GA-GOV: Do GOP Candidates Agree With Williams That Bump Stocks Saved Lives in Vegas?

Candidate Opposes Bump Stock Ban, Claims it Saved Lives in Vegas Shooting

In the latest chapter in the far-right Georgia Republican primary, candidate Michael Williams is somehow running to the right of the NRA. 

Sen. Williams is now championing “bump stocks” like the one used in the recent mass-shooting in Las Vegas. He came strongly against a bump stock ban, something even the NRA is open to. As Williams sees it, the bump stock “actually prevented more casualties and injures due to its inconsistency, inaccuracy, and lack of control.”

To go along with these shocking comments, Williams is holding a giveaway where “one lucky winner” will receive a brand new bump stock.

So the question now comes to Williams’ primary opponents, Casey Cagle, Brian Kemp, Hunter Hill, and Clay Tippen: Do you side with Williams in opposing a bump stock ban and that bump stocks saved lives in Vegas?

“It’s a simple question: where do Cagle, Kemp. Hill, and Tippen stand on bump stocks?” said DGA Communications Director Jared Leopold. “Michael Williams has planted his flag to the right of the NRA, and now it’s time to see who will join him. Georgia voters deserve to know just how far-right these candidates are.”

### 

Read the whole article HERE.   

Atlanta Journal Constitution: GOP candidate for governor: Bump stock ‘prevented more casualties’ in Las Vegas

We are told that it is bad manners to discuss the causes of gun violence after one-man massacres that kill scores and wound hundreds like the one in Las Vegas.

The apparent exception to this rule: Republican candidates for governor in Georgia.

In the latest on a long list of attempts to grab attention, state Sen. Mike Williams of Cumming has developed a unique defense for the “bump stocks” used by the Las Vegas shooter to turn his single-shot arsenal into a cache of nine-rounds-a-second Gatling guns. 

The gadgets made the killing field below the shooter’s 32-floor hotel room less deadly, Williams argued in a press release late Monday that included this quote from the candidate:

“Many firearms experts determined the Las Vegas shooter’s use of a bump stock actually prevented more casualties and [injuries] due to its inconsistency, inaccuracy, and lack of control. There is zero evidence that banning bump stocks would prevent any gun violence deaths.”

In other words, sloppy mass killers are safer mass killers. As a public safety argument, this is more than unusual. Using the same logic, one could argue that we would all be more secure if guns were only in the hands of the legally blind. Nonetheless, in support of his position, Williams is giving away a bump stock to a “lucky winner” who registers at an internet location that we’d rather not share, thank you very much.

The Forsyth County businessman entered the race for governor by declaring, at a state GOP convention in June, that powers in the State Capitol had promised him chairmanship of the Senate budget committee if he would only withdraw. He has since provided no evidence. 

In the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, the NRA has said it’s willing to consider outlawing bump stocks, but only if this is done administratively, through the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. (There’s no need to subject members of Congress to any pressure from constituents.)

But in his Monday press release, Williams argued that that the ATF got it right the first time:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms determined in a 2015 memo that bump stocks are not mechanical, therefore they do not fall under the machine gun weapons ban of 1986. An attack on bump stocks is an attack on the Second Amendment….

“If politicians wanted to have a real conversation on reducing gun violence, they would be discussing mental health awareness, and ways to reduce the weekly bloodbath in Chicago and other inner cities. You cannot regulate evil out of existence. Blaming guns or bump stocks for the actions of a lunatic, is the same as blaming McDonald’s for heart disease.”

No, you can’t regulate evil out of existence. But it’s been a settled matter for some time that you don’t put a machine gun into its hands, either. And at some point, the person who would do so becomes an accomplice.