An employee shows a customer an AR-15-style rifle at a gun show in Costa Mesa, California in June 2021. Gun sales increase in the US, following the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns- 19.
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
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An employee shows a customer an AR-15-style rifle at a gun show in Costa Mesa, California in June 2021. Gun sales increase in the US, following the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns- 19.
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
Author Ryan Busse jokes that he was born with “a shotgun in one hand and a rifle in the other.” That’s the shorthand he used to explain the pivotal role guns played in his childhood in western Kansas.
“I grew up hunting and shooting with my father. Guns are the things we use on the farm and ranch,” he said. “Sometimes we get to spend together doing something fun and exciting, usually with guns. … [Guns] are things that have become very culturally important to us. “
After graduating from college, Busse worked for gun manufacturer Kimber America, where he was so good at weapons marketing that he became a rising star in the industry. But for years, he became disillusioned when he saw the NRA’s refusal to consider gun control in the wake of mass shootings.
“After Columbine, [the NRA] He came up with the idea that fear, intrigue, and hatred of one’s opponent could be used to promote and win political races.
Busse notes that when he first started, weapons manufacturers refused to market high-powered automatic weapons to the public. However, he said, gun manufacturers and the NRA have since embraced military-style tactical weapons and equipment, seeing them as symbols of masculinity and patriotism. This is when “the terrifying vigilance we’ve seen,” he said Kyle Rittenhouse or other incidents around the country actually started. “(Rittenhouse was tried and acquitted of all charges Related to shoot dead people of two men and the wound of another during a protest in Kenosha, Wis., in 2020)
Busse eventually left the gun industry. In 2020, he accepted a job as an adviser to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, and in 2021, he was hired as a senior adviser to the gun violence group. Giffords. He says he still owns and uses a gun, and that he believes in the right of Americans to do the same.
However, he said, “I also know that every right to which we are entitled has to be balanced with the right amount of responsibility. And I believe that over time … that has gotten worse.”
Busse wrote a new book called Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America.
Highlights of the interview
About what changed the way he views the gun industry
When Sandy Hook happened, our boys were almost exactly the same age. It’s horrible to think about, and so I’m more disillusioned and in more trouble, and it just becomes this kind of dangerous existence. It was much more difficult. And I can’t keep my tongue. That blade is harder to go on. …
I did my best to try to change the things I could change. Maybe something that I don’t see coming is this level of industry growth and change into a giant. I don’t see the incredible boom in guns and the importance of the gun industry in politics. When I started, it was really like a cottage industry. Everyone knows everyone. These companies are pretty small, but like so many other aspects of America, it’s grown into something so big that I’m fooling myself into thinking I could have a measurable impact. for something that has grown so vast and powerful.
On how NRA identity and strategy has changed
My grandfather, a proud FDR Democrat, his favorite hat was the big black NRA gold lettering. … NRA to him means safety, camaraderie and responsibility. My father was an NRA member then, and by the time he declined the membership, we were receiving NRA magazines in our home. … They talk about cool guns or shooting competitions or trappers’ tournaments or things like that. Never talk about the impending doom of our republic or some conspiracy theory. … It is often assumed that the NRA is a sort of tool for firearm manufacturers. I find it quite the opposite: the NRA runs the program. They set the course for the industry and everyone followed, no one questioned.
On how the NRA and industry responded to the 1999 Columbine school massacre
It was apparently the first major mass school shooting in our country. And when it did, it happened just south of Denver and the big NRA convention was set to take place in Denver just about 10 days later. And it caused a shock to the entire industry, and the NRA ended up canceling the biggest part of their conference that year, but they held business meetings and had many protests. business meetings in Denver. The NRA ended up taking a rather notorious approach that they have now reduced to doubles instead of giving in. I believe that politics never give in, never admit any improvement or move towards any policy of improvement, really from that moment on.
Denver area residents gather the day after the April 20, 1999 shooting at Columbine High School.
Jeff Haynes / AFP via Getty Images
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Jeff Haynes / AFP via Getty Images
Denver area residents gather the day after the April 20, 1999 shooting at Columbine High School.
Jeff Haynes / AFP via Getty Images
About the NRA’s refusal to close the “gun show loophole” after Columbine
A gun display loophole simply means that … gun sales can happen without a federally mandated background check if they happen not through a federally licensed dealer. So an amateur gun dealer, someone who sells a few guns a year, could go to a gun show and sell a gun, literally, to whoever they want without control. background check. And that was probably legally closed after Columbine, but the NRA decided against it despite the horror of that Columbine shooting. … I believe two or three guns used in Columbine were purchased at a gun show at the north end of Denver. And so, this was really an opportunistic moment to close that hole, and to this day, more than 20 years later, we still haven’t closed it.
On the two things that drive gun sales – shootings and Democrats winning
Usually within hours of a mass shooting then there are discussions about potential legislative fixes and what kind of fear that, which the NRA has found a way to exploit, can be used. to push voters to vote and … it also promotes gun sales that no one can imagine. So if you stack the gun sales of the last 20 years by mass shootings, right after every mass shooting until just the last few years… there’s going to be incredible shootings. .
Another thing that will boost gun sales is when any Democrat gets elected, definitely gets elected president, because again, the same fear has been used that guns will be banned. or there will be legislation that makes it harder to buy guns, so people will rush out and buy them after these events.
Everything that happened after that was turned around in a terrifying, conspiratorial, racial, hate-filled way. Everything turns that way, because every word that comes out has to keep… this kind of political pressure cooker. The way the NRA figured out that it could succeed was to get the country one step below the boiling point and just try to keep it there.
About the state of the NRA today
I think the NRA is an organization that, at least for now, [that] definitely weakened. … NRA is not at a high level with regards to membership or fundraising or organizational health, that’s for sure. But the kind of politics and NRA-ism that were released across the country went nowhere. And I liken it to a fire raging across the country. It was dry and windy and everything was still burning. So I don’t know if the NRA is gone or if it will, but even if weakened, the things it has released are certainly not weakened.
Sam Briger and Seth Kelley produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.
