The Cheap Accessories Make Deadly Semi-Automatic Weapons Even More Lethal
Guns. Congressional Republicans are open to banning the firearm accessory that the Las Vegas gunman used to transform his rifles to mimic automatic weapon fire. The conversion kits, called “bump stocks,” turn semi-automatic weapons into weapons that can fire in long, deadly bursts. Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) said he was drafting legislation to ban the kits. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced legislation to ban bump stocks. Feinstein said her daughter had planned to attend the Las Vegas concert where 58 people were killed but decided against it at the last minute. Some big national sporting goods chains like Cabela’s sell bump stock kits. Cabelas’s yanked bump stocks from its online catalog after the Las Vegas massacre.
Gone dark. FEMA has removed information from its website about how many Puerto Ricans have access to drinking water and how much of the island has power. Puerto Rico is reporting that 9.2% of the island has power and 54.2% of the residents have access to drinking water. About 200 people have died from renal and respiratory problems and heart disease in just three of the island’s more than 70 towns since the hurricane.
Methane. A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration can’t legally block restrictions on methane emissions at oil and gas drilling operations on public land. The Interior Department plans to keep working on a proposal to push back the deadline to comply with the methane rule to January 2019. Methane is one of the most potent accelerators of climate change, 25 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. The new rules cover nearly 100,000 oil and gas wells on federal land. The restrictions require energy companies that own the wells to capture more of the methane and convert it into electricity. The average small business with an oil or gas operation on federal property would see its profit margin reduced by two-tenths of 1% by the rules.
Abortion flap. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), the anti-abortion lawmaker who encouraged his lover to terminate a pregnancy, announced his plan to resign later this month. Republican leaders pressured Murphy to step down. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette revealed he sent a series of text messages to his girlfriend, a psychologist half his age, encouraging her to have an abortion. Murphy is the married father of a child.
Featured Image: This is video grab of a woman firing a bump-stock equipped AR15 rifle. It appears accompanying a guns.com review of a $99 bump stock, which describes the deadly accessory as “the closest thing to a giggle switch most people can get without a few thousand dollars and a fistful of paperwork.”