Gunmakers score $1B windfall on assault weapons as mass shootings surge: congressional report
Gunmakers have raked in $1 billion in profits in the past decade from selling assault-style weapons as mass shootings surged in the U.S., according to a congressional report issued Wednesday.
The Committee on Oversight and Reform said some ads mimic popular first-person shooter video games or tout the weapons’ military pedigree while others claim the guns will put buyers “at the top of the testosterone food chain.”
Those sales tactics are “deeply disturbing, exploitative and reckless,” said Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y). “In short, the gun industry is profiting off the blood of innocent Americans.”
“It’s no secret why gun CEOs are so desperate to avoid accountability for the deaths caused by their products,” Maloney said. “They are choosing their bottom lines over the lives of their fellow Americans.”
Committee chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) speaks during a House Oversight Committee hearing titled Examining the Practices and Profits of Gun Manufacturers in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, July 27, 2022. (Drew Angerer/)
The Capitol Hill drama comes after the recent string of mass shootings carried out by young men armed with assault-style weapons.
“What we saw in Uvalde, Buffalo and Highland Park was pure evil,” said Marty Daniels, the CEO of Daniel Defense, the company that made the weapon used in Texas. “The cruelty of the murderers who committed these acts is unfathomable and deeply disturbs me, my family, my employees and millions of Americans across this country.”
However, he added later in testimony before the committee, “I believe that these murders are local problems that have to be solved locally.”
Christopher Killoy, CEO of Ruger, said it was a mistake to blame guns for mass shootings because they are “inanimate objects.”
Police sit in front of a Tops Grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on May 15, 2022. (USMAN KHAN/)
Gunman unleashes terror at July Fourth parade in leafy Chicago suburb
The House panel’s investigation focused on five major gunmakers and found they took in a combined total of more than $1 billion in revenue over the past 10 years from the sale of AR-15-style firearms.
According to the report, companies sell weapons like the one used in Uvalde on credit and advertise that financing can be approved “in seconds.”
Salvador Ramos, accused in the Uvalde shootings, began purchasing firearms and ammunition when he turned 18, eventually spending more than $5,000 on two AR-style rifles, ammunition and other gear in the days before the massacre, authorities have said.
The U.S. has had 20 mass shootings since Uvalde: report
The increases are against a backdrop of a record-setting overall increase in gun sales that began around the start of the coronavirus pandemic. About 8.5 million people bought guns for the first time in 2020, said Republican Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia. He added that “American people have a right to own guns.”
Law enforcement work the scene after a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School where 19 people, including 18 children, were killed on May 24, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas. (Jordan Vonderhaar/)
A recent compromise bill passed by Congress imposed some modest new restrictions on gun sales. But GOP lawmakers blocked a provision to raise the legal age to buy assault weapons from 18 to 21.
House Democrats plan to hold a vote on an assault weapons ban similar to the one that was in effect for a decade until it expired in 1992.
“There is no reason to have weapons of war flooding the streets of America’s communities, weapons that are not used to hunt deer, they’re used to hunt human beings and shred them to pieces,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)
Wednesday’s hearing marked the first time in 20 years that CEOs of leading gun manufacturers testified about their businesses, Maloney said.
With News Wire Services
