Thread-topic: Gun in Texas Shooting Came From Company Known for Pushing Boundaries - The New York Times
“Companies like Daniel Defense glorify violence and war in their marketing to consumers,” said Nick Suplina, a senior vice president at
Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that supports gun control.” Regardless of bias in that assessment, Suplina is exactly on point!
But it’s not just companies like Daniel Defense that "glorify violence and war.” Look around you, it’s what our culture is, and no one complains. It keeps us ready to go to any war, for any dubious purpose, that our National Security Handlers direct us to.
And will, until we come to calamitous defeat, or destruction. It’s “who we are!” And. A few children dying is only necessary “collateral damage,” to the war lovers who will go on inciting such militarism (don’t call it fascism, that’s an Italian term).
I grew up in Minnesota where hunting was, and is, a common activity, and guns designed solely for hunting were the norm when I was growing up and using them. Anyone using a military rifle
for hunting would have been looked down upon. While I stopped hunting decades ago; from my acquaintances, many from the military, I know that since 9/11, military rifles are now de
rigueur for hunting, along with military gear that would make a Marine Sniper jealous.
Part of their popularity is due to deliberate advertising campaigns to “normalize” them as how the gun industry reinvented them as what they call the “Modern Sporting Rifle”: https://www.nssf.org/msr/
But that’s for public appearance’s sake, as most people buying them know that they are in fact designed for, and buyers have dreams of, using them in a military manner. Call it “self-defense,” or call it by its “true
name,” killing a human being, but with the legal excuse of self-defense. Anyone saying different is lying as I know, or knew, too many people that think that way. But if one doesn’t have a pretext to kill someone, they still have as a true purpose, as a necessary
accoutrement, and symbol, to the well dressed “American Militarist.”
But that attitude and desire has to be “culturally conditioned” by cultural norms, which in our militarized/war society are all around in the social atmosphere of young men. And in the games they play, like mentioned
below: Call of Duty. Which so many organizations in the US promote because it does suit our militaristic society and meets the demand of such a society.
So putting aside the remote likelihood of being able to kill someone without legal accountability, the rifle is an essential ornament and symbol, a “totem,” for what so many people, particularly young men, in the
US aspire to appear as, if not actually be/do: the “Warrior.” One can’t appear as one without a military style gun. How can one wear a t-shirt with the picture of a military gun and a slogan such as “Just try and take my guns,” if one doesn’t actually own
one, and of a particular type! It would be like the Texan: “all hat, and no cattle.”
So in such a militarized society as ours is today, it’s a fantasy to believe there is the political will to do something effective to rein in, what I will call by their “true name,” assault rifles. Both parties want
war, so they both have a need of pre-conditioning cognitively new “Warfighters.” Just as it's a fantasy to believe that groups critical of US perpetual war can do anything to rein in US “Warfighting,” as doctrine now calls it. Not when it has become so embedded
in our militaristic culture as our collective consciousness. And even within such organizations, there is frequently an “internal contradiction,” of criticizing war, but celebrating the traditions and symbols of our past and current wars, and “War Lovers,”
as in the title of a book about Teddy Roosevelt and his fellow war lovers. Trying to stop US perpetual war with the militaristic culture we’ve become, would be like telling Toby Keith to stop inspiring young men and women with his songs to go off and kill
foreigners with the US military.
“Ten hours of video games can change the structure and organization of a person’s brain,” Perez said. “In the past few years we have gathered
data through research that backs that up. The data will eventually be applied for training to enhance warfighter performance.”
Gun in Texas Shooting Came From Company Known for Pushing Boundaries
A flag was flying at half-mast
at Daniel Defense’s headquarters in Georgia on Friday.Dylan Wilson for The New York Times
After one of its military-style rifles was used in the
Texas elementary school shooting on Tuesday, the gun manufacturer Daniel Defense published a pop-up statement on its home page sending “thoughts and prayers” to the community of Uvalde, Texas, and pledging to cooperate with the authorities.
When the pop-up disappeared, a different message took center stage: a promotion, adorned with gold-encased bullets, for a sweepstakes to win $15,000 worth of guns or ammunition.
The Texas shooting, which left 19 schoolchildren and two teachers dead and more than a dozen wounded, has put a national spotlight on Daniel Defense, a family-owned business in Georgia that has emerged as a trailblazer in
an aggressive, boundary-pushing style of weapons marketing and sales.
Some of its advertisements invoke popular video games like “Call of Duty” and feature “Star Wars” characters and Santa Claus, messages that are likely to appeal to teenagers. The company was an early adopter of a direct-to-consumer
business model that aimed to make buying military gear as simple as ordering from Amazon, enticing customers with “adventure now, pay later” installment plans that make expensive weaponry more affordable.
