At a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, Ryan Busse, a former gun industry insider who regularly speaks out about the decisions and tactics that flooded America with military-style rifles, put up a photo of a banner from a recent gun show.
It is this kind of marketing that turned the AR-15 into an enormous cash cow for the industry. As a new report from the committee demonstrates, this weaponry is generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales, with marketing tactics aimed at young men anxious about their masculinity.
Busse’s testimony and the information the committee gathered showed just how committed the gun industry — and the Republican Party — have become to putting military-style weapons into civilian hands, no matter how many lives it costs. But they also showed that undoing what has been done, or even stopping it from getting worse, will be next to impossible.
Right now a bill to outlaw new sales of military-style weapons is moving through the House; the Judiciary Committee approved it on a party-line vote last week. President Biden endorsed a ban.
But in highlighting the ubiquity of these deadly weapons, the Oversight committee’s report and the testimony highlighted the very factor gun advocates, including those on the Supreme Court, will use to insulate these guns from regulation.
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