Mother's Day was a big time for a lot of companies. They used the opportunity to market to women, particularly mothers. They'll market just about anything to moms, and for good reason. People spend money on moms because moms matter.
But, unsurprisingly, some don't think the gun industry should do any such thing.
Now, let's keep in mind that women are a growing segment of the gun market, and a lot of women enjoy firearms and shooting. So it makes sense that gun companies would use the opportunity to possibly make a few more sales.
But The Smoking Gun, which is Everytown's media outlet dedicated to "exposing" the gun industry, took issue with that.
Mother’s Day is a chance for people to honor and celebrate the mothers in their lives. But as it did on Valentine’s Day, the gun industry used Mother’s Day 2025 to market firearms — including AR-15s and other deadly innovations — while ignoring the serious risks of owning a gun and the families torn apart by gun violence.
Many of the social media posts from gun makers, including the examples shown below, urged families to “skip the flowers” and instead buy Mom a firearm. Others not-so-subtly suggested that mothers should purchase firearms and carry them concealed, wherever they go, to protect their families. Part of the industry’s “guns everywhere” agenda, the messaging comes as groups like the National Shooting Sports Foundation push for a federal mandate that would undo many state laws and allow people to carry firearms concealed nationwide without a permit or training.
Unsurprisingly, none of the Mother’s Day social media posts gathered here mention that firearms are the leading cause of death among children and teens. None remind their followers that 76 women are shot and killed each month by intimate partners, or that access to a gun makes it five times more likely that an abusive partner will kill his female victim. None talk about how more pregnant and postpartum women are killed by firearms in states with weaker gun laws.
Unsurprisingly, all of that is absolute BS and has been debunked multiple times. Especially since none of those studies involving women look at what happens when the woman is armed.
Funny, that.
But the real issue for those at The Smoking Gun is that the firearm industry exists at all. In their minds, they shouldn't market at all.
As it is, they primarily market on social media feeds and in gun magazines and on gun websites, as opposed to the broad marketing strategies car companies can enjoy. Never mind that cars kill more people every year than firearms. Never mind that when you eliminate legal adults from the stats, cars are still the number one killer of juveniles--and that number increases as you remove 16- and 17-year-olds from the mix.
No, those companies can market as much as they want and use any metric they want in their marketing materials. 0-60 in less than a second? Who cares if that might encourage drag racers to buy the car and use it in illegal street racing. That's not the car companies' fault.
But a picture of a gun anywhere on the internet spurs a mass shooter into action.
Now, marketing to mothers--a demographic that is generally thought of as pretty peaceful and law-abiding--is a bridge too far for them, too.
It's seriously pathetic.
Make no mistake. Groups like Everytown want nothing more than to destroy the firearm industry because then they won't need to push gun control. Our right to keep and bear arms only has meaning if we can actually access arms. That's why the courts have long found that the right to buy a gun is implicit in our Second Amendment rights.
They want to undermine that by making it impossible for the companies to exist.
Frankly, it's enough to make me want to start a firearm company of my own, just out of spite.
