Blaze News original: Ammo shop known for trolling Biden voters embraces controversial image

Novi, Michigan — Fenix Ammunition, a small shop about a half-hour west of Detroit that remanufactures ammo mainly used by competitive shooters, suddenly became a national name more than four years ago after it began publicly trolling those who voted for Joe Biden in the controversial 2020 election.

Since then, brothers and co-owners Justin and Kyle Nazaroff have embraced their online infamy. Blaze News visited their facility in Novi, Michigan, and learned the personal and professional reasons for their company's political activism.

Background

Justin Nazaroff told Blaze News that while he's always been a politically minded, "Libertarian" kind of guy, he never intended to mix his personal opinions with professional marketing when Fenix opened in October 2016, just a few weeks before President Donald Trump was elected to his first term.

At the time, Justin was still working with an insurance company and wanted to keep his private and business lives separate.

"I thought, 'This is a business. Treat it like a business. This is not you. This is not a reflection of you. This is just a business that you're running,'" Justin recalled.

That all changed after the next presidential election in 2020 that forced Trump out of the Oval Office for four years and replaced him with Biden, who considers the right to bear arms "limited" and who campaigned on ending "the online sale of firearms and ammunitions," according to an archived version of his campaign website.

The election of Biden posed a direct threat to Fenix and other small-time ammo shops that primarily sell their products online. But with the 2020 BLM riots still lingering in the background and a country gone stir-crazy by COVID lockdowns, orders for ammunition kept pouring in so fast that the folks at Fenix could barely keep up.

Even Biden voters, fearful of possible violence, were ordering ammo for self-defense. At that point, Justin said he decided to have a bit of fun and force buyers to check a box confirming that they had not voted for Biden before completing their purchase.

"I just wanted to see if anybody would notice, right? I thought I would get some laughs, [and] people on Twitter would say, 'Oh look what these guys added to the website,'" Justin claimed.

Justin said he was floored when a woman called to complain that she could not complete her order without checking the box. Justin told Blaze News that he tried to explain to the woman the disconnect between buying ammo online and voting for the candidate who wanted to ban online ammo sales, but he got nowhere.

"She said, 'Well yeah, I get that, but [Biden's] not really banning it. He's just reducing the amount of ammo you have,'" Justin recounted.

"That's when it just clicked in my head," Justin continued, "some people you're just never going to be able to reason with."

The argument with the woman prompted Justin to take an even bolder stance with the Fenix website and create a splash page demanding buyers confirm the way they voted in 2020. Those who did not vote for Biden were permitted to continue processing their order. Those who did were redirected to the Second Amendment page on Biden's campaign website.

Justin indicated to Blaze News that the purpose of the splash page was to educate voters on Biden's true platform. "There are some people who maybe still are reachable, but they really honestly don't know all the things that he's saying he wants to do," Justin reasoned at the time.

Mean tweets

Within weeks, the splash page on the Fenix website had made national news, and pundits on right-leaning and left-leaning outlets alike weighed in on Fenix's political activism.

By early 2021, Justin, who controls all the social media content for Fenix, decided to stop the pretense of political neutrality in the marketing for Fenix and instead took to Twitter, now called X, to stand in solidarity with many of his faithful customers who felt that their views regarding the Second Amendment had been ignored.

"We got to get people interested. How do we do that? ... Let's talk about some of these current events," he said.

The move worked, and interest in Fenix skyrocketed. "Our email list got much bigger. We got a lot more followers on Twitter," Justin explained. "You can just see that the interaction is bigger, you're starting to reach more people."

Perhaps the most notable — and controversial — way Fenix began engaging with politics was by printing memes and tweets on the packages sent out to customers. Justin and others snapped photos of the packages and shared them on social media, occasionally sending their liberal targets and others into paroxysms of rage.

Dr. Peter Hotez, who helped develop a COVID booster, even demanded that someone "stop" Fenix personnel from exercising their free speech rights after the company called him a "war criminal."

For Justin, the benefits of the fun labels were twofold. First, they are an inexpensive way to separate Fenix from the competition. Bigger companies cannot afford to engage in politics because they have lucrative contracts with government entities like law enforcement, he said, giving a small firm like Fenix the opportunity to craft a unique brand for mere pennies.

