The Gun Capitalists
Businessmen invented the gun market. They made the gun as commonplace as a sewing machine. And it was not an easy task. Most of the gun capitalists would have preferred to stick to selling typewriters or hammers, but guns promised to make more money. Businessmen stumbled into guns because they were looking for the most lucrative thing they could sell.
This is one of the most striking things that surfaces as you dig into the history of guns in America. The gun capitalists weren’t actually big fans of guns. Guns were a means to an end. It’s just how they made money.
Love of money was what sparked the unlikely romance of what has been called the gun empire’s incestuous family tree—Remington, Colt, Smith, Wesson, Winchester, and a few other lesser-known cousins. It was “incestuous” because they were constantly buying, selling, and merging as they struggled to survive amid competing friends, allies, buyers, and an undeveloped market for guns. The lines of where one company ended and another began were often blurry.
The gun capitalists didn’t love guns. They loved money.
Eliphalet Remington was actually a pacifist, a poet, and a deeply religious man.
Before Samuel Colt got into guns, he had been traveling the country on a bizarre, circus-like “laughing-gas tour,” showcasing the effects of nitrous oxide and undoubtedly having some fun as he did it. He made submarine batteries before he patented the multi-shot revolver that made him his fortune.
Daniel Wesson had apprenticed as a shoemaker, the trade of his father. Horace Smith was a carpenter like his father.
These are the icons of the gun dynasties, and several of them didn’t even like guns that much.
Though Christopher Spencer (inventor of the Spencer repeating rifle) sold record numbers of guns, he spoke of rejoicing when wars had ended and guns were rendered useless, when “the return to a peaceful industry of silk would be hailed with delight.”14
Even later in life, Oliver Winchester—the King of Guns—is known to have had only two guns, which he may not have even fired. They were family heirlooms—a pair of engraved, ivory-gripped pistols.15 He didn’t drink the Kool-Aid he was selling. The man who made a fortune off guns didn’t seem to care much about guns at all. He was a businessman. He might well have sold other things if that would have made more money.
Early gun businessmen were hardworking folks who knew how to make something out of nothing. And that’s exactly what they did with the civilian gun market—or lack thereof. They made something out of nothing.
The War Business
The gun business did not start as a private business enterprise but was instead funded and kept financially viable almost entirely by defense contracts from the only guaranteed bulk purchaser, the US government. The gun business began as a war business. But it didn’t stay that way.
In its early days, hands down the United States was the biggest buyer, the mother of all clients. From Eli Whitney on, the government was supplying the venture capital to get the gun business going and, later, to keep it afloat.
War was certainly the most convenient market. The government relied on the private gun companies to provide guns for war. But that meant that the private arms makers found themselves utterly dependent on the government contracts. Any business person knows you want to diversify your market.
It created one of the greatest conflicts of interest in American history. The private gun capitalists ended up telling the government, their biggest client, essentially this: “If you don’t allow us to freely sell guns everywhere we can in the off-seasons of war, then we will all go bankrupt and you won’t have any guns for the next war.”
Building a business around war is terribly difficult—and we’re not even talking about the bloodshed. War is not a sustainable business. It creates massive surges followed by catastrophic lulls.
In times of war, the gun manufacturers couldn’t create enough guns. And after the wars, they couldn’t get rid of them.
The spasms of war were manic—a desperate buildup of capacity to fulfill huge, time-sensitive orders of weapons in wartime, followed by a period where there were more guns than anyone needed and a surplus production line that could never sell the guns it was producing—which meant layoffs, debt, and massive amounts of excess space.
The gun industry would not survive off war alone. The gun business had to become something other than the war business.
Samuel Colt is said to have been as “poor as a churchmouse” at one point and was done with government work entirely.16 He looked for new clients. He bypassed the government and tried to sell directly to soldiers. His major production plant in Paterson, New Jersey, went bankrupt in 1842.17
Remington may have done the same if he hadn’t diversified beyond the gun, selling other items like washers, sewing machines, and typewriters.
In 1861 Winchester said, “From the commencement of our organization, there has not been a month in which our expenditures have not exceeded our receipts.” At one point he was in debt $77,437—equivalent to $23.7 million today.18 They all struggled to stay alive financially.
They had not yet invented the gun market.
The crisis became: What will we do when all the Natives are killed or subdued? And what if there is not war on the horizon?
In sadistic irony, the gun was too effective. It killed so quickly, it brought about its own demise. Colt’s lawyer said, “The thing was so good that it ruined itself. . . . It killed all the Indians. . . . If it had been a slower process, the . . . Company would have prolonged business; but the moment the Indians were extirpated, there was no market for their guns.”19 Chilling. Sickening.
Colt looked for a new market. He tried to sell to state militias. He tried selling to Mormon leader Brigham Young. He gave away guns all over the world as gifts, hoping to lure in an international market. And that was quite effective—for a while.
