Dayton Police Department handout via Reuters
- The weapon used in Sunday’s massacre in Dayton, Ohio, was featured in a recent Anderson Manufacturing ad that called it "an orchestra of metal and hellfire."
- Anderson Manufacturing posted its video on June 26, just weeks before the deadly shooting, telling customers to "cue up the hellfire."
- Gun-control advocates have long sought to warn the public about such overly dramatized gun ads, many of which use themes of masculinity or war to sell products.
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The weapon used to fatally gun down nine people in Dayton, Ohio, was marketed by its manufacturer as "an orchestra of metal and hellfire" in a dramatically rendered ad just weeks before the shooting.
Anderson Manufacturing’s June 26 video promoting the AM-15 begins with the ominous clicking sound of its magazine sliding into place.
"That sound freedom makes. An orchestra of metal and hellfire crafted with gritted teeth, calloused hands, and passionate harts," a narrator says. "That sound freedom makes is incomparably, unmistakably American-made. Somebody cue the hellfire."
The ad continues: "Anderson Manufacturing. 100% American-made, 100% Anderson."
Read more: Video shows how close the Dayton shooter came to entering a packed bar before being killed by police
Dayton’s police chief, Richard Biehl, told media on Monday that the Dayton shooter used a legally purchased, modified .223-caliber AR-15-style pistol outfitted with an extended magazine and pistol brace device meant to improve control.
Though the pistol has a shorter barrel than the more commonly used AR-15 rifle, Biehl said the shooter’s gun was "modified, in essence, to function as a rifle — and to avoid any legal prohibitions."
On one of the photos of the weapon, Anderson Manufacturing’s logo can be seen on the lower receiver. The company confirmed to NBC News that it sold the component used in the shooting.
Gun-control advocates have long sought to warn the public about such overly dramatized gun ads, many of which use themes of masculinity or war to sell products.
The gunmaker Bushmaster was widely criticized after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, because it had run a campaign equating gun ownership with manhood by distributing "man cards" to its customers.
- Read more:
- The NRA issued a statement supporting Trump’s call to focus on mental illness to reduce gun violence after the shootings in El Paso and Dayton
- ‘We are not helpless here’: Former President Barack Obama made a rare public statement calling for action on gun violence after mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton
- ‘American nightmare’: How newspapers across the world reported on the shootings in El Paso and Dayton
- ‘A bulls— soup of ineffective words’: Cory Booker blasts Trump’s remarks on the mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso
See Also:
- Video shows how close the Dayton shooter came to entering a packed bar before being killed by police
- Former classmates of the Dayton shooter say he was suspended in high school for keeping a ‘kill list’ and a ‘rape list’
- An ex-girlfriend of the Dayton shooter said he showed her footage from a mass shooting on their first date
Source: Business Insider – mmark@businessinsider.com (Michelle Mark)