1 of 6 | Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had planned to pass a bill banning bump stocks by unanimous consent after the Supreme Court overturned a federal ban. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
June 18 (UPI) — Senate Democrats on Tuesday failed to pass a bill banning bump stocks after the Supreme Court last week struck down a Trump-era federal ban.
A lone dissenting vote by Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., halted the attempt to fast-track the measure through a unanimous consent vote in the Senate.
Ricketts said the proposed measure goes beyond a simple ban on bump stocks and would enable the federal government to target common firearm accessories, not just bump stocks.
“If Democrats really cared about gun violence, they’d be trying to build support for a bill that can actually pass,” Ricketts said. “Instead, we have a show vote on a bill that uses vague language to ban as many firearms accessories as possible.”
Ricketts said disabled and elderly Americans who rely on bump stocks and other accessories to enable them to use firearms would be deprived of their Second Amendment rights.
A bump stock replaces the manufacturer’s rifle stock with one that the user holds against one shoulder so the recoil of a semiautomatic rifle enables the firearm to move back and forth.
The back-and-forth action enables many who are disabled and otherwise incapable of operating a firearm to use a rifle for target practice, recreational shooting and self-defense.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday he planned to bring a measure to ban the attachments that allow semiautomatic weapons to fire off hundreds of rounds in a single pull of a trigger by unanimous consent, which allows a measure to pass through the chamber if no lawmakers object.
He said the recent Supreme Court ruling is another sign that the court, which features three justices appointed by former President Donald Trump, is “going off the deep end, aligning itself more and more with the most extreme elements of the hard-right,” Schumer said, adding how the country’s highest court “struck down freedom of choice, environmental protections, affirmative action, fair redistricting, gun safety, and more.”
“We have a long way to go to cure America’s disease of gun violence,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday in remarks on the Senate floor as he called out the “MAGA Supreme Court.”
“Today you don’t need to show people the statistics — Americans know gun violence is disgustingly unacceptable,” he said.
The “Banning Unlawful Machinegun Parts Act,” or BUMP Act, was introduced by a bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.
“Bump stocks are designed to turn semi-automatic firearms into what are essentially machine guns,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said in a statement.
“This bipartisan legislation will prohibit the use of these dangerous devices while protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.”
In his remarks,