Speaker 1: Hi, It's West Kosova. Here's an update on this story.
Speaker 1: The US Commerce Department announced late on Friday that it's
Speaker 1: halting exports of most US made firearms for ninety days,
Speaker 1: and it's reviewing its support of the country's biggest gun
Speaker 1: trade show to ensure it quote does not undermine US
Speaker 1: policy interests unquote. The Department gave no indication of what
Speaker 1: long term changes it might make, but the review could
Speaker 1: alter or even reverse a set of pro industry policies
Speaker 1: that have helped domestic manufacturers expand sales abroad. About two
Speaker 1: million guns are sold in the US each month. Sales
Speaker 1: have softened a bit post pandemic, but overall, the firearms
Speaker 1: industry is doing just fine, with more guns in America
Speaker 1: than people. Though gun makers are increasingly looking to find
Speaker 1: new buyers overseas, Bloomberg's Michael Smith and Jessica Brice report
Speaker 1: they're getting a helping hand from a place you might
Speaker 1: not expect, the US government.
Speaker 2: This goes back to an agreement that the Shot Show
Speaker 2: made with the Commerce Department in twenty thirteen to make
Speaker 2: a concerted effort to bring more gun buyers up from
Speaker 2: around the world.
Speaker 3: Basically most countries in the world don't have the tolerance
Speaker 3: for weapons or the demand for weapons that the United
Speaker 3: States has. You really need that gun culture to rise
Speaker 3: up in these places, to change the politics, to allow
Speaker 3: those guns to come in, and to allow that market
Speaker 3: to bloom.
Speaker 1: I'm wes Kysova today on the Big Take Washington plays
Speaker 1: matchmaker for the gun industry. Jessica, your story starts with
Speaker 1: a scene of the Shot Show, this big convention in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. Can you tell us about the shot Show.
Speaker 3: It's the world's biggest firearms industry event. It officially stands
Speaker 3: for the Shooting Hunting Outdoor Trade Show. It happens every
Speaker 3: January in Las Vegas, and some fifty thousand to sixty
Speaker 3: thousand gun makers, dealers, enthusiasts fled into this convention center
Speaker 3: to learn about what's happening in the industry, to make deals,
Speaker 3: to close deals. The buyers are there to find the
Speaker 3: weapons that they're then going to bring back to their
Speaker 3: stores and sell on. And that includes international buyers who
Speaker 3: want to meet up with the big gun makers and
Speaker 3: they want to get access to those products. And really
Speaker 3: it's a networking event that's inside the industry. It's not
Speaker 3: open to the public. You have to be involved in
Speaker 3: the firearms industry in order to get a ticket.
Speaker 2: And there's a whole ecosystem sort of events that go
Speaker 2: along with this. For example, one day where all the
Speaker 2: sellers take buyers out to the middle of the desert
Speaker 2: to this giant shooting range where they can just try
Speaker 2: all the cool guns that they want to see how
Speaker 2: they fire. And there are also lots of dinners between
Speaker 2: clients and their suppliers. And then there's this whole ecosystem
Speaker 2: of influencing people, networking for social media, trying to promote
Speaker 2: brands that will hopefully sell more, but the main point
Speaker 2: is for the gun industry to sell more guns.
Speaker 1: And Jessica, you're write about how a little bit out
Speaker 1: of the way in a less glamorous part of the
Speaker 1: event is one of the most important groups there, and
Speaker 1: it's the US government.
Speaker 3: Yes, the Department of Commerce works with a number of
Speaker 3: trade shows. It's not just the shot show that it works.
Speaker 3: It works with something like thirty trade shows every year,
Speaker 3: and it brings international buyers to meet up with American
Speaker 3: companies that want to do business abroad. It does that
Speaker 3: for electronics, it does that for concrete, it does that
Speaker 3: for dental equipment. But one of the more controversial products
Speaker 3: it does that for is guns. So in that corner
Speaker 3: of the shot show you have the International Trade Center,
Speaker 3: you know, it's in one of the ballrooms that has
Speaker 3: like the partition walls and the burgundy chairs, and there's
Speaker 3: a lot of bureaucrats basically standing around and what they're
Speaker 3: doing is they're meeting up with the people that they
Speaker 3: invited from abroad, whether that's Brazil or Peru, or Mexico
Speaker 3: or Asia somewhere, or you know, from all over the world.
