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Do More Guns Being Sold Mean That More People Own Guns? Don’t You Believe It.

November 6, 2015

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It’s another year until we elect the next occupant of the White House, but the gun industry is in full swing reminding gun owners that a Democratic win will result in yet another attempt to confiscate everyone’s guns.  And the Democrats, much to the joy of the NRA, are making it clear that gun control will be an issue in the upcoming election, particularly if the ticket is headed by a lady raised in a suburb of Chicago who would love to spend the next four years back in Washington, D.C.

Best gun salesman ever!

The dirty little secret about the gun business is that gun sales spike upward when gun owners believe they won’t be able to buy any more guns.  You can get a pretty good idea of this situation from the ATF’s annual report on gun manufacturing, which shows that 40 million guns were manufactured and imported between 2009 and 2012, an increase from 24 million manufactured and imported the previous four years.  That’s a rise of 66% from the last four years of George Wubbleyou through the first four years of You Know Who, and the numbers during the second term of what Rush calls ‘the regime’ have stayed just as strong.

Even Apple doesn’t have sales increases compared to what’s happened with guns.  If you purchased Smith & Wesson stock for what was about three bucks a share in 2008, you could sell it today for $18. Ruger’s stock was around eight bucks when Barack took the Oath in 2008, now it’s sitting above $52 a share.  Google has gone from $200 to $700 over the same period.  Guess what?  The crummy, old gun business has outperformed hi-tech.

In addition to an unprecedented sales increase, the attitudes of Americans have clearly softened when it comes to attitudes about guns.  The polls say that a majority of Americans believe a household with a gun is safer than a household unarmed.  Americans also believe that we need more 2nd-Amendment rights and less laws regulating small arms.  So under Obama the industry has achieved both remarkable sales and acceptance of a laissez-faire attitude regarding additional laws. Is it any wonder the gun industry doesn’t let a day pass without trumpeting ‘gun-grabbing’ charges against Hillary and the rest of the ‘Democrat’ gang?

There’s only one little problem.  Underneath this blanket of good news, the gun industry is facing a problem that won’t be overcome no matter how loud they talk about America’s love of guns.  And the problem has to do with the fact that every year the number of Americans who legally own guns keeps going down.  It used to be that the decline in the percentage of households with guns was slightly less than the increase in the overall population; hence, the raw number of families with guns continued to go up.  But this is no longer the case, with recent surveys showing that the drop in percentages of homes with guns has been greater than the increase in the population as a whole.

Another, even more disquieting trend facing the gun industry is that the demographic groups whose growth increasingly spurs population as a whole – women, new immigrants, minorities, millennials – are not particularly pro-gun.  Dana Loesch can yap all she wants about the ‘millions’ of American mothers who protect their families by being armed and Colion whatever-his-name can prance around with an AR telling inner-city residents that a gun will make them ‘free,’ but both of those canned and stupid scripts are falling on deaf ears.

I would love to see just one survey which after finding that a majority of Americans believe that a gun will protect them from crime, then ask the same population whether they have actually gone out and bought a gun. It hasn’t happened, it’s not going to happen, and the gun industry knows full well that for a majority of Americans, there’s no love lost with guns.

 

 

It’s Official! According To The NRA Mike The Gun Guy Hates Lawful Gun Owners.

November 5, 2015

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Last week I wrote a column about Amanda Gailey’s new button collection which, as I understand it, has sold out.  And it didn’t take long for the NRA to respond with a comment on one of their websites, which referred to my ‘hateful rhetoric against law-abiding gun owners’ and my hateful this and hateful that.  Which of course then spawned the usual torrent of literate and thoughtful emails from people who wanted me to know just how hateful I really am.

Here’s a couple of examples of the emails that I received:  “Letting all my friends and business associates know what a lying piece of crap you are.”  “Next time get your facts straight, asshole.” And from my Facebook page: “You must be a cowered [sic] and scared of guns. “What a dumbass you are.”  “Stupid ass racist” This last comment was posted against the column I wrote on Colion Noir.

hatred               I receive messages like this all the time.  They used to include some more threatening comments but the word has gotten around that the ATF and FBI routinely scan certain web venues looking for hints that someone is thinking of doing something stupid or dangerous with a gun.  But what I find most interesting about this correspondence, in a bizarre sort of way, is that allegedly I am receiving it because these folks are so offended by the ‘hateful’ rhetoric that I always employ.

Talking about hateful rhetoric, have you ever considered the fact that the only times you can listen to Rush doing a live radio broadcast anywhere in the United States is between 9 and 3? In other words, basically his audience consists of people who don’t work.  Oh yea, there are a couple of salesmen driving around in their cars and maybe an over-the-road trucker here and there, but I worked in corporate environments for years and you just didn’t sit at your desk with a radio that blared AM.

