The Washington Times‘ David Sherfinsky has found that the feds collected a grand total of about 1000 bump stocks when they were made illegal earlier this year. That’s out of an estimated 280,000 to 520,000 in circulation.
To be fair, many could have been turned into state and local authorities or destroyed by their owners. But it’s not likely. And the public’s compliance (or lack thereof) is a good indicator of what can be expected if the Democrats ever succeed in getting an “assault weapons” mandatory buyback (confiscation) bill signed into law.
“There’s a significant feeling of ‘will not comply’ with gun confiscation-type laws on one hand, and on the other hand quite honestly, most gun owners probably don’t know that you were supposed to turn them in or destroy them and so they’re just keeping them anyway,” [Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan] Gottlieb said.
“I’ve traveled around the country since this was put into effect, and I don’t know anybody that had one that turned one in,” he said.
Gun rights advocates suggested in the run-up to the March 26 deadline that owners hold on to the devices as legal challenges to the rule played out in the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court turned aside several of those challenges near the time the ban took effect.
The ban could be seen as something of a smaller-scale “trial run” for what the federal government would have to do under a mandatory ban and buyback of certain military-style, semi-automatic firearms along the lines of what Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke is advocating, said Robert Spitzer, a professor at SUNY Cortland.
“I think it does have some implications for that,” said Mr. Spitzer, who has written extensively on the politics of gun control. “On its face, it’s not clear how any kind of mandatory program would work.
– David Sherfinski in Bump stock ban’s flop a bad omen for Democrats’ gun buyback plan