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Article snippet: Gun enthusiasts looking for an extra thrill have long found makeshift ways to replicate the exhilaration of using an automatic weapon — the thrill of the noise and the jolt of rapid-fire rounds — while bypassing the legal hassle and expense of getting one. They contrived devices using pieces of wood, belt loops and sometimes even rubber bands, to mimic the speed of a fully automatic weapon — even if it meant sacrificing accuracy. Then came Jeremiah Cottle with an answer. A Texas farm boy turned Air Force veteran, he figured he could do better. He sank $120,000 of his savings into the development of a high-end bump stock, a device that harnessed a rifle’s recoil to fire hundreds of rounds a minute. He began selling his bump stocks in 2010 with the help of his wife and grandparents in Moran, Tex., his small hometown of fewer than 300 residents. His company, Slide Fire Solutions, won approval from federal firearms regulators, and the business moved from a portable building that had once been a dog kennel into a much larger space on the Cottle family farm. Sales exceeded $10 million and 35,000 units in the first year. “We literally made our first million in a doghouse,” Mr. Cottle told The Albany News of Texas in 2011. Interest in his products, and in similar stocks from other companies, suddenly surged after Sunday when Stephen Paddock, equipped with a small arsenal of weapons that included a dozen rifles outfitted with bump stocks, massacred dozens of people and in... Link to the full article to read more