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Marty Daniel, founder of arms maker Daniel Defense, did not apologize after four of his company’s firearms ended up in the arsenal used by a gunman to kill 58 people on the Las Vegas Strip in 2017. The company sent a statement offering, “Our deepest thoughts and prayers.”
And Daniel has not apologized since the Daniel Defense DDM4 rifle was used to kill 19 children and two adults Tuesday in Uwalde, Texas. The company again offered “our thoughts and our prayers.”
But four years ago, 59-year-old Daniel admitted he had gone too far.
As a result of various mass shootings at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, which killed 26 people, Daniel backed a federal bill to strengthen the national firearms inspection system. The gunman in this tragedy had a domestic violence record that should have stopped him from buying weapons, including a Ruger semi-automatic rifle. But the allegations were not recorded in the correct database, so Congress passed a bill to fix the problem, and then-President Donald Trump signed it into law.
Daniel Defense’s customers were outraged. They saw the bill as a Trojan horse for controlling weapons. So Daniel stepped back. In a Facebook post, he wrote that he “can no longer put his support behind the bill with a clear conscience”. And he vowed not to give an inch in the future.
“I stand by you and I am ready to continue fighting for our rights,” he said.
The American firearms industry has long been hit by the nation’s polarizing debate over weapons, alternatively toasted and cursed, and its leaders are considered industry titans or social pariahs. But Daniel, who built his family business in Black Creek, Georgia, out of nowhere in the top 25 firearms manufacturers, is used to being celebrated for the business he started.
Georgia’s governor cut the yellow ribbon when he opened a new Daniel Defense firearms factory in 2018. Daniel and his wife regularly hand out checks worth millions of dollars in donations. His company name is in large, bold letters on the board of a new football stadium in the community center in Puller, Georgia, outside Savannah.
Meanwhile, the US arms industry – unique in its mass production of weapons for both military and civilian markets – is going through the best years in its history. Arms manufacturers sold approximately 19.9 million firearms in 2021, second only to 22.8 million sold in 2020, according to the Small Arms Analytics and Forecasting research group.
While some see guns as a symbol of inalienable constitutional law, others blame the arms industry for tens of thousands of violent deaths each year – murders and suicides, family disputes – have turned into deadly and horrific school massacres. The industry “exists right on the edge of morality, especially in the United States,” said Jürgen Brauer, an economist at Small Arms Analytics.
Shooter rifle maker Uvalde published an image of a child with a gun before the slaughter
Ryan Busse, a former chief executive of arms maker Kimber, sees parallels with another industry.
“I think there are a lot of similarities with the opioid industry,” said Busse, who wrote a book about his decision to leave what he saw as a radicalized arms industry.
Manufacturers of opioid pharmaceuticals, once hailed for producing a revolutionary painkiller, are now widely attacked for contributing to what authorities describe as an epidemic of addiction and overdose deaths.
This division in the way Americans view guns can be seen in the actions of other gun manufacturers, including the nation’s largest firearms maker, Smith & Wesson. The armed man from Uvalde bought a Smith & Wesson M & P15, an AR-15-style rifle, in the days before the villa, along with a Daniel Defense rifle.
Smith & Wesson has been around for 170 years and is traded publicly today, with a market capitalization of approximately $ 690 million. The price of his shares rose by more than 8% in the days after the shooting with Uwalde.
The company plans to relocate next year from its longtime headquarters in Springfield, Massachusetts – the heart of the “Gun Valley”, named for its historic role in the production of American firearms – in Merville, Tennessee. The company’s leaders blamed the new gun laws in Massachusetts and credited “Tennessee support for the Second Amendment.”
The arms industry has been moving south for years. Brouwer said academic research has found that cheaper labor and tax breaks are often the most important factors in these relocation decisions.
But, he said, he will not overlook the importance of culture. Weapons workers “may feel a little less shunned on Sunday mornings” in the south.
In Massachusetts, Smith & Wesson faced local protests in front of its headquarters after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people. The gunman used a Smith & Wesson M & P15.
