Pretexts of the Gun Industry As It Washes Its Hands of Responsibility for Gun Violence

Pretexts of the Gun Industry
As It Washes Its Hands of Responsibility for Gun Violence
by Thomas Coffin

Recently Time Magazine featured an article on how America’s gun industry is fixated on selling military-style weapons to civilian consumers, e.g. semi- automatic rifles similar to those used by soldiers, and how this has coincided with a rise in mass shootings. (The Inside History of How Guns Are Marketed and Sold in America, Olivia B. Waxman, August 19, 2022.)

It’s a fascinating read, offering insight into how fear and ideas about masculinity were central to the gun industry in the 20th century and have greatly accelerated in the 21st century. While the industry denies it has created the demand for military style weapons among consumers but is only responding to that demand, the evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary. One example is the NRA-funded campaign to use seminars and articles to twist the narrative regarding the Second Amendment to concoct its purpose as including a right to enable citizens to wage war against their own government. Such a purpose supposedly mandates access to military armaments, not squirrel rifles. Another example concerns strategy sessions among NRA representatives after the 1999 Columbine school shooting in Colorado which killed 13 victims. National Public Radio published secret tapes among the representatives discussing whether they should “…basically use these sorts of events to stir up hatred and fear and division and all the stuff that rule our politics now.”

Moreover, as I have observed previously, the canard that these semi-automatic military firearms are just “modern rifles” and thus in the genre of traditional hunting or self-defense has been exposed as a blatant masquerade with the recent commercial marketing of the MCX-SPEAR by its manufacturer, Sig Sauer. This latest version of the AR-15 military firearm dramatically increases its lethality with ammunition that has twice the kinetic energy of that used in the AR-15 model and thus capable of piercing body armor to kill even targets protected by armor. It also comes equipped with a silencer.

One does not hunt rabbits with such a weapon nor justify it as a self-defense devise any more than a grenade. It is strictly for killing people, and is being sold on the streets for massive profiting. The SPEAR was developed for the nation’s military usage, and selling it outside that structure creates the foreseeable mass murders such weapons are being used for.

Yet the CEOs of leading gun manufacturers continue to deny responsibility for the ongoing murders committed with these products and dismiss the problem as a “local” one, describing the weapons as “inanimate objects.”

Interestingly, one of those CEOs disclaiming any such responsibility was the head of Sturm Ruger, a major manufacturer of assault weapons being marketed to the general public. But I have personal knowledge of facts that contradict his position: Back in the early 1980s I was a federal prosecutor in Eugene, Oregon and investigated an incident that concerned a shipment of Mini-14 semi-automatic assault weapons to some individuals who allegedly were private parties and not law enforcement officials. The then-CEO of Sturm Ruger, the manufacturer of the weapons, informed ATF that the corporation had a policy of only selling these firearms to the military and police because they were anti-personnel military firearms not intended for civilian dissemination due to the danger they presented if they ended up outside the military or law enforcement.

What changed? The CEOs and the profits, which became astronomical. What didn’t change? The danger to the public and the knowledge in the industry regarding that danger.

Continuing to profit by trafficking in these military weaponry and marketing them based on the pretext they are unaware of the intent of the recipients is a specious explanation belied by history, motive, and the manner in which they are being promoted regardless of the carnage and public outrage. It is especially damning that the latest escalation of firepower, the SPEAR, features not only more high-powered ammunition but a “suppressor”, e.g. a silencer. Is the manufacturer, Sig Sauer, unaware that this feature will make it more difficult for potential victims to even know which direction to take when fleeing from the gunman? Sig Sauer, by the way, sold the AR-15 style rifle used by a mass shooter to kill 49 people in Orlando in 2016 and three of the weapons used by the shooter in Las Vegas in 2017 to kill 60 people. How can the maker of such weapons be unaware of such history?

Closing your eyes to avoid seeing what is there is willful ignorance, which is not a legitimate legal or even moral defense. But it is instead a strategy to continue marketing these lethal military weapons for profit while attempting credible denial.

Let me share an ominous prophecy: a while back I wrote an article which touched upon the government’s funding of a project to develop a laser weapon which would melt metal to penetrate and destroy its target. See: The Euphemism of the Modern Rifle.

This project, like the MCX-SPEAR, involves a joint venture between the military and arms industry for a proposed extremely lethal “Ray Gun” (eventually hand held) to destroy objects and people through any known barriers or defenses. I mentioned this project and predicted it would one day join the commercial market for sales to the general public. The commercial trafficking of the SPEAR is a clear indicator that this is inevitable—we are witnessing the military partnering with the gun industry to develop military weapons and the industry adding the weapons to its remuneration by distributing them to the general public. We are, in other words, funding the increasing epidemic of being murdered by the very armaments that supposedly are being produced to protect us. This terribly misguided arrangement was in part responsible for the enactment of the PLCAA legislation in 2005, which granted immunity from civil liability to the manufacturers of firearms such as the SPEAR for their role in promoting and selling them to civilians. The Department of Defense submitted a formal letter to the Senate in support of the PLCAA, stating that “The Department of Defense strongly supports this legislation…We believe that (its) passage would help safeguard our national security by limiting unnecessary lawsuits against an industry that plays a critical role in meeting the procurement needs (of the military.)”

The government itself thus bears significant responsibility for the escalating and ongoing carnage from gun violence in our nation. The Defense Department is not only functioning as a partner in the ongoing development of military weaponry that is being marketed beyond military needs and being used to murder innocent civilians, it has also used its prestige to protect its “partners” from any accountability for its actions in our nation’s judicial system. This is nothing less than a betrayal of the American people.

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Thomas Coffin was the keynote speaker at the Blackberry Pie Society’s Political Party in February, 2020 and Politics & Pie Party in October, 2022.

He is a retired federal magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon and a former professor at the UO Law School.
Thomas retired in 2016 after 24 years on the bench, prior to which he had a career as a federal prosecutor spanning 21 years.

He is married with 7 children.
The Blackberry Pie Society is pleased to include a collection of his essays on our website. We will post them as they become available.

Posted 10.20.2022