Michael R. Weisser's Blog, page 143

Too Many Guns Equals Too Much Gun Violence: Still Arguing About That One?

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What a surprise!  We are treated to yet another piece of research, this time in the American Journal of Medicine that tells us that the ownership of 250 million guns results in more gun violence.  To me, the surprise is not the conclusion of the study, but the fact that medical and public health researchers continue to indulge themselves in trying to prove something which, analytically and logically, is so obvious.

Why is it obvious?  Because the possession of a gun, by definition, creates a risk that disappears if the guns aren’t around.  Now you can go on and on about mitigation strategies – mental health, background checks, enforcement  - but to suggest that reducing something which is harmful should be based on increasing its availability is to engage in an Alice-in-Wonderland argument totally divorced from reality or common sense.

Which is exactly what the NRA has been doing for the past thirty years.  And ever since they were able to end CDC funding of gun violence gun research, they’ve flooded the public domain with pro-gun bromides that not only deny the link between gun ownership and gun violence, but even claim that more guns in private hands protects Americans from gun violence.  The “proof” that guns are a deterrent to gun violence is the assertion that gun homicides have dropped by more than 50% since the mid-90s, while gun ownership and concealed-carry licensing has doubled in the same twenty-year span.

The problem with this argument, however, is that more than 90% of the annual decline in gun homicides took place prior to 2000, while the increase in gun ownership and concealed-carry licenses largely took place after that date.  In fact, gun homicides have slowly increased since Obama took office, exactly the period when gun sales and the number of concealed-carry licenses both showed significant growth.  No matter how you analyze the data, the numbers since 2000 simply don’t support the NRA claims that more guns equals less gun violence.

Despite what readers may believe, I’m not against guns.  After all, I make my living by selling them and training people how to use them.  But I believe in informed public debate and, as Senator Moynihan used to say, “we’re entitled to our own opinions but not our own facts.”  The CDC ban doesn’t prevent anyone from using the data, it simply doesn’t allow the CDC to fund research.  In that regard physicians and medical professionals who want to contribute to the gun violence debate might take a page from the history of another physician-based organization that made a significant contribution to understanding and limiting violence of a much more dramatic type.

I’m referring to Physicians for Social Responsibility, a physician-led organization founded in 1961 that focused public consciousness about the health threats from nuclear war.  PSR first began advocating test bans, arsenal reduction and non-proliferation during the height of the Cold War and faced an opponent – the U.S. Government – whose powers to persuade the public about the necessity of an arms race was far beyond the persuasive abilities and resources of the NRA.  In 1985, largely based on its anti-nuclear work, PSR shared the Nobel Prize.

The role of physicians is to lessen harm.  This not only means treating a patient after harm occurs, it also means developing pro-active strategies to diminish harm before the unhealthy event takes place.  Physicians shouldn’t be in the slightest bit defensive about wanting to end gun violence, nor do they need to justify their commitment to healthy outcomes because the gun industry wants to keep selling guns.  It’s time for physicians to move from research to advocacy and level the playing field between themselves and the NRA. I don’t care who wins the argument, I just want an even match

Related articles

Largest Gun Study Ever: More Guns, More Murder (thinkprogress.org)
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons: Blame the people pulling the trigger, not the guns (guns.com)

When It Comes To Mental Illness & Guns, The NRA May Be Crazy Too

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In the wake of the Navy Yard massacre, the argument about gun control has shifted away from background checks and now has landed on fixing the mental health system.  This is my second blog on mental illness and gun violence and I’m going to write several more.  But here’s my latest thoughts on the subject so follow my drift.

I am an NRA-certified trainer and, as such, spent the weekend with a group of NRA trainers qualifying in a new training certification recently developed by the NRA.  Two things impressed me about the training. First was the character and caliber of the other trainers.  Many are active law enforcement or military personnel, all are ‘first responders’ and would think nothing of charging into a burning building to rescue me. Second, the NRA training course, like all NRA courses, mentions gun safety and gun responsibility on every page. Anyone out there who thinks that the “average” gun owner doesn’t know and understand the basic rules of gun responsibility doesn’t know any average gun owners and certainly hasn’t been paying attention to the endless calls for gun safety voiced by the NRA.

But when it comes to moving from rhetoric to reality, in particular the issue of mental health and gun safety, the NRA’s behavior is so at odds with their own rhetoric that they seem to be suffering from a new form of organizational schizophrenia that may only be found in the gun business and perhaps Wayne LaPierre can become an expert on this type of mental illness as well. He certainly seems to be an expert on mental health issues that lead to mass shootings, at least he never misses the opportunity to call for “fixing” the mental health system as a way to eliminate the kind of tragedy that just occurred at the Navy Yard in DC.

