Senators call for FTC probe of weapons marketing

Connecticut’s U.S. senators on Wednesday joined in an effort to prompt a Federal Trade Commission investigation into the marketing of military-style weapons to children, including the rifles used in the Buffalo murders of 10 people last weekend as well as the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

But hours later, during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing led by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal on a separate proposal to prohibit domestic abusers from possessing guns, Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, illustrated the partisan divide on the issue of gun safety that has paralyzed federal action, even as states like Connecticut have created some of the tightest gun laws in the nation.

Cruz attacked Democrats, charging that they routinely threaten the rights of gun owners and have attempted to “defund the police,” while doing little to address underlying mental health issues that have resulted in many shootings including last weekend’s murder spree in a Buffalo neighborhood supermarket.

At about the same time, on the U.S. Senate floor, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy pointed the finger at the former president for raising the level of hate in this country that has set off a firestorm of gun-related violence and further stoked congressional gridlock.

“Fueling the kind of racist, hateful fear of your neighbor demagoguery practiced by Donald Trump, it exacerbates American violence,” Murphy said. “Doing nothing year after year about the flow of illegal and highpowered weapons into our streets exacerbates American violence.”

The congressional day began with a request to probe firearms marketing techniques and tactics.

“The United States is in the midst of an epidemic of gun violence,” Blumenthal and Murphy wrote in a letter to FTC Chairwoman Lina M. Khan that was signed by nine other Democratic senators including Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.

“Despite the unacceptable levels of gun crime and its devastating effect on our youth, some weapons manufacturers are blatantly flaunting their efforts to market firearms to children,” said the letter, which named the firearms dealer Wee1 Tactical, with a website logo that has pacifiers in the mouths of death skulls and crossbones.

“These are weapons of war that have no place in the hands of our nation’s children, and can cause them substantial harm and even death,” the senators wrote.

A request for comment from the Federal Trade Commission was not immediately returned Wednesday.

The $73 million settlement reached in February by several families of the Newtown school shooting victims came as their lawyers were preparing to bring internal marketing documents to a court trial against Remington, which manufactured the AR-style semiautomatic Bushmaster XM-15 used at Sandy Hook and Chicago.

By mid-afternoon Wednesday, during Blumenthal’s hearing on a proposed federal law named in part for Lori Jackson of Oxford, whose 2014 murder by her estranged husband led to a Connecticut law requiring people under protective orders to surrender their firearms, Cruz charged that Democrats around the country are a threat to gun owners.

“If the objective is to stop violent crime, what is effective is targeting actual violent criminals,” Cruz said. “The approach of today’s Senate Democrats is to try to go after the firearms of lawabiding citizens instead of targeting the violent criminals that are the real threat. Firearms, yes, are used by violent criminals but they are also used over and over and over again by victims of violent crimes to defend themselves.”

Witnesses at the hearing included Kacey Mason, sister of Lori Jackson, who fought back tears recalling the abuse and harassment that led to her murder, in her parents’ home, at age 32 with a gun that was purchased in Virginia.

“This is why it is so important to have this law on a federal level,” Mason said. “This way abusers cannot evade the law by purchasing their guns in another state. It’s too late for Lori, but this law can and will make a difference in another family’s story.”

Holly Sullivan, president of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, which she said represents 43,000 gun owners, said she has been the target of threats, and warned that many gun owners are reticent to seek mental health counseling because of so-called red flag laws that could lead to the seizure of their firearms “with no meaningful penalty for perjury.”