Slide Fire Solutions, the company that invented and manufactures bump stocks, announced Tuesday it is shutting down production.
A notice on its website reads, "On Sunday, May 20, 2018 at midnight CST, Slide Fire will cease taking orders for its products and shut down its website."
The devices, and Slide Fire products specifically, have come under intense public and political scrutiny since the rapid-fire gun accessory was used in the Oct. 1, 2017, Las Vegas mass shooting that left 58 dead and hundreds more injured.
Three of those victims have filed a lawsuit seeking class-action status against Slide Fire and any future bump stock manufacturers for negligence. According to the complaint, "this horrific assault would not and could not have occurred, with a conventional handgun, rifle, or shotgun, of the sort used by law-abiding responsible gun owners for hunting or self defense."
Court documents also allege that Slide Fire manufactured, marketed and sold devices to gun owners who wanted semi-automatic rifles to mimic fully automatic weapons, "thereby subverting federal law that has highly regulated machine guns for over 80 years."
"Slide Fire's decision is just something they're doing now to try to relieve political pressure they're under," Robert Eglet told NPR.
Eglet is a senior partner at Eglet Prince, the firm that filed the class-action lawsuit on behalf of the Las Vegas victims along with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. He contends the shutdown is a strategic move by the company to "put the brakes on any congressional movement that would prevent them or anyone else from producing these bump stocks in the future."
This is not the first time Slide Fire is halting production. As NPR reported, it suspended sales shortly after the devices were used in the Las Vegas shooting in October. But less than a month later, days after another mass shooting in Texas, Slide Fire restarted production on the controversial accessories.
Regardless of what the company does or doesn't do, Eglet said, he and his clients are continuing to pursue this case.
"We want to sue these people out of business and send a message to any future manufacturers that that's what will happen to them if they try to make and sell these devices to the public," Eglet said.
The devices have been legal since June 2010, after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives determined a bump stock "is a firearm part and is not regulated as a firearm under [the] Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act," according to a letter from the ATF to Slide Fire.
http://delawarepublic.org/post/bump-stock-manufacturer-shutting-down-production
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