Isle lawmakers seek explicit ban on ‘bump stocks’

The “bump stock” device that Stephen Paddock used to help him spray gunfire down into a crowd in the horrific Las Vegas mass shooting might be legal under Hawaii law, and some lawmakers want to explicitly ban the devices here.

Hawaii has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, but Hawaii Rifle Association President Harvey Gerwig said the bump stocks used to modify firearms so they fire almost as rapidly as automatic weapons are legal here.

Senate Judiciary Committee Vice Chairman Karl Rhoads said his review of state law also suggests bump stocks are legal in Hawaii, and he wants to change that.

“If someone doesn’t beat me to it, I’ll introduce a bill that says they’re banned, because that’s just crazy,” said Rhoads (D, Downtown-­Nuuanu-Liliha). “It circumvents the current statute. While it’s within the letter of the law, it certainly is not within the spirit of the law.”

Paddock killed 58 people and caused injuries to about 500 others by firing into a crowd of about 22,000 concertgoers before killing himself Oct. 1 in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

National news reports indicate that a dozen of the 23 firearms that Paddock had stockpiled in a suite he rented at the Mandalay Bay hotel were equipped with bump stock devices that allowed them to mimic the rate of fire of automatic weapons.

A bump stock is essentially a slide mechanism attached to a modified rifle stock that can be swapped with the original stock of a weapon. When the modified rifle is fired, the recoil pushes the front portions of the weapon back and forth along the slide in a way that allows it to simulate automatic firing.

Not everyone agrees that bump stocks are allowed in Hawaii under current law. Joshua Wisch, special assistant to state Attorney General Douglas Chin, said the state law that prohibits private ownership of automatic weapons or modifying guns to convert them into automatic weapons also covers the bump stock device.

“Our statute doesn’t use the term ‘bump stock’ — that exact term is not in there — but that being said, modifying a weapon can make it automatic, and any modifying of a weapon that makes it automatic is illegal in Hawaii,” Wisch said.

He said the bump stock device allows semi-­automatic weapons to mimic the firing speed of an automatic weapon, “so we think that, yes, it would make it an automatic weapon, which would make it illegal.”

Wisch said lawmakers often pass bills to clarify the law, and this might be such a case.

“Right now the statute doesn’t use the term ‘bump stock,’ and I can’t see any reason they couldn’t insert that term,” he said.

Staff for the House Judiciary Committee also concluded the existing law covers the bump stock and that such mechanisms are illegal in Hawaii.

However, if there is any question about the devices’ legality, House Judiciary Chairman Scott Nishimoto said, he wants to clarify the law to clearly ban them in Hawaii.

“I can’t see any reasonable reason why someone would have something like that, other than to do some harm like (what happened) in Vegas,” Nishimoto said. He said he is willing to introduce such a bump stock ban, and expects the idea would have strong support in the state House.

“Especially in light of what happened in Vegas, I think we’re going to have a strong desire to do everything we can to prevent that kind of thing from happening here,” Nishimoto said.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2010 ruled that bump stocks could be sold in the United States, reasoning that the devices technically did not alter the guns’ trigger mechanisms to convert them into restricted automatic weapons, according to the Washington Post.

At least nine Senate Republicans are now asking the agency to reconsider that decision in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, and the National Rifle Association now says it supports additional regulation of the devices.

U.S. Rep. Colleen Hana­busa, who represents urban Honolulu, announced Thursday she has joined U.S. Rep. David N. Cicilline, D-R.I., in introducing federal legislation to ban the sale or possession of bump stocks.

“It makes no sense to have state laws prohibiting fully-automatic weapons if one can purchase a bump stock and make a weapon fire like a fully-automatic weapon,” said Hanabusa in a written statement.

Gerwig said Hawaii tends to follow the guidance of the federal regulations on firearms, which helps to explain why there is no explicit ban of bump stocks already on Hawaii law books. He said he doubts there are many bump stock devices in Hawaii because there are few legal places in the state to use them.

“In the right hands it isn’t an issue, but when you get a madman with something like that, it certainly becomes an issue,” he said. “It allows somebody to go virtually full auto without going through the major federal process — it’s a six-month process — that it would take to get a legal federal full auto firearm.”

Rhoads said he expects his fellow lawmakers in Hawaii will be ready to pass an explicit ban on bump stocks when they reconvene in January.

“It’s just such a horrible massacre, and without a real automatic weapon, you couldn’t have done it without that little gadget,” he said. “I think it’s very likely that it would pass.”