Without lots of research, it looks like it is true! Some people worry that Freedom Group is going to control most of the firearms companies in the United States. Of course, if you control the manufacturers you can decide not to sell to civilians, or, you can raise the prices to ridiculous levels or you can make the supply of guns and ammo scarce — all sorts of logjams.
Please pass this on to all your freedom loving friends. This needs to come out — and quickly! I would think this would be BIG news. The absence of big media coverage on this important subject should be BIG news to you, too! At the family home in Italy, a liveried butler and cook oversee a mansion decorated with Venetian glass chandeliers, water buffalo heads, and elephant tusks. In February , Donald Simms, a ship captain in Alabama, was reloading his Taurus pistol at home when it unexpectedly fired.
The bullet went through the palm of his hand and into the chest of his year-old son, killing the boy. The suit is one of numerous cases alleging that Taurus pistols are dangerously defective.
Taurus was founded 77 years ago as a tool manufacturer in Porto Alegre, Brazil; today, it earns roughly two-thirds of its gun revenue in the United States, where it offers free NRA memberships to purchasers. Birmann, who splits his time between Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro, has been described in the Brazilian press as carrying a gun wherever he goes and paying cash at expensive restaurants. This Pennsylvania-based company markets the. In in Kentucky, a five-year-old playing with a Crickett accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old sister.
A resulting flurry of national press put a spotlight on gun deaths of young children, which a Mother Jones investigation found are in the hundreds annually.
Sig Sauer now offers junior shooters a. It was a publicity stunt on behalf of Kahr Arms, maker of the Prohibition-era machine gun. Kahr Arms capitalized on the rising demand for powerful yet small handguns when concealed-carry laws began sweeping the nation in the s.
Its K-9 pistol was small enough to fit into a pants pocket. Emergency room physicians blamed the spread of this type of gun from Kahr and other companies for a dramatic rise in fatal gunshot wounds. He believes that [the Unification Church] is going to take over the world. He would say this all the time. In April , New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called for a ban on the.
Once a professional wedding photographer, he resides on a acre plantation-style estate in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, that features an 11,square-foot mansion and a formal English garden. The Branch Davidians wielded one during the Waco siege in Texas, forcing federal agents to use armored Bradley fighting vehicles.
California and Washington, DC, have banned the guns, but they remain legal everywhere else. In February, the Tennessee Senate passed a resolution designating the Barrett M82 the official state rifle. Headquartered in Beijing, Norinco makes shotguns sold mostly through online dealers such as CheaperThanDirt.
It imports tens of thousands of guns into the United States each year. The company also produces hydroelectric equipment, subway cars, and raw copper. In it was accused of transferring missile technology to Iran, prompting a two-year US import ban. On average, Hi-Points reached criminals within a year of their original purchase, making them among the quickest guns to flow into the black market. In , the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence sued the company on behalf of Daniel Williams, a year-old who was mistaken for a gang member and shot while playing basketball.
The suit alleges that the company and its sole distributor were negligent in selling the pistol—along with 86 other guns—to a straw purchaser at a gun show. A judge tossed out the case under the shield law. In an appeals court reinstated the case, which remains in a New York court. Do you own part of a gun company? Law enforcement has grown increasingly concerned about the proliferation of ghost guns. In , District of Columbia police recovered ghost guns, a percent increase from , when they recovered 25 ghost guns, and a 3, percent increase from , when only three such firearms were recovered.
Advancements in 3D printing technology have created another option for people seeking to make untraceable guns from home. While 3D printing an entire firearm has been successfully completed and is cause for some concern, the more pressing concern is the capability of using 3D printers to create certain firearm components at home. For example, the lower receiver of an AR in particular is essentially the part that makes a gun functional: It houses the fire control and trigger groups, the bolt catch, and the magazine release.
To date, only two states, California and New Jersey, have enacted comprehensive laws to address the problem of homemade, untraceable firearms. There is currently no federal oversight on the production of 3D printed firearms or sufficient reporting requirements to ensure that these guns are produced with the necessary metal materials to follow federal regulations. Ammunition is less regulated than firearms, without federally mandated background checks before purchase or transfer or requirements for documentation of sales of ammunition conducted by dealers.
The lack of oversight or any real ability to monitor the production of homemade ammunition makes it difficult to determine exactly what types of ammunition rounds are being produced. Gun enthusiasts often rely on similar online resources to obtain the materials needed to make cartridges at home, with access to videos and forums similar to those focused on homemade firearms, for personal use or to sell.
There are many dangers associated with homemade ammunition, including stockpiling, improper or unsafe storage of ammunition and components, unsafe manufacturing conditions, poor quality control, and potentially defective products.
Silencers are accessories designed to muffle or disguise the sound of gunfire. The danger posed by silencers was evidenced by the mass shooting in Virginia Beach on May 31, In that case, the shooter used two pistols, one equipped with a silencer, to commit a mass shooting within a municipal building that killed 12 people, wounding four others.