But here’s where the schizoid behavior of the NRA sets in, because at the same time that they call for more effective ways to identify and treat the mentally ill, they’re also try to make it impossible for medical professionals to figure out whether a patient who reports mental illness symptoms, such as depression or anxiety, is a threat to engage in gun violence at all.  Why?  Because the NRA, believe it or not, wants to prevent physicians and other medical professionals from responding to the earliest warnings about gun violence provoked by mental illness by criminalizing any attempt to discern whether a depressed or anxious patient has access to a gun.

In 2011 the NRA backed a law passed in Florida that made it a felony for any physician to inquire about the existence of guns in the home even if the patient reported symptoms of mental distress.  The rationale behind this stupidity was that such a question (not that a patient ever has to answer any question during a consultation) was an invasion of the patient’s right to privacy under the 2nd Amendment, as if the 2nd Amendment says anything about privacy at all.  In the arguments before Federal Judge Marcia Cooke, the NRA-backed attorneys rolled out their ‘slippery slope’ defense which basically says that any kind of gun regulations will eventually lead to total confiscation.  How do we know this is will happen?  Because the NRA says it will happen.

The good news is that Judge Cooke permanently blocked the legislation, but the NRA claims it will appeal the decision to the 6th Circuit Court.   But while the issue meanders through the appeals process, physicians and mental health professionals in Florida and elsewhere (similar bills sat in various state legislatures waiting to see what would happen to the Florida law) will actually have the opportunity to notify both the mental health system and the requisite law enforcement authorities when and if they learn that a gun-owning patient might do harm to himself or someone else because he exhibits or admits to mental distress.  Isn’t that how we should begin to “fix” the mental health system?  Sounds fairly logical to me even though mental health expert Wayne LaPierre will probably disagree.

Related articles

NRA: Get ‘Homicidal Maniacs’ off Streets – ABC News (abcnews.go.com)
NRA chief Wayne La Pierre wants ‘broken’ mental health system fixed but rejects … – New York Daily News (nydailynews.com)

Mental Illness Leads To Gun Violence: They Finally Agree On Something And So What?

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One thing that both sides in the gun debate seem to agree on is the notion that we would suffer much less gun violence if we did a better job of dealing with people who are mentally ill.  After all, what normal person would walk onto a navy base and kill twelve people, or walk into an elementary school and end the lives of several dozen adults and young kids?

Wayne LaPierre

One of America’s foremost authorities on mental illness, Wayne LaPierre, made this point when he was interviewed following the massacre at the Navy Yard in DC. The NRA chief said, “This outrage was [because] of a mental health system that is completely broken.”  How do we know that Wayne’s a mental health expert?  Because he talks about it all the time.  He made the same, exact point in his first public comment after Sandy Hook, then he repeated his demand to fix the ‘broken’ mental health system in his speech before the membership of the NRA.

First time on my blog.

But Wayne’s only an executive of the NRA.  What if you’re the Chief Executive of the United States?  The President is also convinced that tightening up the process for getting mental health records into the FBI background-check database will also protect us from the damage caused by guns.  In January, the White House said it would help states remove barriers for sending mental health data to the FBI background check system known as NICS.    Then in April Obama directed the CDC to begin figuring out how to increase the flow of mental health information to the FBI without violating the privacy provisions of HIPAA and other privacy laws.

So while we can all feel pleased that the leaders of the pro-gun and anti-gun movements can finally agree on something, it’s not clear that this new-found alliance really means anything at all.  For one thing, calling someone “mentally ill” because they commit an outrageous act doesn’t mean that the way they behave fits the definition of ‘mentally ill.’  Consider the definition that is held by the real experts, such as the National Alliance on Mental Illnesss:   “A mental illness is a medical condition that disrupts a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning.”  The same definition is used by the CDC.

Note the fact that we are dealing with a ‘medical condition,’ which means something that should be treated by medical professionals.  But what does the treatment consist of? A visit or two to a therapist and perhaps a brief regimen of pills?  Not a single one of the recent mass murderers – Lanza, Alexis, et. al., – sought or received medical treatment that could have resulted in their names being added  to a mental health watch-list that would have been sent to the FBI.  And note that the definition of mental illness also incorporates the idea that the condition “disrupts” daily functioning.  Not true in the case of the Aurora shooter, not true for the young man who shot Gabbie Giffords, not true for Virginia Tech, not true, not true, not true.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all we had to do to end gun violence was to crank up the computers and stuff some more data into NICS?  If the NSA can record, analyze and store one billion cell-phone calls every day, it can’t be that difficult to enlarge the capacity of the NICS system to track a few million loonies who otherwise might be able to buy guns.

