Ruger Buys Anderson Manufacturing of Kentucky

On July 1, 2025, Ruger announced that it had purchased Anderson Manufacturing of Hebron, Kentucky, one of the country’s largest producers of AR-style weapons and components. According to Ruger, the “strategic purchase includes Anderson’s manufacturing facility and machinery and will provide Ruger the opportunity to work with a skilled and experienced workforce, strengthening its production capabilities and expanding its product offerings.”

In the announcement, Ruger noted that it will discontinue the Anderson brand and instead “integrate the facility’s capabilities into its broader operations, with a focus on launching new products, expanding Ruger’s popular product lines and growing its established accessories business.”

The acquisition marks a significant expansion for Ruger, which already produces more firearms in the U.S. than any other manufacturer and has factories in Arizona, New Hampshire, and North Carolina in addition to its headquarters in Southport, Connecticut. It’s also a sign that the company is doubling down on assault weapons — despite producing the AR-15s used in the Boulder, Indianapolis, and Sutherland Springs mass shootings, and larger-caliber AR-10s used in the Las Vegas and Lewiston mass shootings.

Anderson has its own connection to mass shootings. Gunmen used Anderson AR-15s to carry out mass shootings in New York City in 2017 and in Dayton and Midland-Odessa in 2019. To learn more about the guns involved in the country’s deadliest mass shootings, click here.

Anderson’s market share

Anderson Manufacturing began manufacturing AR-15 parts — particularly lower receivers, or the bottom halves of the guns — in 2009 and complete AR-15s in 2010. The company developed a reputation for producing lower-priced products, with rifles costing as little as $400.

Over the years, Anderson made more AR-style lower receivers than any other manufacturer in the U.S. — producing over 300,000 in 2023 alone — and other parts that an untold number of gun makers used to assemble their own AR-style weapons. In an interview, Anderson’s former CEO, Jeff Stawiarski, said, “Believe it or not, almost 70 percent of the brands in [the AR] space use Anderson parts.”

Now, Ruger, another company known for producing “budget-friendly” firearms, appears poised to fill that role in the market, providing AR-15 parts to any number of gun companies.

dangerous products

Military-grade weapons like AR-15s are deadly on their own, as evidenced by their use in the deadliest mass shootings. But Anderson went further with its products. For example, the company sold “80-percent” lower receivers without serial numbers or background checks, and the jigs used to complete them, making it easy for people — including those prohibited from owning firearms — to build their own untraceable ghost guns.

Anderson also produced short-barreled AR-15s equipped with arm braces that are much more powerful than handguns while being easy to conceal in a backpack or under a coat. The perpetrator of the mass shooting in Dayton in August 2019 used one such Anderson AR-15 (shown below) equipped with a 100-round drum magazine. He was able to kill nine people and wound another 17 in just 30 seconds. Police also recovered a short-barreled Anderson AR-15 near a backpack, among other firearms, after multiple gunmen opened fire at a Super Bowl rally in Kansas City in February 2024.

The relatively low costs of Anderson AR-15s appear to have made them popular among criminals and others prohibited from possessing firearms. A search of Department of Justice press releases found 25 cases involving Anderson AR-15s and lower receivers, and these are just federal cases dating back to 2019. Most of the cases relate to felons illegally possessing the firearms — including at least one Boogaloo extremist — but some involve drug and gun trafficking schemes.

An Anderson AR-15 was recovered from a 16-year-old plotting a school shooting in June 2019, and one of the men who attempted to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was allegedly found with an illegal short-barreled Anderson AR-15 rifle in September 2020.

Like other AR-15s, Anderson rifles are also easy to modify for faster rates of fire using devices like auto sears (as highlighted by three cases) and binary triggers, which allow shooters to fire one shot when they pull the trigger and another when they release it. In July 2023, a man used an Anderson AR-15 equipped with a binary trigger to ambush police officers in Fargo, North Dakota, killing one and wounding two others as well as a bystander.

fEDERAL cASES iNVOLVING aNDERSON AR-15s

Additionally, the ATF noted that Anderson was the third-leading manufacturer of rifles recovered at crime scenes internationally and traced back to the United States between 2017 and 2021, behind Century Arms and Romarm.

aggressive marketing

To market its military-grade products to civilians, Anderson gave many of its AR-15s and AR-10s militaristic names like “Battle Rifle,” “Breacher,” “Frontline,” “Marksman,” and “Ranger.” The company also depicted soldiers and special operators handling its rifles in social media posts — a common tactic among gun makers — and published videos of people firing fully automatic Anderson AR-15s, despite the fact that federal law prohibits civilians from owning such models.

Weeks before the Dayton mass shooting, Anderson published a video showing a magazine being loaded into one of its AR-15s, which a narrator called the “sound freedom makes” and an “orchestra of metal and hellfire.” The since-deleted video ended with the narrator saying, “Somebody cue the hellfire.”

The company also used politics and culture wars to market its products, including AR-15 lower receivers engraved with depictions of President Trump, like the kind shown below. The Punisher skull has become a popular symbol on the far right.

More social media posts highlighting Anderson’s toxic marketing tactics are shown below.