Gun Baby Gun: A Bloody Journey Into the World of the Gun

by Iain Overton

  45.

  http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/fact-sheets/2013/more-guns-less-crime-2013.aspx

  46.

  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/28/nra-war-on-america-wayne-lapierre-indianapolis

  47.

  http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/04/nra-meeting-lapierre-membership/2135063/; http://www.businessinsider.com/gun-industry-funds-nra-2013-1?IR=T

  48.

  http://www.vpc.org/studies/bloodmoney2.pdf

  49.

  http://www.campaign2unload.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Gun-Industry-Members.pdf

  50.

  It led Sturm, Ruger and Co. to pledge $1 for each new Ruger firearm sold between the 2011 and 2012 NRA Annual Meetings. Their goal was a cheque for $1 million to the NRA. Their CEO got his golden jacket – they made over $1.2 million.

  51.

  In addition the National Association of Gun Rights spent nearly $6.8 million and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, over $2.3 million; http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000082&year=2013

  52.

  Dennis A. Henigan, Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2009), p. 184.

  53.

  http://www.businessinsider.com/smith-and-wesson-almost-went-out-of-business-trying-to-do-the-right-thing-2013-1

  54.

  Ibid.

  55.

  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10595087/Hand-guns-should-be-legalised-and-licensed-Nigel-Farage-has-said.html; http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2014/01/27/police-shoot-down-nigel-farage-s-handgun-call

  56.

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/germany-initiates-new-gun-registry/2013/01/19/86bb29f2-60da-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_story.html

  57.

  http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/articles/2013/10/secretary-general-of-interpol-suggests-an-armed-citizenry-to-combat-mass-violence.aspx

  58.

  http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2013/224833.htm

  59.

  http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm

  60.

  http://www.propublica.org/article/democrats-push-to-restart-cdc-funding-for-gun-violence-research

  61.

  http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM198606123142406

  62.

  http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/01/14/169164414/lack-of-up-to-date-research-complicates-gun-debate

  63.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/us/26guns.html

  64.

  Ibid.

  65.

  In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum directing the CDC and others to conduct research into the causes and prevention of crime. He called upon Congress to allocate $10 million for the CDC to conduct further research, including the relationship between video games, media images and violence. Despite media reports that the funding freeze would be lifted in 2014, at the time of writing it was not clear that this will happen any time soon: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/cdc-still-cant-get-funding-research

  66.

  The lobbyists also turned their attention to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) – a body that invests $30 billion into medical research every year. A 2011 act had a rider that stated no NIH funding ‘may be used, in whole or part, to advocate or promote gun control’.

  67.

  Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy (the lone Democrat), Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. The elder Bush resigned from the NRA in 1995 after LaPierre’s attack on federal agents in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/11/us/letter-of-resignation-sent-by-bush-to-rifle-association.html

  68.

  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/18/pro-gun-groups-donated-senators

  69.

  http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/05/01/12591/gun-lobbys-money-and-power-still-holds-sway-over-congress

  70.

  http://www.cpsc.gov/en

  71.

  http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/27/guns-children-hospitalizations/4796999/

  72.

  http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/11/guns-child-deaths-more-than-cancer/2073259/

  73.

  They were later to change the date: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/12/16/guns-save-lives-day_n_4452075.html

  74.

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7056245.stm

  75.

  For more on this, visit: https://aoav.org.uk/2014/15-years-since-columbine/.

  76.

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-australians-gave-back-their-guns/2013/08/23/108458dc-0c09-11e3-8974-f97ab3b3c677_story.html

  77.

  It is not just mass shootings that have been impacted. At that time Australia’s firearm mortality rate per population was 2.6 per 100,000. Today the rate is under 1 in 100,000, less than one-tenth the US rate. Sources: the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the US Center for Disease Control. These are for all gun deaths – homicide, suicide and unintentional. If you just focus on gun homicide rates, the US outstrips Australia thirty-fold.

  78.

  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/social-issues/newtown-divided/how-the-gun-rights-lobby-won-after-newtown/

  79.

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/29/guns-in-school_n_4174071.html

  80.

  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-08/us-rush-on-guns-triggers-shooting-supplies-shortage/5507752

  81.

  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2251762/NRA-condemned-astonishing-response-Sandy-Hook-massacre-calling-schools-arm-themselves.html

  82.

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20815130

  83.

  http://www.businessinsider.com/nra-practice-range-app-2013-1

  84.

