by The Last Gun- How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans
Executives of several gun companies have quite openly discussed their strategies to leverage military and law enforcement sales to profit in the larger commercial market. After an intense competition, Beretta, an Italian gun manufacturer, won a Defense Department contract in 1985 to replace the military’s existing sidearm, the Colt Model 1911 .45ACP pistol. In 1993, the top executive of Beretta U.S.A. Corp. told the Baltimore Sun that the military contract was “part of a carefully planned strategy dating back to 1980.” The company’s plan was to use the military contract to make Beretta a household name in the United States. It could then move into the larger law enforcement and commercial markets. To help get the contract, the company sold its pistols to the military at close to production cost.14 The Austrian entrepreneur Gaston Glock had a similar objective when he founded his handgun manufacturing company, won an Austrian army competition in 1982, opened a U.S. subsidiary, and then went after the American law enforcement market. “In marketing terms, we assumed that, by pursuing the law enforcement market, we would then receive the benefits of ‘after sales’ in the commercial market,” Glock told Advertising Age in 1995.15 A full-page ad on the inside cover of the 2011 edition of a Glock infotainment magazine, Glock Annual 11, features a photograph of two men dressed in SWAT team gear and posed as if entering a room through a doorway. The nearer of the two is thrusting a Glock 40 caliber pistol forward.16
The history of the M&P15 model assault rifle that James Eagan Holmes used during his shooting spree in the Aurora theater is bound intimately to this business of military and police marketing cachet. In early 2006, Smith & Wesson announced that it had begun shipping its new line of “tactical rifles.” The terms tactical rifles and modern sporting rifles are two of the most prominent gun-industry euphemisms for semiautomatic assault rifles. The M&P15 was the first true long gun made by Smith & Wesson, which had long been known as a manufacturer of handguns only. The rifle was designed and produced because Smith & Wesson found itself in a marketing corner. Military-style semiautomatic assault rifles had become essential to profit in the U.S. civilian gun market, but Smith & Wesson did not make rifles. It had, however, successfully marketed a line of “Military & Police” semiautomatic handguns to military, police, and civilian customers. Smith & Wesson’s executives decided to introduce their own line of assault rifles, label them with the established M&P brand, and heavily pitch them to civilians. “We believe the features of these tactical rifles make them strong contenders in the military and law enforcement markets,” said Michael Golden, Smith & Wesson’s president and CEO. “We also believe that our M&P rifle series fills a tremendous gap in the marketplace by delivering high-quality, feature-rich tactical rifles that will be readily available in commercial channels.”17
The money rolled into Smith & Wesson’s coffers according to plan. On July 20, 2009—exactly three years to the day before the Aurora mass murder—Golden stated in an interview that a “category that has been extremely hot is tactical rifles, AR style tactical rifles.” On a June 2009 investors conference call, Golden enthused that “tactical rifles were up almost 200% versus the same period the year before. We have increased our capacity on that rifle.” The company was doing so well with its assault rifles that it decided to introduce a new variant in 22 caliber, because that ammunition is much cheaper than the military-style ammunition used in the M&P15. “We have an M&P15 that shoots .223 ammo that sells extremely well,” Golden said. “We have just launched an AR-style rifle that shoots 22 caliber rounds that we think will be extremely popular because of the price of ammo.”18
Public reports of another gun company, Freedom Group Inc., underscore the vital role that military-style weapons play in today’s commercial gun market. A conglomerate, the Freedom Group boasts that its structure includes thirteen widely recognized brands of guns, ammunition, and related products.19 It claims to hold “the #1 commercial market position across all of our major firearms categories in the United States and the #2 commercial market position for ammunition in the United States, the largest firearms and ammunition market in the world.”20 Freedom Group also asserts that it is “the only major U.S. manufacturer of both firearms and ammunition, which provides a significant competitive advantage and supports our market leadership position.”21
