Last Tuesday, 19 children and two teachers were killed in a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The devastating incident was the 27th school shooting in the US this year.
“I want to say that I was shocked and stunned … but I really feel none of that,” said Ryan Busse, who was a senior executive in a US gun company for two decades. “These are the natural outcomes of this system in America that we’ve had established here.” Busse left the industry in 2020 after becoming disillusioned with its direction. His book, Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalised America, documents his time in the industry. He tells Nosheen Iqbal how the gun industry became less regulated, and the weapons more lethal.