Quad Cities gun owners, range owner react to bump stock ban

The Trump administration has officially banned bump-fire stocks.

The device makes it easier to fire a semi-automatic weapon. The ban comes in response to the Las Vegas massacre in 2017. Former Iowa Senate candidate and current acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker signed the regulation making bump stocks illegal to possess beginning in late March.

"It is nibbling away at our second amendment rights so on the one hand, I don't like the decision but, myself personally, it doesn't affect me,” Janelle Westrom, owner of Davenport Guns told TV6 Tuesday night in response to the announcement.

The Las Vegas shooting killed 58 people. Police say 14 of the gunman’s 22 semi-automatic rifles were equipped with bump stocks, allowing him to fire more than a thousand rounds in 10 minutes.

"A 90-day period now begins in which persons with bump-stock type devices must turn those devices into an ATF field office, or destroy them by March 21st,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said.

Customers at Davenport Guns don’t support the decision and worry about what it could mean in the future.

"It seems like a gateway to banning certain kind of weapons,” John Warhank said. “It is the second amendment. It is the second thing our country thought about when you're making people free."

Bump stocks were not previously subject to federal regulation but after a Justice Department review, they’re now officially banned. Westrom doesn’t believe owners of bump stocks will give them up.

"When Colorado banned bump stocks, exactly zero people turned them in,” she said. “Same thing in Connecticut.”

The decision is drawing criticism from the National Rifle Association which said, “we are disappointed that this final rules fails to address the thousands of law-abiding Americans” who legally acquired bump stocks.

Survivors of mass shootings at a gay nightclub in Orlando, in Las Vegas and the Parkland school shooting all praised the decision.