Five things to know about Georgia gunmaker Daniel Defense

The company also has taken heat for allegedly marketing its guns to minors. A Daniel Defense weapon was used in the deadly 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and relatives of many of the dead have sued the company.

Here are five things to know about the company.

Georgia born

Marty Daniel founded Daniel Defense about 25 years ago in Savannah. In a bio on the gunmaker’s website, the company said Daniel “flunked out” of Georgia Southern University’s engineering school twice. But he returned and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, making the dean’s list, and used his prior setbacks to chart his course in business, the bio says.

Credit: Screenshot via U.S. House

Credit: Screenshot via U.S. House

After college, Daniel started a garage door company. He later fell in love with shooting after firing a friend’s AR-style rifle in the late 1990s, his bio states. He turned that love of shooting into a business, starting with accessories for the same rifle. Daniel Defense accessories quickly became big hits, landing federal defense contracts.

In 2009, Daniel Defense debuted its first rifle, the company’s website states. Its rifles typically sell for a premium: $2,000 to $3,000, and potentially more with various accessories and upgrades.

The company produces weapons for the U.S. special forces and Daniel Defense products are also used by law enforcement agencies.

A surge in growth

Daniel Defense outgrew its initial center of operations and built a large campus in Bryan County in the area known as Black Creek near Ellabell, about 25 miles west of downtown Savannah.

Today, the company makes many variants of the AR-style rifle, bolt-action rifles, a handgun called the Daniel H9, suppressors to reduce the noise of gunfire and men’s and women’s apparel. The company remains privately held and does not release financial results.

In July 2022, the U.S. House Oversight Committee released a memo ahead of a hearing on gun violence that said Daniel Defense’s sales of AR-style firearms increased from $40 million in 2019 to more than $120 million in 2021.

Mass shootings

Authorities say a Daniel Defense rifle was used by the perpetrator in the shooting at Robb Elementary in May 2022 in Texas, which killed 19 children and two teachers.

Credit: From public court records

Credit: From public court records

Daniel testified at the oversight committee hearing that same year. He said gunmakers are not responsible for mass shootings. He expressed his disgust at mass shootings and blamed them on “evil people.”

“These acts are committed by murderers,” Daniel told Congress. “The murderers are responsible.”

In 2017, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas from his 32nd-story hotel suite. He killed 58 people and wounded about 500 in the initial shooting. In the following years, two other people died of injuries attributed to the shooting.

Among the cache of about 20 guns found in Paddock’s suite, at least four were rifles made by Daniel Defense, officials have said.

Marketing controversy

Daniel Defense and other gunmakers have taken heat for their sales tactics, including at the 2022 hearing before Congress.

Then-House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., criticized gun manufacturers, including Daniel Defense, for “marketing to children, preying on young men’s insecurities and even appealing to violent white supremacists.”

“Finally, we found that even as guns kill more Americans than ever, none of those companies take even basic steps to monitor the deaths and injuries caused by their products. This is beyond irresponsible,” Maloney said at the time.

In his testimony before the committee, Daniel said semiautomatic rifles are not much different from other types of firearms that have circulated in America for years, so they should not be blamed for the rise in mass shootings.

“Lately, many Americans, myself included, have witnessed an erosion of personal responsibility in our country and in our culture,” he told the committee. “Mass shootings were all but unheard of just a few decades ago. So, what changed? Not the firearms. They are substantially the same as those manufactured over 100 years ago. I believe our nation’s response needs to focus not on the type of gun but on the type of persons who are likely to commit mass shootings.”

Litigation

In the wake of the Uvalde school shooting, the families of many of the slain children and some of the survivors filed a lawsuit against Daniel Defense, accusing the company of negligence and grooming underage customers.

The Uvalde shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, browsed for weapons on the Daniel Defense website prior to turning 18, placing a weapon in his online cart. Daniel Defense sent an email to Ramos encouraging him to complete the purchase, the lawsuit said.

He later purchased the firearm after he became a legal adult.

The complaint highlighted marketing that included a social post showing a small boy holding a rifle in his lap and a verse from Proverbs, in the Old Testament, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Credit: From public court records

Credit: From public court records

A different social post included a picture showing a rifle among snacks and video game controllers that said: “Game Time!”

The families have also alleged Daniel Defense did not use age-verification measures that would dissuade underage people from browsing firearms on its website, signing up for an account or adding guns to their virtual carts.

The company in court filings has denied wrongdoing. The lawsuit is pending.

— Staff writers Tia Mitchell and Jeremy Redmon contributed to this report.