For all his talk about the virtues of hard work, free enterprise and profitable gains, the fact is that most of the people who listen to Rush are sitting on their rear ends at home.  And most of them are probably good and pissed off because they really have nothing to do.  My father spent the last ten years of his life sitting around getting increasingly angry about a world that he didn’t understand except the truth is that it was world that had passed him by. And if you listen to Rush, and I listen to him all the time because I like to keep my enemies closer than my friends, he’s always invoking a world that has somehow changed and no longer is a fit place for the kind of people who listen to his show.

The folks who send me those angry emails seem to be cut from the same cloth.  Let’s be honest. If you actually had time to sit down and email such nonsense to someone you don’t even know, isn’t this an indication that maybe, just maybe you have nothing better to do with your time? I once showed some of these messages on my Facebook page to a high-ranking official with the ATF who told me that I needed to consider some kind of personal protection; to which I told him that the odds of some jerk getting drunk and plowing his car into mine were much greater than getting shot by some guy who was upset by what I write.  First of all, in order to attack me, the guy would have to get dressed and come out of his house.

The NRA can accuse me of being an enemy of law-abiding gun owners, but what I am really opposed to is an organization that used to promote gun ownership for hunting, collecting and sport but now justifies its existence through appeals to fear.  What I’m saying is true, and if you need proof just take a look at the comments about me that crop up every time I say it again.

 

The GVP Community Had A Big Night At The National Cathedral And They’ll Have More.

November 4, 2015

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Yesterday I had the great honor and pleasure to attend the United To Stop Gun Violence event at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.  I joined hundreds of others for a program of remarks, tributes, musical moments and videos, all focusing on the issue of gun violence and what needs to be done to stop it now.  It’s difficult, if not impossible, to sit within the lofty and majestic naves of the Cathedral and not feel inspired by what you see and hear.  But I can tell you in this case that we could have been sitting around a campfire in Rock Creek Park and the feelings of strength, dedication and sense of purpose would have been the same.

cathedral2                The program was the handiwork of the Cathedral’s Gun Violence Prevention Group who were described as a “band of determined advocates” in the program that we all received.  Let me tell you something right off the bat.  This bunch isn‘t just determined; they are determined to succeed.  The first thing that impressed me more than anything else about the evening was the shared commitment to solving this problem no matter how long it takes.

The second thing that impressed me was the diversity of the crowd, both on the stage and in the audience watching the event.  Every major religion was represented, there were no racial ‘minorities’ because, if anything, people of color seemed to be everywhere I looked, as well as speaking and performing on the stage.  And as opposed to NRA get-togethers or gun shows where the guys far and away outnumber the gals, at last night’s event clearly the women had the upper hand.

Finally, what impressed me most of all was the number of organizations and groups who displayed literature, sign-up sheets, fresh fruit and (thank goodness) Snickers to slake the hunger and thirst of itinerant travelers like me.  The whole point of the evening was to create a venue in which as many organizations as possible could introduce themselves to a wider audience, engage folks to get more involved, and build an even greater sense of purpose in the gun violence prevention community as a whole.  I spent time chatting with a number of the organizational staff and I figured out that these groups probably represented at least 100,000 activists, if not more.

Now 100,000 may sound like a paltry number when compared to the millions which the NRA claims to represent, but the issue isn’t numbers, it’s energy and commitment, which is what will ultimately prove out.  The fact that the NRA claims to have 4 million members basically means that 3-4% of the nation’s gun owners give the NRA thirty bucks a year to get a monthly magazine (which happens to be a very good publication) and a decal for their car.  They can also buy some low-cost gun insurance, get discounts at some motels, the standard fare offered by any membership organization, whether it’s the NRA or the AARP.

I’m not questioning the fact that some NRA supporters are always willing to stand up, shout out, do whatever they can do to ‘protect’ their 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’  But while the NRA makes its members feel they share a common bond, namely, the ownership of guns, I don’t suspect they draw many people into the pro-gun fold unless they own guns. And here is where the GVP community, if it continues to forge ahead, has a potential for strength that the NRA simply can’t match.  Because when all is said and done, more and more Americans just don’t believe in guns.

I was convinced that the push to strengthen gun laws would run for about a year after the massacre at Sandy Hook.  The gun-control clamor didn’t even last that long after Gabby was shot. But I didn’t get the feeling that the people who were present at the Cathedral last night are going to fade away.  If anything, I suspect that GVP as a defining issue in the public dialog is here to stay.

 

 

My Response To Colion Noir: Guns Don’t Make You Free.

