Sign up to get the latest on sales, new releases and more …
28Jul 2022
CEO of Daniel Defense, maker of rifle used in Uvalde massacre, tells Congress guns aren't to blame
By Benjamin Wermund, Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — The manufacturers of the assault-style rifles used in mass shootings, including in Uvalde and Sutherland Springs, made more than $1 billion on those weapons over the last decade as their profits skyrocketed, according to a House investigation released Wednesday.
The company, which made $528 million off those weapons between 2012 and 2021, has been accused ofdirecting its ads at children and teensby activists who filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission earlier this month.
Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc., which manufactures the gun that was used to kill 25 people in Sutherland Springs, raked in $514 million from AR-15-style firearms, according to the report. The company’s gross earnings from those rifles also nearly tripled from 2019 to 2021, from $39 million to over $103 million, the House panel found.
“It seems to me that if a company really cared that its products were being used to kill scores of Americans, it would stop selling them,” said U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who chairs the committee. “But of course the gun industry won’t do that because they're making lots and lots of money from these weapons. That is the very definition of putting profits over people.”
The CEOs of both Daniel Defense and Ruger, who testified before the committee voluntarily, insisted repeatedly that the gunmen are to blame, not the guns or the companies that make them.
“These acts are committed by murderers,” Daniel Defense CEO Marty Daniel said when asked by Maloney whether he feels any personal responsibility for the killings committed with weapons his company made. “The murderers are responsible.”
“With all due respect, while I grieve like all Americans at these tragic incidents, again to blame the firearm — and the particular firearm in use here that we’re talking about, modern sporting rifles — to blame the firearm, it is an inanimate object,” said Christopher Killoy, the Ruger CEO.
The House panel’s investigation is the latest fuel for a growing effort to hold gun manufacturers, which are shielded from liability for a range of conduct, to the same standards as other industries. The companies do not track the deaths or injuries caused by their firearms, the report said, as other industries, such as drug companies, are required to do.
Related video:What's most concerning about new Uvalde shooting report is what's not in it, lawmaker says
Maloney said Wednesday she plans to introduce legislation to “hold the gun industry accountable for the damage inflicted by their products, just like the car industry, pharmaceutical industry or any other American business.”
Gun safety advocates, meanwhile, have urged the Federal Trade Commission to regulate weapons manufacturers like it has the tobacco industry by cracking down on deceptive marketing practices, especially those aimed at children and young adults.
House takes up assault-rifle ban
A complaint filed earlier this month by the legal arm of Everytown for Gun Safety claimed Daniel Defense was violating Federal Trade Commission rules by marketing assault weapons with violent and militaristic imagery that misleads consumers — especially young men — to believe they can use the weapons for combat-like missions.
The families of nine victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, meanwhile, agreed to a $73 million settlement earlier this year of a lawsuit against Remington, makers of the rifle used to kill 20 first graders and six educators in 2012. The families had argued that Remington’s advertising appealed to troubled men,according to the New York Times.
The House investigation found that was a common marketing tactic among gun manufacturers. For instance, Smith & Wesson advertisements mimic first-person shooter video games such as “Call of Duty” that are popular with young men. Sig Sauer describes one of its guns as an “apex predator” that meets the “demands of the Special Operations community,” according to the report.
The report comes as House Democrats prepare to vote on legislation banning the sale of assault-style weapons, something the parents of Uvalde victims have begged lawmakers to do. The weapons, which have become a common tool for mass murderers, fire bullets at much higher velocity than ordinary handguns, and do far more damage.
Roy Guerrero, the Uvalde pediatrician working the E.R. the day of the Robb Elementary School shooting, described children whose bodies had been “pulverized” and “decapitated,” who could only be identified by blood-splattered “cartoon clothes” intestimony before the committee last monthas he urged lawmakers to act.
“Inaction is harm. Passivity is harm. Delay is harm,” he said at the time.
But even some House Democrats,including U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo, have said they oppose such a ban, and legislation to enact it would stand virtually no chance of passing the evenly divided Senate.
The CEOs of the gun manufacturers argued on Wednesday that the focus on assault-style weapons is misguided. They said Congress should instead focus on making sure “evil” people cannot purchase them.
“I don’t consider the modern sporting rifles my company produces to be weapons of war,” Killoy said. In the case of Sutherland Springs, he said, “the evil person who perpetrated those crimes and committed those murders was allowed to buy a firearm that frankly he should not have been allowed to do.”
Daniel blamed an “erosion of personal responsibility in our country.”
“Mass shootings were all but unheard of just a few decades ago. So what changed? Not the firearms. They are substantially the same as those manufactured over 100 years ago,” Daniel said in his opening testimony. “I believe our nation’s response needs to focus not on the type of gun, but on the type of persons who are likely to commit mass shootings.”