Federal law requires a license from ATF to manufacture or sell silencers, and individuals seeking to buy them must first obtain approval from ATF, a process that can take many months because of a backlog in processing these applications. Individuals are permitted under current federal law to manufacture their own silencer at home, as long as they do not offer it for sale and they register it with ATF. Nearly every industry involved in manufacturing and selling consumer products is subject to regulation by the federal government to ensure that products are safe for consumer use.
Safety-focused regulation of consumer products helps ensure that defects or problems with products are addressed in a timely manner through actions such as consumer alerts and product recalls. A range of federal agencies serve a consumer product safety regulatory function: Food items and prescription drugs are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration, motor vehicles are under the jurisdiction of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and recreational goods and household products are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission CPSC.
There have been a number of high-profile incidents of design defects or manufacturing flaws of firearms leading to injury or risk of injury or death.
This was not an isolated incident among gun manufacturers. In , a class action lawsuit was filed alleging defects in certain models of Taurus handguns. The manufacturer settled the lawsuit and offered gun owners a refund or the opportunity to replace specific models of pistols, which had been manufactured from through In , it was reported that a PT Millennium Pro pistol, among the guns available for a full refund, was used by a year-old man unaware of the problem with the firearm.
It was reported that the gun fired while holstered, shooting its owner in the leg and striking the femoral artery, causing him to bleed to death. From May 1, , through April 9, , the Remington series rifle was alleged to have a major defect reported by thousands of gun owners: The rifle reportedly fired without anyone pulling the trigger. The lax approach to ensuring the safety of firearms sold to consumers stands in stark contrast to how potential safety hazards posed by other consumer products are treated.
In August , L. Bean began selling a knife with a leather sheath. In April , the product was recalled after the company received three reports of the knife cutting through the leather sheath, causing minor cuts. A replacement sheath was offered to all consumers who purchased the recalled product at no cost to the consumer and the company contacted all people known to have bought the recalled product to inform them of the problem.
The company recalled the product because of the risk of injury and offered a full refund. CPSC-regulated products may even be recalled because of the potential risk of injury to consumers before any actual injuries are reported.
Fireworks are closely regulated by the CPSC to ensure they do not pose unique risks to consumers, including potential burn and injury hazards. In , Miller Fireworks recalled a specific type of ball bullet rocket fireworks because they were overloaded—meaning that the explosive weight exceeded the allowable amount for consumer fireworks—which could result in the fireworks producing a larger explosion that could be a safety hazard.
For example, Bath Petals recalled soy candles from the market and offered a full refund after one reported incident of a candle shattering the glass holder. The gravity of the error in packaging related to this recall included promises to consumers that the product would not return to production until both the manufacturer and the FDA felt certain the problem was corrected.
Ironically, the CPSC does have jurisdiction to ensure the safety of firearm storage devices, such as gun safes, as well as toy guns and air rifles. There have been a number of product recalls due to defects in gun accessories that create the risk of accidental discharge of a gun. The CPSC has also worked with manufacturers to recall gun locks and safes because of defects that create risk of unauthorized access to firearms.
The exclusion of firearms, firearm accessories, and ammunition from the jurisdiction of the CPSC or any other federal agency has left the responsibility to ensure the safety of these products to the industry itself. With origins as a source of technical information about firearms and ammunition production to the U. Firearms and ammunition manufacturers are not bound to follow these standards. Similarly, the NSSF provides resources for manufacturers about different laws and regulations.
The NSSF is not focused on public health and safety. In the late s and early s, municipalities across the country grappling with rising gun violence tried a new approach to the issue: suing the gun industry for the harm caused by its products.
In addition to traditional product liability lawsuits alleging harm caused by design defects, some of these lawsuits used a novel legal argument—alleging that gun manufacturers created a public nuisance through sales practices that enabled firearms to be sold illegally in secondary markets and to be illegally trafficked, after which they ended up being used to commit violent crimes. Not all of these lawsuits were successful, but many resulted in gun industry actors implementing new practices and standards to help reduce illegal gun trafficking.
Lawsuits were also filed against individual gun dealers for negligent practices that resulted in violence. In , two shooters went on a nine-month crime spree that left 17 people dead and seven injured, including 10 individuals killed in what are now infamously known as the Beltway sniper shootings. Investigators discovered that the retailer failed to keep records of gun sales required by federal law and had lost more than guns from its inventory over the previous three years.
In addition to monetary damages paid by both parties, Bushmaster agreed to change its distribution practices. In , following extensive lobbying by the NRA and others in the gun lobby, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act PLCAA , which granted broad immunity from liability to gun manufacturers and dealers in federal and state courts. While other federal laws set some limitations on litigation against other industries—such as the cap on the amount of damages that can be awarded in lawsuits against the railroad and nuclear power industries —no other industry enjoys this type of extensive blanket immunity against even the filing of lawsuits against manufacturers and retailers.
