An arsenal assembled by Stephen Paddock in his Las Vegas hotel room included at least one device called a “bump stock” that modifies a semiautomatic weapon to fire rapidly, almost like a machine gun. It should be our highest priority.”Although Paddock had weapons modified with the bump stocks, authorities have not confirmed that he used those weapons in his rapid-fire assault on a music festival crowd. Richard Vasquez, former acting chief of that division, said the decision on the bump stocks was not that difficult or particularly controversial with the agency. The bump stock devices work by allowing the gun’s stock to slide back and forth, and use the gun’s recoil as a way to dramatically accelerate the speed of the shots. “When when we looked at it … we could not fit it into the definition” of a machine gun, he said.

Source: Los Angeles Times October 04, 2017 00:20 UTC