Our good friends at The Trace have just published a story about how an old law suit may be used to bring the gun industry out of the shadows and give everyone access to all those gun-industry ‘secrets’ which we have never been told before. The story concerns a lawsuit by the city of Gary, IN charging gun makers with failing to prevent their products from ending up in the ‘wrong hands.’

              One of the common mis-perceptions about the gun business which floats around in Gun-control Nation is the idea that the gun industry is this secret cabal of bloodthirsty gun makers who go out of their way to keep their business as quiet and as far away from public scrutiny as they can.

              The ‘public’ face of the industry, so it is said, is the NRA. But behind the scenes, working to make sure that guns end up being used to kill, injure, and maim, are these bloodsucking, ‘opaque’ gun makers whose behavior is really the reason that gun injuries even occur.

              And what is worse, these stealthy manufacturers are protected by the federal government because they are not only immunized against class-action suits under the notorious PLCCA law,  but their products are also not controlled in any way by the Consumer Products Safety Council which was set up to track injuries caused by all consumer products like bicycles and teddy bears.

              No wonder the gun industry gets away with murder in a literal sense.

              Except there’s only one little problem with this scenario, which our friends at The Trace appear to have discounted as well. And the little problem is that it’s simply not true. In fact, the gun industry is regulated to a much greater degree than any other consumer-product industry, believe it or not.

              If I want to open a store and sell cigarettes to the residents in my town, I just need to get a retail license from the Town Clerk which costs $20 bucks and open an account with the State Department of Finance so that I can send them a monthly payment for the sales tax that I collect. I also have to make sure that my store isn’t across the street from a school, and I have to post a sign in the store that I will not sell cigarettes to anyone under the age of twenty-one.

              Want to know what I have to do to sell guns along with those cigarettes? I not only have to get the retail and sales tax licenses and post the same signage in my shop, I also have to get both state and federal dealer’s licenses to receive and sell guns, along with having my shop inspected by the local police chief who then signs off on my federal license application to the ATF.

Once I get my dealer’s license from the Feds, I then have to keep meticulous records on each and every sale of a gun. I also have to make sure that every customer who buys a gun is first approved for that purchase by the FBI, and these records can all be examined at any time by an ATF team which can walk into my shop without prior notification of a any kind, and hang around checking these records for as long as they like.

Incidentally, these ATF inspectors can and do also show up and examine the same information at every gun-making company and every wholesaler who sells guns to retailers like me.

Are you going to tell me that cigarettes are less dangerous than guns, particularly now that many of the most devoted cigarette addicts are switching to vapes whose health risks we still don’t even understand?

The article in The Trace laments the fact that 16,000 people will be killed this year in gun homicides. The CDC says that more than 440,000 people will die from smoking this year.

And everyone’s so concerned about bringing the ‘secret’ gun industry into the open? Give me a break.

Amazon.com : what is an assault rifle?