approved a final plan for liquidating the company; in October, an auction house sold its assets for half a million dollars.
A reasonable man might expect that at this point the gun, this weapon built to kill soldiers in close combat and adopted by dope peddlers and urban gangs, would be allowed to disappear from America’s arsenal and consigned to Thomas Nelson’s history books. But RPB Industries rose quickly from the tomb, this time as S.W. Daniel Inc., named for Sylvia Williams Daniel. After ATF’s rulingthe Daniels set out in earnest to develop a weapon that could be sold readily to the public.They succeeded—introducing by 1983 the Cobray M-11/9—but nonetheless continued sending prototype after prototype to the ATF technical branch in Washington, as if probing for holes in the law. Once, for example, they sent a prototype of what they claimed was a single-shot weapon. It was the same weapon that previously had been ruled a machine gun, but with a plate over the bottom of the grip where the magazine would otherwise be inserted. ATF, however, found that the plate could be removed and classified this weapon too as a machine gun.
The company also sold machine-gun “flats,” stamped and notched pieces of steel that could be bent to form the frame, or “lower receiver,” of a machine gun. Under federal law, a machine-gun receiver is treated as if it were a complete firearm. The flats, however, were legal, provided they were left unbent and certain holes were left undrilled. All a consumer had to do to commit an instant felony was to drill out a single hole—but that was the consumer’s problem.
The Daniels knew their market well, said Earl Taylor. “I’ve always had a hunch that Wayne and Sylvia were not so much believers in all the pro-gun propaganda that goes on and that they so freelytalk about, but that they were more interested in making money than anything else.” Of Wayne, he said, “He’s got a reputation for testing the waters, so to speak. He’ll come close to the edge of the envelope—maybe not blatantly doing something illegal, but he’s very anxious to test and see how far he can go in the weapons field.”
Wayne’s attitude, according to Taylor, made his products all the more attractive to gun buyers. “He can kind of feel the pulse of this gun culture out there and kind of say things and do things and market things that appeal to those people.”
Indeed, far from embarking on a PR campaign to sweeten the gun’s reputation, Sylvia and Wayne played up its bloody history, marketing the Cobray as “The Gun That Made the Eighties Roar.”
The company’s marketing ideology soon led it to begin a business venture that provides a case study in how powerless our society is to control the easy traffic in the tools of murder. This new venture would trigger a nationwide ATF investigation that exposed widespread illegal sales of weapons to neo-Nazis, the IRA, and assorted felons; exposed the illegal practices of federally licensed gun dealers; and resulted in the arrests of hundreds of the company’s customers—yet left Sylvia, Wayne, and their corporation virtually unscathed.
Wayne Daniel may have felt it a personal affront to work alongside John Leibolt, but he felt no such moral reluctance when in January 1983 he and Sylvia invited two men, JosephLedbetter and Travis Motes, to their home to make the men a proposition.
Ledbetter and Motes had installed air-conditioning in the RPB offices and had wired S.W. Daniel’s corporate headquarters. The Daniels suggested that their two visitors diversify into the business of making the outer tubes for silencers. S.W. Daniel would make the interior parts. The two companies would advertise in the same gun publications and travel to the same gun shows. By selling only parts, both would stay on the right side of federal laws requiring registrationof completed silencers. Indeed, no law barred the sale of silencer parts. In the eyes of the law, however,
A reasonable man might expect that at this point the gun, this weapon built to kill soldiers in close combat and adopted by dope peddlers and urban gangs, would be allowed to disappear from America’s arsenal and consigned to Thomas Nelson’s history books. But RPB Industries rose quickly from the tomb, this time as S.W. Daniel Inc., named for Sylvia Williams Daniel. After ATF’s rulingthe Daniels set out in earnest to develop a weapon that could be sold readily to the public.They succeeded—introducing by 1983 the Cobray M-11/9—but nonetheless continued sending prototype after prototype to the ATF technical branch in Washington, as if probing for holes in the law. Once, for example, they sent a prototype of what they claimed was a single-shot weapon. It was the same weapon that previously had been ruled a machine gun, but with a plate over the bottom of the grip where the magazine would otherwise be inserted. ATF, however, found that the plate could be removed and classified this weapon too as a machine gun.
The company also sold machine-gun “flats,” stamped and notched pieces of steel that could be bent to form the frame, or “lower receiver,” of a machine gun. Under federal law, a machine-gun receiver is treated as if it were a complete firearm. The flats, however, were legal, provided they were left unbent and certain holes were left undrilled. All a consumer had to do to commit an instant felony was to drill out a single hole—but that was the consumer’s problem.
The Daniels knew their market well, said Earl Taylor. “I’ve always had a hunch that Wayne and Sylvia were not so much believers in all the pro-gun propaganda that goes on and that they so freelytalk about, but that they were more interested in making money than anything else.” Of Wayne, he said, “He’s got a reputation for testing the waters, so to speak. He’ll come close to the edge of the envelope—maybe not blatantly doing something illegal, but he’s very anxious to test and see how far he can go in the weapons field.”
Wayne’s attitude, according to Taylor, made his products all the more attractive to gun buyers. “He can kind of feel the pulse of this gun culture out there and kind of say things and do things and market things that appeal to those people.”
Indeed, far from embarking on a PR campaign to sweeten the gun’s reputation, Sylvia and Wayne played up its bloody history, marketing the Cobray as “The Gun That Made the Eighties Roar.”
The company’s marketing ideology soon led it to begin a business venture that provides a case study in how powerless our society is to control the easy traffic in the tools of murder. This new venture would trigger a nationwide ATF investigation that exposed widespread illegal sales of weapons to neo-Nazis, the IRA, and assorted felons; exposed the illegal practices of federally licensed gun dealers; and resulted in the arrests of hundreds of the company’s customers—yet left Sylvia, Wayne, and their corporation virtually unscathed.
Wayne Daniel may have felt it a personal affront to work alongside John Leibolt, but he felt no such moral reluctance when in January 1983 he and Sylvia invited two men, JosephLedbetter and Travis Motes, to their home to make the men a proposition.
Ledbetter and Motes had installed air-conditioning in the RPB offices and had wired S.W. Daniel’s corporate headquarters. The Daniels suggested that their two visitors diversify into the business of making the outer tubes for silencers. S.W. Daniel would make the interior parts. The two companies would advertise in the same gun publications and travel to the same gun shows. By selling only parts, both would stay on the right side of federal laws requiring registrationof completed silencers. Indeed, no law barred the sale of silencer parts. In the eyes of the law, however,
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