On a Memorial Day weekend when we honor those who died in service to our country, the company that manufactured a weapon of war used to kill 19 children and two adults in a Texas elementary school had planned to hawk its wares at the gun industry’s annual collective disgrace.
But in the aftermath of Tuesday’s slaughter in Uvalde, Daniel Defense, is no longer slated to join all the other profiteers of violent death at this weekend’s NRA convention in Houston.
Up until Wednesday afternoon,the company was to have occupied Booth 4839, conveniently close to the cafe at the George R. Brown Convention Center, amid what the NRA terms “14 acres of guns and gear.”
“GIVEAWAYS, DEMOS, CELEBRITY APPEARANCES & MORE!” Daniel Defense had promised online.
The items on display would have included the DDM4 V7 rifle, the model used with such horrific effect at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
“A perfect rifle for everybody,” a Daniel Defense promotional video says.
The roster of exhibitors indicates that Booth 4839 has been taken over by the NRA iself. The offerings there will now include, “Membership programs and services, commission based dealer programs, manufacturer programs, legislative initiatives and awareness, firearms training, education and safety programs, NRA Advancement, Foundation, Friends of NRA and NRA Publications.”
Daniel Defense may still benefit from Tuesday’s horror. The company reported that the 2012 slaughter of 20 kids and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut boosted sales to folks fearing an assault weapons ban.
The now $100-million-a-year company was founded by 59-year-old Marty Daniel of Georgia. He started out making garage doors after flunking out of Georgia Southern University twice before finally graduating. A company history on its website suggests he might not have gone into guns if he had been a better golfer.
“Daniel Defense got its start because Marty’s golf game sucked. He would spend most of his free time unwinding on the golf course, until the day a friend invited him to shoot his AR,” the story says. “Every shot he fired filled him with a satisfaction he’d never before experienced. Marty would purchase his first AR this same year.”
That was in 1999. He manufactured his first gun a decade later. It was the DDM4 V1. The M4 indicates a kinship to the miilitary M4 that Colt produced for the U.S. armed forces. Daniel joined Bushmaster and Smith & Wesson and other companies in selling variations on a weapon of war to civilians.
“FREEDOM. PASSION. PRECISION,” his trademarked advertising mantra read.
He was soon doing well enough to film a commercial he hoped to air during the 2014 Super Bowl. It featured a fictional former Marine at home with his wife, gazing down at their baby.
“My family’s safety is my highest priority,” a narrator says. “I am responsible for their protection and no one has the right to tell me how to defend them. So I’ve chosen the most effective tool for the job… Daniel Defense.”
The NFL deemed the ad inappropriate and it never aired. Daniel Defense continued making other variants, and went uncensored when it tweeted a photo in which a youngster cradles a semi-automatic rifle while seated on a carpeted floor.
“Train up a child in the way he should go and, when he is old, he will not depart from it,” the caption read.
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The tweet was posted on May 16, which happened to be Salvador Ramos’s 18th birthday. He was still three years too young to buy a beer in Texas, but old enough to buy two AR-15 style assault rifles in the next two days. Along with 375 rounds of 5.56 ammunition. One of the weapons was a DDM4 V7.
A receipt for the online purchase posted on an Instagram account associated with Ramos shows the price was $1,870, plus $154.28 sales tax, for a total of $2,024.28. Ramos also posted a photo of his two rifles.
“My gun pics,” he wrote in a posting to a young woman he had met online.
He might as well have…
Read More: Daniel Defense—the Maker of the Uvalde Shooter’s ‘Perfect Rifle’—Abruptly Exits the NRA Convention