Following the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, in which an attacker used an AR-15 to kill two children and wound 18 others as well as three adults, Governor Tim Walz plans to call a special legislative session to address gun violence. Walz’s proposals include a ban on assault weapons like AR-15s, liability insurance, and stronger secure storage laws — framing the debate as one Minnesota could no longer avoid.
Walz told reporters, “The thing that makes America unique in terms of shootings is we just have more guns and the wrong types of guns that are on the streets.” He added, “If Minnesota lets this moment slide and we determine it’s OK for little ones to not be safe in a school environment or a church environment, then shame on us.”
In response, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association, issued a statement accusing Walz of “exploit[ing] tragedy to snatch away rights.” Instead of viewing any of these reforms as effective public safety measures, the group claimed that the governor’s only plan is to see “how much freedom can he take away from those who obey the law in the name of ‘safety.’”
using a familiar script
For decades, the NSSF has pitched gun safety measures — from background checks on all gun sales to limits on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines — as an existential threat to the gun industry and constitutional rights. Here, the NSSF instead rebuked Walz for not “talking about addressing serious mental health issues, improving security at schools or even why the law he signed to allow ‘red flag’ laws in Minnesota failed to bring this murderer to the attention of law enforcement or judicial authorities,” casting blame on others.
The NSSF also said nothing of the role AR-15s have played in some of the country’s deadliest school shootings, including in Newtown, Parkland, and Uvalde. One possible explanation for its defense of AR-15s is their profitability: The NSSF’s own research shows that AR-15 owners tend to stockpile the weapons and spend over $600 on average for accessories.
But the NSSF’s response is nothing new. After the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, the NSSF issued a similar statement in which Senior Vice President and General Counsel Larry Keane claimed that lawmakers calling for reforms were “seizing” on tragedy and insisting that “no gun control…would have prevented this tragedy.”
Keane referenced remarks from Democratic lawmakers, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who told reporters, “Every single day, there are people in [Congress] that continue to vote against doing anything. They vote against universal background checks. They continue to support legislation and also remove any way to block the mentally ill, to block extremists, to block people with histories and records of domestic violence from getting guns in their hands. So, are we going to do something about this or not?”
Instead, Keane cast Republican lawmakers as the “side that respects and reveres Constitutional rights, while recognizing it is criminals who ignore laws that overwhelmingly are the cause of crimes involving firearms.”
While the NSSF refrained from discussing the AR-15 used in the Annunciation School Shooting other than to say it was “criminally misused,” Keane seized on the bolt-action rifle used by Kirk’s suspected assassin: “Since its invention over a century ago, the bolt-action rifle is and always has been one of the most universally accepted firearms in our nation’s history.” Questions remain about how the shooter gained access to the weapon, or why authorities had such difficulty tracing it.
According to Keane, “This demonstrates that violence stems from intent[,] not the firearm misused to commit the violence, reinforcing skepticism of gun control measures as a solution to tragedies like Kirk’s assassination.”
who’s exploiting tragedy?
While the NSSF has accused lawmakers of exploiting tragedies, it is the gun industry that often benefits from high-profile shootings, as fears of new gun regulations — amplified by groups like the NSSF — lead to more gun sales. For example, after the Parkland mass shooting in 2018, rifle sales in Florida increased by 12.6 percent as buyers rushed to stockpile rifles like AR-15s.
After the Kirk assassination, publicly traded gun makers Ruger and Smith & Wesson saw their stock prices surge. Similarly, the stock prices for both companies spiked after the Uvalde mass shooting, and both reported record-breaking sales in 2020 and 2021, when the country faced record-breaking gun deaths.
Years earlier, Marty Daniel, whose company, Daniel Defense, made the AR-15 used in the Uvalde shooting, acknowledged that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook “drove a lot of sales.”
The NSSF’s statements after the Annunciation and Kirk shootings reveal more about the gun industry’s priorities than about public safety. By framing any new regulation as an “attack on rights,” the group seeks to protect the profits of gun manufacturers and sellers. And while the group chastises lawmakers for “politicizing tragedy,” it’s the gun industry that repeatedly profits from it.