Neighbors Of Slide Fire Solutions Stand Behind Company

Clark Aposhian, chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council, demonstrates how a little-known device called a "bump stock" is attached to a semi-automatic rifle at the Gun Vault store and shooting range Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017, in South Jordan, Utah. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

On the last day of September, no one knew the name “Slide Fire Solutions.” They didn’t know it the next day either, but the days of relative anonymity were quickly drawing to a close and were abruptly shattered when news broke that the madman behind the Las Vegas massacre had used bump stocks on some of his weapons.

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Now, the small, Texas-based company has found itself and its products in the center of a firestorm of controversy.

Yet their neighbors in Moran, Texas seem to have their back.

Moran, Texas, sits 150 miles west of Dallas off State Highway 6. Less than 300 people call the town home and most of them consider Slide Fire Solutions an economic blessing.

“It’s kept the community going,” Jed Cottle, Jeremiah’s brother, told the New York Times during an interview at high school football game earlier this month. “Everybody shows up here on Friday night. Slide Fire has kept it going.”

Jeremiah Cottle, an Air Force veteran, opened Slide Fire Solutions in Moran in 2010, generating $10 million in sales in its first year. It’s signature product, the bump stock, soared from obscurity into the national spotlight three weeks ago when federal investigators revealed a dozen of the devices were found in the Las Vegas shooter’s hotel room at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Public fervor for a ban reached fever pitch earlier this month when a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers introduced legislation outlawing the devices.

“It’s being used as a scapegoat — they’re looking for somebody to blame,” Lanham Martin, a Shackelford County commissioner who lives in Moran, told the newspaper. “Guns don’t kill people. Slide Fire stocks don’t kill people. It could have been just as lethal, if not more so, with a good scope.”

The company halted filling orders of the stocks following the revelation that it had been used in the shooting. Cottle hasn’t publicly commented on the shooting, either, which is fine. Not everyone needs to comment.

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The people of Moran are standing beside the company that probably does more good for their community than anyone else, a community that the anti-gun hysteria-driven gun grabbers couldn’t care less about. Destroy a town, destroy people’s livelihoods, who cares so long as they can be seen doing “something” about guns.

Who cares if nothing they propose would actually work? After all, it never does, now does it?

Lanham Martin was dead on accurate. Slide Fire stocks are not responsible for Las Vegas. Vegas still would have happened even if the stocks had never been invented. In fact, it might have been more deadly as Martin noted. Bump-fire isn’t exactly accurate, after all.

But again, that doesn’t matter to the average anti-gun crusader. All that matters is the appearance of actually accomplishing something, especially within the bizarre confines of their own minds.

Good on the people of Moran, Texas for doing what’s right. Then again, that tends to be the way of most Texans I’ve encountered through the years. It’s almost like they just grow ’em good over that way.

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