In the year 2021, Pew Research Center found that the United States reported almost 49,000 gun deaths, “a 23% increase since 2019, before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. According to the CDC WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports, in 2003, there were approximately 30,000 gun deaths in the United States. The change from 2003 to 2021 represents a 63% increase.
For any other industry, statistics linking their product with a significant rise in deaths would be undoubtedly detrimental to sales and the overall success of the industry. But the firearm industry is different. During roughly the same time period to which this increase in deaths is associated, the firearm industry has seen continued success and rising profits. This apparent anomaly against standard economic expectation begs the question: how has the firearm industry turned potential PR disaster into one of America’s most predominant subcultures: The American Gun Culture?
In the hope of providing a piece of the answer, the following study of language use in firearm advertisements over two decades was conducted.
METHODS
This study looked at 50 product catalogs from 7 of the top performing firearm manufacturers in the United States (based on recent sales performance). The catalogs were scraped for their text using a code in JavaScript, outputting text documents that were then analyzed by R software. The R software output lists of every word included in each respective catalog and listed the number of appearances of the word.
Three groups of key terms were analyzed: words associated with hunting/recreation, words associated with self-defense, and words associated with the intangible values a firearm might supply. Words demonstrating the intangible values can be understood as language implying that the firearm might provide the consumer with non-material utility. This promised non-material utility can be anything from claims that the firearm makes you more masculine, more powerful, more of a patriot, more aligned with a certain identity, etc.
Based on prior research in the field, I hypothesized there would be an overall decrease in the presence of key terms associated with hunting/recreation and an overall increase in both key terms associated with self-defense and with lifestyle appeal. For each group of key terms, R software produced a scatter plot comparing the year of the catalog to the overall presence of key terms.
FINDINGS
For the top three performing firms — Smith & Wesson, Ruger, SIG — hunting/recreation key terminology had a gradually decreasing presence. For the top three performing firms, words associated with self-defense gradually increased in magnitude of appearance. For words associated with lifestyle appeal, the top three firms shared a positive trend over the last two decades.
Of all of the firms included, it is important to note that data was most accessible and least damaged for the top three performing firms. In the interest of displaying results that more clearly display the most significant findings, scatter plots have been simplified to exclude individual datapoints, and only display the trends of the top three performing firms — Smith & Wesson, Ruger, and SIG Sauer.
IMPLICATIONS
All three components of my hypothesis were supported by the resulting data. In accordance with previous research done on gun advertisements, this data showed an increasing emphasis on self-defense as a selling point for the firearm while showing a decreasing emphasis on its use for hunting. Given the success that this industry has found in the last two decades, we can surmise that selling the firearm as a tool to assuage fears of danger has been profitable for these firms. In contrast, we can assume that selling the firearm as a sporting good has been decreasingly profitable, therefore meriting a decreasing emphasis in marketing material. There is more profit to be found in convincing consumers that your product is a prerequisite for continued safety than there is in offering consumers a product that has niche uses in recreation.
Additionally, increases in the lifestyle key terms supports findings I previous research showing that marketing in this industry is largely targeted at the interests of repeat customers. According to the National Firearms Survey, 86% of the firearms in circulation in the United States are owned by individuals with multiple firearms. The cash crop for the firearm industry is their sales to repeat customers. But how do you sell a given product to someone who already owns it?
Lifestyle appeal — appeal to the intangible values of the firearm — can perhaps account for this question. By convincing consumers that the firearm can serve to enhance aspects of an identity, thereby giving it a certain immaterial utility, the firearm industry can continue persuading firearm owners that there is more of that utility to be had with continued purchase. While an individual who has purchased a firearm for the purpose of self-defense or hunting can fulfill that purpose with only one or two firearms, the abstract and immeasurable nature of the intangible values of the firearm prevent definitive fulfillment of that purpose. By creating a product for which the utility is essentially immeasurable, the firearm industry can continue convincing consumers that additional purchases have value.
I hope this study provides a starting place for more research on the advertising methods of firearm manufacturers. With better access to funding, fewer time restraints, and the benefit of more prior research to build upon, I believe the concepts explored in this study can serve as the basis for further research on the tactics used by the most profitable and powerful corporations in the arms industry.
Peter Clark is a rising senior at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
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