Late last week, the U.S. government paved the way for the selling of forced-reset triggers that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire ammunition far more rapidly.
“This Department of Justice believes that the 2nd Amendment is not a second-class right,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on the decision. “And we are glad to end a needless cycle of litigation with a settlement that will enhance public safety.”
However, the move has experts worried that an uptick in gun violence will follow, rather than this promised increase to public well-being. “The Trump administration has just effectively legalized machine guns. Lives will be lost because of his actions,” Vanessa Gonzalez, a vice president at gun violence prevention group GIFFORDS, told the AP.
Sandy Hook Promise, a national nonprofit launched in 2013 following the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, agrees – and now, the group is fighting back. In response to the DOJ, it launched a petition urging elected officials to take actions opposing this move.
Nicole Hockley, co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise, took to Instagram to discuss the need for such action. “This [decision] is awful news for anyone interested in public safety and preventing more gun violence and more mass shootings,” she said in the video, posted this past weekend. “Many semi-automatic weapons are already too deadly, and add-ons like these forced reset triggers make them even more lethal.”
“This will put lives at risk,” she added plainly.
The forced-reset triggers are modifying tools that make it possible for semi-automatic rifles to fire hundreds of rounds more than usual in a minute’s time – nearly as fast as machine guns, which fire ammunition as long as the user is holding down the trigger.
The U.S. already has a significant gun-violence problem without them – hardly surprising, considering there are more guns than people in the country. An average of almost 4,000 people lose their lives to guns each month in America.
Which is why gun violence prevention advocates feel such urgency around ensuring the illegality of these triggers. As Hockley noted in the nonprofit’s Instagram post: “We can’t afford to wait for another tragedy” to make a change.
Note: This post has been updated to better describe the work of Sandy Hook Promise.
