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Shares in an online gun retailer backed by Donald Trump Jr slid in a volatile market debut as investors assessed the latest push by the US president’s son into the so-called anti-woke economy.
GrabAGun, a marketplace “built for the next generation of firearms enthusiasts and sportsmen,” merged with a special purpose acquisition company earlier this week and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday under the ticker PEW — “a little take off of ‘pew pew,’ like shooting a gun,” Trump Jr explained in an interview with Bloomberg.
Shares in the company plunged as much as 24 per cent as trading began, but recovered by mid-morning, and were last down 12 per cent.
GrabAGun chief executive Marc Nemati, told Trump Jr’s podcast, Triggered, last week that the platform was aimed at “the younger demographic, people like me, who buy everything online”. In a presentation to investors last month, GrabAGun said millennials and Gen Z “are now shaping the future of firearms retail”.
“Why shouldn’t we be able to buy a firearm, which is protected by the second amendment, in the same vein,” Nemati added, referring to the US Constitution provision permitting people to “keep and bear arms”. GrabAGun’s public offering represented a “middle finger” to the advertising companies and social media groups that he said had shunned gun retailers in recent years.
Companies marketing themselves as antidotes to “woke” corporate America have enjoyed a bounce since Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory, as members of the president’s inner circle have tapped into what GrabAGun described in a regulatory filing as the “burgeoning patriotic parallel economy”.
Trump Jr will act as a consultant to the company, which he has promoted heavily on social media site X and his podcast, which airs on Rumble, an alternative to YouTube. He also owns 300,000 shares in an affiliate of GrabAGun.
Former Bank of America Merrill Lynch executive Omeed Malik, who has emerged as a financier to the Maga economy, runs the Spac that GrabAGun merged with and likens the Texas-based group to an “Amazon of guns”. The Spac holds about $170mn from its public offering in 2023.
Malik fundraised for Trump’s 2024 election campaign and founded anti-ESG investment firm 1789 Capital, where Trump Jr is a partner. Malik heads another Spac that in 2023 merged with PublicSquare, an ecommerce platform similar to eBay and Amazon for users who value “life, family and freedom”.
PublicSquare derives the bulk of its revenue from sales of red meat, “natural health” remedies and financing gun purchases, including on GrabAGun.
Established in 2007, GrabAGun says it holds a licence for retail firearm sales and that potential buyers must complete background checks before picking up their guns from licensed dealers. “Accessories and ammunition” can be sent directly to customers, it adds.
GrabAGun booked revenue of $93.1mn in 2024 and boasts that its mobile-first platform includes a “shoot now, pay later” feature allowing customers to finance purchases on credit.
US banks, law firms and other large companies have come under pressure from the Republican party’s demands that they reverse initiatives to boost diversity and work less with the oil and gas industry.
Corporate policies concerning firearms are also in flux. In June, Citi ditched measures introduced in 2018 that limited which firearms companies it would do business with.
Announcing the U-turn, Citi said it “appreciate[s] the concerns that are being raised regarding ‘fair access’ to banking services” and that it would update its employee code of conduct and global financial access policy “to clearly state that we do not discriminate on the basis of political affiliation”.
