Everytown for Gun Safety Launches First-of-its-Kind Online Hub Dedicated to Holding the Gun Industry Accountable 

NEW YORK – Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund today launched a new online resource, “The Smoking Gun,” which will serve as a hub for Everytown’s work to hold the gun industry accountable. The site includes the nation’s most comprehensive database cataloging guns used and recovered in mass shootings, profiles on some of the largest gun manufacturers, news and reports about the industry, along with new data sets on guns recalled due to product defects and a gallery of examples of toxic gun industry marketing.

The gun industry plays a central role in proliferating America’s gun violence epidemic, and The Smoking Gun goes in-depth to profile three ways the gun industry contributes to our gun violence crisis:

1. Innovating Towards Danger: The gun industry continues to produce increasingly deadly firearms, like assault weapons, ghost guns, and firearms that can easily be turned into machine guns.
2. Arming Criminals: The gun industry fails to secure its supply chain, making it more likely for guns to be diverted to the criminal market and used in crimes.  
3. Toxic Marketing: The gun industry markets guns, including assault weapons, to teens and extremists while downplaying the risks that firearms pose.

“For decades, the gun industry has skirted accountability: innovating their products to become even deadlier, marketing their weapons in irresponsible ways, and supplying gun dealers with heaps of deadly weapons,” said Nick Suplina, Senior Vice President for Law and Policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. “The decisions made by the gun industry in boardrooms across America have been made with profits in mind, with little concern for public safety. This new resource shines a light on the gun industry’s greed and irresponsibility.”

“Guns are the number one killer for my generation, but the gun industry’s top priority has always been raking in profits,” said Roan Thibault, a Students Demand Action National Advisory Board member and student at the University of California, Davis. “We’ve all seen the automobile and tobacco industries move towards safety while the gun industry has continued to double down, making their products even more dangerous and skirting accountability at every turn. We are committed to exposing the gun industry’s role in worsening our gun violence crisis, and we won’t stop fighting until the industry puts our safety and our right to live over maximizing their profits. ”

The Smoking Gun builds on Everytown’s comprehensive efforts to shine a light on the gun industry’s irresponsible business practices: 

• Everytown Law, the nation’s most experienced team of litigators in the U.S. working full-time on advancing gun violence prevention in the courts, continues to work to hold members of the gun industry accountable through litigation.
  • Everytown Law has filed lawsuits on behalf of survivors of the Highland Park and Uvalde mass shootings and on behalf of the estates of two 17-year-old Virginians who were shot and killed by an 18-year-old classmate using an unserialized, self-assembled ghost gun purchased from ghost gun seller 80P Builder. 

• Everytown Research & Policy conducts rigorous research on gun violence, its causes and the best policies and programs to address it, producing reports on firearms dealers and their relationship to firearms trafficking, the gun industry’s power broker: the National Shooting Sports Foundation and more.

• Federally, Everytown has supported the Biden Administration’s efforts to strengthen the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) crackdown on rogue gun dealers and eliminate the “Gun Show Loophole,” in addition to reducing the threat faced by dangerous gun industry products like ghost guns and short-barreled rifles. 

• In statehouses across the country this year, Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and its grassroots networks, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, have successfully helped pass comprehensive legislation aimed at industry accountability, including passing legislation to:
  • Prohibit Assault Weapons (or strengthen existing state law): Connecticut, Washington
  • Make it Easier to Sue Bad Actors in the Gun Industry: Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Washington
  • Create an Office of Gun Violence Prevention (by governor action): North Carolina
  • Prohibit Ghost Guns: Colorado, Connecticut, Oregon

• Everytown’s grassroots networks, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, also continue to mobilize volunteers to hold the gun industry accountable. Last year, Students Demand Action volunteers descended on Las Vegas to confront the gun industry during the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s SHOT Show, spreading their message of accountability to conference participants.

• Mayors Against Illegal Guns members, a part of Everytown, have also worked to release data on the gun manufacturers whose guns are turning up at crime scenes in America’s cities, in addition to taking action to hold gun manufacturers and sellers accountable in the courts.      

To speak with an expert from Everytown about gun industry accountability, please contact [email protected]