November 4, 2015

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I knew that something had been posted about me on the internet when I started to receive a more-than-usual number of emails which began with ‘Dear Mike Rat-Ass,’ or ‘Hello Mike You Jerk,’ and other bright and cheery salutations.  And it turned out that the NRA, in response to my comments about its racist appeal to the membership, unleashed their African-American attack dog, Colion Noir, who went after me today in a video he stuck up for everyone to see.

And Colion’s correct in that I did mistakenly accuse the NRA of identifying a young man who was shot in a Chicago playground as a bad-ass who shot and killed a young girl in St. Louis; same name, wrong picture, but it doesn’t change the validity of what I said.  And what I said, and I won’t back down, is that the NRA has been and continues to pander to racial animosities as a way of doing what they do best, namely, using fear to promote the ownership of guns.

noir                Fear is the most dangerous of all human emotions.  A little bit is a good thing, because we need ways to warn ourselves that something is too risky or will yield results that will hurt more than help.  But fear can also spur over-reactions which lead to violence and destruction – a phenomenon in history we have witnessed too many times.  I support the NRA 100% when they talk about gun ownership for hunting, collecting and sport. But when they promote guns by pandering to fear, that’s where I draw the line. If Colion doesn’t like it, he can lay brick.

A new study conducted by Nobel Prize-winner Angus Deaton has found that white males, ages 45 to 54 with no more than a high-school education have recently shown an alarming increase in mortality due to substance abuse; typically alcoholic liver disease or overdoses of heroin and other opioid drugs. The numbers constitute an ‘epidemic’ and parallel an unprecedented increase in suicides within the same group.  Not surprisingly, this population has also been unable to surmount the economic difficulties of the past decade, with household incomes dropping by as much as 19 percent!

 

Middle-age white men with high school education at best – is there a particular group in America which fits that profile to a greater or lesser degree? It’s the group which remains the core of the gun-owning population, no matter what Colion Noir and Dana Loesch try to pretend about all those women and minorities going out to buy guns. Noir can call me all the names he wants, but when he says that what I’m doing is trying to ‘manipulate’ black people away from the ‘gun rights’ issue, he’s just going back to the same old crap that the NRA has been using to try and convince African-Americans that guns are their first line of defense against the depredations of ghetto life that many still endure.

On the other hand, if you are a white, middle-age male without a job and without much of a future, you become susceptible to alcohol, to drugs, to depression, and there’s a good chance you’ll walk around all day feeling pissed off.  And it’s this anger, this fear of yet the next unpredictable catastrophe that makes some respond to the NRA message which says that you are more in control and have less to fear if you walk around with a gun.

The Huffington column has been corrected and I apologize to Wayne-o for what was my error, not his.  But if Colion or Collins or whatever his name believes that prancing around with an AR-15 makes him ‘free,’ then he’s either appealing to the lowest common intellectual denominator or to a messed-up mind of some teenage-boy who spends all day playing video games and watching tv.

Want to walk around with a gun?  That’s fine.  But understand you are increasing, not diminishing risk and if the NRA would just come out and admit what Colion wants to pretend he doesn’t know, Wayne-o would get no argument from me.

Lesley Stahl Might Re-think What She Knows About Smart Guns.

November 2, 2015

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With all due respect to Lesley Stahl and the staff that produced the 60 Minutes segment on smart guns, the show basically mangled the history of smart gun technology beyond repair.  And what I am referring to is her discussion about the NRA boycott of Smith & Wesson back in 1999 which brought smart-gun innovation efforts to a grinding halt. According to Stahl, the government made a deal with S&W that would have required the company to invest profits from the sale of regular guns into the development of smart guns, leading to a boycott of the gun maker which then meant that “no big U.S. gun maker ever went near a smart gun.”

Stahl’s storyline is not only important for understanding why smart-gun technologies never got off the ground, but also for explaining why the NRA and other gun organizations view smart guns as just another arrow in the gun-grabber’s quiver that is always aimed at the legal ownership of guns.  Stahl herself posted a headline on the show from the NRA-ILA website which says, “smart guns could open the door to a ban on all other guns.”  And when you stop and think about it, the ‘slippery-slope’ mantra of how any gun regulation will eventually lead to confiscation is what the gun violence argument is really all about.

armatix                There’s only one little problem.  If you want to use the Smith & Wesson boycott to explain the origins of the gun lobby’s mistrust of smart guns, you’d better get your facts straight.  Because to begin with, the boycott wasn’t led by the NRA at all, and the reasons for the boycott had nothing to do with the part of the Clinton – S&W agreement that would have mandated investment in smart guns. Here’s what really happened.

