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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.