UVALDE, Texas — The rifle used in the Texas elementary school shooting is known as a “DDM4 Rifle.” It’s modeled after the M4 carbine, the U.S. military’s go-to rifle, according to a blog post by the gun’s maker, Daniel Defense.
The Daniel Defense rifle can be classified as an AR-15 type. A key difference between the Daniel Defense rifle and the M4 carbine is that the military’s version can switch to fully automatic or fire a three-round burst depending on the model.
AR-15-type rifles can be purchased for as little as $400, but the Daniel Defense rifle is on the high end at around $2,000 or more. These rifles can also be financed, with customers paying less than $100 a month.
The Daniel Defense rifle is not sold with sights. According to pictures of the shooter’s guns posted on Instagram. He appears to have purchased a battery-powered holographic sight that typically sells for around $725.
A sniper’s scope uses magnification to aid in hitting targets from a great distance. Holographic sights are designed to speed up the process of short-range shooting by helping to fix on targets more quickly.
Anger has been drawn out of many by the manufacturer after an ad posted by the company on their social media shows a child holding the firearm with the caption, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
Ryan Busse, a former firearms executive said, “In an industry with 500 companies all making the same products, you have to get ahead somehow.” Busse is the author of "Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America.”
Daniel Defense was founded by Marty Daniel who is said to have been long breaking any norms in marketing, even within the industry.
Daniel Defense has pulled out of the NRA convention set to take place this weekend in Houston, Texas, and the company's Twitter account, where the “incendiary" ad was posted, is now locked.
Outrage spread on Twitter, with some calling the ad "sick." Another user called the ad "reckless."
.@DanielDefense has their tweets “protected” currently. https://t.co/ElLuyBat1V
— Jordan Sphere Hoffman (@jhoffman) May 27, 2022
Some defended the company with one user writing onTwitter that it was "safe to say Daniel Defense will be fine as they did nothing wrong."