This law has had a significant chilling effect on efforts to hold the gun industry accountable through litigation. Since its enactment, only a handful of cases against gun manufacturers or dealers have survived pretrial motions to dismiss. For example, in , Lonnie and Sandy Phillips, whose daughter was killed in the Aurora, Colorado, theater shooting, sued the online retailer, Lucky Gunner, that sold the shooter thousands of rounds of ammunition and the round ammunition magazine he used to kill 11 people.
Consumers and society more broadly have benefited from the strategic use of civil litigation as a tool to influence consumer product industries. Litigation against motor vehicle manufacturers led to safety innovations, and class action lawsuits against the tobacco industry resulted in an unprecedented settlement that drastically shifted its advertising methods and messaging and created a substantial fund to support public health efforts related to smoking abatement.
One recent bright spot in efforts to hold the gun industry accountable is a lawsuit filed by the families of some of those killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December against the manufacturer of the firearm used in that attack, Remington.
As the commercial industry solely responsible for manufacturing, marketing, and selling guns, ammunition, and gun accessories to the civilian public, the gun industry has a tremendous responsibility to take appropriate steps to minimize the misuse and criminal use of these products, as well as to ensure the safety of the products themselves. The industry has largely been left to regulate itself: A combination of weak laws and lack of resources and political will has led to the gun industry being effectively unregulated for decades.
This honor system approach is simply not working—the gun industry continues to innovate around current law, introduce even more lethal weapons into civilian markets, and far too often, it balks at taking even modest measures to prevent gun trafficking. Policymakers need to take serious action to dramatically improve oversight of this industry to better protect U.
The laws, regulations, and systems in place for providing regulatory oversight of the gun industry have failed to keep pace with the exponential growth of this industry over the past few decades. Both annual gun production and importation increased significantly beginning in , and gun exports reached an all-time high in Similarly, the number of gun dealers increased by 18 percent from to The nation is long overdue for an overhaul of the laws, regulations, and administrative practices guiding and governing gun industry oversight.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives publishes an annual report that offers only the most basic information on firearm commerce in this country. However, there are key gaps and missing pieces of data that should be collected and reported for public analysis and oversight. A more robust annual firearms commerce report should include the following:.
ATF needs a substantial increase in its budget to hire additional personnel to conduct gun dealer compliance inspections. Using only a rudimentary analysis, this suggests that one IOI can inspect roughly 17 retail dealers per year, meaning that ATF would need 1, IOIs to meet its internal goal of inspecting every dealer once every three years. Federal law needs to be updated to provide ATF with sufficient tools to address licensed gun dealers who are unable or refuse to comply with all legal requirements.
Congress should enact legislation updating the federal law to give ATF additional tools to work with the industry to ensure full compliance with the law. Increasing the options for civil penalties for gun dealers will help ensure that ATF leadership have options available that they are comfortable using and that are effective at helping dealers become fully compliant with the law.
Such legislation should authorize ATF to:. A number of bills have been introduced in Congress to address many of these gaps, including to eliminate harmful riders and increase the available penalties for noncompliant gun dealers. A substantial portion of the guns manufactured in the United States are exported to countries around the world, both for military and civilian markets.
In January , the Trump administration dramatically weakened oversight of these exports by shifting oversight to the Department of Commerce and eliminating the congressional notification requirement. This would also have the effect of restricting the ability of individuals to disseminate blueprints to make 3D printed guns or gun parts, particularly using online forums. Gun dealers have a significant responsibility to secure their dangerous inventory, and while many of them have succeeded under a voluntary honor system, it is crucial that the federal law is strengthened to actually mandate that gun dealers implement strong, commonsense security measures designed to prevent theft.
At a minimum, this should include amending federal law to require that gun dealers store all guns in secure vaults, safes, or with locking devices during the hours that the store is closed. This is a basic step that most responsible business owners already take to protect their valuable inventory and should be a minimum requirement for all licensed gun dealers.
A bill to implement this requirement has been introduced in Congress by Rep. Dick Durbin D-IL. A bill introduced by Rep. Joseph Morelle D-NY would require the attorney general to engage in this rulemaking process and mandate that gun dealers submit a security plan to ATF detailing their approach to reducing the risk of theft consistent with the new regulations. Gun dealer security requirements can also be imposed as a matter of state law.
To date, nine states and Washington, D. The deferential approach ATF has taken regarding inspections and assessments to determine whether a firearm or accessory violates the National Firearms Act has created a clear power imbalance between ATF and gun manufacturers. Manufacturers are effectively operating outside the parameters of the law, with ATF failing to serve as a genuine check on the production of NFA firearms and firearm accessories available to the general public.