"We are in a market where we have to take that kind of risk ... to survive," he said. "We have to find ways to market it. Funny and unique ways. We don't have the money to blow tens of thousands of dollars on radio or TV ads."

The images also help ingratiate Fenix with its politically active buyers, he said.

"As time went on and we started to understand our customer base more ... I started to be in these worlds with competitive shooters and doing training classes and understanding the radicalism, I suppose you'd say — in a good way," Justin said. "I think it's important for people to be this passionate about ... the ability to protect yourself and other people."

Without the right to bear arms, "you don't have free speech," Justin claimed. "You don't really have anything."

Haters gonna hate

As might be expected, the politically charged tweets and packaging from Fenix prompted a range of reactions. Even some Michigan politicians took notice.

In August 2023, the Michigan Elections Commission sent the company a letter stating that an investigation had been opened into its marketing practices after it received a complaint about a bag with the message "Recall MI State Rep Jaime Churches" emblazoned on it. Churches is a far-left Democrat who advocated for tighter state-level restrictions on gun rights.

The message about Churches may have violated the Michigan Campaign Finance Act because it pushed a "recall vote" without disclosing who had paid to finance the packaging, the MEC claimed.

"Because the materials explicitly advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate ... the materials contain express advocacy as defined by the Act" and therefore require a "paid for by" disclosure, the MEC explained.

The letter even menacingly warned Fenix that such an offense is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 93 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Screenshot of letter. Used with permission.

An attorney for Fenix later denied any coordinated effort to recall state Rep. Churches and claimed that production of the packaging occurred at the Fenix facility at "minimal cost." The Bureau of Elections at the Michigan Department of State dismissed the complaint in November 2023 because of "insufficient evidence."

A year later, state Rep. Churches lost her seat, and Fenix took a victory lap. "We had a great fling, Jaime," the company teased on November 7, 2024, two days after the election.

Screenshot of tweet

Oakland County Commissioner Gwen Markham likewise voiced concerns about Fenix Ammunition. In an email in September 2020, Markham warned Thomas Hardesty, then-county Homeland Security Division manager, and David Molloy, then the Novi chief of police, that Fenix Ammunition had engaged in "hostile" online activity.

"Justin Nazaroff makes his presence known online, and sometimes shows up at events with open carry 'just because I can,'" the email continued. "He likes intimidating people."

Screenshot of email. Used with permission.

Markham did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

But state and local officials are not the only people who have expressed their ire about the unusual packaging and Fenix's brash online presence. Justin showed Blaze News other missives that have been tacked onto what he dubbed the "Wall of Fame," a bulletin board in the office filled mostly with complaints and nasty messages his company has received over the years.

"F*** you! You deserve to get COVID & suffer, you a**hole," one message reads.

"You don't respect the rights of others and, in fact, you don't act like Americans. You should move your business to Russia," says another.

"Half of these are people telling us to f*** off and half of these are people telling us that it's the funniest thing they've ever seen," Justin told Blaze News.

Blaze News photo

Trump incites lukewarm 'optimism'

Though the Nazaroff brothers and the rest of Fenix Ammunition embrace their controversial image and chuckle heartily at the opportunity to troll former President Joe Biden and his voters, they have not always been sold on President Donald Trump, either.

"I actually didn't really take Trump seriously until probably September-ish," Justin told Blaze News, referring to the 2016 election.

Now that Trump is back in office and even issued an executive order entitled "Protecting Second Amendment Rights," Justin is still guarded about what he expects Trump to do this term.

"This EO was issued more than 30 days ago," Justin wrote Blaze News on March 25, "and so far we've received zero commentary from AG Pam Bondi, who seems to be too busy relitigating the Epstein situation to bother with addressing the infringement on our constitutional rights."

"While I have some optimism due to some of the other selections in Trump's Cabinet, I really have no expectation that any MEANINGFUL gun regulations will be removed."

In the meantime, to bolster his business and shore up his skills, Justin has taken to participating in competitive shooting and to making inroads with the next generation to preserve his business and the Second Amendment as best he can.

"We donate money to people who are younger competitive shooters," he said. "We've donated money to schools that are trying to teach firearms education. That's a charity that we support."

"I'm 39 years old," Justin continued, "and I'm the oldest guy here. So I grew up at the beginning of the internet age, and all my guys are a lot younger."

"So we try to stick with meme culture."

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