Throughout 2024, The Smoking Gun published dozens of news stories and reports highlighting the gun industry’s dangerous business practices. Because the decisions made by gun makers and sellers can have devastating impacts on public safety.
As the year comes to a close, we thought it would be helpful to compile and summarize some of the worst news stories about the gun industry that we covered in 2024 — from lethal innovations to callous corporate interviews — to make sure you didn’t miss a beat.
To read some of 2024’s best investigative journalism on the gun industry, click here.
The gun industry descended on vegas
In January, gun manufacturers debuted numerous deadly innovations at the annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show hosted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) in Las Vegas. In addition to the hundreds of AR-15s and other assault weapons on display, other standout items include Kel-Tec’s latest folding rifle; Palmetto State Armory’s X5.7, which is designed to fire high-velocity 5.7x28mm ammunition while being easy to conceal; and a .22-caliber pistol disguised as a trucker’s tire bat.
The 2024 SHOT Show also hosted the Gundies, an award show sponsored by gun makers and Gun Owners of America (GOA), a far-right gun group. The Gundies were awarded to several prominent “GunTubers” who have contributed to a toxic gun culture, including Brandon Herrera, who has glorified weapons used by Nazis and Rhodesian soldiers, and “recreated” high-profile assassinations. For more, click here.
During SHOT, gun maker Sig Sauer published a commercial dangerously equating American revolutionaries with modern AR-15 owners — and gun laws with tyranny. The advertisement juxtaposes colonial Minutemen with a contemporary homeowner wielding a Sig Sauer AR-15 while a voiceover states, “Our freedoms…have been challenged before, yet they have stood the test of time. Today, our freedom is once again in question, and its future is not promised.”
ghost guns and other dangerous products
In March, New York Attorney General Letitia James secured a $7.8 million default judgment and permanent injunction against Indie Guns, a ghost gun retailer whose owner repeatedly defied court orders and bragged about destroying evidence. He even threatened his co-defendants, calling them rats on social media for settling with the attorney general after posting a graphic video of rats being shot to death.
Later, in May, Louisiana-based custom gun maker Outlaw Ordnance used the National Rifle Association’s Annual Meetings & Exhibits in Dallas, Texas, to introduce a 9mm AK-style pistol painted with the “Barbie” logo and bright colors, which children could find appealing. The story, first reported on by Devin Hughes of GVPedia, sparked an outcry, and Outlaw Ordnance removed the gun from its catalog.
Wee1 Tactical gained notoriety in 2022 for marketing and selling a child-sized, .22-caliber AR-15 called the “JR-15.” But the company rebranded as Mountain Billy Gun Lab and used the 2024 NRA show to reintroduce the scaled-down rifle as the GOAT-15. Despite being styled after a military rifle, the company says the “GOAT-15 is meticulously designed for those with an active lifestyle looking for a lightweight, compact gun to carry while hiking or camping,” including “survivalists” and “nature lovers.”
In July, news broke that American Rounds, a Texas-based company, had installed ammunition vending machines in grocery stores in Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas. The company states that the vending machines are as convenient as ATM machines and “accessible 24/7, ensuring that you can buy ammunition on your own schedule, free from the constraints of store hours and long lines.” The company claims the machines use “card scanning and facial recognition software to meticulously verify the identity and age of each buyer,” but it’s unclear how the machines prevent sales to people prohibited from possessing ammunition.
GUN EXECS on the record
Sig Sauer also made headlines in July when the company’s CEO, Ron Cohen, called critics of P320 pistols — which have allegedly wounded over 100 people by firing on their own — “vultures that enjoy picking at a company, especially the companies that are on top.”
Alex Bosco, co-founder of SB Tactical, the largest company making arm braces for short-barreled AR- and AK-style assault weapons, sat down for an interview in August where he railed against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and attempted to downplay the four mass shootings involving AR-15s with arm braces, saying they were “just a talking point.”
More recently, in October, Jeremiah Cottle relaunched Slide Fire Solutions, the company that made the bump stocks used in the Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas, after the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on the devices. But Cottle has also used Slide Fire’s new Instagram account to stoke conspiracy theories about the Route 91 mass shooting — even implying that it was a “false flag” operation carried out by the U.S. government.
the nssf’s secret database
Finally, one of the biggest news stories of this past year was the revelation that the the gun industry’s trade association, the NSSF, had amassed a secret database of gun owners’ personal information. A ProPublica investigation published in October found that at least 10 gun companies, including Glock, Mossberg, Remington, and Smith & Wesson, gave their customers’ personal information — originally obtained via warranty cards — to the NSSF so it could a create a database to “rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians.”
ProPublica established the existence of the NSSF database — alleged in this January 2023 report — by “reviewing tens of thousands of internal corporate and NSSF emails, reports, invoices and contracts.”
Ironically, the NSSF has repeatedly railed against government and corporate attempts to learn more about gun owners, alleging that the information could be used to create a registry “akin to a watchlist” and the “first step to confiscation.” In response to the allegations, the NSSF defended its actions and denied any wrongdoing.