by Iain Overton
52.
http://www.webershandwick.com/who-we-are/bio/leslie-gaines-ross
53.
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2010/10/16/bushmaster-acr-recall/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=acr
54.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_45/b4202025114499.htm; http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/06/daniel-zimmerman/remington-settles-trigger-suit/
55.
http://www.bushmaster.com
56.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/12/18/bushmaster-paid-after-malvo-killings-and-may-yet-pay-again/; http://www.crimemuseum. org/crime-library/the-washington-dc-sniper
57.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/12/26/bushmaster_223_william_spengler_jr_reportedly_used_same_type_of_gun_as_adam.html; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/25/william-spengler-had-semiautomatic-rifle_n_2362646.html
58.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/12/18/cerberus-capital-owner-steward-health-care-boston-also-owns-maker-bushmaster-rifle-used-newtown-shootings/87mKS2CJNcr2grFPAJMVTK/story.html
59.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-4
60.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/12/18/cerberus-capital-owner-steward-health-care-boston-also-owns-maker-bushmaster-rifle-used-newtown-shootings/87mKS2CJNcr2grFPAJMVTK/story.html; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-rosenthal/cerberus-capital-profitin_b_4072807.html
61.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/19/newtown-shooting-bush-master-gun
62.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/company-sell-newtown-gunmaker-article-1.1222849
63.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f684114-6032-11e3-b360-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk#axzz34npCSrgX
64.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9fb20eea-6407-11e3-b70d-00144feabdc0html#axzz3Ehx2zdA7. And it is not just Cerberus. After Sandy Hook, Smith & Wesson reported sales for that year up by 43 per cent, hitting a record $588 million. Ruger saw net sales up almost 50 per cent at $491.8 million: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-26/gun-business-still-booming-as-anxiety-buying-continues
65.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-09/gunmaker-tax-breaks-to-lure-jobs-face-renewed-scrutiny.html. Since 2007 the Group had received some $5.5 million in subsidies and grants.
66.
http://www.cerberuscapital.com/team/stephen-a-feinberg/
67.
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-10-02/graphic-bio-stephen-a-dot-feinberg
68.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/company-sell-newtown-gunmaker-article-1.1222849
69.
http://littlesis.org/relationship/view/id/203656; http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/20/pension-fund-investments-firearm-companies; http://littlesis.org/person/34771/Stephen_A_Feinberg/political
70.
http://www.nrapvf.org/news-alerts/2012/09/nra-pvf-endorses-orrin-hatch-for-us-senate-in-utah.aspx
71.
http://littlesis.org/relationship/view/id/203668; http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/04/max-baucus-background-checks-retiring
72.
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2005-10-02/theyre-not-telling-quayle-jokes-at-cerberus
73.
http://www.freedom-group.com/press.htm
74.
http://www.sportsonesource.com/events/under40/u40winner2009.asp?WID=56
75.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/georgekollitides/9101447597/
76.
http://truthaboutguns-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Ana-Lobo-honoree-George-Kollitides-II-Caitlin-Leszuk-courtesy-panacheprivee.com_.jpg
77.
http://bfanyc.com/uploads/preview_BFA_4089_462024.jpg
78.
His company certainly sells arms into Africa: http://www.remington.com/my-account/partners/sales/international-distributors/africa.aspx
79.
http://www.conflictarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Dispatch_IS_Iraq_Syria_Weapons.pdf
80.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/freedom-group-cerberus-calstrs-bushmaster-newtown-sandy-hook
81.
https://www.opensecrets.org/usearch/?q=George+Kollitides&cx=010677907462955562473%3Anlldkv0jvam&cof=FORID%3A11
82.
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-10-02/whats-bigger-than-cisco-coke-or-mcdonalds
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to give heartfelt thanks to my agent, Antony Topping at Greene and Heaton, and to my editor at Canongate, Katy Follain; both friends, both inspirational, both on the side of good. I am sorry for the endless morning walks and for filling your heads with dark tales of guns before your breakfasts had even been digested.
Deep thanks must go to Jenna Corderoy, my indefatigable and irreplaceable researcher on this book. A journalist with a glittering career ahead of her and a glittering mind in her head.
I’d like to thank Steve Smith and all of those at Action on Armed Violence for your help, too, in the writing of this book. Without your support none of this would have been possible.
Without the following people, this book would also not have been written. Either through your decisions as editors to send me to far flung parts of the world, your abilities as reporters to help me see the light amidst the pathways of shadows, your courage to speak out in the face of the gun’s terror or just for granting me your time, insight and patience, I thank you equally and deeply:
Aage Borchgrevink, Ailsa Bathgate, Alexander Renderos, Alice Shortland, Alicia Fernández, Anne Cadwallader, Apostolos Spanos, Barbara Eldredge, Cate Buchanan, Christopher Coker, Claudia Xavier-Bonifay, David Mapstone, David Potter, David Watson, Dorothy Parker, Elaine Potter, Flossie Baker, Frank Gardner, German Andino, Henry Dodd, Jamie Byng, Jamie Mills O’Brien, Jenny Kleeman, Jòn Pálmason, Jaz Lacey-Campbell, Lesley Levene, Mark Murray-Flutter, Michal Lee Sapir, Molly Molloy, Nic Marsh, Oren Rosenfeld, Ramita Navai, Robin Barnwell, Roy Isbister, Sam Poling, Sara Ramalho, Jon Snow, Shahida Tulaganova, Simon Reeve, Sophie Lochet, Stella Hermes, Vicki Rutherford, Will Thorne, Willard Foxton.
Those whose help I fail to mention here, the failing is all mine, but thank you to those who know.
I’d like also to thank all of those people I have not met whose work is referenced in the footnotes and pages herein. I have stood upon your shoulders. To acknowledge each and every one of you in the main body of the text or individually would take up a book in itself. I hope that I interpreted your findings accurately and that you accept that a footnote is more than that – it is a sign of my deep admiration for your journalism and research.
And then, of course, the deepest and most private gratitude must go to my family: whose patience made this possible, whose belief calmed my nerves, and whose spirits eternally lifted me. You remind me there is always something left to love.
A midnight death in San Pedro Sula, Honduras
After an autopsy, San Pedro Sula
Dark sacks in San Pedro’s morgue
Orlin’s phone of horrors, Honduras
A shot to the gut in Cape Town, South Africa
Utøya – the scene of a mass killing in Norway
Death graffiti, San Salvador
Police on a raid in the Cape Flats, South Africa
Children searched for drugs and guns in South Africa
An instructor at an anti-terrorist training camp in Israel
Spot the Israeli enemy
A wounded Palestinian boy in Bethlehem
Graffiti in Bethlehem
Clay shooting in Iceland, a country with one of the lowest homicide rates
Handmade luxury at the IWA show in Nuremberg, Germany
Whimsical hunting trophies at the IWA show
Me taking aim in South Africa
My first kill<
br />
Meeting Stoya in Las Vegas
Sex sells at a gun show
Asher John’s home security in Pakistan
Bullets and burgers on Vegas’ strip
Gambling for guns at the Shot Show
Poor attempts at gun humour
Satanic imagery at the world’s largest gun show
Kalashnikov and his legacy at the Las Vegas’ Shot Show
Glock’s gun stand
The enemy is everywhere – the Eurosatory military show in Paris
Generals and their cheque books
Underwater guns from the Russians
Kaalbye’s offices in Odessa
Being shown around the Contraband Museum in Odessa
No More Weapons, Ciudad Juárez
Pigeonholes filled with new pistols in Samsun, Turkey
Zombie menace at the Orange County Fairgrounds – the perfect marketing tool
