Mid-December, 2012, Newtown Connecticut, USA: 20 year old Adam Lanza from New Jersey, entered Sandy Hook elementary school, armed to the teeth. His march of madness, which lasted only five minutes and is considered one of the worst massacres in US history, took 26 lives, most of them children. The Glock and SIG Sauer handguns, and the Bushmaster rifle that he used, were found later at the scene of the carnage - a testament to the ease with which firearms may be obtained in the US.
In the days following the massacre, leaders in firearms industry had good reason to panic, as did firearm aficionados: there was a new Federal bill on the table to reduce the limit on the number of bullets in a magazine from 30 to 10. “In the end, the Federal bill did not pass, and was adopted only in a few states. The pressure was felt by the many gun owners across the country,” arms accessory manufacturer CAA Tactical owner Moshe Oz told “Globes.”
“This pressure led to three months in which we sold magazines for 30 bullets in quantities that we had not seen over the previous three years,” said Oz. “Over eight months we sold about a million such magazines. Up until three months ago we were working around the clock, 24 hours a day, in order to manufacture the magazines and meet demand. This was all for the US market - because of the mass fear that a law would pass that would limit the purchase of 30-bullet magazines.”
75% of CAA Tactical’s production is intended for the US market. Its second largest market is the Philippines. 60 employees work at the factory in Kiryat Gat, and the company’s annual sales are estimated at NIS 50 million. In retrospect, Oz has come to understand how the US Federal bill attempting to restrict gun owners fizzled out: “Such a law is not easy to pass in a place like that.” Almost a year after the massacre in Connecticut, Oz says: “The economic situation in the US is not great, and the firearms industry generates tremendous amounts of money and is a major growth engine. The solution for extreme situations, such as these criminal massacres, is simply to increase security: it creates more jobs, and prevents crazy acts of violence. An attacker will not choose a target that is secured.”
So long as it is legal and there is demand, Oz continues to manufacture and export and expand his family business. He also has a factory in Pennsylvania, which is managed by his brother Eldad. Less than a decade after entering this hot market, CAA’s catalog includes more than 250 products, most of which have become part of every self-respecting gun owner’s “combat pack.”
Oz spent almost nine years serving in elite special ops units. When he left, he turned to manufacturing arms accessories, which only a combat soldier can understand and assess the need for: tools to improve the accuracy of firearms and improve the ease of use of guns and rifles, such as some that improve grip and allow for stabilizing the weapon, in order to improve performance. Among the company’s clients are many Israeli security companies, such as the Israel Security Agency, the IDF, the Israel Police, and the Israel Prison Service.
A Hard Plastic Case
For a growing company managed by an ambitious man, the Israeli market is too small - a good enough reason to market “Roni,” one of the company’s patented inventions, to the world. Roni transforms essentially any gun into a rifle - it is a heavily accessorized hard-plastic case that gives the gun the appearance of a large weapon. It improves efficiency by increasing firing range and accuracy significantly: “First of all, a gun with Roni is intimidating,” says Oz, “Secondly, it is far more accurate than a handgun. It comes with an advanced sight, a flashlight, and other accessories, depending on the customer’s needs. Shots are fired from the same gun: the trigger is the same trigger and the barrel is the same barrel. It reduces misfires, is accurate to a 100 meter range, and is much lighter than sub-machine guns, like the Uzi.
The 5.56mm magazines that sold like hotcakes in the US over the past year, and are being snatched up by the IDF as well, are Oz’s own patented design: unlike the familiar metal magazines, they are made of a polymer material that dramatically reduces the number of failures to fire, and a window that runs down its length allows the fighter to constantly monitor how many bullets are left.
With the old magazines, soldiers were only able to tell when they were running out of bullets by using tracer bullets, which were loaded in the bottom of the magazine, and signaled to the soldier that it was time to prepare the next magazine: “Meanwhile, the global market is only demanding more products, accessories, and innovations,” says Oz in response to the question of whether the belt-tightening and defense budget cuts in many countries are threatening him. “We have an abundance of ideas. We have many development initiatives, and most of them show returns on the investment after three or four months. In this market, customers constantly want innovations, and we intend to deliver them.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 13, 2013
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