And the company’s founder and chief executive, Marty Daniel, has fashioned himself as a provocateur who ridicules gun control proposals and uses publicity stunts to drum up sales.
Daniel Defense is at the forefront of an industry that has grown increasingly aggressive in recent years as it tries to expand beyond its aging, mostly white customer base and resists the calls for stronger regulation that
seem to intensify after every mass shooting.
“Daniel Defense is basically the poster child of this egregious, aggressive marketing,” said Ryan Busse, a former executive at the gun company Kimber who is now an industry critic. “Marty Daniel burst in the door, a lot
louder and more brazen than other gun makers, much like Donald Trump did on the political scene.”
He added, “Through this company, you are telling the story of how the gun industry has become increasingly radicalized.”
Daniel Defense’s strategy seems to have been effective. Its sales have soared, in part because of its successful targeting of young customers like Salvador Ramos, the gunman in Texas. Mr. Ramos, whom the authorities killed
on Tuesday, was a “Call of Duty” video game enthusiast and
appears to have bought his assault rifle directly from Daniel Defense, less than a week after turning 18.
Mr. Daniel did not respond to emails or calls. Steve Reed, a Daniel Defense spokesman, said in a statement that the company was “deeply saddened” by the Texas shooting.
Mr. Daniel, 59, is a practiced storyteller who adopts a folksy tone to market his company and its guns. He often casts himself as something of a goofball, a screw-up who flunked out of Georgia Southern University — not once,
but twice — before finally graduating and starting a company that made garage doors.
Marty Daniel, the founder and
chief executive of Daniel Defense.Savannah Morning News
He has said that his gun company was born out of his poor golf game. Instead of puttering around the course, Mr. Daniel started using an AR-15 — the type of gun he would later go on to make — for target practice. “Every
shot he fired filled him with a satisfaction he’d never before experienced,” the
company’s website says.
At the time, Mr. Daniel had trouble finding a way to mount a scope onto his rifle. He began designing and selling his own accessory that allowed gun owners to add lights, a range finder and lasers onto the rifle.
He got his break in 2002 at a gun show in Orlando, Fla., where he was approached by a representative of the U.S. Special Forces. He ultimately won a $20 million contract to produce the accessories for combat rifles. More
deals followed. In 2008, he won a contract with the British military, according to Daniel Defense’s website.
By 2009, the company had expanded to making guns for consumers. Its military ties were the basis of its marketing, which often featured heavily armed fighters. “Use what they use,” one ad says. Another shows a military-style
scope aimed at passing cars on what looks like a regular city street. Others include references — using hashtags and catchphrases — to the “Call of Duty” video game.
Before the 2000s, most gun makers did not market military-style assault weapons to civilians. At the largest industry trade shows, tactical military gear and guns were cordoned off, away from the general public. That started
to change around 2004, industry experts say, with the expiration of the federal assault weapon ban.
“Companies like Daniel Defense glorify violence and war in their marketing to consumers,” said Nick Suplina, a senior vice president at Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that supports gun control.
In 2012, the Sandy Hook shooting led to an industrywide surge in gun sales, as firearm enthusiasts stocked up, fearing a government crackdown. In an
interview with Forbes, Mr. Daniel said the shooting “drove a lot of sales.” (Forbes reported that Daniel Defense had sales of $73 million in 2016.)
After the shooting, Daniel Defense offered employees extra overtime to meet skyrocketing demand, according to Christopher Powell, who worked for the company at the time. “They kept people focused on the task at hand,” he
said.
But in the late 2010s, some colleagues started to worry that Mr. Daniel had become distracted by the glamour of marketing the brand and rubbing shoulders with celebrities and politicians, according to a former Daniel Defense
manager. They voiced concerns that some of the marketing materials were inappropriate for a company that manufactures deadly weapons, said the manager and a former executive, who didn’t want their names used because they feared legal or professional repercussions.
Some ads
featured children carrying and firing guns. In another, posted on Instagram two days after Christmas last year, a man dressed as Santa Claus and wearing a military helmet is smoking a cigar and holding a Daniel Defense rifle. “After a long weekend, Santa
is enjoying MK18 Monday,” the caption states, referring to the gun’s model.
The industry’s aggressive marketing has landed some companies in trouble. Earlier this year, the gun maker Remington reached
a $73 million settlement with families of children killed at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Conn. The families had claimed that Remington improperly marketed its assault rifles, including with its weapons appearing in “Call of Duty,” which the killer
at Sandy Hook had frequently played.
A year after Sandy Hook, with the Super Bowl approaching, Daniel Defense deployed a new marketing stunt.
