New Everytown Report Reveals How Gun Makers Use Tax-Payer Funded Military Contracts to Produce and Market Weapons of War to Civilians

NEW YORK – Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund today released a new report, entitled Turning Our Streets Into War Zones, which reveals how America’s leading gun manufacturers exploit taxpayer-funded military contracts to produce and sell deadly, military-style weapons to civilians – fueling a cycle of violence that has turned schools, grocery stores, places of worship, and more into battlefields.

“While communities across the country endure the deadly fallout of civilian access to weapons of war, the gun industry has turned the U.S. military’s prestige into a sales pitch – profiting off of both taxpayer-funded contracts and the chaos these products unleash in our communities,” said Greg Lickenbrock, Senior Firearms Analyst at Everytown for Gun Safety. “The Department of Defense must end contracts with companies that produce assault weapons for civilians and exploit military personnel for marketing purposes, and policymakers at every level must act to ban these assault weapons once and for all.”

Per the report, several prominent gun manufacturers – including Colt, FN, Daniel Defense, Sig Sauer, Remington, and Barrett – have received at least $3.5 billion in DoD contracts over the years, and taken the same firearms they designed for combat and repackaged them into civilian products that they marketed as being “battle-tested” and “battle-proven,” among other military descriptors, to garner more sales. But many of these weapons have also had a devastating impact on public safety, as evidenced by their use in the deadliest mass shootings, raising concerns about the proliferation of high-powered firearms in the United States and their contribution to the gun violence epidemic.

Read the report here.

Key Points From the Report Include:

• Gun makers commonly use the “halo effect” – a marketing technique that includes associating products with the U.S. military and police to build their legitimacy – to entice civilians to buy military-style weapons, including AR-15s and .50-caliber rifles.
  • The tactic is profitable for the industry: Daniel Defense’s revenue from AR-15-style rifles tripled between 2019 and 2021, even as its military contracts remained stable.
• Many AR-15s modeled on military rifles, including Colt, FN, and Daniel Defense variants, have been used in the deadliest mass shootings — from Uvalde to Las Vegas to Pittsburgh. What’s more, assault weapon recoveries from crime scenes rose 64% from 2018 to 2023.
• The Department of Defense has awarded at least $3.5 billion to gun makers who sell nearly identical copies of their military rifles to civilians. Tax-payer funded DoD contracts effectively subsidize gun makers’ civilian marketing campaigns, which feature soldiers and slogans like “Use What They Use.”

Company-Specific Marketing Tactics Include:

• Since the 1960s, Colt has leveraged its M16 and M4 military contracts to sell nearly identical AR-15s to civilians – even advertising them as “Hot Combat Rifles for Sport.” 
• Sig Sauer blurred the lines even further, going so far as to release civilian versions of the Army’s M17 pistol and the new XM7 rifle before the military even began fielding them.
• FN offers semi-automatic versions of the belt-fed machine guns used by soldiers as part of its “Military Collector” series.
• Barrett’s .50-caliber rifles – designed to disable vehicles and aircraft – are marketed directly to civilians, despite being used by transnational criminal organizations and extremist groups.
• Remington and Bushmaster’s toxic marketing linked masculinity to military-style weapons, culminating in a $73 million legal settlement after the tragic Sandy Hook shooting.

Read more here. To speak with an expert from Everytown, please contact [email protected].