Gun Modifications Walk a Legal Tightrope

CHARLOTTE, NC — The bump-stock. It’s a device used to make a semi-automatic weapon virtually automatic. A device the Las Vegas shooter had.

They are readily available. And relatively cheap. Part of a growing market for gun modification that walks a legal tightrope.

“$10,000 fine, ten years in prison,” says Larry Hyatt. “There’s no gray there.”

Hyatt of Hyatt Guns in Charlotte makes no bones about it.

“Possession of a fully automatic weapon without the proper license, which are very expensive and hard to get, will get you in jail,” he says.

We know the Las Vegas shooter had a massive stockpile of high-powered weapons, including a popular device that allows for rapid fire.

“We are aware of a device called bump stop,” says Clark County Nevada Sheriff Joe Lombardo. “And that enables an individual to speed up the discharge of ammunition.”

“The stock itself moves back and forth,” demonstrates Roger Ayscue with Hyatt Guns. “So what you do is, you pull the front of the gun against your hand. So you’re pulling forward with one hand, pulling back with the other.”

Bump stops can cost up to $400, but there are internet sites selling them for $99.

They are legal. Hyatt does not carry them.

“The action of the rifle going back and forth causes the trigger to pull rapidly,” explains Ayscue. “So you can almost simulate automatic fire.”

The AK-47 and the AR-15 are often modified illegally to be fully automatic.

With millions of these guns are out there, there’s a big market for people selling illegal parts.

“Yeah, these are not inexpensive guns,” says Hyatt. “These are $2,000 rifles.”

Federally licensed gun stores won’t carry and sell illegal parts. But the internet gives easy access, simple instructions, and sometimes deadly consequences.

“It’s just an unbelievable sort of dark information out there, and no one seems to be doing anything about it,” says Hyatt.

Legally-owned fully automatic firearms are rare. Numbers on illegally-modified automatic guns are hard to track.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police tell me they rarely encounter the illegally-modified weapons when confiscating firearms.