Gun Sellers' Message to Americans: Man Up
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/us/firearm-gun-sales.htmlGun Sellers’ Message to Americans: Man Up
The number of firearms in the U.S. is outpacing the country’s population, as an emboldened gun industry and its allies target buyers with rhetoric of fear, machismo and defiance.
By Mike McIntire, Glenn Thrush and Eric Lipton
June 18, 2022 Updated 11:26 a.m. ET
Last November, hours after a jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse of two shooting deaths during antiracism protests in 2020, a Florida gun dealer created an image of him brandishing an assault rifle, with the slogan: “BE A MAN AMONG MEN.”
Gun companies have spent the last two decades scrutinizing their market and refocusing their message away from hunting toward selling handguns for personal safety, as well as military-style weapons attractive to mostly young men. The sales pitch — rooted in self-defense, machismo and an overarching sense of fear — has been remarkably successful.
An examination by The New York Times of firearms marketing research, along with legal and lobbying efforts by gun rights groups, finds that behind the shift in gun culture is an array of interests that share a commercial and political imperative: more guns and freer access to them. Working together, gun makers, advocates and elected officials have convinced a large swath of Americans that they should have a firearm, and eased the legal path for them to do so.
Some of the research is publicly known, but by searching court filings and online archives, The Times gained new insight into how gun companies exploit the anxiety and desires of Americans. Using Madison Avenue methods, the firearms industry has sliced and diced consumer attributes to find pressure points — self-esteem, lack of trust in others, fear of losing control — useful in selling more guns.
In a paradigm-setting 2012 ad in Maxim magazine, Bushmaster — which manufactured the rifle used in the racist massacre in Buffalo in May — declared, “Consider your man card reissued.”
At the National Rifle Association convention in Houston last month, a Missouri-based gun maker, Black Rain Ordnance, featured a line of “BRO” semiautomatics punning on the company’s acronym: AR-15-style guns with names like BRO-Tyrant and BRO-Predator. Dozens of other vendors had similar messages.
= new reply since forum marked as read
about a European reporter traveling around America taking pictures of people with their guns.
33 years ago.
By doing so, of course, they boosted public knowledge of these guns far more so than any amount of advertising in "Maxim". And sales followed. As you can see, per-capita sales have skyrocketed.
Combined with increasing urbanization and thus reduced hunting, the market shifted away from traditional sporting guns towards self-defense, thus the rise in handgun and rifle sales. And rifles shifted away from bolt-action and lever-action to semi-automatics.
So OF COURSE gun makers have refined their advertising to the conditions of the market! I am perpetually confused as to the surprise that people have about gun makers doing advertising. They do basically the same as every other product does: demographic-specific advertising, region-specific advertising, special offers, limited special editions, color combinations, partnerships with other companies, celebrity endorsers, sponsorships, licensing images for things like video games, and paying for product placements.
Advances in computer-aided design and solid modeling, laser engraving, durable finishes, as well as computer-controlled multi-axis machining means guns can also be made to be more visually appealing. The "coolness" factor, if you will.
And again, why is this surprising? The world of manufacturing is steadily progressing. Multi-axis multi-spindle machining centers can do in one operation what used to take two, three, four, or more steps.
Since 1992, with the official platform of the Democratic Party having various gun-related bans in it, sales of potentially-banned items have waxed and waned but the overall trend has been upwards, especially when Democrats are running things.