There's a lot of unanswered questions, even after the investigation was completed. A FOIA request showed that the ATF was prohibited from inspecting any of the guns to check for full auto modifications. It was a deliberate choice by investigators to not determine anything pertaining to the function of any given weapon.
Why would the ATF inspect the guns? That she FBI's job, isn't it?
The ATF handles the firearms portion of high visibility investigations. It was the ATF that investigated the firearms aspect of the massacre and were the source of that portion of the final report. No agency actually inspected the internal components of the guns at any point and the final report did not determine whether or not bump stocks were actually used, just that it was a possibility. This was revealed via a FOIA request after the investigation completed. The powers that be made the specific choice to not figure out if they were or were not machine guns or conduct any sort of testing on the weapons regarding their function or rate of fire and commented on this fact on internal documents during the investigation.
Interesting, I've never heard of this function of the ATF.
I guess it didn't matter since the suspect was dead and there wasn't going to be a prosecution for an unlawful possession of machine gun charge?
Maybe? They didn't give their justification but more likely than not it is because both the FBI and ATF considered their primary job not to be investigating and getting answers as much as creating justification for summarily ignoring laws by executive fiat.
There's a lot of unanswered questions, even after the investigation was completed. A FOIA request showed that the ATF was prohibited from inspecting any of the guns to check for full auto modifications. It was a deliberate choice by investigators to not determine anything pertaining to the function of any given weapon.
Why would the ATF inspect the guns? That she FBI's job, isn't it?
The ATF handles the firearms portion of high visibility investigations. It was the ATF that investigated the firearms aspect of the massacre and were the source of that portion of the final report. No agency actually inspected the internal components of the guns at any point and the final report did not determine whether or not bump stocks were actually used, just that it was a possibility. This was revealed via a FOIA request after the investigation completed. The powers that be made the specific choice to not figure out if they were or were not machine guns or conduct any sort of testing on the weapons regarding their function or rate of fire and commented on this fact on internal documents during the investigation.
Interesting, I've never heard of this function of the ATF.
I guess it didn't matter since the suspect was dead and there wasn't going to be a prosecution for an unlawful possession of machine gun charge?
Maybe? They didn't give their justification but more likely than not it is because both the FBI and ATF considered their primary job not to be investigating and getting answers as much as creating justification for summarily ignoring laws by executive fiat.