THE US government and the gun lobby mooted restrictions on purchase of the “bump stock” device used by the Las Vegas massacre gunman on Thursday – while dismissing calls for gun control as a bid to “politicise” the atrocity.

Stephen Paddock used an arsenal of 16 assault rifles, 12 of them equipped with the device, in his massacre of 58 people last Saturday night.

The bump stock uses recoil to bump the trigger into the shooter’s finger after each shot — effectively turning a semi-automatic rifle into an automatic one.