In order to fulfill its mandate and properly enforce the NFA, ATF should realign the work of the Firearms Technology Industry Services Branch to inspect the designs of firearms and firearm accessories to determine whether the firearms or accessories are capable of being used in a manner that would categorize the weapon as an NFA firearm, rather than the current approach that considers only the stated intended use of the firearm or accessory as articulated by the manufacturer.
The FTISB should also retract its guidance from December 11, , stating that it would review accessories only if they were installed in a firearm as the manufacturer intended the accessory to be used. ATF should also offer much more transparency into this decision-making process and make NFA decisions publicly available on its website. The inability for gun owners right now to obtain this information directly from the federal agency mandated to conduct NFA reviews and assessments is problematic and makes people reliant on getting this critical information from nonofficial sources such as internet blogs and forums.
ATF should publish quarterly reports of all ATF firearms classifications, removing any sensitive information as it relates to criminal investigations or privacy concerns. Finally, ATF should conduct a comprehensive review of all NFA decisions over the past 10 years and reassess whether the findings in those cases would change based on how the firearm or accessory was used by a gun owner.
One of the most glaring examples of how the law has failed to keep pace with innovation in the gun industry is the prevalence of homemade, untraceable guns made from unfinished receivers or 3D printing technology. Congress needs to update the law to address this dangerous gap that has been exploited by the industry to sell kits and parts that allow people to make untraceable and undetectable firearms and silencers at home.
The combination of an outdated law and legal interpretation by ATF has resulted in the development of a substantial subset of the consumer gun industry producing, marketing, and selling nearly finished firearm receivers and frames that can be turned into fully functional guns by individuals at home with basic tools and no specialized knowledge or skills.
Unfinished receivers pose the same risk to public safety as completed firearms and should therefore be treated the same under the law. ATF should commence a rulemaking process to update the regulations to clarify that unfinished receivers should be treated the same under the law as fully functional firearms for purposes of serial numbers and background checks.
In December , Everytown for Gun Safety filed a petition requesting this rulemaking, and in a May interview, former Acting Director of ATF Thomas Brandon revealed that he pursued efforts to reclassify some gun-making kits as firearms but was unable to make significant progress prior to his retirement. David Cicilline D-RI. Although current law places limits on the manufacture and sale of silencers, there is a robust online marketplace attempting to evade the law by offering for sale facially legal products, such as barrel shrouds or solvent traps, that actually function as silencers.
Currently, ATF is inundated with applications for silencer manufacturing licenses while the underground industry continues to produce silencers, under the moniker of barrel shrouds or solvent traps or booms. The fact that there are no data available to measure the size and scale of the homemade ammunition industry illuminates the need for regulation and oversight of this sector.
Licenses to make ammunition at home as well as licenses to sell homemade ammunition should be required, similar to licenses needed to manufacture or sell firearms. Additionally, ATF should issue guidelines on how to safely transport, store, and dispose of large quantities of homemade ammunition as well as the highly flammable propellent powder used to make ammunition cartridges.
Since , there have been calls to create some form of safety regulation of the firearms industry, either by granting the Consumer Product Safety Commission jurisdiction over these products or empowering ATF to serve in that role.
Firearms and ammunition manufactures have enjoyed unprecedented freedom from meaningful federal safety regulations for far too long. Congress must pass legislation to empower a federal regulatory agency to monitor guns and ammunition for safety risks, work with the industry to create standards for these products to minimize accidents, and issue recalls to protect consumers from known design flaws and defects in these already inherently dangerous products.
The CPSC is well-positioned to serve this function, and legislation has been introduced in Congress to amend consumer product safety laws to expand the definition of consumer products to include firearms and ammunition. Regardless of which agency was empowered with this function, Congress would also need to provide sufficient additional funding to enable that agency to complete it effectively.
By immunizing the gun industry from most civil lawsuits, PLCAA has effectively absolved gun-makers and dealers from any responsibility to take affirmative steps to help prevent dangerous or illegal use of their products and removed an incentive for the industry to innovate to improve the safety of its products and commercial channels used to sell them. This law has also harmed victims and survivors of gun violence by shutting the courthouse doors to most claims against the industry for damages caused by gun industry products and practices, leaving them without recourse to recoup financial losses.
Bills to repeal PLCAA and put the gun industry back on the same footing as most other potentially dangerous consumer product industries have been introduced in both houses of Congress. The gun industry is a primary player in the public health epidemic of gun violence yet receives very little attention in the national debate over how to address the problem.
The gun industry has a tremendous responsibility to take affirmative steps to help ensure that the weapons it puts into communities in the United States and abroad do not continue to cause devastating harm. And it is far past time for our laws and administrative policies to catch up to that reality.
Her work focuses on advocating for progressive laws and policies relating to gun violence prevention and the criminal justice system at the federal, state, and local levels.
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