Machine gun-maker violates federal election law with illegal super PAC donation

An Ohio maker of firearms and warfare weaponry, which says its “notable customers” include the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy, has violated federal election law.

Ohio Ordnance Works of Chadron, Ohio, whose fully automatic machine guns are “currently deployed by U.S. and international forces” and “ready for battle right out of the box,” will pay a $19,000 fine, according to an agreement with the Federal Election Commission.

The company admitted making money from the U.S. government as a contractor and, later, making a $100,000 donation to a right-wing super PAC, said the conciliation agreement with the FEC, a bipartisan regulatory agency.

That’s against federal election law, which bars “contributions to political committees by any person who enters into a contract with the United States or its departments … if payment on such contract is to be made in whole or in part from funds appropriated by Congress.”

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A complaint to the FEC said Ohio Ordnance Works made the donation in 2022 to the Club for Growth Action, which lists as a priority “defeating big-government Democrats in red seats and swing districts and replacing them with pro-growth conservatives.”

Club for Growth Action refunded the $100,000 contribution in May of this year, and the FEC did not penalize the super PAC.

As a super PAC, Club for Growth Action may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for and against political candidates, and it frequently does so in support of conservative politicians. During the 2021-2022 election cycle alone, it spent nearly $70 million to back or attack federal-level candidates, according to nonpartisan research organization OpenSecrets.

Ohio Ordnance Works had argued that while it did have a “master contract” with the Defense Logistics Agency, an agency within the U.S. Department of Defense, it wasn’t a federal contractor because there were no active purchase orders when it made the donation to Club for Growth Action.

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But the FEC’s legal office disagreed, and the agency’s six commissioners — three Republicans, three Democrats — unanimously voted to approve the $19,000 fine.

Ohio Ordnance Works says it has “grown into a world class manufacturer of light, medium, and heavy machine guns able to compete globally with much larger manufacturers.”

The company’s website features the OOW249 Squad Automatic Weapon (S.A.W.), which “provides infantry fire teams with the heavy volume of fire of a machine gun combined with light weight and accuracy. It fires the NATO standard 5.56mm cartridge from a belt or magazine, and is capable of engaging targets out to 800 meters.”