Please Write the CEO of the Company that Made the Florida Shooter’s AR-15
P. James Debney is CEO of “American Outdoor” (formerly Smith and Wesson). They manufacture the assault rifle used to kill 17 people at a high school in Florida last week. Debney earns $5.3 million/year. He’s donated $1 million to the NRA. He and his wife, Karen, live in Massachusetts on an “equestrian” farm. Their address is: 278 Scantic Rd. Hampden, MA 01036–9120. That’s public information.
I think Mr. Debney deserves to hear from people in the USA. He pushes fear memes, that guns are needed to prevent immigrants and minorities from attacking ‘ordinary’ Americans. His company’s money, and his own, set and pay for the NRA’s extreme agenda. They’re uninterested in logical dialogue or compromise, believing gun manufacturers can have their cake and eat it. They see their market as suckers, eager to pump fists and gun stocks at the sight of tightly dressed, stiletto heeled, gun-toting vixens. Like stealing candy from babies.
Debney is British. So he knows the talking points about the terrible loss of freedoms found in places like the UK, where nuts, fools, and criminals find guns hard to obtain, are lies. He mouths those lies in the US, to suit American Outdoor’s bottom line.
Gun manufacturers, the NRA, their paid-for politicians and extremist citizens, form a genuine axis of evil. It’s a model form of modern Republican control: big money funds media and lobbying institutions, who push a message of fear to mobilize those who can’t think straight. Oil companies must hide their tracks, but not gun makers. Debney hasn’t even bothered to mask his contact information.
25 years ago I talked to someone who ran a foundation that promoted peace. He mentioned that trying to control guns in America was a third rail, literally, not figuratively. He’d received death threats, along with his wife and children, from people who boasted of their firearm collection. He couldn’t just dismiss these letters, when they described the guns they’d use, the bullets, the impacts.
By harnessing the disturbed, angry fringe of America, gun manufacturers have developed a small army to protect them. The NRA manages psychological warfare and organizes insurrections.
Debney probably has a thick skin and thicker head. He’s CEO to make money, for himself and shareholders, and whatever stands in his way must fall. But there’s something tragically wrong with these people, when their companies cause such damage. Logic and reason may fail to convince them, but there must be an emotional inroad. I hope someone can come up with it.