Speaker 3: They bring these buyers into Las Vegas and then they
Speaker 3: help them set up these meetings with American gun makers,
Speaker 3: and for a fee, they'll even sit in on these
Speaker 3: meetings and help close those deals.
Speaker 1: Mike, How does the Commerce Department find all of these
Speaker 1: people to bring to the US to go to the
Speaker 1: gun show?
Speaker 2: So the Commerce Department has what it called specialists. They
Speaker 2: post in embassies around the world, and their main job
Speaker 2: is to match buyers of US good with sellers of
Speaker 2: US goods. Some of these specialists specialize in guns. That's
Speaker 2: one of the sort of turfs that they have to
Speaker 2: drum up business for. They basically talk to entities that
Speaker 2: are interested in buying guns, and then they just go
Speaker 2: out and make contacts with these buyers and then they
Speaker 2: open up a whole world of services that the US
Speaker 2: government through commerce, provides to essentially get buyers together with
Speaker 2: sellers in the United States.
Speaker 3: These specialists, they're foreign commercial service specialists. Around the world,
Speaker 3: they typically tend to be like foreign born specialists, so
Speaker 3: they're foreign born hires. And the reason for that is
Speaker 3: because the American officers will rotate in and out of
Speaker 3: embassies and consulates on two or three year stints. But
Speaker 3: you need the foreign you know, the locals who are there.
Speaker 3: They're working there, you know, for decades, and they're maintaining
Speaker 3: those business relationships. So when the American officers come in,
Speaker 3: they're ultimately the ones who are always calling the shots.
Speaker 3: But they're tapping into this network that has been built
Speaker 3: for twenty thirty years.
Speaker 1: So, Mike, the Commerce Department is trying to find buyers.
Speaker 1: The people they're bringing to Las Vegas, what are some
Speaker 1: of the countries they're bringing them from.
Speaker 2: So these specialists really work in embassies around the world.
Speaker 2: You have some posts in Asia, in Europe, and some
Speaker 2: posts in Latin America. In our story, we really focused
Speaker 2: on Latin America, and we found examples of commerce specialists
Speaker 2: bringing gun buyers up from Brazil, from Peru, and from
Speaker 2: different countries in Central America.
Speaker 1: So all told, how many different buyers coming to the
Speaker 1: Shot Show are there as essentially guests of the Commerce Department.
Speaker 2: This goes back to an agreement that the Shot Show
Speaker 2: made with the Commerce Department in twenty thirteen to make
Speaker 2: a concerted effort to bring more gun buyers up from
Speaker 2: around the world. Basically, in the first year twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: they brought around three hundred and seventy buyers to Shot Show,
Speaker 2: but by January twenty twenty three this year, that number
Speaker 2: had searched to more than thirty two hundred buyers. So
Speaker 2: that gives you a sense of the scope and the
Speaker 2: growth we've seen in international buyers being basically brought up
Speaker 2: by these specialists around the world.
Speaker 1: Is it working? Our exports of US guns rising as
Speaker 1: a result of the Commerce Department's efforts.
Speaker 3: One of the frustrating things about how the Department of
Speaker 3: Commerce operates is that there's no transparency because it involves
Speaker 3: corporate trade secrets, so there's no real transparency around this
Speaker 3: program and how it works. We don't know how much
Speaker 3: in sales the Commerce Department officials are helping to broker.
Speaker 3: We don't have a real clear insight into how much
Speaker 3: exports have climbed because of this program, but we do
Speaker 3: know that between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two we
Speaker 3: saw a three hundred percent increase in semi automatic rifles
Speaker 3: and handguns coming into Brazil.
Speaker 2: After President Trump came into office, he basically put the
Speaker 2: approval process for gun exports into the hands of the
Speaker 2: Commerce Department, the same department that has the specialists around
Speaker 2: the world. After that happened, a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: gun exports from the United States jumped to sixteen billion
Speaker 2: dollars and that's almost thirty percent above historical averages. So
Speaker 2: there you can see sort of how things have changed
Speaker 2: for the better for gun makers and Jessica.
Speaker 1: Does the Commerce Department work with gun advocacy groups or
Speaker 1: trade associations for the industry.
