Well, there you're getting into several other discussions.
First, let me say I am for background checks, but checks on the person, not the guns or anything that can be bought for them. Personally I think a single background check per year should be it. That person should be given a card that then allows them to go buy whatever is legally on the market, and as many times as they wish. When the year is up, if they wish to purchase another firearm, they have to go get another background check. A background check for every single gun purchase isn't really a background check on a person, it becomes a registry of gun sales. Which I don't agree with.
To do a check for every single gun purchase achieves nothing more than additional waste of time and money. In the same vein, a check on a larger magazine, or a bump stock is the same waste of time. The person has already passed, or not, the background check. Nothing more is going to show up simply because they want to buy an accessory. Honestly I'm not even sure how it would be physically possible to do a more thorough background check than is already required. Currently it's a simple phone call to the
NICS and they search all the databases that would exclude a person from purchasing a firearm. 1.3 million people have been denied already.
Bump stocks. This is an interesting subject. Just being technical for a bit here on definition. Bump stocks don't make guns fully automatic. People here keep using that phrase wrong because they hear it on the media, where they really don't have a clue what they are talking about. Rifles with bump stocks are still semi-automatic. That being defined as one trigger pull produces one fired bullet. To be fully automatic means pressing a trigger and more than one bullet can be fired repeatedly. Nothing the Las Vegas shooter did involved fully automatic weapons in any way as far as I know. Feel free to correct me on that if I'm wrong.
But then it does get a bit more complicated than that. To most people, bump stocks seem like an accelerated rate of fire, because they are use to simple bolt action or similar hunting rifles, things of that nature. But they aren't really, nor are they more lethal.
Look at the rate of fire produced by them. Bump stocks usually make the rate of fire between 400-800 rounds per minute (rpm). The Las Vegas shooter was calculated at firing 90 rounds in 10 second spans, or 540 rpm, according to one report I read. Let's compare and contrast using that as a base value.
That can be beat by finger pulls, no mechanical aid needed. Anyone can fire by finger pull alone, faster than a bump stock. This man is an example, he's been referenced on the forum before, but I'll point to him once again. Jerry Miculek. In
this video alone he can be seen firing a single pistol at 545 rpm. Then using two hands to fire a single pistol he goes to 609 rpm. Using two pistols, one in each hand, he's firing at 822 rpm. Any of these methods are faster than the Las Vegas shooters rate of fire.
Just to stress that last one:
Finger trigger pulls can fire 282 rounds a minute faster than that bump stock managed in Vegas.
For one more look from a different guy, look at the
last few seconds of this video for a shot timer for iPhones. You'll notice the first shot is at 2.84 seconds on that iPhone timer, the last at 5.92 seconds. 18 rounds fired in 3.08 seconds. That's a rate of fire of 350.6 rounds per minutes. It's entirely possible for anyone with practice to achieve close, or above, bump stock rate of fire without any modifications.
Bump stocks really aren't an advance on what can be done without them. So, yeah, they're still the same gun, the same lethality. Modification or not, a determined person will find a way.