A Freedom Group quarterly report stated that “the adoption of the modern sporting rifle has led to increased long-term growth in the long gun market while attracting a younger generation of shooters,” and that the company is “experiencing strong demand for modern sporting firearms and handguns.”22 In another report, the group noted the importance of the fact that assault rifle demand has grown, “especially with a younger demographic of users and those who like to customize or upgrade their firearms.”23 Customizing and upgrading are gun industry jargon for the profitable aftermarket of hardware accessories that can be fitted onto assault weapons, like scopes, bipods, lasers, forward pistol grips, flash hiders and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Until recently, the Freedom Group’s stable of manufacturers produced only rifles and no handguns, the converse of Smith & Wesson’s market situation. To fill the gap, in January 2012 it acquired the handgun manufacturer Para USA Inc., which was originally a Canadian company.24
With studied banality, the company recently observed that “the continued economic uncertainty and the 2012 presidential election is likely to continue to spur both firearms and ammunition sales. Additionally, returning military are likely to purchase firearms for recreational use and to maintain training.”25 The company’s report did not explain what sort of “training” would be necessary for returning military to “maintain.” That line of thinking, however, will almost certainly be used by the gun industry to justify its sale of military style weapons to the civilian market. Making and selling assault weapons becomes more than a sordid way to make money. It’s elevated to the level of a patriotic act—helping to keep America’s heroes trained for war.
Training for another eventuality—a “Zombie Apocalypse”—has also proved profitable for the gun industry. Although dressed in the thin outer garments of spoof and fun, so-called “zombie shoots” are at their core a clever appeal to gun enthusiasts who believe that they must prepare for social disorder and government breakdown or tyranny. According to Shotgun News, “the younger set is all about zombie shooting, and a whole industry has sprung up to supply the undead in target form.”26 Zombie shoots are organized shooting events that feature three-dimensional humanoid targets, filled with paintballs or other inserts that “bleed” when hit by bullets. One company, Zombie Industries, specializes in designing and making such zombie targets. DPMS, a leading maker of AR-15-type assault rifles in the United States and a star in the Freedom Group’s constellation, sponsors an annual zombie shoot it calls Outbreak: Omega. The company claims that its event is “the world’s premier recreational zombie shoot.”27
At its most superficial level, the zombie shoot craze is simply an example of the industry’s aggressive and exploitative marketing. “We have found that what may have worked in the past with the Baby Boomer generation, doesn’t seem to be working well with the X, Y and Millennium generations,” Rex Gore, president and CEO of Black Wing Shooting Center in Delaware, Ohio, told Shooting Industry magazine in January 2012. “We have hired some younger people to work in our operation, asking them to help us understand what excites and motivates the younger age groups. Then, we are developing shooting activities focused toward that demographic, like bachelor parties, zombie shoots, full-auto shoots and other fast-paced activities.”28
At a deeper level, however, zombie shoots are thinly disguised events to train for shooting other people in numbers large and small. Shotgun News discussed the phenomenon in its July 20, 2012, issue—published on the very day of James Eagan Holmes’s murderous rampage in Aurora. “A crackhead or a meth addict isn’t a great deal different from a post-apocalyptic zombie,” the industry tabloid newspaper observed, blandly exposing the true mentality underlying
the “sport” of zombie shoots. The article noted approvingly that Zombie Industries “has developed special training targets that illustrate the vital organs. These allow shooters to engage the targets at angles rather than strictly head-on. There’s also a psychological dimension; shooting a 3D target is a lot closer to shooting an enemy than is firing on a flat paper target. If the target ‘bleeds,’ well, that’s just an added dimension of realism.”29
The ease of acquiring military-style firepower in the U.S. civilian market has—as noted in chapter 4—generated a massive market for smuggling guns to Mexico, Canada, and other countries in the Western Hemisphere. An online resource maintained by the Violence Policy Center (VPC) contains indictments and other documents related to federal gun-trafficking prosecutions filed since 2006, primarily in the southwest United States. The documents detail specific information, such as the make, model, caliber, manufacturer, and retail source of firearms seized in criminal trafficking cases. These resources confirm that military-style semiautomatic firearms readily available on the U.S. civilian gun market are highly sought after by international gun traffickers; they also describe the methods, such as “straw purchases,” that are commonly employed to obtain weapons in the United States to smuggle to Mexico and other Latin American countries. Categories of guns cataloged on the site, Cross-Border Gun Trafficking, include assault rifles, assault pistols, 50 caliber sniper rifles, body-armor-penetrating handguns, standard pistols and revolvers, as well as other firearm types. As of September 2012, of the 4,454 guns detailed on the site, 2,278 were assault rifles (primarily AK-47 and AR-15 variants), 255 were assault pistols (almost all AK-47 pistol variants), 29 were 50 caliber sniper rifles, and 373 were body-armor-penetrating handguns (all of which were FN Five-seveN pistols, known as the mata policía, or “cop killer,” in Mexico).30
