gracchusdixit

On a clear April morning in 1994, the CEOs of the world’s seven largest tobacco companies testified before a special committee of the United States Congress.  The committee had been convened to investigate whether those companies had deliberately covered up the link between smoking and innumerable lethal maladies: lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and others.  The testimony of those executives proved to be so self-serving, insincere, and transparently false, that the American people were able to see them and their corporations for what they were: liars, profiteers, merchants of death.  After decades of doctored science and misleading advertising, what finally turned the tide against the tobacco companies was the public exposure and personal humiliation of their chief executives.

Today, we have our own “merchants of death”—the executives who profit, not from selling tobacco, but from selling guns.  These executives have yet to face scrutiny, let alone any sort of public tribunal.  Just days ago, we were reminded of how desperately that tribunal is needed.

The slaughter of 49 innocent people in Orlando was unique for its scale and for the fact that the killer’s target was the gay community.  In every other way, however, it was tragically typical.  In the last year alone, there have been nearly 400 mass shootings in the United States, a level of carnage that is unparalleled in the so-called civilized world.  The cause does not lie, as we are so often told, in the motives of demented individuals; every society has plenty of those.  The cause lies in the ubiquitous presence of guns in our society, particularly military weapons like the assault rifle that the Orlando killer was able to buy, without question or examination, just days before he committed his atrocity.   He pulled the trigger, but our laws gave him the opportunity and the means.

The makers of these awful means have thus far succeeded in evading every shred of shame or blame for what they have spawned.  Having learned from the humiliation of their predecessors in the tobacco business, they have cleverly insulated themselves.  Few Americans know their names; most are only dimly aware of the companies they run.  They rarely appear in public or talk to the press.  Instead, they pay someone else do their talking.

That someone else is the National Rifle Association.

The NRA classifies itself as a 501 (c) (4) corporation, which means that it is exempt from paying taxes.  To qualify for this status, the law requires that a corporation “must not be organized for profit and must be operated exclusively to promote social welfare.”  For the NRA to make such a claim is a macabre joke, because the NRA is nothing more than a shill for the gun business—and a very profitable one at that.

The NRA’s annual revenues exceed $300 million.  It owns than $200 million in assets.  It has substantial financial investments, including $5 million tucked away in offshore accounts in the Caribbean.  Its president, Wayne Lapierre, is paid nearly a million dollars a year, and its all chief financial officer, Wilson Phillips Jr.—“Woody,” as he likes to be known to his pals—makes nearly $3 million.

The NRA’s bloated board of directors includes dozens of Republican politicians, conservative political hacks like Grover Norquist and Oliver North, gun-obsessed celebrities like Tom Seleck and Ted Nugent, and wannabe warriors like Robert K. Brown, the founder of Soldier of Fortune magazine.  It is also larded with executives from the gun industry.   And thereby hangs the tale.

More than half the NRA’s revenue comes from what it calls “corporate partners” rather than the dues of the “responsible gun owners” it purports to represent.   These “corporate partners” are, of course, the gun makers.  There is more to the deception than a euphemism, because several gun makers give free NRA memberships to their customers.  Buy one of their lethal toys, and, voilà, you become a member, whether you want to or not.  Thus, NRA membership revenue is directly tied to gun sales.

Today’s Republican-controlled Congress, which is itself controlled and terrorized by the NRA, is unlikely ever to deal with the gun industry as an earlier, more courageous Congress once dealt with the tobacco companies—by subpoenaing their executives, forcing them to testify in public, and exposing their malignant business practices.  In the face of that sad truth, we can at least get the ball rolling—by naming names and calling out the guilty.

At the top of the list is a company most Americans have never heard of, Midway USA. Based in Missouri, Midway specializes in manufacturing high-capacity magazines, which no “responsible” gun owner needs for any “responsible” purpose.   This hasn’t stopped the company’s founder, Larry Potterfield, from touting himself as a pillar of rectitude and a philanthropist.  He also touts himself a management guru, because, as he routinely boasts, his close relationship with the NRA has helped to turn a small family business into a major player in the gun trade.  Which is all you need to know about the motives of Larry Potterfield and Midway USA.

Another major backer of the NRA is America’s largest manufacturer of civilian firearms, Sturm, Ruger & Co., headquartered in Southport, Connecticut, an exclusive enclave with more rich people per square inch than anywhere else in the country.   Ruger’s CEO, Michael O. Fifer, is one of them.  Last year, he was paid two and a half million dollars.   Four years earlier, when 20 children and six teachers were massacred in Sandy Hook, scarcely 30 minutes north of the plush little town where Ruger’s headquarters are tucked away, Fifer claimed to be “deeply saddened.”  That hasn’t stopped his company from giving the NRA one dollar for ever gun they sell.

Right behind Midway USA and Ruger comes, not an American company, but the Italian firm, Beretta, the oldest and the largest manufacturer of small arms in the world.  Its nine-millimeter pistol is the standard handgun of countless military and police forces both here and abroad. That, however, isn’t enough for management.  Beretta also aggressively peddles its guns to consumers, particularly American consumers.    Its CEO is Pietro Gussalli Beretta, the 15th generation of the family to run the company.  Like his father before him, he has made Beretta one of the NRA’s leading “corporate partners.”

On and on the lethal list goes: Browning, Glock, Remington, Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson, Springfield Armory—the elusive or reclusive executives who hide behind these famous corporate names know precisely what they are doing in subsidizing the sham that is the NRA.   They are merchants of death, one and all, who put profit before life.  They are personally responsible for the carnage on our streets, in our schools, malls and movie theaters, and now, in a nightclub in Orlando.

Until these executives are dragged out into the open and confronted with the deadly consequences of their deadly products, until they are compelled to pay a personal price for what they are doing, the epidemic of gun violence in this country will never end.  This is not about the Second Amendment.  This is not about the so-called “right” to own guns.  This is about the thousands of lives that have been lost and the thousands more that can still be saved.  This is about justice.