  After much criticism, they raised the age to twelve years; http://bigstory.ap.org/article/nra-shooting-game-no-longer-preschoolers

  85.

  http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-gun-violence-schools-20140610-story.html; http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-says-mass-shootings-are-on-the-rise-in-america-2014-9?IR=T; Everytown.org, a pro-gun law lobby group, listed 72 incidents since Sandy Hook, so the LA Times figure is a conservative one.

  86.

  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10889499/Bulletproof-blankets-to-protect-children-from-tornadoes-and-crazed-gunmen.html

  87.

  Watts spent a number of weeks in 1945 in Obersalzberg or Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s Berghof. While there, he hunted not for Nazis, but for treasure. He collected thousands of items of silverware, uniforms and documents.

  88.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQWb-5nblx4

  89.

  http://www.zombiesurvivalcourse.com

  90.

  http://www.outdoorlife.com/photos/gallery/survival/2010/03/surviving-undead-zombie-guns

  91.

  http://www.cinemablend.com/television/Walking-Dead-Season-4-Premiere-Crushes-With-16-1-Million-Viewers-59862.html

  92.

  Dead Snow is a 2009 film about a ski vacation that goes a bit wrong for a group of medical students as they find themselves confronted by an ‘unimaginable menace’. It cost about $800,000 to make and made about $2 million at the box office alone.

  93.

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/zombie-fads_n_2852032.html

  94.

  http://www.abc-7.com/story/25409465/abc7-extra-zombies-and-guns-in-fla

  95.

  http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ipr/journal/v1/n2/abs/ipr201313a.html

  96.

  http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/13/exclusive_the_pentagon_has_a_plan_to_stop_the_zombie_apocalypse

  97.

  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisf
ree/2013/sep/21/american-gun-out-control-porter

  98.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2gCFOtaZPo

  99.

  http://www.vpc.org/studies/militarization.pdf

  100.

  http://www.nrapublications.org/index.php/11920/obamas-secret-plan-to-destroy-the-second-amendment-by-2016/

  101.

  http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11296403.htm

  102.

  To 2.78 million in December, an all-time record and a 49 per cent increase over December 2011.

  103.

  G. J. Wintemute, ‘Guns, Fear, the Constitution, and the Public’s Health’, N. Engl. J. Med. 358, 2008, pp. 1421–4. Such conclusions are consistent with a study from the Violence Policy Center, based on 2008 data from the CDC. It found: ‘States with higher gun ownership rates and weak gun laws have the highest rates of gun death . . . The analysis reveals that the five states with the highest per capita gun death rates were Alaska, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Wyoming. Each of these states had a per capita gun death rate far exceeding the national per capita gun death rate of 10.38 per 100,000 for 2008. Each state has lax gun laws and higher gun ownership rates. By contrast, states with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership had far lower rates of firearm-related death.’

  Chapter 15: The Manufacturers

  1.

  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moby-Dick-Herman-Melville/dp/1494316641

  2.

  Reuters was set up the month before.

  3.

  Samuel Colt, ‘On the Application of Machinery to the Manufacture of Rotating Chambered-Breech Fire-Arms, and the Peculiarities of those Arms’, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, vol. XI, session 1851–2 (London: Institution of Civil Engineers, 1852), http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=QnkDAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA13. Again, thanks to Barbara Eldredge for alerting me to this meeting in her excellent thesis: http://gundesigndotorg.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/barbaraeldredge_missingthemoderngun.pdf

  4.

  This was not a ‘new’ idea – the design had been around for a few years. What was significant was its presentation as a manufacturing design upon the world stage.

  5.

  As Colt said on that day: ‘When a new piece is required, a duplicate can be supplied with greater accuracy and less expense, than could be done by the most skilful manual labour, or on active service a number of complete arms may be readily made up from portions of broken ones, picked up after an action.’

  6.

  http://gundesigndotorg.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/barbaraeldredge_missingthemoderngun.pdf

  7.

  Mass production using interchangeable parts was actually first achieved in 1803 by Marc Isambard Brunel. But this method of working did not catch on in general manufacturing in Britain for many decades.

  8.

  http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/10/04/8186795/index.htm

  9.

  http://www.remington.com/pages/our-company/company-history.aspx.

  10.

  Roy G. Jinks and Sandra C. Krein, Smith & Wesson (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006), p. 9.

  11.

  http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/23/mikhail-kalashnikovak47inventordeadat94.html; http://www.theglobalist.com/20-facts-mikhail-kalashnikov-ak-47/

  12.

  http://www.forbes.com/global/2003/0331/020.html

  13.

  Philip Schreier, Senior Curator at the National Firearms Museum, interview by Barbara Eldredge, 8 November, 2011, National Firearms Museum, Fairfax, VA: http://gundesigndotorg.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/barbaraeldredge_missingthemoderngun.pdf

  14.

