Leading bump stock maker briefly makes product available again
Slide Fire website resumes selling controversial gun accessory used in Las Vegas shooting, before halting sales again to ‘replenish inventory’
Bump-stock devices like the ones used by the gunman in last month’s Las Vegas massacre briefly went back on sale from the US’s leading manufacturer after a five-week hiatus in the shooting’s aftermath on Tuesday.
The devices, accessories that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire at fully automatic rates, went back on sale at 11am ET on Tuesday on the Slide Fire website, but by 2.30pm sales had again been halted to “replenish inventory”.
The company had initially paused sales in early October when their product came under scrutiny after a gunman, using several rifles fitted with bump stocks, fired thousands of rounds into a crowd of concertgoers. Other online retailers quickly sold out of the devices that week, as concern that they might be banned drove a spike in sales.
The brief window of availability might have been the last purchase opportunity for some consumers. On Friday, Massachusetts became the first state to ban the sale and ownership of bump stocks since the October attack. They had already been banned in California.
Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts said in a statement that his office “support[s] the second amendment to the constitution and Massachusetts’ strict gun laws, including the ban on assault weapons and bump stocks, and [is] pleased that the commonwealth continues to lead in passing commonsense reforms”.
The gun control advocacy group Giffords Law Center said it hoped other states would follow Massachusetts’ lead.
The NRA, which is typically opposed to laws that restrict firearm ownership, suggested in the wake of Las Vegas that the devices should be “subject to additional regulations”.
There was momentum behind bipartisan legislation banning the devices in October, but that has reportedly slowed in recent weeks.
Fully automatic firearms, which fire continuously as long as a gun’s trigger remains pressed, are, in virtually all cases, illegal to purchase and own in the US. However, semi-automatic weapons, where a shooter must pull the trigger for each successive shot, are abundant in handgun and rifle forms.
The bump-stock devices blur this distinction by using the weapon’s own kickback to “bounce” the gun back and forth against the shooter’s shoulder, while stabilizing their finger against the trigger to achieve multiple trigger pulls in rapid succession.
“The Slide Fire simply allows you to shoot as fast as you want to,” said its inventor, Jeremiah Cottle, while promoting his device in 2011.
This action allows bump stocks to replicate the speed of a fully automatic rifle, but because the motion involves essentially shaking the whole firearm, they dramatically reduce accuracy. Until the Las Vegas attack, bump stocks had limited popularity with gun enthusiasts, who commonly regarded the devices as a novelty or a toy.
Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter, used a variety of AR-15 style semi-automatic rifles modified with bump stocks in his attack.
Devin Kelley, the suspected gunman in Sunday’s Texas massacre, used an AR-15 style Ruger semi-automatic rifle.
The limited models available on the Slide Fire website as of Tuesday morning were selling for between $179.99 and $199.99.
