President Donald Trump said Thursday his administration is in the final stage of crafting regulations to ban the use of bump stocks, devices that enable semi-automatic guns to fire at fully automatic speeds.
"Bump stocks — we're almost finished with the legal papers," Trump told reporters at the start of a Cabinet meeting at the White House. "Bump stocks are just about finished from the standpoint of getting the legal work done."
Despite procedural hurdles, he added, "bump stocks are going to be gone."
After the Feb. 14 shooting rampage that killed 17 students and adults at a Florida high school, Trump directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to revise the existing federal ban on machine guns to include devices like bump stocks. The device, which was not used in that massacre, enables a standard firearm to operate the way a machine gun does.
The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms had previously determined that it did not have the authority to regulate bump stocks because they were merely an accessory for guns, and not an actual weapon.
The bump stock ban, once it is enacted, will be the most significant new federal gun control measure in recent memory. But unlike other recent gun control proposals, regulations for bump stocks have the backing of the National Rifle Association, the country's largest gun-rights lobbying group.
Following the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, in Las Vegas in October, the NRA quickly issued a statement saying that "devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations." The gunman used a bump sotck in killing 58 people.
Correction: An earlier version misstated the month of the Las Vegas massacre. It was in October.