Eight days before a Texas teenager killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, the manufacturer of the rifle used in the massacre posted an ad on social media that featured a toddler holding a similar weapon.
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” read the post from Daniel Defense on May 16, the same day the Robb Elementary shooter turned 18.
The ad represented the kind of provocative marketing that has helped the Georgia-based gun company become one the largest privately owned firearms manufacturers in the country, NBC News reported.
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“In an industry with 500 companies all making the same products, you have to get ahead somehow,” said Ryan Busse, a former firearms executive and author of the book “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America.”
Read the full story at NBCNews.com.