Across the country, Fortune 500 companies, tech giants, big box stores, and universities are all slashing their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs and frantically editing their policies and marketing materials to avoid backlash from the Trump administration. Within the administration, federal officials and Elon Musk’s DOGE are looking to eliminate government contracts and websites that contain the words “diversity” and “inclusion.” For example, the Pentagon has removed “thousands of pages honoring contributions by women and minority groups,” including a Black Medal of Honor recipient.
Yet the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade group, recently launched a new “Faces of Firearms” campaign showcasing a diverse audience of gun owners, an initiative blanketed in DEI. The NSSF also just released a market research study to help gun makers and sellers reach more Black Americans. Gun enthusiasts may wonder: Has the gun industry gone woke?
THE GUN INDUSTRY’s SEARCH FOR NEW CUSTOMERS
Early symptoms of the “woke mind virus” appeared at least 10 years ago, in internal industry documents determining gun buyers had gotten too vanilla. At an NSSF summit in 2015, members of the gun industry discussed how their customers had become too “pale, male, and stale” and promised that the conversation would “significantly change the way the industry does business.” At the summit, a competitive shooter, Chris Cheng, urged gun companies to “highlight people of color in firearm ads, media articles and other marketing collateral.” He dubbed the presentation, “Diversity: The Next Big Opportunity.”
While the effort lurched forward in fits and starts, by 2020 things were looking up for the industry’s attempts at customer diversification; that is, until the pandemic-era growth in non-traditional gun owners ran headlong into the Trump era’s referendum on identity politics. Surely, at the very moment where federal officials are looking to eliminate government contracts and scrub websites containing the words “diversity” or “inclusive” or “gay,” the NSSF — staunch supporters of the Trump administration and sworn enemy of “woke” banks and Democratic leaders — would have to stand down, right?
Wrong. It turns out there is just too much profit in diversifying the gun community, even if doing so goes against the industry’s political agenda and allies, and even if the very customers the gun sellers seek are being targeted by the administration. Besides, the gun industry is in the business of selling the illusion of safety. A climate of fear, of retrograde action on Black history, women’s autonomy, and LGBTQ rights, is a good opportunity to sell guns to worried new customers. So, on January 13, 2025, a week before Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second term, the NSSF launched its glossy “Faces of Firearms” campaign.
THE NSSF’s LATEST INITIATIVES
“Faces” shows a kinder, gentler gun industry that is welcoming of all. The videos and website are drenched in the language of DEI and the aesthetics of corporate community building. If soft focus and warm color palettes seem a bit at odds with a sector known for marketing assault weapons that reissue “man cards,” make “forces of opposition bow down,” and provoke you to “be a man among men,” fret not: The two-minute-long “anthem” video with over 290,000 YouTube views doesn’t actually show any guns. Nor are there any white men with speaking roles. Instead, women, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and gay men are shown celebrating the beautiful and accepting firearms industry while the text reads, “The Firearm Community is Diverse.” Chris Cheng, the very same competitive shooter and gun influencer from the 2015 conference, walks the rainbow-painted streets of San Francisco — a city the NSSF previously criticized for its “strict gun control.” Later, we see a montage of the American and LGBTQ flags behind the text, “The Firearm Community is Inclusive.” Later still, a voiceover says, “Each and every one of us has a special and unique gift that we give to this world” before a title card reads, “You are worth protecting.”
The gun industry followed up “Faces of Firearms” with a 294-page research report, released earlier this month, providing gun companies and shooting ranges with tips to entice more Black Americans to become active gun owners. The tips range from cynical to downright cringeworthy, including that companies should “consider incorporating the word ‘empowering’” in advertisements, and an acknowledgment that “discrimination at [shooting] ranges is an issue that must be dealt with.”
wasteful government spending
But the kicker about this study: It was funded by a multistate conservation grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Paging Elon Musk! In this time of concern about wasteful government spending, maybe someone should flash the bat signal over to DOGE about this taxpayer-funded corporate subsidy — a literal gift to help private industry leverage identity politics to reach more customers. Of course, if the crusaders against waste, fraud, and abuse really wanted to dig in, they might look at the over $156 million in federal PPP loans doled out to the firearms industry during the pandemic despite record-breaking sales at gun shops that stayed open thanks to being labeled “essential businesses.”
Whether it is making new appeals to diverse audiences, scooping up federal resources, or both, the bottom line is that the gun industry has no ideological guiding principle other than to sell more guns. It’s not about small government, the Second Amendment, or freedom. It’s simply about profit.