been much help either, beset by the same sense of bafflement.<\/p>\n
The NRA\u2019s announcement will not change that, but it brought new hope to gun reform advocates who had given up on the organisation as an unscalable wall sitting between them and change, commonsense reforms such as background checks of prospective buyers and regulating sales at fairs and exhibitions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The National Rifle Association, which spearheads America\u2019s powerful gun lobby that has blocked all attempts to tighten gun laws for decades, has relented in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre and asked the government to review the sale of devices that allow weapons to shoot rapidly. NRA\u2019s announcement came a day after many Republican […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7002,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7000\/revisions\/7002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}