Less than 18 months after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, the United States raised the bar yet again when it comes to naming “the worst mass shooting in modern American history.” This week, at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, a gunman opened fire from a hotel room overlooking the event, killing 58 and injuring more than 500 people.
It is no coincidence that the death toll from mass shootings continues to increase.
In Las Vegas, the shooter used an accessory known as a bump stock—a device that attaches to a semi-automatic rifle, increasing its rate of fire to nearly that of a machine gun—which allowed him to inflict maximum carnage on the 22,000 concertgoers. The catastrophic loss of life in the Las Vegas shooting was due in large part to the use of a bump stock, but this device is just one of many types of firearm components and accessories being marketed by the gun industry that convert firearms into military-style weapons.
While a bump stock allowed the Las Vegas shooter to dramatically increase his rate of fire, another accessory also contributed to the horrific number of casualties—large capacity ammunition magazines. The...
