NSSF Salutes America’s Veterans • NSSF

November 10, 2026

By Mark Oliva

This Veterans Day, Nov. 11, the firearm industry pauses to honor the day the guns fell silent.

The confounding question of where we find such men and women who possess the courage and moral and physical stamina to endure war and all that accompanies war to fight for an idea — freedom for their fellow man and woman — is answered this day every year. Those answers are all around us. They are the American veterans who walk the sidewalks of our neighborhoods and, for many of us in the firearm industry, they walk our factory floors, lead our nation’s firearm manufacturing, cutting-edge innovation and design and continue to make those freedoms we treasure so dearly a tangible reality.

Our nation’s history, and that of America’s firearm manufacturers, is sewn together because of those veterans.

Veterans Day was originally established as Armistice Day, a day to mark the cessation of hostilities of World War I, or The Great War, as it was called then. It took effect on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918. It was known as “the war to end all wars.” Unfortunately, wars did not end.

Fortunately, though, American veterans continued, and continue still, to answer the clarion call to defend freedom here in America and venerated battlefields and the seas and air across the globe. The firearm industry was, and still is, with our warfighters every step of the way.

The Arms

In World War I, American troops carried a variety of small arms into battle, including the M1903 Springfield rifle produced by Springfield Armory, the Colt M1911 and the Colt and Smith & Wesson M1917 revolvers. Winchester made the Model 1897 and Model 1912 shotguns and Remington made the Model 10 shotgun, the trench guns that were favored in the brutal close-quarters fighting.

John Moses Browning, aside from designing the M1911, brought forth the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle, and the Browning M1917, a heavy, water-cooled machine gun. American gun manufacturers continue that legacy and commitment to arming our warriors with the tools needed to secure liberty at home and abroad.

President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Armistice Day a year after those guns fell silent, telling the nation, “To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.”

The Veterans

That peace is fragile and too many times, even in the 21st century, has been broken. It is our veterans who rose to the occasion to blunt tyranny, repel malevolence and safeguard American freedom. President Ronald Reagan reminded us that our commitment to freedom’s cause requires vigilance and constant patriotic renewal.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” President Reagan said in 1967, when he was inaugurated as California’s governor. “We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

This freedom we enjoy as Americans, to determine our own future, to pursue life, liberty and happiness, to raise our children and grandchildren with the hope and promise of a better future, was purchased with a price. For that, our America’s firearm industry pauses, we reflect, we honor and we celebrate that such men and women rose from our cities, hometowns and villages to answer the call to arms, pledge their lives to defend the ideals protected by the U.S. Constitution and march into harm’s way.

The uniforms have changed. The enemies have changed. The firearms our forces carry into battle have changed, though Browning’s M2 “Ma Deuce” which entered service in 1933 continues its role in today’s U.S. military’s arsenal. The common thread that is sewn through all those wars, generations and decades that seemingly drift past us like vapor, is that America continues to be renewed by the rising generation of veterans.

Today, especially today, America’s firearm industry salutes the American veteran. The answer to the question of where we find such men and women is before us. Our freedom is indebted to you.

Mark Oliva is Managing Director of Public Affairs for NSSF, The Firearm Industry Trade Association. He is a retired Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant with 25 years of service, including tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Albania and Zaire.

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