Lindsey Graham Backpedals Support For Bump Stock Ban

Nikki McCann Ramirez
·3 min read
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In the aftermath of the 2017 Harvest Festival mass shooting — in which 60 Las Vegas concertgoers were killed by a gunman armed with bump stock-equipped rifles — prominent Republican lawmakers supported efforts to ban the firearm accessory. One such legislator was South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. But after the Supreme Court struck down an ATF rule restricting bump stock sales last week, Graham is now threatening to block any effort by Congress to regulate their availability to the public.

On Friday, the Supreme Court decided in a 6-3 ruling that the 1934 National Firearms Act’s ban on the public sale of fully automatic weapons — colloquially referred to as machine guns — could not be interpreted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to cover a ban on bump stocks. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority decision that since the trigger was technically being “released and reengaged to fire each additional shot,” a bump stock did not qualify as an accessory that converted a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic one.

The justices further ruled that while the ATF lacked the justification to ban bump stocks under the National Firearms Act, Congress could still enact laws restricting their sale.

In the aftermath of the decision, Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) introduced the Banning Unlawful Machinegun Parts (BUMP) Act to ban the sale, manufacturing, and transfer of “a device that is primarily designed, or redesigned, to increase the rate of fire when attached to a semiautomatic firearm,” as well as devices intended to increase the rate of fire of a firearm.

On Monday, Graham made clear that he would be blocking a unanimous consent request to expedite the bill’s journey to a floor vote. “I will oppose any legislative fix,” Graham told NBC News. 

A bump stock is a rifle attachment used to significantly increase the firing rate of a semi-automatic weapon by harnessing the gun’s recoil momentum to repeatedly and rapidly  “bump” the trigger off of the shooter’s finger. Bump stocks have long been considered a convenient loophole that allows gun owners to skirt the national federal ban on the ownership of fully automatic weapons.

In 2017, after the Las Vegas gunman managed to fire off more than 1,000 rounds in the span of about 10 minutes, Graham was among a cohort of GOP lawmakers who expressed openness to reviewing the legality of bump stocks. “I’m an AR-15 owner and the bump stock makes it truly an automatic weapon,” Graham said in a 2018 interview on proposed gun control legislation. “I’m willing to take that off the table.”
Graham also expressed support for having the ATF decide what to do about bump stock regulation without the intervention of Congress. “I think once they make a decision then it would be our job to evaluate if it makes sense or not,” Graham told CNN in November of 2017. The ban eventually went into effect under the Trump administration.

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