But it’s not the unfortunate individuals suffering from real mental illness who walk into a building and begin shooting everyone in sight.  It’s the guys you don’t notice, the ones who walk around seemingly normal and functioning who all of a sudden just snap.  Want to keep those types from getting their hands on a gun?  We’re right back to where we started arguing whether it’s guns or people who do the killing.

Related articles

Jayne: On guns, mental illness and the intersection of the two (columbian.com)
NRA chief Wayne La Pierre wants ‘broken’ mental health system fixed but rejects … – New York Daily News (nydailynews.com)

It’s Time To End Gun Violence Against Kids

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For a country as wealthy as we are, the failure to do something about violent gun deaths suffered by children is really shameful. And it’s particularly shameful when we consider the disparities in between white and minority kids.  Let’s look at the numbers.

From 2005 to 2009, there was an average of 3,500 fatal deaths per year, or nearly 10 deaths every day.  About one in five of these victims was between ages 5 and 14, and the death rate for African-American children in this age bracket was three times higher than the rate for white children of the same age.

The problem with gun violence is that everyone wants it to end, but we can’t seem to get everyone on the same page.  Today Wayne LaPierre from the NRA will be interviewed on television and whatever he says, you can be sure that the anti-gun folks will find every word he utters to be wrong.  And at the end of the day, another 10 children will have been killed with guns.

So I have an idea.  For once let’s all get together around some common-sense ideas that will unite instead of divide us.  Let’s agree that if we all act responsibly around guns, they won’t get into the wrong hands.  After all, every single gun that will be used today to kill those ten children was first sold legally to someone who passed a background check.  But then the gun was lost, or it was stolen, or it wasn’t locked up or locked away.  Let’s get everyone: manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, gun owners and non-gun owners to do the responsible thing.

If we can agree to be responsible, we can do something about this terrible violence against kids.  And if we work at it, hopefully next year there won’t be ten kids killed each day but only eight, and the next year six, or four, or none!  We’ll give everyone a little badge or a little pin for being part of the solution instead of the problem.  LaPierre and Bloomberg can be the first recipients of our annual ‘responsibility’ award.

Now just to make sure that I’ve got my facts straight, I’m going to check the data on gun deaths one more time.  It’s from the CDC.   Oops.  There’s a little problem.  The overall numbers are correct as is the disparity between white and minority deaths.  But somehow, don’t ask me how, what I thought were the alarming numbers about child gun violence turn out to be annual child deaths from – unintentional drownings!  Boy, talk about misreading the data. Man, I really blew that one.

No biggee, we’ve already got things going and we’re gaining momentum every day.  Need to change our logo a bit and re-print our mission statement. Now let’s find a nice, little backyard pool to substitute for the AR-15 and don’t forget to re-do our Facebook page.  I’m sure the same people who are upset about children being shot by guns will be just as concerned about kids who fall into pools.  And the good news is that safe swimming is just like safe shooting – it’s all about responsible ownership and doing the right thing.

Related articles

Liberals always use tragedy to their advantage (wgno.com)
Gun Culture in America (while-you-were-sleeping.com)

Did America Ever Have A Frontier?

 

The American frontier has been one of the enduring cultural motifs of our entire history.  After all, we started out as a couple of rag-tag coastal towns in what later became Virginia and Florida, and ended up conquering an entire continent, with all the attendant history and personalities that we attach to that effort. You may not know the name of your Congressman but you surely can recall with pride such frontier heroes as Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, George Armstrong Custer, Sitting Bull, Annie Oakley and Wyatt Earp, just to name a few.

Single Action Army Revolover

For those of us who like guns the great Western frontier saga has a special significance because without the Winchester Repeating Rifle or the Colt Single-Action Army Revolver, we may not have won the West at all! So it’s not surprising that stories and legends about the Old West continue to provoke our imaginations. The great cattle drives from Texas up to Kansas City, the shoot-out at the OK Corral, Westward Ho! the wagons, and so forth.

