Justice Dept. Proposes Banning Bump Stocks, Setting Aside Its Own Recommendations

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that the Justice Department was proposing to ban so-called bump stocks through regulations rather than wait for Congress to act, a move that defies recommendations by federal law enforcement officials and could subject the department to litigation from gun rights groups.

Sessions’ announcements came moments after President Donald Trump said on Twitter that the Justice Department would imminently announce a rule banning bump stocks.

It also comes amid rising public pressure on Washington to curb gun violence after a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead. Students will gather Saturday in Washington to protest gun violence for an event called March for Our Lives.

The Justice Department said it was publishing for public comment a proposed rule “that would define ‘machine gun’ to include bump stock-type devices under federal law — effectively banning them,” Sessions said in a statement.

A proposed bump stock ban would defy the conclusion of Justice Department officials, who have said they could not, under existing law, stop the sales of bump stocks, accessories that allow semi-automatic guns mimic automatic fire, and that congressional action was needed to ban them. But Sessions said the department had worked around those concerns.

“After the senseless attack in Las Vegas,” Sessions said, “this proposed rule is a critical step in our effort to reduce the threat of gun violence that is in keeping with the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress.”

The 55-page proposal, which was published for public comment, said it was redefining machine guns to include bump stocks because “such devices allow a shooter of a semi-automatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger.”

The proposal would force bump stock owners to surrender or destroy them the day the rule would go into effect.

A previous Justice Department review, done by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was prompted by the mass shooting last fall in Las Vegas, where a gunman killed 58 people using semi-automatic weapons outfitted with bump stocks.

By working around the ATF’s earlier interpretation, the Justice Department essentially said that the statute had not changed, but that it could now be read in a different way.

By reinterpreting the conclusion that was made under President Barack Obama, the Justice Department could open itself up to lawsuits when the rule is finalized. Litigation would tie up the bump stock ban in the courts.

Legal experts say that groups that sue could win because bump stock makers specifically designed the devices so they could not qualify as machine guns under the law.

“When you pull the trigger once on a machine gun, multiple bullets fire, whereas each pull of a trigger fires a single round with bump stocks,” said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston. “People designed it this way deliberately to keep bump stocks from being defined as machine guns under the statute. It’s like the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. The first is specifically to avoid being illegal.”

The controversial new rule is in keeping with Sessions’ practice of closely hewing to White House political directives, sometimes remaining silent in the face of criticism from Trump and other times rebuking his own employees.

Before the Justice Department issued any measures of its own, Trump had publicly declared that he would use executive authority to ban bump stocks, and he ordered the department to find a way to prohibit them.

This month, the Justice Department announced an array of initiatives designed to address the issue of gun violence, sometimes echoing measures that had already been proposed by Trump.

The department said it would help local law enforcement officials hire more school resource officers, help local firearms training programs work with teachers and help states provide faster, more accurate and complete information to databases used in federal firearms background checks. It also said it would provide a $1 million emergency grant to Florida to help cover law enforcement costs related to the Parkland shooting.

Trump had said earlier that he supported the inclusion of mental health information in the background check system and the arming of teachers as part of an effort to deter school shootings.

Sessions also ordered federal prosecutors to more aggressively prosecute gun buyers who lie on gun purchasing applications, a move that The New York Times reported last month.

Each year, thousands of prospective gun owners who apply to buy guns through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System are found unqualified to purchase a firearm.

It is a felony to lie on that application, but the crime is rarely prosecuted. From 2008 to 2015, prosecutors considered fewer than 32 cases a year, according to the Justice Department’s inspector general.

“Under my tenure as attorney general, we have already increased federal gun prosecutions to a 10-year high — and we are just getting started,” Sessions said when he announced those measures.

Those past directives acknowledged that gun violence is a problem, but they were unlikely to upset opponents of more restrictive gun policies. In the past, the National Rifle Association has supported some forms of bump-stock regulation, the enforcement of existing gun laws and some background check legislation.

But the Justice Department’s latest move, which Sessions previewed in an announcement this month, will be met with more opposition.

“You need Congress to pass a statute,” Blackman said. “That’s how you change a law, not through executive action.”