A House panel found that the companies have thrived in the past decade by selling and marketing military-grade weapons to civilians, specifically young men.
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A gun store in Austin, Texas. A congressional report accused gun manufacturers of marketing their weapons to young men as a way to “prove their manliness.”
WASHINGTON — The leading manufacturers of assault rifles used to perpetrate the deadliest mass shootings in the United States have collected more than $1 billion in revenue over the past decade as gun violence across the country has surged, according to a House investigation set to be presented on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
The findings, released before a congressional hearing on Wednesday on the marketing of assault rifles, indicate that the gun industry has thrived by selling and marketing military-grade weapons to civilians, specifically targeting and playing to the insecurities of young men, while some have made thinly veiled references to white supremacist groups.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform opened an investigation into the gun manufacturing industry in May after the gun massacre in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 elementary school students and two teachers and a racially motivated mass shooting in a Buffalo supermarket that killed 10 people.
The panel requested that the country’s top five gun manufacturers share information on their sales and marketing strategies, as well as any efforts they make to track safety data related to their products.
“The business practices of these gun manufacturers are deeply disturbing, exploitative and reckless,” Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and the chairwoman of the committee, said in a statement. “These companies use aggressive marketing tactics to target young people — especially young men — and some even evoke symbols of white supremacy.”
She added, “We found that none of these companies bothers to keep track of the death and destruction caused by their products.”
The House is expected to vote on Friday on an assault weapons ban for the first time since 1994, a measure that will have no chance of passage in the evenly divided Senate.
On Wednesday, the committee will hear testimony from Christopher Killoy, the president and chief executive of Sturm, Ruger & Company, and Marty Daniel, the chief executive of Daniel Defense.
The manufacturers that were investigated — Bushmaster, Daniel Defense, Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson, and Sturm, Ruger & Company — all marketed their weapons to young men as a way to “prove their manliness,” according to the report, and sold “guns to mass shooters on credit” while failing to take basic steps to monitor deaths associated with their products.
The report showed that, as the country has struggled to cope with an epidemic of gun violence that has plagued schools, churches, supermarkets, concerts and shopping malls, firearms manufacturers have been enjoying ballooning proceeds from the sale of the weapons used to carry out mass shootings.
Daniel Defense’s revenue from AR-15-style rifles tripled from 2019 to 2021, to over $120 million from $40 million, the report said. Daniel Defense manufactured the AR-15-style rifle that was used by the 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde.
Ruger, the country’s largest maker of rifles, reported that its gross earnings from AR-15-style rifles also nearly tripled from 2019 to 2021, increasing to over $103 million from $39 million. The company’s AR-15-style rifle and pistols were used by mass shooters in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017 and Boulder, Colo., in 2021.
Smith & Wesson’s revenue from all long guns, which include AR-15-style rifles, more than doubled between 2019 and 2021, to $253 million from $108 million. The company sold the weapon used in the July 4 massacre in Highland Park, Ill., as well as the Parkland school shooting in Florida in 2018.
Sig Sauer, the company that sold the AR-15-style rifle used in a mass shooting in 2016 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., and three of the weapons used by the gunman in Las Vegas in 2017, refused to disclose its revenue.
And Bushmaster, which made the weapon used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, said it had no financial data from previous years because it was recently purchased by a new company.
As their business has expanded, the gun manufacturers have also made covert references to white supremacist groups like the Boogaloo Bois, according to the report.
The Boogaloo movement is a group of anti-government extremists who believe a race war, or a second Civil War, is on the horizon. Members of the group often dress in Hawaiian-style floral print shirts and military fatigues. The Palmetto State Armory, a firearms company, markets a “Big Igloo Aloha” AK-47-style assault rifle adorned with such a floral print, which the report said was a clear reference to the Boogaloo Movement.
Daniel Defense has also posted photos of an assault rifle with a floral pattern similar to the one worn by its members.
One Daniel Defense inventory catalogue from 2017 also featured an image of a shooter with a tattoo of a Valknot, a Norse symbol closely associated with transnational white supremacists. The Valknot has been identified as a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League.
The gun manufacturers have also made appeals that played on male insecurities, claiming that owning weapons would put users “at the top of the testosterone food chain.”
One Bushmaster ad used the slogan “consider your man card reissued” in an advertisement for an AR-15.
The committee’s investigation also found that the five gun manufacturers under review do not have any systems in place to monitor and analyze deaths and injuries associated with their products.
The companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Republicans on the panel have invited Antonia Okafor Cover, the national director of women’s outreach for Gun Owners of America, a gun rights group, to testify.
Source: nytimes.com
