- The Times found that a World War II-era AR-15 ammunition factory is linked to several mass shootings.
- The Lake City Army Ammunition Plant was built to supply the U.S. military.
- But in the last decade the work shifted to commercial sales.
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A World War II-era munitions factory that supplied the U.S. military has been linked to more than a dozen mass shootings.
The Lake City Army Ammunition Plant transitioned to commercial sales in 2011 and is now one of the largest manufacturers of commercial AR-15 ammunition in the United States. According to the New York Times, there have been “hundreds of millions” of rounds of advertising every year since 2011.
The facility was built during World War II and has been operated by U.S. government contractors to produce munitions ever since. However, their focus gradually shifted to commercial production as military demand waned, The Times reported.
By 2021, commercial production at the facility was more than double the production rate for military munitions, The Times noted.
While The Times noted that the “vast majority” of ammunition sold by Lake City to retailers ends up in the hands of law-abiding citizens, they have also turned up in a number of mass shootings.
Lake City shootings have been linked to at least a dozen mass shootings, including the 2012 Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting, the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, and the 2017 Las Vegas Strip mass shooting deadliest in U.S. history, the report said.
According to the report, the gunman responsible for the Buffalo supermarket shooting that killed ten people in May 2022 also mentioned Lake City in his manifesto. The gunman reportedly wrote that he planned to shoot at security guards through a window and said the shots fired in Lake City were “the best barrier-penetrating ammunition I can get.”
According to the National Criminal Justice Association, semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 are becoming the most commonly used weapon in mass shootings in the United States. As of May 2022, there were 20 million AR rifles in circulation in the United States. In total, there are almost 400 million weapons in the possession of US civilians.
Source : www.insider.com