60,000 Bump Stocks Shredded in Texas (VIDEO)

To comply with a new federal rule classifying bump stocks as untransferable machine guns, a Texas distributor sent their entire inventory of the now-banned devices to the scrappers.

Fort Worth-based RW Arms on Wednesday brought 60,000 bump stocks to American Shredder where they were destroyed under the supervision of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents. The retailer had aquired the remaning inventory of Texas-based bump stock maker Slide Fire Solutions, who had closed their doors last year as the federal government persued a ban on the once-legal accessory.

Footage released by local media showed truckload after truckload of cardboard boxes containing the polymer replacement stocks spill onto a conveyor belt which pulled them into an industrial crusher where they were pulverized into debris.

In the days before the rule change reclassifying the stocks went into effect on March 26, RW was selling the devices for between $105 to $450, making the parts destroyed to comply with the prohibition worth millions. Under the rule, bump stock owners must either destroy the stocks or abandon them at an ATF office without reimbursement for their cost or value.

Nonetheless, a bevy of plaintiffs who are challenging the rule change in federal courts across the country has argued the ban may violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment which states that private property can’t be taken for public use without compensation. A federal judge in Washington D.C. last month responded to that argument that bump stock owners could resort to filing a lawsuit for damages from the government under the Tucker Act after the fact but that factor alone wasn’t enough to halt the ban.

Federal regulators last year estimated there could be as many 520,000 bump stocks in circulation. The ATF has posted instructions online so that owners can destroy their own stocks.

Guns.com