Unfortunately, U.S. law enforcement officers are finding themselves increasingly in the sights of military-style guns, wielded by criminals, the mentally deranged, and radical extremists. A VPC study published in 2010, based on reports of assault weapons in the news over a two-year span—between March 1, 2005, and February 28, 2007—made clear that assault weapons are frequently used in crime and confiscated from criminals. Moreover, it demonstrated that the number of incidents in which law enforcement officers were reported to have been confronted with assault weapons rose dramatically in the two-year period monitored. More than one out of four assault-weapons incidents in the study involved police. Those incidents are likely to involve shots being fired, with injuries to law enforcement personnel, gunmen, and bystanders. Shots were fired from assault weapons (other than police weapons) in three out of every four reported incidents involving police.31
One example of the impact of assault weapons on police occurred in April 2009 in the Stanton Heights area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a “close-knit, family oriented and pet friendly neighborhood” that “appeals to those looking for a quiet and relaxed way of life.”32 Many Pittsburgh police and fire service officers live in Stanton Heights.33 In April 2009, Eric G. Kelly was among them. A fourteen-year veteran of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, Kelly had changed the police zone in which he worked in January. He wanted to be closer to his home, where he lived with his wife and three daughters.34 His new policing area included Stanton Heights.35
Another family lived on Fairfield Street, several blocks away from Officer Kelly. Three generations of the family that lived in this small ranch-style house had immersed themselves in the great American gun culture. The youngest, Richard Jr., held a concealed-carry permit from Allegheny County.36 He was an outspoken advocate for permits. In 2008 he posted on the website of the Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Association, “I want all the guys that deserve them to have their licenses without fear of cracking a fart and the county sheriff smelling it. Ya dig?”37
Richard’s grandfather, the late Charles Scott, was a “deadbeat alcoholic who beat his wife and other family members.” Unemployed for the most part, he drank up to two cases of beer a day and kept a cache of guns in the house.38 He liked to walk around with a handgun stuffed into his belt and was known for uttering racial slurs.39 Scott was a man given to rage. He beat his wife and daughter. He deliberately shot a family kitten to death, fired through the ceiling and roof of his house, and pointed his guns at other family members.40 During one domestic argument, he shot two telephones that his wife tried to use to call for help. When she began studying to get a GED (General Educational Development) diploma,41 he shot up her textbooks because he was against the idea.42
It is perhaps not surprising that Charles’s daughter, Margaret, took up drinking at an early age and (unsuccessfully) attempted suicide at least three times, including shooting herself with a shotgun.43 Her marriage to Richard Poplawski produced the future concealed-carry-permit holder Richard Jr. The elder Poplawski left the home when his son was about three years old. Richard Poplawski Jr. was left largely to the care of his grandparents.44
The younger Poplawski followed the cycle of guns, violence, hatred, and failure. (All references to Poplawski hereafter are to the son, Richard Jr.) Said to have been bright and likable as a child, Poplawski spiraled down into anger and bitterness. By 2009, when he was twenty-two, he had already enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and lasted only three weeks. He had also tried dental school, computers, and a string of other jobs. He failed at them all. He went to Florida for a while, came back, and ended up living at home with his mother. The two had loud and bitter arguments. Within the last year, Richard had acquired two pit bull puppies from an animal rescue center.45 On the morning of Saturday, April 4, 2009, the action of one of the two dogs set off an explosion of violence that stunned Pittsburgh.