Speaker 3: It's not working directly with the gun advocacy groups, but
Speaker 3: it works with the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which is
Speaker 3: the industry group, the trade group that runs shot show,
Speaker 3: the NSSF, which is how they're known. They're actually more
Speaker 3: influential in terms of lobbying money being spent in Washington
Speaker 3: than the NRA is These days, a lot of people
Speaker 3: know the NRA. The NA has traditionally said that they
Speaker 3: represent the gun owner. The NSSF represents the gun manufacturer, right,
Speaker 3: so who's paying those membership dues. It's the glocks and
Speaker 3: the Rugers, and the smith and Wessons. All the companies
Speaker 3: are part of the NSSF, and they're spending almost twice
Speaker 3: as much money every year to push through laws that
Speaker 3: are more favorable to gun makers. They advocated for this
Speaker 3: shift to put Commerce Department more in control and have
Speaker 3: more oversight over the gun exports.
Speaker 1: One of the concerns that the US government has had
Speaker 1: in the past with gun exports is making sure that
Speaker 1: they don't go to countries where there are unstable governments,
Speaker 1: where there are reasons to believe the guns could be
Speaker 1: used for violence. Is that still something that the US
Speaker 1: government monitors very closely before they make deals for foreign
Speaker 1: gun sales.
Speaker 2: It's unclear how closely they monitor it. The Commerce Department
Speaker 2: has taken over processing and essentially approving gun exports licenses.
Speaker 2: They're called but the state of Hartman. They have the
Speaker 2: right to look over an export license and stop it
Speaker 2: if they want. That has happened sporadically from what we
Speaker 2: can tell, but it's difficult to know how steadfast their
Speaker 2: policy considerations are and exactly what criteria they use to
Speaker 2: come up with those decisions.
Speaker 1: And what is the Commerce Department said about this when
Speaker 1: you ask them about the program.
Speaker 3: This topic sort of spans the State Department, the Department
Speaker 3: of Defense, and the Department of Commerce, and of all
Speaker 3: of those departments, and not to mention all the embassies
Speaker 3: many of which we tried to reach out to. The
Speaker 3: Commerce Department is the least transparents. They don't offer any
Speaker 3: information regarding how many people they send a shot show
Speaker 3: every year, what sort of resources are dedicated towards the effort,
Speaker 3: how many folks are out in the world recruiting and
Speaker 3: building these lists, and these these group trips to Las
Speaker 3: Vegas every January. Bloomberg entered in with a Freedom of
Speaker 3: information request so called FOYA, trying to get even the
Speaker 3: most basic of numbers. We actually have started up a
Speaker 3: lawsuit trying to get this information. But they really really
Speaker 3: are close lift about the entire process.
Speaker 1: After the break, exporting US guns also means exporting US
Speaker 1: gun culture. Jessica, one thing you write is that part
Speaker 1: of this story isn't just exporting US guns, but also
Speaker 1: exporting US gun culture to the places where US gun
Speaker 1: makers are looking to sell their.
Speaker 3: Product exporting guns. You know, most countries in the world
Speaker 3: don't have the tolerance for weapons or the demand for
Speaker 3: weapons that the United States has, and so it's not
Speaker 3: as easy as just you know, reaching some deals and
Speaker 3: shipping these guns abroad. Like you really need that gun
Speaker 3: culture to run up in these places, to change the politics,
Speaker 3: to allow those guns to come in and to allow
Speaker 3: that market to blue. And that's part of this effort.
Speaker 3: It's not just about signing contracts. It's also about getting
Speaker 3: advocates and politicians on board with the Krogen agenda.
Speaker 1: And Mike who is pressing in these other countries to
Speaker 1: change their culture to make them more receptive to US guns.
Speaker 2: We looked at a couple of countries that basically have
Speaker 2: adopted American style gun culture to a certain degree, Brazil
Speaker 2: and Peru. In Peru, it's very interesting, you have to
Speaker 2: go back almost fifteen years when a member of the
Speaker 2: NRA advocacy family, it's they don't have formal ties, but
Speaker 2: they like each other. It's called Safari Club International. It's
Speaker 2: a hunting rights advocacy organization. They found a man named
Speaker 2: Thomas Saldias, a Peruvian hunter who was getting a graduate
Speaker 2: degree in Texas, and he really wanted to learn how
Speaker 2: to lobby for gun rights like they do in the
Speaker 2: United States, and they basically took him under their wing.
Speaker 2: When we spoke to Thomas Seldius, he explained us how
Speaker 2: Saphari Club International worked very closely with him over years,
Speaker 2: not only teaching him how to lobby, they took him
Speaker 2: to Washington and showed him how you go visit your congressman.