What gives the Western saga (and the role of guns within the saga) such enduring strength, of course, is the image of a few, hardy and independent souls going out into a vast wilderness, a wild and unknown place, and slowly but surely transforming a frontier into a settled place. First were the explorers, like Lewis and Clark, then a few mountain-men, hunters and trappers, later a very few homesteaders, and finally the ranchers and the farmers whose descendants still lay claim to much of this territory today.

The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 first opened up the frontier to expansion. In 1890, less than a century later, the U.S. Census announced there were enough people living in every part of the United States to consider that wilderness no longer existed and the frontier had come to an end. And who could argue with this claim? Both coasts were linked by multiple train lines, the Indian wars had come to an end, Chicago was now our second-largest city, and the buffalo were nearly extinct.

Over the following fifty years, what had been the reality of the wilderness frontier turned into a myth. And the myth was developed and spread first through the medium of motion pictures, later through television. Whether it was John Wayne with his Winchester 94 carbine, or James Arness with his six-shooter, the taming of our frontier by a man with a gun became the filter through which most of us learned about the settling of the West.

Whether it’s the Greek Jason and the Argonauts or the Roman Romulus and Remus, most myths of origin are exactly that: they are myths and they don’t represent anything that really happened. But the interesting thing about the myth of the Old West is that it supposedly represents the truth. Davy Crockett and Chief Crazy Horse were real people and what made them famous is they both played important roles in the transformation of the wilderness and the closing of the frontier.

Davy Crockett

But there’s just one little problem? What if there was no wilderness? What if the frontier that we closed in less than a century had been closed centuries before? Recall that the Census Bureau stated that the frontier was closed by 1890 because there was some degree of human settlement in every area within the continental United States. They couldn’t pinpoint exactly where all these people lived, but it was presumed that between the area between the Missouri River and the Great Basin (Nevada) now held an average of at least two people per square mile which, according to government calculations, meant that the frontier was gone.

Crazy Horse – maybe.

Actually, this territory probably held a lot more people three or four hundred years earlier, perhaps as many as ten times the number that were living there when we allegedly ‘closed’ the frontier. But they weren’t white settlers, they were indigenous populations whom the whites called Indians, and while there were probably 250,000 of them living in the west, there may have been as many as several million living in this territory at the time that Europeans first hit the eastern shore.

Where did they all go? For the most part, they died. And they didn’t die from lack of food because the buffalo were killed off, nor did they die at the hands of the cavalry, they died from disease.  And because disease always disproportionately kills off the youngest, if a population suffers a substantial loss of children as the result of disease, this means that the next generation of this population will be smaller still. And the early white settlers infected the Indians with multiple diseases – smallpox, measles, typhoid, influenza – which provoked multiple epidemics that reduced the Indian population to a shadow of its former self.

It may be comforting to believe that because we live in cities, drive cars and use telephones that we are somehow more ‘civilized’ than people who live out in the woods, ride horseback and communicate with smoke signals. And when white Americans first started going out on to what we called the frontier, we believed, then and now, that we were transforming the wilderness and thus bringing the fruits of civilization to people who had always lived there, whether they wanted to share that fruit or not.

In 1876, General George Crook hired more than 30 Indian scouts to guide his cavalry and wagon train from Fort Laramie to the Powder River, a trip that I have driven comfortably in less than six hours. Crook already had wagons with wheels, the railroad and the repeating rifle. The Indians he hired had none of those things. But they knew how to guide him from one place to the other. Without their knowledge of the ‘wilderness,’ Crook believed that the Army campaign against the plains Indians would fail.

So who were the real ‘savages’ in 1876 when we were slowly but surely closing the frontier? It wasn’t the Indians who had no trouble moving about, living and knowing the land. It was all us white folks with our fancy machines, our store-bought clothing and our guns. Think about that the next time someone tells you that then, as now, we needed guns to protect ourselves from less-civilized folk.

Related articles

Window on the Wild West: Newly released photographs show truth of America’s past (express.co.uk)
The Gilded Western Frontier (muwgildedage.wordpress.com)

Why Does The Gun Control Crowd Want To Take Away Our Toys?

 

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In 1890 the U.S. Census reported there were enough people living in every part of the continental United States to definitively eliminate the notion of a frontier.  By 1900, it is estimated that more than 90% of the U.S. population derived the bulk of what they ate through purchase of foodstuffs produced from some place other than where they lived.  In other words, it’s been more than 100 years since the average U.S. resident needed a gun either for self-protection or food.

The truth is that, all arguments notwithstanding about concealed-carry and the “right” to self-defense, guns are a hobby.  And like most hobbies, the hobbyists take their hobby very seriously.  They spend lots of money on their hobby, they spend time with other like-minded hobbyists, their hobby is more important than their work, and they define themselves in terms of the enjoyment they derive from engaging in their hobby.

