WATCH: GOP rep shows how ‘bump stock’ works

A GOP lawmaker who founded a rifle manufacturing company in 2010 demonstrates how a so-called “bump stock” device works in an interview with The Hill TV.Using one finger as a trigger and another to pull the “trigger,” Oklahoma Rep. Steve Russell (R), a combat veteran and retired Army lieutenant colonel, walked through how a bump stock, or a “novelty” product for some gun owners, operates.

Using one finger as a trigger and another to pull the “trigger,” Rep. Steve Russell (R-Okla.), a combat veteran and retired Army lieutenant colonel, walked through how a bump stock — “novelty” product for some gun owners — operates.

“When you file a rifle, you pull the trigger, the rifle recoils and then it returns to its place. [The bump stock] what it did was it formed a plastic mold around the trigger so that if you pulled the rifle forward, the trigger fires, the recoil kicks back and returns to your finger creating a rapid rate,” Russell explained.

Asked how popular bump stocks are among gun owners, Russell said, “Until the Las Vegas shooting most people didn’t even know they existed. In the gun industry they were a novelty and many of them, after a time or two at the range, they’d throw them in the closet.”

Russell cautioned against “knee-jerk” legislative reactions such as banning the use of certain implements or devices, saying a solution will require feedback from members from all sides — including gun owners.

“To the gun owners and others that are out there, we have to engage on the issue as a public, we have to have all sides on this issue engage and look at it kind of like how we did the terrorism threat: How do we identify who is a danger? And then that’s how we protect ourselves,” Russell said.