What's a Bump Fire Stock Do To A Gun?

Bump fire stocks enable a shooter like Las Vegas killer Steven Paddock to fire a semi-automatic rifle at nearly the rate of an automatic. How do they work?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
it's Christian Seger here. On Sunday, October one, a country
music festival in Las Vegas became the scene of a
mass killing when a gunman positioned in a high rise
hotel began shooting at concert goers. At least fifty eight
died and more than five hundred others were injured before

(00:24):
the shooter took his own life. This is according to
Las Vegas TV station k X and T. During the attack,
the shooter at one point managed to fire nearly ninety
rounds in just ten seconds, according to a New York
Times analysis of audio posted on social media. The speed
of that bullet barrage led some to assume that the

(00:45):
killer used a fully automatic firearm, a type of gun
that automatically reloads after a shot is fired, fires again,
and then repeats the process as long as the trigger
remains depressed. With the Firearm Owners Protection Act of six,
Congress banned the sale of new fully automatic firearms, but
once produced before that date, are still obtainable after the

(01:09):
purchaser goes through an FBI background check. But the Las
Vegas killer didn't need a fully automatic weapon to unleash
rapid fire terror. In a Wednesday, October four press conference,
Jill Snyder, special Agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms from the San Francisco office, said that

(01:30):
when authorities reached the gunman's hotel room, they found an
arsenal that included twelve semi automatic rifles equipped with aftermarket
attachments called bump fire stocks. As Snyder explained, the devices
are designed to simulate automatic fire without mechanically altering the
function of a rifle in a way that would make

(01:51):
it illegal under current federal law. A standard fully automatic
weapon like a pre n coult A R fifteen, can
fire a hundred shots in about seven seconds, according to
the New York Times analysis, while a semi automatic a
R fifteen style assault rifle of the kind used in
the June two thousand sixteen Orlando nightclub shooting that can

(02:13):
fire twenty four shots in nine seconds. The bump stock,
though the one that was used in Las Vegas, more
than triples the capability of the ladder. As The Truth
about Guns, a popular gun blog, explains, a bump fire
stock basically replaces the rigid standard stock on a rifle,

(02:34):
Unlike the standard stock, the bump fire stock has a
small amount of space that allows the rest of the
rifle to move back and forth. That way, the recoil
causes the gun to bump the trigger against the shooter's finger,
increasing the speed of firing. As a discussion thread on
the gun enthusiast website a R fifteen dot com explains

(02:55):
it's possible to get a similar effect by holding the
rifle at waste level. Though they increase the lethal potential
of a gun and replicate a now illegal to possess firearm,
the bump stocks themselves do not violate the current law.
A two thousand ten letter produced by the A t
F explains that one bump fire device that was evaluated

(03:17):
was found to be a legal firearm part and therefore
not regulated under the Act. Senator Diane Feinstein, a Democrat
from California, has introduced a bill that would ban devices
designed to allow a semi automatic weapon to simulate full
auto speed. According to CNBC, even some Republican members of Congress,

(03:40):
generally reluctant to enact firearm regulation, are now willing to
consider such a band. In the wake of the Las
Vegas shootings, both the White House and the National Rifle
Association have indicated an openness to considering more regulation. Today's

(04:01):
episode was written by Patrick J. Keiger, produced by Tristan McNeil,
and For more on this and other topics, please visit
us at how stuff works dot com.