 

 

When I was growing up in the 50′s I had three hobbies: toy soldiers, toy trains and toy guns.  If I was a good boy my father would stop off on his way home from work and buy me a hand-painted, lead toy soldier which I added to a collection that was always on permanent display on a shelf in my room.  The floor of my room was almost entirely covered by the track on which my beloved Lionel trains ran, whistled, stopped and reversed course.  And in my closet I kept an impressive array of toy rifles and handguns, of which my most prized possession was my Roy Rogers plastic revolver, complete with leather holster and velour cowboy hat.

Over the years the toy soldiers broke into bits and pieces and weren’t replaced, my mother gave the trains away to my cousin, and God knows what happened to the toy guns.  They were probably replaced by baseball bats, balls and gloves as I moved from acting out Wild West fantasies in my room to acting out Major League fantasies at the playground.  But as I moved into adulthood the fascination with guns continued and ultimately the toys were replaced by the real thing.

I developed other hobbies as an adult – hiking, self-taught ‘gourmet’ cooking, winemaking – but none of these hobbies involved carrying over the toys of my youth  with the exception of guns.  When I pick up a Winchester Model 94 lever-action carbine today I’m also picking up the toy copy of the Daisy Red Ryder that I had from the time I was six.  When I take out a Colt Government Model 45 pistol, it hardly looks and feels any different from the toy Army Colt cap pistol that my father gave me when I was eleven or twelve.

When I was good, I was rewarded with a toy.  When I misbehaved, the toys were taken away.  If I didn’t do my chores, the guns were transferred to another closet for which my parents had a key.  Or the trains would suddenly disappear, the track broken down and put away. The toy soldier shelf would look like Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard.

I reacted to these catastrophes the way all children respond to a sudden confiscation of their toys: I threw a tantrum.  I wasn’t interested in the why or the how.  I wanted my toys back and I didn’t want them taken away again.  Believe it or not, I get those same feelings of anger today when I think that someone’s trying to pass a law that will result in the loss of my guns.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not accusing gun owners of being children.  But the emotion and anger about gun control usually crowds out any effort to conduct a rational debate.  Gun control advocates need to understand that when gun owners think about their guns, it’s not a simple pro versus a simple con.  Instead, it’s a question of memory and identity that has been nurtured and maintained for a very long time.

Related articles

What happens when kids aren’t allowed to play with toy guns? (pbs.org)
Toy gun found in backpack at Collins Lane Elementary (state-journal.com)
Could cap guns make a comeback? (myfox8.com)

Want to Know What the Gun Control Crowd Will Do About the Navy Yard? What They Always Do: Nothing.

Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) signs “safe gun” pledge at NSSF event.

 

It only took 9 months since Sandy Hook for another nut to get his hands on an assault-style weapon and shoot the hell out of the place.  The gun lobby will respectfully keep their mouths shut during the requisite mourning period.  Then Wayne-o will hold a news conference and state that this incident again proves the need for more armed security at sensitive locations, ‘sensitive’ being defined as any place where human beings might get in the way of a bullet or two.

The gun control crowd, of course, doesn’t have to wait for the shock and revulsion to subside.  Dianne already has faxed and emailed her requisite statement, ditto the President.  I’m sure we’ll hear from Biden shortly and since the Brady Campaign has also issued their statement, a comment from Mike Bloomberg can’t be far behind.

But that’s about as far as it’s going to go because the Colorado recall has effectively sapped any lingering energy from the diminishing number of members of Congress who are interested in gun control anyway.  And the good news for the NRA/NSSF juggernaut is they know something that most of us don’t; namely, that beyond statements to the media, occasional testimony before unreported sessions of various Congressional subcommittees, and a once-every-other-decade attempt to pass some largely-ineffective Federal legislation, the gun control crowd doesn’t have any real strategy or commitment anyway.

What the gun control folks do have, in abundance, is a wealth of research that proves, conclusively, the link between the existence of several hundred million privately-owned guns and a level of gun violence that is ten, twenty or thirty times higher than gun violence rates in all other Western countries.   The latest contribution comes from public health researchers at Boston University who have amassed a closet-full of data that basically makes it impossible to deny the degree to which gun violence rates correlate with gun ownership.  The report, just published in the American Journal of Public Health, is being republished and touted by every liberal advocacy organization and then some.

