Rick Vasquez, a former senior analyst for the Firearms Technology Branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, was tasked with reviewing the first SlideFire bump-stocks in 2010. After working with the device, Vasquez determined that it did not violate any NFA requirements and could be sold without regulation.
Seven years later the bump-stock accessory was allegedly used to murder 58 people and wound nearly 600 others at a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. The proposed Automatic Gunfire Prevention Act hoped to ban the novelty accessory, but Vasquez doesn’t think that gun-control bills like this will ever change anything.
“If congress bans the bump-stock, are people going to find another way?” the Vice News reporter asks.
“What are they going to ban?” Vasquez responds. “If they come out today and say the SlideFire stock or ‘binary trigger’ by name is illegal, they’re going to have to make illegal the operating principle.”
In the video below, the former ATF analyst shows how easy it is to simulate automatic weapons fire without any accessories.
“Now to answer your question, yes,” Vasquez continued. “Immediately people will wake up in the morning and start thinking ‘how can I make something that doesn’t fit into this 10-point criteria that congress just put out.'”
Rick Vasquez stands by his original decision not to regulate the bump-stock in 2010. “We made a technical and statutory decision that was correct.”
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