Press Releases

Campaign Research Notes, October 29, 2024 – Though most people think of Halloween as a fun holiday for children, for the gun industry it’s just another opportunity to market their militarized products. As the gun website Pew Pew Tactical noted last Halloween, “So…Halloween Gun Sales are a thing now. But if you think about it…it’s the perfect thing to bridge the gap until Black Friday and Cyber Monday.”

In this industry update: the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on the Biden Administration’s ghost gun regulations while ongoing VPC research offers a snapshot from Washington, DC on the dramatic increase in police recoveries of these guns; another example of the gun industry’s militarized marketing, this time from gunmaker FN; and, back to the Supreme Court, which agrees to hear the Mexican government’s case against specific gun manufacturers.

Campaign Research Notes, September 26, 2024 – In this industry update, Gun Owners of America (GOA) hosts their inaugural Gun Owners Advocacy and Leadership Summit (GOALS) which highlights the group’s “expanding partnerships within the gun industry.” Held in August in Knoxville, Tennessee, VPC staff traveled to the meeting and attended panels featuring gun industry members and GOA personnel.

In this industry update, in the wake of the school shooting allegedly committed with an AR-15 style assault rifle by a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia on September 4, we examine the role played by the firearms industry, which relentlessly markets guns to children ─ directly and through their parents.

In the wake of the school shooting allegedly committed with an AR-15 style assault rifle by a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, today the Violence Policy Center (VPC) released a new backgrounder on the gun industry’s marketing of guns to children.

In the wake of our nation’s most recent mass shooting at a public school, this time at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, it is vital that the media, policymakers, and general public demand answers about the firearms (or firearm) used by the alleged perpetrator and how the guns (or gun) were procured.

In this industry update, one NSSF “Real Solutions” partner attacks another, a Maryland appeals court upholds the state’s ban on assault rifles, including the Barrett 50 caliber sniper rifle, and preliminary data from ATF show gun production dropping by 30 percent.

In the same month as a would-be assassin armed with a DPMS AR-15 assault rifle targeted former President Trump, two separate gun magazines ran stories highlighting the guns used in two completed Presidential assassinations.

In this update, we look at a legal victory for Illinois’ 2023 assault weapons ban, VPC comments to the Commerce Department on gun exports, and an example of gun industry disregard for the victims of gun violence.

It’s all about marketing at the NRA Annual Meeting. The NRA and gun industry use the show in their ongoing marketing efforts targeting women, children, and communities of color, while working to resell the primary market of white males with increasingly militarized firearms, such as assault weapons.