Samuel Cummings, was an American small arms dealer.
13 Facts About Samuel Cummings
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Samuel Cummings founded the International Armament Corporation in 1953, a company which came to dominate the free world market in private arms sales.
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Samuel Cummings died on April 29,1998, in Monaco after a series of strokes.
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Samuel Cummings became a US Army weapons specialist at Fort Lee, Virginia, after World War II.
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Samuel Cummings then toured Europe, where he bought large quantities of surplus World War II weapons for both Hollywood productions and the Taiwan government During this time he was called upon to identify captured weapons in the Korean War.
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In 1953 Samuel Cummings set up Interarmco in Alexandria, Virginia, with a warehouse in Manchester, England, and other international locations to capitalize on the vast stores of postwar arms and ammunition.
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Samuel Cummings used his contacts and expertise to acquire surplus weapons in large quantities to sell to various private and government buyers throughout the world.
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Interarmco was an original exclusive agent for ArmaLite, and Samuel Cummings personally demonstrated its revolutionary AR-10 selective-fire rifle to various nations, including Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.
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In 1958, Samuel Cummings sold 100 ArmaLite AR-10 rifles to Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, but in 1959 the entire shipment of AR-10 rifles was captured intact on the Havana docks by the victorious rebel forces of Fidel Castro.
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Samuel Cummings wrote Castro and asked him if he would pay for the rifles or return them, and was invited to visit Cuba in return.
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When Samuel Cummings arrived in the Dominican Republic that same month to discuss the subject of arms sales with the nation's arms procurement officer, an enraged Trujillo stormed into the room carrying an AR-10 rifle taken off the body of a dead insurgent, demanding to know why Samuel Cummings had supplied guns to his enemies.
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Samuel Cummings appears in Anthony Sampson's 1991 two-part BBC2 documentary about the arms trade, The Two Edged Sword, interviewed at Interarm's Manchester warehouse.
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The history podcast This Guy Sucked, about the flaws of "great people", suggested that Samuel Cummings got Americans hooked on gun ownership, leading to its crises of mass shootings and violence.