Bump stock maker celebrates Cyber Monday by rebooting sales

Bump stocks are back, just in time for the holidays.

The controversial devices — which transform semi-automatic assault rifles into rapid-fire machine guns — were thrust into the national spotlight when the Las Vegas shooter used them to unleash a deadly hail of gunfire on an outdoor music festival from his hotel room nearly two months ago.

Slide Fire Solutions, the inventor and largest manufacturer of bump stocks, stopped selling them online soon after the Oct. 1 massacre, which killed 58 and injured more than 500, amid calls from both Republican and Democrat lawmakers to regulate the devices.

At the time, Slide Fire said the reason to halt sales was that they were sold out, even though both Walmart and Cabela’s stopped selling them on their websites. But Slide Fire is now back to marketing bump stocks heavily, just in time for “Cyber Monday,” typically the biggest e-commerce shopping day of the year.

“We will have a wide variety of products available for sale on Cyber Monday!” Slide Fire said in a press release appearing on trade sites like Ammoland and Gunsamerica. “At 12:00 a.m. CST on November 27th, the items will begin to be listed for sale.”

The company also warned potential customers that they expect “high traffic volumes.”

READ: Facebook tried to sell me a bump stock like the Las Vegas gunman used

Slide Fire quietly resumed limited sales of two bump stock models on Nov. 1, both priced at $179.95.

The massacre reignited the gun control debate, normally a highly partisan issue. At the time, many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle conceded that bump stocks were dangerous and warranted tighter regulation. Since then, legislative efforts have stalled as lawmakers focus on background checks in the wake of the Texas church mass shooting that followed. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, has said he favors a regulatory solution where bump stocks come under the purview of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Fear of an all-out ban on the devices meant that demand for bump stocks surged in the wake of the attack. Slide Fire Solutions, the inventor and largest manufacturer of bump stocks, said it had completely sold out of the firearm accessories four days after the shooting.

“They’re such a niche product,” said Rommel Dionisio, gun industry analyst for Aegis Capital Corp. “Many firearm enthusiasts didn’t know much about them, but that incident in Las Vegas brought them to the forefront.

READ: The biggest seller of bump stocks has halted sales on its website

In October, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence filed a class action suit on behalf survivors and relatives of the Las Vegas shooting against Slide Fire Solutions and other bump stock manufacturers. The complaint accuses those companies of negligence, namely of misleadingly marketing their products as aids to individuals with limited hand mobility.

Slide Fire Solutions’ decision to reboot sales on Cyber Monday comes just days after the gun industry saw its most successful Black Friday ever. There were a total of 203,000 FBI background checks (a proxy for gun sales) run in just one day, outpacing the previous year’s record of 185,000 checks.