President Trump Pushes For Ban On Gun "Bump Stocks"

While a hundred students from Parkland (Florida) headed to Tallahassee (the state capital) to demand legislative changes and greater control over the weapons after the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Institute in which 14 students and three teachers died , the president of the United States, Donald Trump, announced on Tuesday his first step in relation to the anti-arms debate that has resurfaced in the country.

"I have signed a circular ordering the attorney general to propose regulations to ban all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns," he said at the White House during a value-award ceremony. In the first rows was the highest representative of Justice in the US, Jeff Sessions, which Trump addressed to urge him to "finish soon" that work.

A task in which, as indicated in the memorandum, his administration was already working since December 2017. After the mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas (Nevada), in which 59 people were killed by shots fired from a hotel with a semiautomatic weapon turned into automatic, Trump had asked his team to review how the Alcohol, Tobacco, Weapons and Explosives Agency regulated those devices. A work that, supposedly, was completed at the end of January.

In the note sent to the Department of Justice, the president took the opportunity to criticize the Obama Administration, assuring that his predecessor "repeatedly concluded that it was legal to buy and possess the 'bumb stock' devices." The previous administration tried on numerous occasions to tighten the control measures of the weapons, especially after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School (Connecticut) in which 20 children and six members of the school staff died in 2012.

Since last Wednesday, when the Parkland massacre occurred, Trump had not spoken publicly about the weapons. In the official speech he delivered at the White House, he never referred to them. "We are committed to local and state leaders to help make our schools safe and tackle the difficult issue of mental health," he said one day after the mass shooting occurred, one of the worst in recent US history.

Before, via Twitter, the president had lamented the multiple signs that "the shooter had mental problems." Trump has also charged into social networks against the FBI for devoting more resources to investigating the Russian plot - and to him - instead of investigating the warnings they received about the massacre's author, Nikolas Cruz.

The step taken by the president, urging the prohibition of devices that make automatic semi-automatic rifles - which was not used in the Parkland shooting - is an advance, but is far from the demands that activists ask for weapons control.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who last year introduced a proposal in the Senate to ban such devices, questioned the viability of the regulation demanded by the president. "Legislation is the only answer," he stressed, taking into account the Agency's limitations to prevent the sale of those "devices" that accelerate the speed during the shooting.

After the last shooting, numerous voices have been raised demanding that assault weapons be re-prohibited among civilians. On Monday, Trump announced that he supported the efforts of several Senators from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to improve the background check system for gun buyers.

The White House is planning meetings with parents, teachers and students of Parkland as well as other centers that have suffered shootings in recent decades. The survivors of the massacre in Florida continue to organize the March for our lives on March 24 with Washington DC on the horizon.

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