Suddenly, for the secretive gun companies, image is everything. Nearly a dozen cities have launched massive lawsuits against the industry–Boston will file this week–charging that it floods the streets with cheap black-market guns. The school shootings in Colorado and Georgia, meanwhile, have given opponents on Capitol Hill new ammunition. “Gun manufacturers don’t have horns,” Ricker says plaintively. “We’re members of the community like other people. We have children like other people. This industry has a proud history. We have a stellar safety record. But how do you tell that story with events like Littleton?” The answer, Ricker says, is by negotiating with your enemies. And that position has touched off a civil war within the gun trade.
Publicly, at least, gun companies have historically moved in lockstep to block regulation, much like Big Tobacco. But now, lacking leadership and facing pressure from litigators and politicians, gun makers are opening fire on each other. On one side are Ricker and his trade group, the American Shooting Sports Council (ASSC), which represents mainly handgun makers such as Smith & Wesson and Glock. Their view: to survive, gun companies must convince the public that they’re willing to embrace innovations like safety locks. On the other side are predominantly “long gun” companies, venerable rifle makers like Remington and Winchester that have their own trade group and are aligned with hard-liners at the National Rifle Association and the ammunition companies. The way they see it, the handgun makers got the industry into this mess by peddling cheap guns, and now they’re looking to subject the entire industry to more regulation just to save themselves. “There are a few companies that capitalize on tragedy, make cheap and unsafe guns and have no problem dumping these guns on the open market,” says a source at one company. “They’re posing enormous problems for legitimate businesses who want nothing to do with these practices.”
The gun companies weren’t carping about morality before the lawsuits hit. But it is true that many gun makers, contrary to the rhetoric of Capitol Hill critics, have a storied past in America. Many date back to the Industrial Revolution, which is why they’re located in the liberal Northeast. Smith & Wesson perfected the revolver for generations of beat cops; Colt’s military rifles helped America win two world wars. It wasn’t until a new breed of manufacturers came along–such as the notorious “ring of fire” companies making junk guns in California–that the industry took on a more sinister public image. Navegar’s Tec-9, for instance, a version of which was used in the Littleton shooting, came to prominence as the weapon of choice for drug lords on “Miami Vice”; out on the real streets, the “fingerprint resistant” gun saw plenty of action.
It was Bill Clinton who broke the fragile coalition of gun companies. In 1997 several large gun makers, under the auspices of the ASSC, appeared in the White House Rose Garden to announce they would voluntarily include safety locks on their guns. Incensed that companies like Smith & Wesson, the world’s largest handgun maker, would make concessions to the president, industry hard-liners turned their wrath on Richard Feldman, the trade group’s executive director. Feldman, a shrewd political tactician, had a brash style strikingly out of place in a cautious industry. Typical Feldman: “Do we want to be acceptable to the average, non-gun-owning American, instead of looking like a bunch of wackos? Yes.” The “wackos” apparently disagreed. They fired him.
Now it’s Bob Ricker’s turn to be the man in the middle. A former criminal defense lawyer, Ricker got involved in the pro-gun movement when he answered an ad for a job at the NRA in the late 1970s. Ricker says he’s ready to sit down with anti-gun forces to discuss new laws, tighter controls on distribution or even stepped-up regulation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. “Every issue’s on the table right now,” Ricker says. “If there’s a proposal aimed at keeping guns out of the wrong hands, we’ll consider it.” Still, none of the concessions the industry has made will cost gun makers much money, and it’s not at all clear that they’re willing to sacrifice sales for safety. Case in point: Ricker dismisses out of hand the “one-gun-a-month” proposal that would limit consumer purchases and thus create new obstacles for gun traffickers. He says it won’t work; opponents of the industry say the companies don’t want to lose the money they make from illegal sales.
But Ricker’s enemies outside the industry are nothing compared with those within it. “Bob Ricker is a very nice and very weak man,” says one industry executive. As for the NRA, Ricker laughs sardonically: “I think I’ve been removed from the Christmas-card list.” That’s a list you want to stay on if you work for the gun industry. Gun execs still remember the pounding that Sturm, Ruger took from an NRA boycott when it tried to limit the ammunition in its rifle clips, and no one’s in a hurry to anger the NRA’s 2.5 million devoted followers. “A grass-roots boycott can almost put a company out of business,” says an industry source. “They can hurt us very badly.” Ricker and his allies infuriated the NRA when they attended the White House summit on violence earlier this month, even though the NRA wasn’t invited and other gun companies refused to go.
If it seems odd that the NRA would find itself at war with some major gun companies, it really isn’t. For years, the gun companies relied heavily on the NRA to protect their interests on Capitol Hill. But now those interests are diverging. The NRA’s members are dead set against yielding any ground on the right to bear arms, and the more the mainstream public turns against them, the harder they’ll fight. Handgun makers aren’t interested in holy wars; they want to stay in business. “Everybody in the industry subscribes to the mantra: ‘Yeah, yeah, Second Amendment and all that’,” Feldman says. “But they’re businessmen. What they care about most is the bottom line.”
While the NRA fights on, some gun makers have all but given up on conventional handguns. “The environment now is too tough to envision growth in this market,” admits Donald Zilkha, an investment banker who owns Colt along with his partner, John Rigas. Instead, Colt has been cornering the market on assault rifles for the military, which makes up the largest part of its business. It’s also pursuing so-called smart gun technology that would render a handgun useless to anyone but the owner by scanning a fingerprint–a feature that may someday be required on police weapons. Even if the gun makers can win the lawsuits now facing them, Zilkha says, the cost of fighting them will be unbearable. “If the tobacco companies, who were very rich, couldn’t do it,” he says, “then it’s unlikely that the gun companies can.” Dennis Henigan of the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, a plaintiff in many of those suits, says the cities aren’t trying to bankrupt gun makers. “The goal is not to bring them to their knees. It is to bring them to their senses.”
On that, at least, he and Bob Ricker can agree. Ricker wants the gun makers to take a lesson from beer companies. When they were under attack from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, he says, they responded by launching a public-service campaign that softened their image. Then again, there were only a few big beer companies, they weren’t tearing each other to shreds and there wasn’t a powerful National Drinkers’ Association threatening to shut them down. “It’s the extreme positions on both sides that will be the losers,” Ricker says hopefully. “In politics, the best place to be is always in the middle.” In politics, perhaps. But on a firing range, it’s usually better to get out of the way.
On the Defensive: Firearms Factions The gun world used to present a united front. But public pressure and looming financial threats have splintered it. The combatants:
National Rifle Association (NRA) Still wields influence in the capital. Openly at war with ASSC, which, it says, was “conned” by Clinton into making concessions that hurt the industry.
National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) Broad-based group of gun companies, dealers and makers of hunting equipment. Closely allied with the NRA.
American Shooting Sports Council (ASSC) Primary voice of hand-gun makers; wants to project reasonable image and work with foes to head off more lawsuits.
Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (SAAMI) Represents “long gun” manufacturers and ammo makers. Vehemently opposes regulation. Linked in leadership to NSSF.
