Texas-Book-Gun Law Armed And Educated - Flipbook - Page 457
Similarly, under Texas law, a machine gun is defined as “any firearm
that is capable of shooting more than two shots automatically,
without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” Tex.
Penal Code § 46.01(9). Texas law lists machine guns as prohibited
weapons under Section 46.05 of the Texas Penal Code unless the
item is registered pursuant to the NFA. In other words, if more than
two bullets come out of a firearm with only one pull of the trigger,
the firearm is a machine gun.
There is no new manufacturing of machine guns for private
ownership. Because of a federal law that effectively disallows
private ownership of any machine gun manufactured after May
19, 1986, machine guns available for private ownership are limited
to the legally registered machine guns that existed prior to May
19, 1986. Thus, the private market is very limited and prices, as a
result, are very high.
Bump stocks
Bump stocks are a rifle accessory that harness the energy of the
recoil to assist the shooter in pulling the trigger as soon as it resets.
This device does not alter the mechanical operation of the rifle;
it still fires only one round for each trigger pull. The bump stock
became controversial after the October 1, 2017, shooting at an
outdoor concert in Las Vegas. Politicians and the media immediately
declared that these devices allow a semi-automatic rifle to fire
as rapidly as a machine gun. Many of them erroneously stated
that a bump stock “turns a rifle into a machine gun.” Bills were
filed in Congress which did not pass, but ultimately in 2018, the
Department of Justice, through the ATF, issued a final rule banning
bump stocks by way of regulation. This was done in spite of an ATF
determination in 2010 that bump stocks did not modify a semiautomatic rifle to make it an NFA-regulated machine gun. This new
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