In Tennessee, by contrast, Gov. Bill Lee (R) late last year appointed executive director of the munitions industry to the State Board of Education. Jordan Molenhour owns Lucky Gunner, an online munitions store that is on trial for delivering bullets to gunmen, both in the Aurora, Colorado, 2014 shooting – 12 dead – and the 2018 school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. which left 10 dead.
Molenhur said in a statement about the Uwalde shooting that there are “millions of armed and law-abiding Americans who would protect these innocent children if given the opportunity” and that he and his company “proudly serve many of these Americans as our customers and will we continue to pray for Uwalde’s families. “
In 2012, mass shootings really made the owners of the company change their minds. Just days after 20 children and six adults were shot dead at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut, private investment firm Cerberus Capital Management said it wanted to unload the country’s then-largest arms company, Remington, and its holding company, Freedom Group.
The gunman in the Sandy Hook uses a Remington Bushmaster AR-15 rifle.
Cerberus’s pension fund investors did not want to have anything to do with the arms manufacturer. But the private investment company was struggling to find a buyer. In 2018, after several failed sales attempts, what was then known as Remington Outdoor Co. filed for bankruptcy.
But the Bushmaster’s name lives on. The trademark was seized by another firearms manufacturer, Crotalus Holdings of Carson City, Nev., In a bankruptcy sale.
Earlier this month, a gunman used a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle to kill 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo.
The Sandy Hook families have announced a $ 73 million deal with Remington Arms in a landmark deal
None of this slowed down arms sales. But there are changes.
In the last decade, the nation has moved from a land of guns to a home of guns. Fewer people hunt. More and more people are buying firearms for protection. Long arms sales peaked in December 2012, during the Sandy Hook massacre, according to federal data.
In the last three years, about 60 percent of firearms sold have been pistols and about 40 percent have been long, according to Brouwer.
At the same time, AR-15 rifles are becoming increasingly popular. U.S. arms manufacturers produced 1.5 million of them in 2017, twice as many as a decade ago, according to a 2019 report by the National Sports Shooting Foundation, a trade group that calls firearms modern sporting rifles.
AR-15 rifles have allowed many arms companies to thrive – especially newer and smaller companies like Daniel Defense. These AR-15-style weapons are also leading up to the gun control debate. With its menacing appearance and military heritage, the semi-automatic rifle is often involved in mass shootings, from Sandy Hook to Parkland to Uvalde.
“It has an intimidating factor, something to prove its masculinity, which is around the AR-15,” said Busse, a former chief executive of the arms company.
Few companies produced this type of rifle before the mid-2000s. There was no large market until the country’s ban on assault expired in 2004. More than 500 companies now produce AR-15 rifles. And they all sell basically the same weapon, Busse said.
“What do you do to stand out?” You shop. You give it a name, you use more inflammatory action to get attention, “Busse said.
“That’s what Daniel Defense did,” he continued. That’s how the AR-15 runs their business.
Daniel Defense – like many firearms companies – leaned toward militant images to sell his weapons. “Freedom of production” was one of his slogans. “Another bite!” reads a 2016 ad for a new rifle called the DD5.
An online ad for Daniel Defense, released a week before the shooting of Uwalde, shows a young boy holding an AR-15-like rifle in his lap, with the caption: “Train your child the way he should go and when it is old, it will not deviate from it. ” This is a reference to a biblical proverb.
Today, the company is known for producing solid, expensive firearms, especially AR-15-style rifles. Some of his weapons cost twice as much as other manufacturers. The DDM4 model involved in the Uvalde attack starts at $ 1870. Available in seven colors.
The rifle is one of 19 designed by Daniel Defense “to protect his family and home,” according to the company’s website. It looks like something a soldier or a SWAT team member can wear.
Daniel Defense produced more than 52,000 firearms in 2020, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The company sells to military and ordinary people. There is a funding program that helps people make purchases in monthly installments.
Busse said he watched in horror as the arms industry pursued AR-15 rifle sales. The companies no longer focused on hunting or shooting with a hermitage. They leaned toward intimidation and fear. “Tactically” was popular. People wanted a certain image. “Commandos on the couch,” Busse calls them.
And the AR-15 captured that image perfectly.
Buse said he was under pressure to push semi-automatic rifles because …
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