WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Saturday it has taken the first step in the regulatory process to ban bump stocks, probably setting the stage for long legal battles with gun manufacturers while the trigger devices remain on the market.
The move was expected after President Trump ordered the Justice Department to work toward a ban following the shooting deaths of 17 people at a Florida high school in February.
Bump stocks, which enable semiautomatic rifles to fire like automatic weapons, were not used in that attack — they were used in last year’s Las Vegas massacre — but have since become a focal point in the gun control debate.
The Justice Department’s regulation would classify the hardware as a machine gun banned under federal law.
That would reverse a 2010 decision by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that found bump stocks did not amount to machine guns and could not be regulated unless Congress amended existing firearms law or passed a new one.
A reversal of the department’s earlier evaluation could be seen as an admission that it was legally flawed, which manufacturers could seize on in court. Even as the Trump administration moves toward banning the devices, some ATF officials believe it lacks the authority to do so.
But any congressional effort to create new gun control laws would need support from the pro-gun Republican majority.
A bid to ban the accessory fizzled last year, even as lawmakers expressed openness to the idea after nearly 60 people were gunned down in Las Vegas.
Some states have sought their own restrictions in light of the inaction. A ban on bump stocks was part of a far-reaching school safety bill signed by Florida Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, on Friday that was immediately met with a lawsuit by the National Rifle Association.
The powerful group has said it supports ATF regulations on the accessory but opposes any legislation that would do that same. The NRA did not immediately return calls for comment Saturday.
Calls mounted for a bump stock ban after the Las Vegas shooting, and the Justice Department said in December it would again review whether they can be prohibited under federal law.
Trump told officials to expedite the review, which yielded more than 100,000 comments from the public and the firearms industry. Many of the comments came from gun owners angry over any attempt to regulate the accessory, a move they view as a slippery slope toward outlawing guns altogether.
The proposal still needs the approval of the Office of Management and Budget. The Justice Department submitted its draft regulation to prohibit the sale of the devices to the OMB on Saturday.
If the budget office approves the proposed regulation, it would then be published and members of the public would be allowed to comment before a final version was put into place.
On Friday, Scott signed a law for his state imposing a three-day waiting period for most purchases of long guns, raising the minimum age for buying those weapons to 21, and banning the possession of bump stocks.
The NRA immediately filed a lawsuit in federal district court over Florida lawmakers’ approval of the gun-control package, contending that it violated the Second Amendment.
The NRA maintains that Florida’s new age limit violates the constitutional rights of young adults, alleging that it prohibits ‘‘an entire class of law-abiding, responsible citizens from fully exercising the right to keep and bear arms — namely, adults who have reached the age of 18 but are not yet 21.’’
The group further notes that ‘‘at 18 years of age, law-abiding citizens in this country are considered adults for almost all purposes and certainly for the purposes of the exercise of fundamental constitutional rights. At 18, citizens are eligible to serve in the military — to fight and die by arms for the country.’’
Federal courts have rejected that argument before.
In 2013, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled in an NRA case that age restrictions on handgun purchases are ‘‘consistent with a longstanding tradition of targeting select groups’ ability to access and to use arms for the sake of public safety.’’
When Congress set the age limit for handgun purchases as part of the Gun Control Act of 1968, it did so because it reasoned that young adults between the ages of 18 and 20 ‘‘tend to be relatively immature and that denying them easy access to handguns would deter violent crime,’’ the court found.
The NRA appealed the 2013 ruling to the US Supreme Court. But the court declined to review the case, letting the appeals court’s ruling stand. It also declined to review a lower court decision that let stand a Texas law prohibiting 18- to 20-year-olds from carrying guns in public.
In more recent years, the Supreme Court has also allowed other state-level restrictions on gun ownership to stand: an assault-weapons ban in Maryland, a 10-day waiting period for gun purchases in California, and a ban on the open carrying of guns in Florida, to name a few.