During the Clinton Administration, the gun industry faced a series of torts brought by city governments and the NAACP who claimed that the industry was not effectively policing the sale of its products, hence there were too many deaths and injuries from guns.  In the midst of the legal battle, Clinton offered the gun makers relief by asking them to agree to new sales and distribution practices in return for which the government would immunize them against tort suits.  A committee representing the gun industry began negotiating with the Clinton bunch, then S&W jumped ship, walked away from the negotiations and announced they were ready to cut their own deal.  The boycott was initiated by S&W’s largest distributor, a company called RSR, and while the NRA came around and supported the boycott, they never really led the fight.

I not only recall the boycott, but I also have taken the trouble to read the agreement which S&W actually signed.  What’s interesting about the agreement is that some of its provisions (gun locks, loaded chamber indicators) were adopted by the gun industry without real pushback of any kind.  But the heart of the agreement was the requirement that gun makers would also be responsible for the behavior of all dealers selling their guns.  And let’s understand that being a gun dealer for Smith & Wesson isn’t like being a car dealer for General Motors or Ford.  Want to be a Smith & Wesson dealer?  Buy a dealer’s license from the ATF and get some wholesaler to ship you a Smith & Wesson gun.  Back in the early 90s, S&W conducted a survey of who was selling their products, and they found that 90% of their dealers transferred less than 50 every year.  The reason that one of the company’s distributors led the boycott was because this wholesaler knew that the terms of this agreement – at the point of sale – could never be met.

I’m not so sure that the gun industry was wrong in viewing this agreement as a back-door effort to get rid of guns. Which means that the slippery-slope argument against gun control may contain a grain of truth.  And remember, we’re dealing with an industry in which a little bit of truth goes a long, long way.

Want To Play Fast And Loose With Facts? Follow What The NRA Says About Guns.

November 2, 2015

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If it weren’t for the fact that the NRA continues to make public statements that are at such variance with the truth, I would probably cease responding to their continued efforts to persuade America that more guns are good, less guns are bad.  Because all their talk and all their noise hasn’t convinced an increasing share of Americans to own guns, even if public opinion polls indicate that a majority of Americans believe that gun ownership makes us safe. The NRA’s latest flight from reality is their response to Obama’s speech delivered in Chicago to the annual meeting of the IACP.  As usual, the President lamented the failure of Congress to pass new gun-control laws, and since the NRA would prefer there were no laws regulating the sale or ownership of guns, if Obama says yes, they have to say no.

The NRA’s nay-saying began by actually agreeing with the President when he said that crime rates had fallen to historic lows.  I suspect, incidentally, that when the crime numbers are published for 2015 (Obama was referring to crime stats for 2013), we will see the downward trend reversed.  According to my friends at the Gun Violence Archive, the number of gun homicides this year has already surpassed all of 2014, and we have a couple of months still to go, plus the GVA has no choice but to understate the actual number given that it compiles real-time data from unofficial (i.e., media) reports.

Best gun salesman ever!

Of course whatever the true gun violence number turns out to be, the NRA will remind us that the number would be much higher because the current downward trend is due to the ownership of all those guns.  One can’t argue the fact that there has been a 50% reduction in violent crime over the last twenty years, a period that has also witnessed somewhere around 150 million new guns getting into civilian hands.  But the NRA has never been one to caution its supporters that coincidence and causality are two very different words, and the Brennan Center’s very careful study of the causes for the decline in crime found “no evidence” that increased gun ownership or the issuance of concealed-carry licenses made any difference at all.

But I want to say something here that I have been saying to my GVP friends again and again; the effort to promote gun regulations both at the federal level and within individual states is grounded in the notion that public policies should flow from a commitment to evidence-based information, or what we call ‘facts.’  Not that both sides necessarily agree on the facts, but at least there should be some acknowledgement on both sides that facts are an indispensable component in any public-policy debate.

The problem is that, generally speaking, the NRA could care less about facts.  After all, they are in the business of promoting gun ownership and as long as what they say about guns doesn’t create legal threats to their welfare, it really doesn’t matter whether what they say bears any relation to the truth.  I’ll give you a couple of examples from this NRA-ILA screed.

The NRA states that the President insulted the intelligence of the American people by ‘ridiculously’ asserting that “it is easier for young people in some communities to find a gun than to find fresh vegetables at the supermarket.”  What’s so insulting about that?  Inner-city neighborhoods are notoriously devoid of fresh, nutritious foods; they are also notorious for the ease with which one can pick up an illegal gun.  In contrast, according to the NRA, a law-abiding individual has to undergo a background check and fill out a “six-page federal form.”  Actually, the buyer fills out one page, four of the remaining five pages are instructions and boilerplate always attached to all federal forms.

I’m not saying that the GVP community should detach itself from a commitment to facts.  But they should not operate under any illusion that fact-based arguments will yield a fact-based response from the other side. Don’t worry – it won’t.

 

 

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