Kimberly Wehle: The best hope for fixing America’s gun crisis The ad elicited some criticism, but the industry was silent. Antifa had a limited national profile before 2017, when its members were among counterprotesters at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, but Spike’s quickly identified it as the enemy of loyal gun-owning Americans. Although this event was more than two years away from the protests and violence that erupted in American cities in the summer of 2020, the ad encapsulated an explicit appeal to those drawn toward armed confrontation with left-wing agitators. (Spike’s Tactical)Īt the show in 2018, I noticed a huge ad for Spike’s Tactical, an up-and-coming AR-15 maker from Florida. I attended more than 25 of them and witnessed their transformation-from an event that once prohibited the display of militaristic tactical gear to one where that became the default. Usually held in Las Vegas, the SHOT Show is one of the world’s largest trade conventions. The danger signs were evident in places like the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show, the industry’s marquee annual event. With behind-the-scenes urging by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the main industry trade association, Smith & Wesson added Sport to its branding of the rifle-relying on the social acceptability of hunting and target practice to launder the lethality of the gun.įor an insider like me, the part that industry marketing was playing in creating these customers was unmistakable. Hence the name of its M&P15, essentially the same rifle it supplied to its military and police customers. Smith & Wesson was a more mainstream, traditional brand that chose to take a chance on marketing weapons nearly identical to those carried by soldiers and cops, which could legally be sold to the general public with minor modifications. Bushmaster ended its “Man Card” campaign soon after the Sandy Hook massacre, but other gun manufacturers had taken notice of the company’s sales success. On December 14, 2012, a troubled young man from Newtown, Connecticut, used an XM-15 rifle to kill 20 children and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary. Of course, the great majority of people who own this rifle have never done anything illegal with it, but one other exception is notorious. If you’re hearing there, in “dying breed,” an anticipatory echo of the “Great Replacement” theory that inspired the alleged killer in May’s mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, you’re not mistaken: The conclusion that this type of marketing has contributed to creating today’s radical violent extremists is inescapable.Īnother echo: One of the guns used by the Buffalo shooter was a Bushmaster XM-15. “The Bushmaster Man Card declares and confirms that you are a Man’s Man, the last of a dying breed, with all the rights and privileges duly afforded,” the ad copy read. More important, they showed the rest of the industry the power of an appeal based on masculinity to the 18–35 male demographic, at a time when images from America’s foreign wars were airing constantly on the evening news. The ads, which ran in several gun-industry publications, on websites, and in Maxim magazine, were controversial and gained national attention. Many advertisements evoked a love of craftsmanship and the outdoors, and some, like this 1995 Ruger ad, even directly addressed its customers as “responsible citizens”-a tagline the company dropped from its advertising in 2007. When I got my first job in the gun industry, in 1995, the marketing centered on hunting, target shooting, and responsible self-defense. Maloney, “will examine the role of gun manufacturers in flooding our communities with weapons of war and fueling America’s gun violence crisis.” Next week, I am testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform at a hearing that, in the words of its chair, Representative Carolyn B.
Over my years as a rising executive with a successful gun manufacturer, I became more and more disturbed by the sort of firearms the industry was selling, how it was selling them, and to whom. This is something I know a bit about, as someone who spent a quarter century in the business. We seem to be fumbling around for answers: Is it racism and radicalization, or untreated mental illness, or toxic video games, or too-easy access to guns? All of these may be parts of the problem, but equally none of them makes complete sense outside of the larger context: The gun industry’s modern marketing effort did not just arm these shooters in a very real sense, it created them. Americans are rightly anguished by gun violence and the question of what’s motivating the young men who have committed a succession of horrific mass murders.
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