It has to be my fault. There’s simply no way that a media organization as sophisticated and professional as 24/7 Wall Street could do a story about guns and get it so completely wrong. So, I have to assume that although I have described what the FBI-NICS numbers mean at least two dozen times, obviously I’m doing it in a way that simply doesn’t allow the reporter who wrote about guns for 24/7 to get what I’m saying at all.
Yesterday, 24/7 ran a story with a headline which said there was one state which already racked up more than 5 millions gun sales this year. One state has already accounted for the purchase of 5 million guns? In 2019, the total for all guns manufactured in the United States was 6.5 million, of which 200,000 were exported and the rest were sold here. Now I know the Pandemic increased gun sales exponentially in 2020, but how could one state, identified as Illinois, register more gun sales in five months this year than the total gun sales for the entire United States in 2019?
In fact, it didn’t happen. It didn’t come close to happening. So, I guess this means that for the umpteenth time I have to explain the meaning of those monthly FBI-NICS numbers that the reporter for 24/7 Wall Street didn’t understand at all. Here goes.
In May, the state of Illinois connected up to the FBI-NICS call center 998,926 times. In April the number of calls from Illinois to the FBI-NICS desk was 955,439; March was 1,427,917; February was 902,029, and January was 1,002,118. Round it off and you get 5.3 million background checks for residents of Illinois.
There’s only one little problem. Ready? Of those 5,3 million calls, roughly 245,000 (I’m rounding off) were for background checks covering the purchase of guns. The rest of those calls, the other 5.2 million calls, were for approval of new gun permits, rechecks of previously issued permits, and guns redeemed out of pawn. Illinois doesn’t yet require background checks for person-to-person private sales which in California, for example, accounts for another 7,000 – 8,000 background checks each and every month.
What the FBI-NICS numbers really show, if the reporter for 24/7 Wall Street would like to know what he is writing about, is that the great 2020 surge in Pandemic gun sales is, like the Pandemic, beginning to slowly but surely fade away. In May 2020, Americans bought 955,278 handguns, last month that number dropped 20% to 767,314.
The reason the reporter for 24/7 Wall Street made such a big goof is because he looked at the wrong NICS dataset published by the FBI. He based his story on the dataset which lists calls received by the NICS call center for each state but doesn’t break down the reason for the call: NICS Firearm Checks: Month/Year by State — FBI. What he should have been referencing was the dataset which shows not only the number of calls per state, but the reason why the calls were made: NICS Firearm Checks: Month/Year by State/Type — FBI.
Unfortunately, the writer of this article is not just some kid reporter. He’s Douglas McIntyre, not only Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Editor-in-Chief of 24/7 Wall Street, but “an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income, and travel.” A Magna Cum Laude graduate from Harvard College, obviously McIntyre’s choice of major at America’s oldest University didn’t include a course on guns.
Am I surprised that someone as educated and professionally experienced as Douglas McIntyre could write a story about the gun business and get it so utterly and completely wrong? To the contrary, I have to assume that his sudden interest in guns reflects an awareness that with the current political alignment in D.C., we might actually see a gun-control bill debated and even passed on Capitol Hill.
Let’s just hope that if such a debate occurs, that our Congressional friends supporting a new law to reduce gun violence will rely on sources more accurate than 24/7 Wall Street.
Jun 06, 2021 @ 12:07:52
And I’m sure that if our Congressional friends who support a new law to reduce “gun violence” it will have a significant impact on reducing “gun violence.” Just like all those other 20,000+ laws already on the books.
Mike you have described what the FBI-NICS numbers mean at least two dozen time. So maybe it’s not that you’re doing it in a way that simply doesn’t allow the reporter to get what you’re saying, but it’s that the reporter just doesn’t care about you.
Remember, definitions matter and when those definitions get in the way of your narrative…ignore then.