Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has long supported an Assault Weapons Ban, called on Tuesday for legislation to close a loophole that allows semi-automatic firearms to be cheaply transitioned into simulating automatic weapons.
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Owning fully automatic guns is not illegal but there’s a limited supply of them, which makes them expensive and far more difficult to obtain. The Las Vegas shooter reportedly used a “bump-stock” device that enabled some of his semi-automatic guns to effectively fire as fast as automatic weapons. Augmenting semi-automatic weapons with bump-fire stocks makes them far more deadly. The AP writes:
"This replacement shoulder stock turns a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon that can fire at a rate of 400 to 800 rounds per minute," she said.
A semi-automatic weapon requires one trigger pull for each round fired. With a fully automatic firearm, one trigger pull can unleash continuous rounds until the magazine is empty.