On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled that it would take an act of Congress, not a Trump-era regulatory rule, to ban bump stocks for firearms.
Monday afternoon, New Mexico’s U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, joined by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), announced that they had organized nearly two dozen co-sponsors around quick action to do just that.
By Tuesday afternoon, the bill was dead. At least for now.
Heinrich and his co-sponsors had pushed the Banning Unlawful Machinegun Parts (BUMP) Act, which is designed to prohibit the sale of bump stocks and other devices that allow semiautomatic firearms to increase their rate of fire and effectively operate as fully automatic weapons. A similar bill sponsored by Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) was also recently filed in the U.S. House of Representatives and had gained 145 co-sponsors by Tuesday, although there is little chance of it passing the Republican-led chamber in an election year.
Heinrich, Collins and Cortez Masto had introduced the bill once before — in 2017 — just after a Las Vegas, Nevada, concert shooting where a shooter using a bump stock fired more than 1,000 bullets at concertgoers, killing 60. But interest in Congress slowed after the Trump administration used its regulatory authority over firearms sales to effectively ban bump stocks.
Heinrich pushed to pass the act on Tuesday by unanimous consent, a procedural vote requiring every senator present to consent. Sen. Pete Ricketts, a Republican from Nebraska, was present and objected.
“We can’t wait for another tragedy to act — Americans are counting on Congress to ban bump stocks now,” Heinrich said before the vote. “There’s no good reason any person should possess a device that turns a firearm into a machine gun. I’m grateful to my colleagues for recognizing that truth and for joining us in the fight to pass this common sense legislation to make our communities safer.”
Senators had not announced next steps for the bill by press time.