Reed Knight: KAC, Eugene Stoner, and the Criminal Case

Reed Knight — full name Charles Reed Knight Jr. — is the American firearms manufacturer who founded Knight’s Armament Company (KAC) in 1982 and built it into one of the leading suppliers of rifles, suppressors, and night vision equipment to U.S. Special Operations forces. He is known for his 22-year collaboration with AR-15 designer Eugene Stoner, for assembling one of the largest private military small arms collections in the United States, and, more recently in the news, for the January 2026 arrest of his son, Charles Reed Knight III, on armed burglary and related charges in Brevard County, Florida.¹²

Background and Path Into Firearms

Knight was born in 1945. Before he ever built a rifle, he spent six years in the National Guard, raced stock cars on the national NASCAR circuit, ran a garbage collection company, and operated a police supply store. The police supply store did the work of a career pivot. Selling equipment to law enforcement put him in daily contact with the people who carried firearms for a living, and what they needed, and what they couldn’t easily get. He founded Knight’s Armament Company in Vero Beach, Florida, in 1982.¹

The Partnership With Eugene Stoner

The single relationship that shaped Knight’s career was with Eugene Stoner, the engineer behind the AR-15 and M16. Stoner happened to be living in Vero Beach. Knight cold-called him and invited him to lunch. The lunch turned into a friendship and a working partnership that lasted 22 years, ending only with Stoner’s death in 1997.¹³

Stoner mentored Knight in metallurgy and heat treatment. The two refined the AR-15 platform into the KAC SR-15 and, more consequentially, developed the SR-25, a 7.62mm semi-automatic precision rifle built on Stoner’s original AR-10 design. The SR-25 became the first purpose-built semi-automatic sniper system to see widespread military adoption.¹⁴ They also designed the All American 2000 pistol and sold the design to Colt.

The compensation arrangement was unusual. Instead of a salary or consulting fee, Knight covered jet fuel and operating costs for Stoner’s personal aircraft through KAC’s accounts. Knight also acted as Stoner’s expert witness and representative in dealings with Fairchild Corporation and Colt, and through those negotiations he acquired collections of firearms prototypes and historical machine guns that later formed the core of his museum.¹

Knight has written that Stoner favored incremental improvements over sweeping overhauls, perfecting individual components rather than redesigning entire weapon systems. That philosophy became the house style at KAC.

What Knight’s Armament Company Makes

KAC designs and manufactures small arms, suppressors, weapon accessories, and night vision equipment, mostly for Special Operations forces and counter-terrorism units. The company produced the first Rail Interface System for the AR platform, which became the standard modular mount across military and law enforcement, giving soldiers a way to attach optics, lights, and lasers to a rifle without gunsmithing.¹

The SR-25, first produced in 1990, was adopted early by U.S. Navy SEALs and used in overwatch roles during operations in Somalia. A variant won the Army’s XM110 Semi-Automatic Sniper Rifle competition in 2005 and entered service as the M110 SASS, replacing the older bolt-action M24. The M110 has since been fielded by the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.⁵⁴ In 2020, KAC received a firm-fixed-price Army contract worth approximately $13.5 million for various M110 configurations, with a completion date of September 2025. A newer variant, the M110A2, has appeared in Army use.

The company also runs KnightVision, an in-house division producing clip-on night vision weapon sights. Its inline sights use patented boresight technology to add night capability to an existing day scope without losing zero, and have been supplied to the Army since the mid-1990s. KnightVision serves as the provider for USSOCOM’s long-range Universal Night Sight program.⁶

Federal spending records list Knight, as the sole proprietor behind KAC, receiving roughly $23.4 million in total federal contract awards across 78 transactions, nearly all from the Department of Defense and about $22.85 million of it from the Department of the Army.⁷ Knight has described his approach as distinctly “capitalist” for a defense contractor, keeping proprietary ownership of his designs rather than agreeing to the government-mandated intellectual property sharing common in the industry.¹

