- Over 60 exhibitors — including Century Arms, Daniel Defense, Palmetto State Armory, Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson, Springfield Armory, and Ruger — produce and import military-style assault weapons, such as AR-15s and AK-47s, that have been used in the country’s deadliest mass shootings — including the May 2022 shooting in Allen, Texas, a suburb outside of Dallas, involving an AR-15.
- AR-15s were also used in the Sutherland Springs, Uvalde, and Midland-Odessa shootings in Texas, while the El Paso shooting was carried out with an AK-47.
- Over 25 exhibitors manufacture silencers, or sound suppressors, which dampen the sound of gunfire and eliminate muzzle flash, making it harder for bystanders to figure out where a shot originated.
- At the convention, the NRA will present its 2024 Golden Bullseye Pioneer Award to Brandon Maddox, the founder and CEO of Silencer Central, a silencer retailer who has streamlined the silencer-buying process and ships silencers directly to customers’ doors so they never have to set foot in a gun shop.
- A few exhibitors, including Maxim Defense and Gear Head Works, manufacture and sell arm braces, which are used on AR- and AK-style “pistols” that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) recently determined were short-barreled rifles subject to National Firearms Act (NFA) regulations. Such weapons are easy to conceal while being much more powerful than handguns.
— Greg Lickenbrock in NRA Show Preview: Assault Weapons, Silencers, and More
One Response
Hey, Dan –
I’ve been hearing that thanks to form 4 e-file approvals taking a week or so to be approved, suppressors are out-of-stock nearly everywhere.
Are the suppressor companies hiring more people and ramping up more production in response?