A custom Bump Fire Systems-equipped AR. (Photo: Facebook/TracerX)
Bump Fire Systems has agreed to back out of the bump fire market for now, according to an agreement between Bump Fire Systems and their main competitor, Slide Fire Solutions. Slide Fire Solutions filed a lawsuit against Bump Fire Solutions back in 2014, claiming patent infringement.
“Slide Fire Solutions, LP is pleased to announce the resolution to the patent infringement suit with Bump Fire Systems, LLC, reports the Firearm Blog. “As part of the agreement, Bump Fire Systems, LLC acknowledges the validity of patents possessed by Slide Fire Solutions, LP, and agrees to a judgement under which they will no longer infringe on the patents in question”
“It is great to have another instance of verification as the sole patent holder of bump fire technology. We are eager to put this situation behind us, and look forward to continuing to expand our product line in the future.”
Bump Fire Systems has updated their website with the following message. “Slide Fire Solutions, LP and Bump Fire Systems, LLC announced that they have resolved their patent infringement lawsuit. Pursuant to their agreement, Bump Fire Systems, LLC pays a confidential sum of money to Slide Fire, acknowledges the validity of four patents asserted in the litigation and agrees to a judgement under which it must cease and desist from any further sales of bump fire stocks for the duration of the terms of the patents.”
Both companies make — or made, in Bump Fire Systems’ case — bump fire stocks. Bump fire stocks allow users to simulate full-auto fire, even though the guns stay semi-automatic. They work by using recoil to manually reset the trigger while the user pulls the gun forward. Every time the shooter pulls the gun forward they simultaneously pull the trigger. The gun fires, recoils and resets the trigger, and around and around it goes until all the ammo’s gone.
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With a little practice it’s easy to manage controlled bursts making these popular accessories for rifles at ranges across America. True full-auto rifles are rare, heavily regulated and can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Bump fire stocks are a vastly cheaper and easier alternative for ARs and AKs.
Relatively speaking, anyway. Slide Fire Solutions’ bump fire stocks are up there with high-quality precision rifle stocks, and while they add a pretty nifty feature, they’re expensive for what you get. Bump Fire Systems wanted to change that.
When Bump Fire Systems hit the market they brought with them a very similar product but at a fraction of the price. They quickly became a popular, if less-known alternative, selling bump fire stocks for as little as $99.
If anyone thought it was too good to be true, apparently, it was.
Still, it’s not like Slide Fire Solutions is the only company with a way to make guns shoot fast. Companies like Tac Con and Franklin Armory have figured out other ways to send lead downrange fast and legally. Tac Con has their 3MR “positive reset” trigger that uses energy from the action to deliver a kind of internal bump fire mechanism, and Franklin Armory has their Binary Firing System which — legally — fires a second shot upon the release of the trigger.
These alternatives, however, don’t have the same budget-friendly appeal that Bump Fire Systems corralled. It’ll take some time before these patents give way to bargain-basement competition.