The Titusville Campus and the Institute of Military Technology

After September 11, KAC outgrew its Vero Beach facility. In 2002, the company moved to Titusville, Florida, taking over a surplus manufacturing plant that McDonnell Douglas had previously used for Tomahawk missile production and vacated after its merger with Boeing. The campus covers more than 460 acres, with over 600,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space under roof. KAC uses automated systems, robotics, and additive manufacturing, running what it calls “Knight Shift Automation” for 14 to 16 hours of unattended production.²¹

Housed at the same complex is the Institute of Military Technology (IMT), which Knight founded as a private educational institution. It began as his personal reference library of Stoner-designed weapons and grew into one of the largest privately held military small arms collections in the country. IMT spans more than 30,000 square feet of display space and holds small arms tracing the evolution from muzzle-loaders to modern platforms, along with military vehicles, tanks, cannons, and 17th-century suits of armor.⁸⁹ Because of security concerns tied to KAC’s military contracts, the collection has generally stayed closed to the public, though the Institute has opened for large events, including tours for roughly 2,500 guests during the 2009 SHOT Show in Orlando.

The 2026 Case Involving Reed Knight III

The Knight name reentered local news in early 2026 through a criminal case involving his son, Charles Reed Knight III. The case is against the son, not Reed Knight Jr., and remains pending.

On the morning of January 28, 2026, Brevard County deputies responded to reports of a suspicious person on Hillview Circle in Merritt Island. Witnesses said the man had been knocking on doors, damaging security cameras, and tearing up yards. Surveillance video showed Knight III, then 54, striking a security camera with a pitchfork before switching to a hatchet.¹⁰ Homeowner Laura Boles told reporters she opened her front door to find a stranger on her porch with an ax, striking her security camera. Another resident, Loc Vo, said Knight approached him, struck him on the head, and chased him as he ran.¹¹ When deputies arrived, Knight refused to drop what he was holding and threw punches at a deputy before being subdued with a Taser.

Knight was initially held without bond. He made his first court appearance on January 30, 2026, and a judge later set bond at $26,000, with conditions including a SCRAM alcohol-monitoring device, no contact with victims, and no possession of alcohol or drugs.¹¹¹⁰

On February 17, 2026, the State Attorney’s Office formally filed six charges, consolidating multiple cases into a single proceeding: armed burglary of a dwelling, a first-degree felony punishable by up to life in prison; resisting an officer with violence; assault on a law enforcement officer; battery; petit theft; and criminal mischief. Victims had publicly urged prosecutors not to drop the charges, and prosecutors confirmed they would not. A judge granted a motion allowing Knight to travel to Arizona for treatment at a rehabilitation facility while the case continues. Boles told reporters her autistic daughter had been traumatized by the incident and that the attack had “destroyed our entire existence.”¹² As of the most recent available reporting in February 2026, no trial date had been set.

1
RECOIL. Zeroed In: C. Reed Knight II
2
Manufacturing Today. Discover Knight’s Armament Company and Its Leader’s Entrepreneurial Spirit of Innovation
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American Society of Arms Collectors. Knight: Eugene Stoner Design and Guns Before the M16
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RECOIL. Knight’s SR-25 Enhanced Combat Carbine
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Guns.com. Knight’s Armament Wins $13M Army M110 Contract
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Knight’s Armament Company. KnightVision
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USAspending.gov. Recipient Profile: Charles Reed Knight Jr
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SA Defense Journal. Knight’s at the Museum: The Institute for Military Technology
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Institute of Military Technology. Institute of Military Technology
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Fox 35 Orlando. Man With Pitchfork, Hatchet Arrested After Attempted Nighttime Break-Ins
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WESH. Merritt Island Residents Demand Justice After Hatchet, Pitchfork Attack
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Fox 35 Orlando. Victims of Alleged Merritt Island Ax Attack Pushing for Justice, Charges Not to Be Dropped