As RedState reported, authorities released some information about the weapons used in the horrific killings of 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas, this week. One of those facts was that Daniel Defense was the manufacturing company that sold one of the guns used by the Uvalde shooter.
The shooter is believed to have bought at least two AR-15s, one of which was a pricey Daniel Defense model that generally costs over $2,000. He posted a receipt for it on social media, which said he paid $1,870 for it, with tax it was $2,024.28.
The private business has come under media scrutiny this week, as my colleague Nick Arama wrote, including during an exchange between a New York Times reporter and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Now, it’s NBC News’ turn, apparently. Earlier this week, “[a] Daniel Defense spokesman told NBC News that the company has decided to skip the NRA event in Houston “due to the horrifying tragedy in Uvalde, Texas where one of our products was criminally misused.”
And what thanks do they get for their contrition, their bending a knee to the left here?
A hit piece published Thursday, with the headline: “Maker of rifle used by Texas gunman draws fury for ‘incendiary’ ads.” I’ll return to the headline later, but here are just a few of the things the publication attacked them on. First, their cutting-edge advertising.
The ad represented the kind of provocative marketing that has helped the Georgia-based gun company become one the largest privately owned firearms manufacturers in the country.
The left gets a “twofer” here: not only do they get to demonize a gun company (who they see as evil and making blood money from mass shootings — in Daniel Defense’s case, at least two mass shootings. A Daniel Defense weapon was found during the investigation of the Vegas Route 91 Harvest music festival massacre, NBC News reported), but they also get to drag out their tired socialist storyline of success via capitalism is totally evil. The unbiased “experts” here? An anti-gun author (also, a reformed, former firearms exec) and an activist with the Gabby Giffords gun-grabbers group.
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“In an industry with 500 companies all making the same products, you have to get ahead somehow,” said Ryan Busse, a former firearms executive and author of the book “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America.”
Busse said the “incendiary marketing” pushed by Daniel Defense founder Marty Daniel has long broken norms in the industry.
“This is how he has grown his business by being on the edge and wrapping this holy roller thing around it,” added Busse, who is a senior adviser for the gun violence prevention group Giffords.
The fact that a legal business makes money is not and should not be controversial. NBC News includes a previous quote from Mr. Daniel on the fact that mass shootings do have a tendency to raise sales of guns and ammo. You’ll find more like this (and from actual experts) in my colleague Jeff Charles’ new VIP piece. The leftists and their media friends gloss over the reason this happens, and which the Daniel Defense owner explains:
“The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 drove a lot of sales,” Daniel said in a 2017 interview with Forbes. “That was a horrible event and we don’t use those kinds of terrible things to drive sales, but when people see politicians start talking about gun control, they have this fear and they go out and buy guns.”
Again, who cares what the owner of a gun company had to say? They only print it because it riles up the base that seethes with hatred at the wrong culprit. This man and his product are not responsible for the actions of any monster wreaking havoc on other human beings. The shooter is. And Marty Daniel should be free to express a political opinion without being demonized for it.
But the larger problem here is that the owner or his company’s PR department decided to skip out on business opportunities and potential sales revenue at the NRA event out of fear of media reprisal. You can see in this case it did them no good. They still merited punishment from the media. The lesson: Never give the left an inch – ever.
Let’s consider that headline for a moment and how grotesque it is: “Maker of rifle used by Texas gunman draws fury for ‘incendiary’ ads.” Twenty-one people are dead. They woke up, kissed their loved ones goodbye before heading to work or school on Monday, and they never came home. But to the left and the media (but I repeat myself), that isn’t the thing making them furious — a company’s advertizing is. That tells you all you need to know about their goals here.
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