On Friday night, April 3, Officer Kelly worked the 11:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M. shift.46 Richard Poplawski partied with friends,47 came home late, and surfed the Web. Among the sites he visited Saturday morning between 3:30 A.M. and 5:00 A.M. was the website of the white supremacist organization Stormfront.48
Poplawski left markers of his disintegrating identity and festering hatred on the Internet beginning in high school. According to Mark Pitcavage, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s investigative research department, Poplawski’s first Internet writings were about smoking marijuana and making dope pipes, which Poplawski said his mother was “cool with.” He first appeared on white supremacist sites in 2007, when he scribbled about his hatred of minorities and a government collapse that was supposedly coming. Poplawski believed that the federal government was building concentration camps for dissenters and that under President Obama’s leadership it was planning to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, and confiscate Americans’ firearms.49 “If a total collapse is what it takes to wake our brethren and guarantee future generations of white children walk this continent, if that is what it takes to restore our freedoms and recapture our land: let it begin this very second and not a moment later,” he wrote in March 2009.50 In 2007, Poplawski explained his hatred for blacks on the Stormfront hate site. “I attribute it, in part, to my solid upbringing . . . my mother made it clear that it would be frowned upon (to say the least, she actually told me she would bust me with a frying pan) to bring home a non-white girlfriend long before I had started thinking about bringing home any girls period, lol.”51
Poplawski also posted several hundred times on the website of the Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association, beginning in December 2007. Most of his posts there—made under the name of “RWhiteman”—discussed concealed-weapons permits, police arrests and gun confiscations he believed were illegal, and buying and selling guns.52 In an early post, Poplawski made a twisted allusion to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech,” in which King said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”53 In December 2007, Poplawski wrote, “I can only hope I would be judged not on the make of my firearm, but on the content of my character.�
�54 In the same year, he posted this statement about police:
I dont [sic] care to bend at all from harassment from the police If I’m doing nothing more than exercising a right. If that means pissing a cop or two off, then so be it, if they are so ignorant as to try to trample my rights or inconvenience me in any way for no reason. I mean Im [sic] not talking about DISRESPECTING any cops, just not bending for them in fear as so many people do.55
Poplawski discussed his private “hit list” on a white supremacist Internet radio program he co-hosted sometime in the weeks before April 4, 2009. The list included a Pittsburgh police officer, a black, a Jew, his ex-girlfriend, her parents, and neighbors’ pets.56 “You have an individual who is, by any stretch of the imagination, a total failure in life with very deep feelings of inadequacy and filled with tons of hatred,” Louis B. Schlesinger, professor of forensic psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2011. “This guy had a mind-set that was anti-government and conspiratorial. He had organizations like these white supremacist groups telling him that it wasn’t him. It was foreigners, minorities and the government causing his problems.”57
In addition to getting his concealed-carry permit—he encouraged Eddie Perkovic, his hate radio co-host, to get one too58—Poplawski bought body armor (popularly called a bulletproof vest) from a friend.59 He built up an arsenal at home. His guns included a .380 semiautomatic pistol, a 22 caliber rifle, a .357 Magnum handgun, a shotgun, and an AK-47 semiautomatic assault rifle. He had more than a thousand rounds of ammunition, better than nine hundred rounds of it for his AK-47.60 “Hand everybody an AK and a sidearm,” Poplawski wrote on a Penguin hockey team fan website in December 2008. “Everybody. And see how long these mass murdering spree’s [sic] last, if anybody even dares to attempt them.”61