KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Starting Tuesday, March 26th -- it is now illegal to possess, use, or sell a bump stock in the United States.
►READ MORE: Trump administration moves to ban bump stocks
A new law bans the add-on, which allows semiautomatic weapons to fire multiple times with a single pull of the trigger, after a gunman used one in the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 58 people.
To be in compliance with the law, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives suggests bump stock owners should turn in the devices to a local ATF office or destroy them. The ATF had provided people with 90 days to become compliant with the ban once the Trump administration put it into effect.
ATF spokesperson Michael Knight believes many may take the disposal into their own hands.
“There's a variety of methods that can be used for the destruction of these items,” Knight said.
First, to destroy your device at home -- you should know what it's made of. The owner of the Knoxville Gun Range, Robbie Paskiewicz, says the devices could be made out of several materials.
“Plastic, fiberglass, even digitally printed,” Paskiewicz said. “There could be metal ones out there or a combination of any of those materials.”
The ATF website lists up to 15 examples of bump stocks and where to destroy them. The agency suggests you cut it, melt it, crush or shred the device.
You can find diagrams of where to cut to effectively destroy various devices beyond repair at this link.
“They're basically telling you to crisscross in certain spots across the device,” said Paskiewicz.
Destroying the bump stock under these guidelines would make reassembling the device nearly impossible.
“And if you don't follow those guidelines you might be in violation of the machine gun laws in the state of Tennessee and in the United States,” Paskiewicz said. “Ignorance is no excuse for the law. And we have to make sure we're informed.”
Destroying the device properly would avoid thousand of dollars in fines and up 10 years in prison.
“If an individual is caught in possession with one of these devices, then they are subject to prosecution. But we will handle the situation on a case-by-case basis,” Knight said.