An Army of All-American Paramilitary Death-Squad Soloists
An Army of All-American Paramilitary Death-Squad Soloists
In their 2014 Super Bowl ad (declined by the NFL), Daniel Defense, the AR-15 merchants of death, EXPLICITLY tied a ‘paramilitary army-of-one’ motif to its role as a military-industrial complex supplier. A man arrives home — presumably from a tour of duty — and enters the house past a conspicuously displayed, framed photo of him in his Marine uniform. Behind that photo is another photo with a wide frame labeled “FAMILY… they are always…” the last words are hidden behind the photo of the Marine.
He walks into the next room where his wife is folding baby clothes and they hug. His voice over narrative: “And my family’s safety is my highest priority. I am responsible for their protection.”
The two of them then walk over and peek into the baby’s room. Baby is awake so they enter. Baby smiles as Dad reaches down to pick her (signified by a pink blanket) up. “And no one,” his narrative continues, “has the right to tell me how to defend it.”
“So I’ve chosen the most effective tool for the job.” The screen changes to a black background with a gray silhouette of an AR-15 and the Daniel Defense logo. A different, corporate voice takes over the narrative, “Daniel Defence,” the voice intones. “defending your nation. Defending your home,” as those words appear on the screen.
The YouTube copy of the ad has had 341,665 views since it was posted to the company’s channel on November 27, 2013. The 353 comments are almost all positive. On May 16, eight days before a gunman murdered 20 children and two school teachers with one of Daniel Defense’s commodities in Uvalde, Texas, the company tweeted the following message, since deleted:
The text is from Proverbs 22. I won’t bother scrounging through Proverbs to show that the passage is not about teaching a toddler how to use an AR-15. There is no point agonizing about the obscenity of the juxtaposition of a small child and murder weapon. It is a minor obscenity compared to the immense obscenity of the elected representatives who appropriate money to pay the company that promotes that message.
Are the Republicans culpable? Yes. Are the Democrats absolved of complicity? No.
As the Daniel Defense video makes abundantly clear, the rationale for self-appointed vigilante violence is directly linked to the funding of the “support our troops” military-industrial complex.
Regardless of what their rhetoric is on “gun control” supermajorities of both parties — 84% of Senate Democrats and 92% of Republicans — voted to bestow $778 billion on the military-industrial complex. That’s why its real name is the military-industrial-congressional complex. You can bet your bottom dollar some of that money went to Daniel Defense.
Some of the money DD receives from taxpayers pays for lobbying to make sure they continue to get more money from taxpayers. Some of that money goes to lobbying to insure that their gun sales to child murderers are not impeded. And some of goes to marketing their “most effective tool for the job” to 18-year old psychopaths as a way to protect their second amendment right to slaughter schoolchildren.
“And no one has the right to tell me how to defend it.” If Fox News hosts tell me night after night that the great replacement is a threat to my family’s safety no one has the right to tell me how to defend it. If I am seething with rage at a world that doesn’t even let me have a safe family no one has the right to tell me how to avenge the wrongs I feel I have suffered.
A story about the Daniel Defense tweet and the use of their product in the Uvalde massacre appeared in the Guardian earlier today:
The Uvalde attack is also not the first time that Daniel Defense weapons have been involved in a mass shooting. Guns manufactured by the company were in the arsenal of the gunman who killed 58 people and injured more than 500 in Las Vegas in 2017.
Months before that attack Daniel Defense had acknowledged the impact of high-profile shootings on gun sales.
“The mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary in 2012 drove a lot of sales,” Daniel told Forbes. “That was a horrible event and we don’t use those kinds of terrible things to drive sales but when people see politicians start talking about gun control, they have this fear and they go out and buy guns.”
In the aftermath of Uvalde, gunmaker stock prices have risen, reports Fortune. Shares of Sturm, Ruger & Company rose by about 5.8% and Smith & Wesson is up 10%.