Winchester went after folks fighting Natives in unofficial wars. We can see this turned out to be very profitable—and catastrophic for Natives. One man fighting Seminole warriors (and who was known to shoot them and hang them from trees as a warning) said this: “I honestly believe that but for these arms, the Indians would now be luxuriating in the everglades of Florida.”20 Thus we see the horror of American history and the unique role the gun played in that history.
It turned out to be very difficult to sell guns to ordinary Americans.
So the gun capitalists went overseas. Profits were to be made selling guns to countries involved in wars, conquest, and fragile situations.
Arming the World
One American living in Vienna, Austria, said to gun inventor Hiram Maxim: “If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each other’s throats with great facility.”21
As the domestic gun market was still being invented, the international market kept the gun industry afloat. The irony is that many of the countries that are baffled by the gun epidemic in the United States helped create it. They were the folks who kept the gun market alive in the mid-1800s.
The gun icons like Colt and Winchester were nursed into being, or nursed back to life, by the international market. Without that revenue during the mid-1800s, the private industrial gun business would likely have gone belly up after the Civil War.
All the major gun capitalists—Winchester, Colt, Remington, Smith & Wesson—relied on international markets for their survival. Winchester armed the Ottoman Empire and Benito Juárez in Mexico in 1866. Remington armed Egypt and Cuba, among others. Russia kept Smith & Wesson going in the 1870s.
Memorial to the Lost
SAND CREEK, CHEYENNE AND ARAPAHO TERRITORY IN PRESENT-DAY COLORADO (NOVEMBER 29, 1864)
When we think of mass shootings, we often think of recent tragedies such as Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Pulse nightclub. But guns have been used in mass shootings for hundreds of years.
One of the largest mass shootings on US soil happened on the morning of November 29, 1864, when a
US volunteer soldier troop of roughly seven hundred men descended upon peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho camps. Carbine rifles and howitzer cannons were used to murder roughly 230 people, most of whom were women and children. Their names have been lost over time, but we memorialize them here as a reminder that guns have been instrumental in the murder of native people and in the subjugation of Africans. We honor the lives lost, and lament the inability to name them.
Lord, have mercy on us.
On December 3, 2014, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper formally apologized to the descendants of the Sand Creek massacre victims, gathered in Denver to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the event. Hickenlooper stated, “We should not be afraid to criticize and condemn that which is inexcusable. . . . On behalf of the state of Colorado, I want to apologize. We will not run from this history.”
In recent years, Arapaho youth have taken to running the length of the Sand Creek massacre trail as an endurance test to bring healing to their nation.
The first batch of 3,211 Winchester Model 1866 guns, named after the year it was born, went to Paris, the first of over eight million guns that would be sold by 1930.22 That was enough to keep the factories going. Gun industrialists traveled the world showing off guns and gifting guns to tsars, revolutionaries, and tyrants alike. Russia basically saved Smith & Wesson from its financial crisis, as Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich went hunting with Buffalo Bill in 1869. (Buffalo Bill Cody is credited with fighting in sixteen battles with Natives and killing buffalo to supply railroad workers, including as many as sixty-nine buffalo in one day.) After the hunting trip, Russia bought 250,000 Model 3 guns—five years’ worth of business.23
The worlds collided. Former enemies found a common friendship in their love of guns. Japan, Australia, Cuba, Spain, England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, Greece, Peru, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Curaçao, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, the Bahamas, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Liberia, Hong Kong—even the Vatican. All were buying guns. Yes, Remington sold five thousand guns to the pope.
Remington alone recorded sales of 10,000 to Puerto Rico, 89,000 to Cuba, 130,000 to Spain, 55,000 to Egypt, 50,000 to Mexico, 12,000 to Chile, and an “unknown quantity” to China.24 Winchester began to translate catalogs into other languages to scatter the guns around the world. They were indiscriminate in whom they sold guns to.
The gun business stood to make money off both sides of conflict (a precursor to the Iran-Contra affair). There was a vested interest in international conflict. Winchester in 1866 went to Mexico willing to sell “to either warring party”—whoever was the highest bidder, no doubt.25
One article in London pointed out that Russia and Turkey were outbidding each other in the race to arms as they prepared to slaughter each other, stating that “it is in the US alone that they find the means of gratifying their wishes promptly available.”26 As early as the 1800s, American companies were already arming the world and making a killing off of killing.
There were laws and standards about one government selling guns to another government, violating neutrality. But just like today, there were many ways around those technicalities. For instance, Remington purchased $9 million worth of guns from the US federal government and sold them to France during the Franco-Prussian conflict.27
There was a moral agnosticism to it all. Ignorance is bliss. Money is worth the same amount from revolutionaries and democracies, tyrants and criminals.
One of the brokers of the deal with France was interrogated by Congress and asked, “Was it not your business to inquire where the guns were going?” He answered, “I think not. We sell arms to arms-dealers. . . . They dispose of them to their own advantage.”28 It was not his duty or responsibility to know where the guns were going. His job was to maximize profits.
