Bump Stocks Are Back, One Month After Las Vegas Gun Massacre

One month after a mass shooting in Las Vegas left almost 60 dead and more than 500 injured, a device similar to one used in the attack is back on the market, despite calls in Washington for a ban in the massacre’s aftermath. “Bump-fire stocks,” which allow semi-automatic weapons to be fired as if they were fully automatic, became a household name after the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said a dozen such devices were found in the room of Stephen Craig Paddock at the Mandalay Bay Resort. He allegedly targeted the Route 91 Harvest concert, shooting wildly from his 32nd floor room on the night of Oct .1.

Jeremiah Cottle, founder of Texas-based Slide Fire Solutions Inc., owns a slew of patents related to bump stocks and claims to have invented the device as early as 2005. A semi-automatic weapon releases one round of ammunition per trigger pull. A bump-fire stock expedites the process, in part by using the recoil of a weapon to generate continuous fire.