Daniel Defense released a statement after the shootings in Uvalde saying: “We are deeply saddened by the tragic events in Texas this week. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and community devastated by this evil act.”
And they are grooming ammosexuals for the next generation.
Home defense is a different application for firearms than a military conflict of force. It is baffling for one that learned to shoot before they learned to read, when both those for and against stricter gun controls base their deliberations upon such limited subject matter expertise.
Although the M-16 was an appropriate firearm for my use in the Vietnam War, there is no legal civilian application for which any semi-automatic or full automatic weapon offers any practical advantage over firearms with manually chambered rounds. Furthermore, for home defense, then one wants an easy to aim weapon that will not shoot through a wall killing a family member in the next room. That would be a shotgun loaded with bird-shot. The pump shotgun offers the additional advantage of making an unmistakably threatening sound when a round is chambered from the magazine. On most models (at least the older ones with which I am familiar) there is a plug that can be removed from the magazine that increases its capacity from three to five r0unds, which would also make it illegal to use for hunting in many states.
Lever and bolt action rifles are fine for hunting any game that cannot return fire. High powered rifles are great for hunting large game where legal, mostly in very remote and hilly or mountainous areas because of their long range. With a scope they are even better for hunting in the high country and also if the US ever becomes more like Afghanistan. Large bore revolvers are backups for big game hunting. Small bore revolvers are for snakes and varmints.
Anyone that cannot effectively use a firearm with manually chambered rounds should not be allowed to own any firearm.
If you need an AR-15 to defend your house, it’ll be easier and safer to just move.
Amen… well, unless you are Tony Montana.
Coberly,
Understood and agreed except for the “Beau” part, which I did not bother to reference. I am not invested in this discussion because I have been unable to discern a coherent discussion in which to invest (not in reference to yourself – but the RoW). So, the outcome, as it were, is certain. Nothing is nothing new.
On a brighter note here in central VA we are having a run of 90F + high days with overnight lows in the mid-60’s. This is the good part of summer before 70’s move in overnight and many days top 100F. Suddenly I have a ton of stuff to do. Now just waiting for my smoke stack wife to clear the kitchen before I can clean up from breakfast and get on with the last of our Memorial Day weekend.
Ron,
Coberly is banned from commenting on my posts. His comment was deleted.
At 75, I have never had to defend myself or my home. I have been aware of violence reasonably close to my home at various times, but the two people I know personally who were killed by violent attacks were killed by family members.
My husband is a former Marine, also. We had some rowdy neighbors once and he had no problem dealing with them empty handed. It never occurred to him to get his gun out to deal with people. It was for plinking, not intimidating or worse. Protect his family, oh yeah. Use a gun of any kind to do it? NO.
Trump dances at NRA amid applause
From Doug Muder, The Weekly Sift:
…most pro-gun arguments are story-based, because gun advocates are addressing something else entirely: Sometimes a dark fantasy gets stuck in your head and you can’t get it out. What do you do about that? Armed intruders invading your home, your daughter getting raped in the park, roaming street gangs killing people at random — those images can disrupt your peace of mind, no matter what the statistics say about their probability. Some policy change that experts predict would cut rapes in half, for example, doesn’t really help you deal with the what-if in your brain.
That’s what a gun is for. It’s a magical talisman that enables a counter-fantasy you can invoke to dispel whatever dark fantasy might be plaguing you. Home invaders? You’ll win a shoot-out with them. Your daughter? She’ll manage to get the gun out of her backpack and plug the guy before he can take it away and shoot her instead. (And the gun will never haunt her imagination on days when she’s feeling suicidal.) Gangs? You, the neighbors, and your AR-15s will form an impromptu urban warfare platoon to take them out.
Will any of that work in reality? Hardly ever, as ABC demonstrated with this gun-training exercise. But realistic thinking misses the point. If the problem lives in your personal fantasy world, a fantastic solution works just fine.