This small group of business folks in New England would arm almost the whole world in just over twenty years.29 Before the 1860s the US had imported most of its guns. By 1881 all that had changed, and the world was looking to America for its guns. We now had the corner on the market. All of this momentum continued to build until the first embargo on arms exports, in 1898.
Back in the 1850s Winchester was still a shirt man. He was more interested in the sewing machine than the gun machines. But there was a very important intersection. Winchester had discovered the wonder of mass production—and how lucrative it could be. He had found the superiority of machine over man. In 1853 he replaced workers with sewing machines. He decreased his workforce by 4,500 people, converting as much as possible to an entirely machine-run production line.30 And it proved to be very profitable. His shirt business was worth over $200,000 (over $4 million today).31 As business success often does, profits led to a desire for more profits. The gun business was booming, and to it Winchester now turned.
As did many others.
Inventing the Domestic Market
As we moved to the second half of the nineteenth century, with a dwindling international market (due largely to embargos, increased competition, and new laws), the gun capitalists looked to the domestic market. There was much doubt about whether Americans would buy guns. Most farmers who needed them already had them. Most urban folks did not have them or need them. The gun was still seen mostly as a rural instrument for hunting or farming. How many shovels do you really need, and do you really need one in the city?
Unlike some countries after wars, we did not melt down our guns after the Civil War. We did not tell our citizens, as Mandela did after apartheid fell, “Take your guns . . . and throw them into the sea.”32 Nope. We let people take them home with them after the war. It was the informal “inheritance of the Civil War.”33 And men on opposing sides of the war came home with their guns, in the same country, sometimes the same town, now being reconstructed after the war.
Half a million men went home from the Civil War with guns. And the federal government sold its excess guns uninterruptedly from 1865 to 1871, making $17 million net proceeds.34 This all made the civilian gun market tricky from the start. In 1871 we were already one of the most heavily armed countries in the world when it comes to our own citizens. Our Constitution backed that up with the right to bear arms, which moved from a collective right to an individual right (see chap. 10).
The challenge for the gun manufacturers became: How do we get people to love guns like people love horses? How do we get them to see that just one is not enough? And how do we get people who really don’t need one to want one?
GUN TIMELINE
(Note) 1364 First recorded use of a firearm.
1380 Hand guns are known across Europe.
1400s The matchlock gun appears.
1498 Rifling principle is discovered.
1509 Invention of wheel lock (rose lock).
1540 Rifling appears in firearms.
1607 Settlers arrive in Jamestown, Virginia.
1630 The first true flintlock.
1637 First use of firearms proof-marks.
1750–1850 Dueling pistols come into fashion.
1776 American Revolution.
1807 Percussion-detonating principle patented.
ca. 1825 Percussion-cap guns are in general use.
1830 The back-action lock appears.
1835 The first Colt revolver.
1840 Guns begin to use pin-fire cartridges.
1847 The telegraph is invented.
1850 True shotguns in common use.
1854–1856 The Crimean War. The last war to use only muzzle-loaded guns.
1859 The first full rim-fire cartridge.
1860 Spencer repeating carbine patented.
1861 Breech loaded guns in common use.
1861–1865 American Civil War. Both breech and muzzle loaded guns used.
1862 The Gatling gun is invented.
1869 Center-fire cartridge introduced.
1870–1871 The Franco-German War. Breach-loaded guns are dominant.
1871 First cartridge revolver.
1873 Winchest
er rifle introduced.
1876 Custer defeated at Little Big Horn.
1877 First effective double-action revolver.
1879 Lee box magazine patented.
1892 Advent of automatic handguns.
1900 Historical firearms period concludes. Contemporary period begins.
In the beginning, guns were very expensive. Only the wealthy could afford them, and most wealthy people didn’t think they needed them. Guns were often frowned on as the poor man’s—the farmer’s—tool. And the folks who needed guns for their farms and in rural areas often could not afford them. The task became how to sell guns to rich folks who didn’t need them and to poor folks who couldn’t afford them. That’s why marketers have to be savvy, even conniving.
DEVELOPING A DOMESTIC GUN MARKET AFTER THE CIVIL WAR
(Note) It proved very difficult to invent a domestic market for guns. In the early days of the 1850s, Winchester had fifty men and four women on deck to help manufacture guns. Orders were so exceptional that when there was an order, Winchester would blow a whistle to call in help. And then everyone would go back to their farms when the order was completed. As hard as manufacturers tried, the gun did not sell well. Many investors withdrew. Winchester took his own money, largely coming from the shirt business, to keep the hemorrhaging young gun business alive. In 1857 his cash was down to less than $100. Even though the Winchester guns were advertised in the New York Times as “A Triumph of American Ingenuity” in 1859, it was more of a dream than a reality.
Beating Guns Page 5