Access The Price Is Wrong — our two-year investigation into the gun industry's widespread economic monitoring and discipline around prices, but not public safety.
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Today, Guns Down America released the results of an investigation exposing how the gun industry artificially inflates prices and profits — in potential violation of antitrust law — and consolidates its power in a way that allows them to block safety efforts.
The analysis details how at least six gun manufacturers, controlling 66% of the domestic handgun market, have enacted policies that effectively set a minimum price at which distributors and retailers can sell guns.
These resale price maintenance policies inflate profits for the gun industry at the expense of consumers, help retailers avoid competition that could drive safer products, and feed the industry's outsized financial and political power. And as the analysis shows, there is substantial evidence that these coordinated agreements meet the criteria for state and federal antitrust violations.
For decades, gun industry executives have told Congress and the courts under oath that they have no visibility into retailer sales as a way of avoiding responsibility for guns that are used in crimes. Guns Down America's investigation found otherwise: the industry has built an extensive economic surveillance system to track sales and enforce prices — which executives have openly bragged about to shareholders. The same capabilities they claim don't exist for public safety purposes do exist, but only to track and inflate profits.
“The gun industry in the United States has been remarkably successful at resisting policy changes and business reforms that would save lives,” said Hudson Munoz, Executive Director of Guns Down America. ”For decades, a major driver of that success has been overlooked: the gun industry’s cartel-like approach to pricing firearms. Enforcement that eliminates vertical agreements would improve public policy and, through competition, deliver safer products from better companies.”
Guns Down America calls on state Attorneys General, the Federal Trade Commission, private litigants, and consumer advocacy groups to consider challenging the industry’s pricing policies in court.
“For too long, we’ve focused on the political power of the gun lobby without fully exposing the economic machinery that fuels it,” said Po Murray, Chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance, and Member of the Guns Down America Board of Directors. “When manufacturers and retailers coordinate pricing to protect profit margins, they are not just manipulating the market — they are working together to keep gun prices high and profits flowing, even as families across this country are burying their loved ones. In a country where guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens, padding profits while blocking gun safety reforms is morally indefensible. We demand enforcement.”
“When manufacturers and retailers conspire to shield themselves from competition, they’re fortifying their ability to obstruct safety reforms that would save lives — all just to increase their profits, ” said Christian Heyne, Chief Programs and Policy Officer at Brady. “Exposing vertical coordination enforced through these policies is essential for challenging the gun industry’s deadly political impunity, which Brady has worked for decades to dismantle.”
"This kind of research is critical to our understanding of how gun manufacturers, distributors, and retailers operate," said Justin Wagner, SVP of Law and Policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. "With gun violence now the leading cause of death for American children and teens, we must hold an industry accountable that puts profits over safety. This research works to pull back the curtain on the business practices behind the crisis so we can build safer communities."
"This report reveals a striking contradiction in the gun industry's business practices,” said Adam Skaggs, Chief Counsel and Vice President of GIFFORDS Law Center. “Manufacturers justify refusing dealer codes of conduct or trafficking prevention measures by claiming they can't influence retailer behavior. But this research shows gun makers coordinate extensively with retailers when it serves their financial interests. They can clearly impose standards across their supply chain to protect profits—the question is whether they'll also use that power to save lives.”
“These pricing practices show that gun manufacturers and retailers are more than willing to work together when it helps their bottom line, but not when it would prevent gun violence,” said Jaclyn Corin, Executive Director of March For Our Lives. “It’s that hypocrisy that is putting so many young people in danger in our country.”
“The gun industry and its political machine have convinced gun owners that they’re fighting for them. This is a red herring. This report shows that, in reality, every American should share a common adversary in the gun industry,” said the Hon. Nan Whaley, former mayor of Dayton, Ohio, and member of the Guns Down America Board of Directors. “The gun industry doesn’t care about consumers or advocates calling for common-sense legislation. They are focused on one goal: exploiting every opportunity to inflate profits, no matter the damage — economic or physical — they leave in their wake.”
The full analysis, including the reports “Gun Industry Cohesion, Market Power, and Retail Pricing” and “The Middleman Myth: The Gun Industry’s Selective Use of Retail Sales Control” as well as evidence from case files and sworn affidavits, is available HERE.