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6294242.stm

  15.

  http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/weapons-and-markets/producers.html

  16.

  http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/28/us-world-firearms-idUSL2834893820070828

  17.

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/19/seven-facts-about-the-u-s-gun-industry/

  18.

  http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-43.pdf

  19.

  James Bevan, Rifles, Research Note No. 38 (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2014).

  20.

  Peter Batchelor and Kai Michael Kenkel, Controlling Small Arms: Consolidation, Innovation And Relevance In Research And Policy, (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 35; it’s been this way ever since President Roosevelt encouraged America to become ‘the great arsenal of democracy’ in Christmas 1940. The US subsequently saw a military-industrial explosion, manufacturing output doubling between 1940 and 1943, and arms production increased eight times between 1941 and 1943, reaching a level that was nearly equivalent to those of Britain, the Soviet Union and Germany combined.

  21.

  http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/F-Working-papers/SAS-WP14-US-Firearms-Industry.pdf

  22.

  http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/22/news/companies/beretta-guns-move/

  23.

  http://www.chuckhawks.com/turkish_invasion.htm

  24.

  $11.7 billion in sales and $993 million in profits: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/19/seven-facts-about-the-u-s-gun-industry; http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/default.aspx?indid=662; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said that the number of guns made in the US rose 16 per cent between 2010 and 2011 to 6.4 million guns, and the FBI expects to run 17.8 million firearm purchase background checks in 2012 – up 9 per cent from 2011.

  25.

  $688.3 million: http://www.ruger.com/corporate/PDF/ER-2014-02-25.pdf

  26.

  Jeff Knox, ‘Guns: A bright spot in the economy’, Firearms Coalition, http://www.firearmscoalition.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=709:guns-a-bright-spot-in-the-economy&catid=19:the-knox-update&Itemid=144

  27.

  Owen Greene and Nic Marsh (eds.), Small Arms, Crime and Conflict: Global Governance and the Threat of Armed Violence (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 215.

  28.

  http://www.guns.com/2014/05/02/gaston-glock-buys-wife-15-million-horse/

  29.

  http://www.billionaire.com/guns/beretta/918/beretta-firearms-going-great-guns

  30.

  http://www.history.co.uk/biographies/j-p-morgan

  31.

  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-24/mikhail-kalashnikov-inventor-of-the-ak-47-dies-aged-94/5173370

  32.

  The company Izhmash merged with Izhevsk Mechanical Plant under the new name Kalashnikov Concern; http://en.ria.ru/military_news/20140207/187298025/Kalashnikov-Concern-Estimates-Operating-Loss-of-50M-in-2013.html

  33.

  http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-29/colts-curse-gunmakers-owners-have-led-it-to-crisis-after-crisis

  34.

  http://www.metalstorm.com

  35.

  http://www.nammo.com/globalassets/pdfs/product-sheets/general/nammo-brochure-2011.pdf

  36.

  http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/feb/15/army-taliban-sniping

  37.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnA9yyE2ma8

  38.

  http://www.lehighdefense.com/index.php/our-technology/subsonic-bullets-and-ammunition

  39.

  http://avrockwell.com

  40.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/business/how-freedom-group-became-the-gun-industrys-giant.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

  41.

  Ibid.

  42.

  It then acquired DPMS/Panther Arms, Marlin, H&R, The Parker Gun, Mountain Khakis, Advanced Armament Corp, Dakota Arms, Para USA, Barnes Bullets and TAPCO; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/business/how-freedom-group-became-the-gun-industrys-giant.html?pagewanted=all

  43.

  Cerberus has just under $160 millio
n of equity in Freedom Group and 94 per cent ownership; http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-18/cerberus-outlay-reviewed-by-pension-after-school-massacre.html

  44.

  http://www.freedom-group.com/2013%2010-K.pdf

  45.

  The media people listed on the Cerberus company website – Peter Duda and John Dillard – are public-relations men.

  46.

  http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2007/12/18/for-cerberus-feinberg-privacy-has-a-price/

  47.

  Tom Dias, Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America (New York, The New Press, 2000), p. 11.

  48.

  http://www.freedom-group.com/2013%2010-K.pdf

  49.

  http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2013/12/10/philippines-poverty-rate-narrows-little-despite-economic-growth/

  50.

  http://www.vice.com/print/pr-firms-in-the-uk-are-spinning-stories-for-foreign-dictators-734

  51.

  http://www.webershandwick.com/who-we-are/bio/eric-pehle