The National Football League had a policy prohibiting ads for weapons on its telecasts. But Daniel Defense tried to buy a 60-second
spot that depicted a soldier returning home to his family, with ominous music in the background. “I am responsible for their protection,” the ad’s narrator intones. “And no one has the right to tell me how to defend them.”
Given the N.F.L.’s ban on gun ads, it was no surprise that the ad was rejected. (Daniel Defense claimed that the ad complied with the policy because the company sells products besides guns.) But Mr. Daniel turned the rejection
into a rallying cry, and the conservative media lapped it up. Appearing on Fox News’s “Fox
& Friends,” he urged viewers to “call the N.F.L. and say, ‘C’mon, man, run my ad.’”
“That is Marty Daniel at work,” Mr. Powell said. “He’s not one of those typical C.E.O.s that you see.”
Mr. Daniel and his wife, Cindy, have worked hand-in-hand with the National Rifle Association to raise money for the group, sell weapons to its members and beat back calls for gun control.
In recent years, Mr. Daniel and Ms. Daniel, the company’s chief operating officer, became outspoken supporters of Donald J. Trump, contributing $300,000 to a group aligned with Mr. Trump. Mr. Daniel joined the “Second
Amendment Coalition,” a group of gun industry heavyweights who advised Mr. Trump on gun policy.
Mr. Daniel
told Breitbart News in 2017 that Mr. Trump’s election saved “our Second Amendment rights.” He and his wife have also donated to other Republican candidates and groups, including in their home state of Georgia. So far in the 2022 election cycle, they’ve
given more than $70,000 to Republicans.
Food vendors, vending machines
and tables occupy the area where Daniel Defense was to have its booth at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston this weekend.Michael
Wyke/AP
Before the Uvalde massacre, Daniel Defense’s guns were used in at least one other mass shooting.
Four of its semiautomatic rifles were found in the hotel room of the gunman who killed 59 people at a Las Vegas music festival in 2017, one of the deadliest shootings in American history.
Mr. Daniel has been an especially vocal critic of gun control. After the shooting at Parkland High School in 2018, he briefly expressed support for legislation, backed by the N.R.A., to bolster the federal background-check
system. But he soon
reversed his position, citing “overwhelming feedback.” He declared that “all firearms laws that limit the rights of law-abiding citizens are unconstitutional.”
“You don’t see the same kind of boldness from the chief executives of Smith & Wesson or the old-guard gun companies,” said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the nonprofit Violence Policy Center. “Daniel is more at the
edges.”
Daniel Defense is only a fraction of the size of those rivals. It manufactured nearly 53,000 guns in 2020, the most recent year for which government data is available, giving it a less than 1 percent share of the market.
But experts say it has led the way in building a direct-to-consumer sales business, as gun manufacturers try to match the success of other industries in capitalizing on e-commerce.
In the past, gun companies would sell their products to stores, which then sold the weapons to customers. Now, industry experts say, the manufacturers are increasingly trying to sell guns and accessories online, targeting
consumers with slick ad campaigns. (Guns sold online have to be picked up at a licensed firearms dealer, who conducts a background check.)
Daniel Defense also offers a buy-now-pay-later financing option that allows qualified buyers to spread the price — some of its guns retail for more than $1,800 — over a number of payments. The approval takes seconds, the
company’s website says.
“They’ve been a brand leader,” said Timothy Lytton, a law professor at Georgia State who studies the gun industry. “They’ve been exceptionally successful at selling the idea that civilians who’d like to own a firearm for
self-protection need a high-capacity, semiautomatic weapon.”
Gun sales surged during the pandemic, including at Daniel Defense. The company also received help via
a $3.1 million loan from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which was intended for small businesses at risk of laying off employees.
The week before the Texas shooting, Daniel Defense posted a photograph on Facebook and Twitter, showing a little boy sitting cross-legged, an assault rifle balanced across his lap. “Train up a child in the way he should
go,” the
caption reads, echoing a biblical proverb. “When he is old, he will not depart from it.”
The ad was posted on May 16. It was Mr. Ramos’s 18th birthday.
A day later, he bought his first gun, a Smith & Wesson assault-style rifle, from a store in Uvalde, according to State Senator Roland Gutierrez of Texas who cited law enforcement officials. The store has been identified
as Oasis Outback. Three days later, he bought the Daniel Defense rifle for $1,870 plus tax, according to
a photo of the receipt that Mr. Ramos reportedly posted on the social media platform Yubo.
Amid a national outcry after the shooting, Daniel Defense retreated from its usual provocative online presence. The company restricted access to its Twitter feed. It canceled plans to have a booth at this weekend’s N.R.A.
convention in Houston.
And on Thursday, it removed the $15,000 guns-and-ammo sweepstakes from its home page.
Tara Siegel Bernard and Serge F. Kovaleski contributed reporting and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