Speaker 2: They also gave him a little bit of money to
Speaker 2: cover his travel expenses. It was a volunteer job, but
Speaker 2: he got paid to go back to Peru. First organizing
Speaker 2: a regional gun rights advocacy organization to try to push
Speaker 2: for liberalized gun laws across Latin America. But he also
Speaker 2: lobbied the Peruvian Congress to stop an attempt to basically
Speaker 2: ban almost all guns in civilian hands in Peru, and
Speaker 2: he was quite successful. Congress blocked it. You can basically
Speaker 2: own as many semi automatic assault rifles as you want
Speaker 2: if your license gun owner or pistols. It's quite a
Speaker 2: dramatic change that came about largely because of the influence, financing,
Speaker 2: and sort of inspiration of the US gun lobby.
Speaker 1: It seems hard to believe that one man's lobbying could
Speaker 1: be so effective. What was the argument that persuaded so
Speaker 1: many lawmakers in Peru to change their minds?
Speaker 2: Well, Saldias was very clever in how he went about this.
Speaker 2: You have to understand that in Peru, lobbying is not
Speaker 2: part of the culture, especially not grassroots movements to get
Speaker 2: stuff changed. People don't have the culture of just going
Speaker 2: to visit their congressman saying hey, i'm your constituent, you
Speaker 2: got to do what I want. But that's exactly what
Speaker 2: he did because he learned in the United States, and
Speaker 2: he also took advantage of the fact that the president
Speaker 2: was under fire. The opposition in Congress wanted to just
Speaker 2: to get anything they could to take him down, so
Speaker 2: to speak, and so they really embraced this idea of
Speaker 2: this president cracking down on the rights of law abiding
Speaker 2: citizens to own guns. And he really used that quite
Speaker 2: effectively and convinced Congress almost single handedly to block this
Speaker 2: effort to restrict gun ownership in Peru.
Speaker 1: And what did Safari International have to say about this.
Speaker 2: Well, they were very proud of the work he did.
Speaker 2: They put up press releases about his work. They brought
Speaker 2: him up to shot Show in twenty fourteen after he
Speaker 2: organized this regional gun rights organization, and they had a
Speaker 2: news conference that they basically sponsored for him. They helped
Speaker 2: write his remarks that he gave at that news conference,
Speaker 2: and then they went on to sort of follow his
Speaker 2: career and publicly call him out in the good way
Speaker 2: for the work he was doing on behalf of gun
Speaker 2: rights in a place like Peru.
Speaker 1: Jessica, you're in Brazil, and that was another country where
Speaker 1: the gun culture changed quite a bit.
Speaker 3: Brazil has always had pretty restrictive gun laws. Bolsonado came
Speaker 3: in and that was one of the platforms that he
Speaker 3: campaigned on, was this idea that law abiding citizens have
Speaker 3: a right to protect themselves because Brazil is a very
Speaker 3: violent nation and there are a lot of illegal guns
Speaker 3: on the streets. It's not like there's no guns here,
Speaker 3: there's lots of gun violence. He came in on this
Speaker 3: promise to start allowing like everybody to have guns, so
Speaker 3: that they can defend themselves, and within two weeks of
Speaker 3: taking office, he blew that market open. He just allowed
Speaker 3: basically anyone who had the will, they were able to
Speaker 3: get access, they were able to get a license, and
Speaker 3: they were able to own types of firearms that no
Speaker 3: one had ever seen before. His son, Eduardo Bolsonado, who's
Speaker 3: also a lawmaker and also pushing the pro gun agenda.
Speaker 3: He'd been to shot shows several times and they had
Speaker 3: a real tight relationship with the former ambassador in the
Speaker 3: United States and with the Department of Commerce and the
Speaker 3: Foreign Commercial Service.
Speaker 1: But now Bolsonar's successor is pushing back a bit on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bolsonar's successor, Luis Naso Lula da Silvam, he's actually
Speaker 3: a returning president. He was in office at the start
Speaker 3: of the century, and he was the one who had
Speaker 3: pushed through many of the really tight gun laws that
Speaker 3: Brazil had. When Bolsonato lost the election and Lula took over,
Speaker 3: on his first day of office, he reversed that he
Speaker 3: required anyone who had purchased guns to reregister in a
Speaker 3: national registry. He blocked all these shipments of guns that
Speaker 3: had been purchased, and you know, they were stuck at
Speaker 3: ports and in Georgia and Florida since shut down the market.
