Slide Fire Solutions, the maker of bump stocks, announced Tuesday it would stop taking orders and shut down its website next month.
The firearm accessory, which allows a semi-automatic weapon to fire rapidly like a fully automatic one, has been in the spotlight since the Las Vegas mass shooting in October that killed 58 people and injured hundreds. The shooter used bump stocks on 12 of his guns.
Slide Fire and weapons retailers were selling out of the devices in the days following the attack, and the company had to suspend new orders to keep pace with surging demand.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives approved the devices in 2010, saying they weren’t classified as firearms.
Slide Fire didn’t say why it’s ending sales. But last month, after Congress failed to act, President Donald Trump said the Justice Department would go forward with plans to ban bump stocks. Attorney General Jeff Sessions explained that the government would reclassify bump stocks as “machine gun” accessories, making them forbidden.
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence sued Slide Fire last fall, co-president Avery Gardiner told HuffPost. It’s unclear whether the lawsuit played a role in the bump stock maker’s decision to shut down, but Gardiner called the decision a “positive development.”
“Bump stocks should not be available for sale to the general public, and they should never have been allowed to be sold,” she said. “Bump stocks serve no purpose other than to create the functional equivalent of a machine gun.”
Nick Wing contributed reporting.
This article has been updated to include comment from Gardiner.
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