Speaker 3: But what you're seeing is that culture, that gun culture
Speaker 3: is still very alive and well Lula's bands are based
Speaker 3: on decrees, they're not based on laws. That's the real
Speaker 3: important change that we've had in Brazilian culture recently in
Speaker 3: that you know, Bolsonado used to be the only pro
Speaker 3: gun lawmaker and now we have more than one hundred
Speaker 3: in Congress, and that's rising every year. You're seeing that rise,
Speaker 3: and it's probably not long before we actually get some
Speaker 3: laws on the books that open this.
Speaker 1: Market up when we come back. Joe Biden has pushed
Speaker 1: for gun control. What does the administration have to say
Speaker 1: about its efforts to boost foreign gun sales? Might just
Speaker 1: to be clear, in places like Peru, in Brazil, where
Speaker 1: there are these efforts to make the culture more receptive
Speaker 1: to guns, that's not the US Commerce Department doing that work,
Speaker 1: is that right.
Speaker 2: No, it's more the gun affics groups in the United States.
Speaker 3: I think we want to be really clear that it's
Speaker 3: not the Department of Commerce that's pushing this cultural change.
Speaker 3: They're pushing business opportunities for American gun makers. The lines
Speaker 3: are really blurred between the folks who are acting as
Speaker 3: activists and advocates for the changing culture and the people
Speaker 3: who are the business representatives for those organizations and sort
Speaker 3: of the center of gun culture. It's Shot Show. If
Speaker 3: you're a gun lover, like, there's no cooler place on
Speaker 3: earth than to me than Shot Show in Las Vegas
Speaker 3: every January. That's where a lot of this is happening.
Speaker 3: And they're all mingling. You know, you have US government officials,
Speaker 3: you have advocates, you have lobbyists, you have the business folks.
Speaker 3: They're all mingling in that same universe.
Speaker 1: The Biden administration has come out for a greater gun
Speaker 1: control measures. The presidents signed in an executive order to
Speaker 1: try to crack down on so called ghost guns that
Speaker 1: don't have serial numbers. Is there any effort inside the
Speaker 1: Biden administration about whether they want the Commerce Department doing
Speaker 1: this kind of work.
Speaker 3: There's no indication that's the case. No matter who we
Speaker 3: reach out to within the government about this program, no
Speaker 3: one wants to talk about it. Right, it's happening on
Speaker 3: foreign soil. It's not something that's really really, really front
Speaker 3: and center to an American audience. It's something that they
Speaker 3: just declined to comment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is a mystery, just because we don't
Speaker 2: have much insight into what's going on, and the immistration
Speaker 2: hasn't really spoken about it. The one thing we have
Speaker 2: been able to discover is that, you know, there have
Speaker 2: been instances where the State Department has decided, Okay, we
Speaker 2: we really shouldn't be exporting guns to this particular country,
Speaker 2: or they should be restricted, like the example of Peru
Speaker 2: where there were some really violent protests at the beginning
Speaker 2: of this year and fifty people were killed by police,
Speaker 2: mainly in these protests, and so the State Department started
Speaker 2: raising concerns about the human rights situation in Peru and
Speaker 2: putting a freeze on issuing new export licenses. But that's
Speaker 2: a temporary freeze, and commerce officials have told gun importers
Speaker 2: in Peru that this will probably be worked out at
Speaker 2: some point. It's unclear how enduring that will be and
Speaker 2: whether that will be applied in other places with similar issues.
Speaker 1: As you continue to report on this story, what are
Speaker 1: you following, what are you looking for?
Speaker 3: We'd really like to get, you know, additional insight into
Speaker 3: how the government interacts with the shot show and the NSSF.
Speaker 3: I think it's really important that there's transparency there because
Speaker 3: you know, seventy five percent of the nssf's annual budget
Speaker 3: comes from shot show. You have government employees around the
Speaker 3: world driving traffic to that event, and then that money
Speaker 3: is used to lobby in Washington for more favorable gun laws,
Speaker 3: and so not having transparency, it just feels like that's
Speaker 3: something that people should say is unacceptable.
Speaker 1: Mike Jessica, thanks so much for sharing your reporting.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
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