There’s only one problem.  When it comes to talking about guns, the NRA and the NSSF aren’t interested in facts or data.  They’re interested in keeping their constituency – gun owners – ready and able to challenge anyone who is perceived as doing anything that might make them lose their guns.  And when it comes to grass-roots campaigns, the pro-gun groups have the landscape all to themselves.

Every month the NSSF sponsors a major gun safety event, co-hosted by NRA-friendly Senators like Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mark Pryor (D-AR.) Not to be outdone, the NRA has ramped up its Friends of NRA organization, which holds well-attended social events, complete with a meal, a raffle with guns as prizes, a speaker and other entertainment.  So far there are 8 events scheduled for the remainder of the year in Pennsylvania, 21 in Texas.  And for the remainder of 2013 there are probably more than 150 gun shows being held around the country, all of which feature NRA exhibits and membership displays. Will the gun shows have a total attendance in excess of one million?  Yes.  Do the gun control organizations ever hold grass-roots events? No.

There may be a link between gun ownership and gun violence, but there’s certainly no link between gun violence and attempts to control guns.  And if you want to blame this on the “strength” and financial “power” of the NRA, go right ahead.  But the next time you want to get together with a bunch of like-minded folks to talk about gun control, try contacting the Brady Campaign to see if they’ll sponsor the event.  Just try.

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Related articles

Washington Navy Yard shooting: deaths may restart gun control debate (wjla.com)
David Frum: “Let’s Not Wait to Talk About Gun Control” (thetruthaboutguns.com)

Where Do All The Shooting Victims Go?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Urban Institute just published an important report on the costs of gun violence.  Titled, “The Hospital Costs of Firearm Assaults,” it attempts to calculate the costs associated with hospitalizations due to shootings based on reports from hospital admitting units and emergency rooms.  Not surprisingly, the report found that more than 50% of gun-shot victims either had no insurance or were covered by public plans supported by taxpayer revenues. Since the total cost for all gunshot admissions was slightly short of $630 million, this means that Uncle Sam Taxpayer got stuck with at least half the bill.

Unfortunately, there’s only one problem with this report.  The data covers one year – 2010.  During that year, roughly 50,000 people were admitted to hospital in-patient and emergency units with gun shot wounds.  But according to the Department of Justice and the CDC, there were over 100,000 gun shootings that resulted in death or injuries in 2010.  So where did the other 50,000 go?  Maybe we can eliminate most of the 19,000 suicides that resulted from using guns because most of those folks went to the morgue.  But if that’s true, it still leaves another 30,000 men, women and children who got shot but found some other way to deal with their wounds besides going to the hospital. Maybe they went to a local clinic, or maybe there’s some over-the-counter remedy now available that takes care of the common gun shot the way that Ibuprofen takes care of the common cold.

Or maybe someone ought to get their data straight.

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Related articles

The High, Hidden Cost of Gun Violence (theatlanticcities.com)
Taxpayers Shoulder Bulk Of Gun Violence Costs, Study Finds (huffingtonpost.com)
STUDY: Gun Violence Hospitalizations Cost Over $600 Million In 2010 Alone (thinkprogress.org)

The Party’s Over for the Gun Business

Back in July I posted a tongue-in-cheek comment about the correlation between gun sales and arguments about gun control and suggested that the gun control crowd would see a decline in gun sales if they would stop talking about guns.  Guess what?  Smith & Wesson just posted their first-quarter results for the current fiscal year and Mike the Gun Guy turns out to be correct!

Barron’s said it best in reviewing the gun-maker’s results:  ”Gun buyers loaded up on weapons in fear of regulations that never materialized. Now, with lower sales in the company’ sights, the stock may fall short.” Which is exactly what happened.  The day after the company’s announcement, the stock dropped 8%.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t like to see gun-makers or gun-owners suffer because some nut walks into  school or a theater and starts banging away.  But the economic news from S&W should remind all of us that, NRA public relations aside, gun ownership is still largely dependent on the vagaries of the political climate, rather than reflecting some innate desire on the part of all ‘good’ Americans to own guns.

Don’t forget that our new book is for sale on Amazon.

Related articles

Gov. to push gun control bill (wwlp.com)
Taxpayers Shoulder Bulk Of Gun Violence Costs, Study Finds (huffingtonpost.com)

Ever Hear About The NSSF? Not If You Don’t Own A Gun

 

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The biggest problem in dealing with the issue of gun violence is that the two sides don’t have the foggiest idea of what the other side is talking about.  The gun control people talk one language, the anti-gun control crowd speaks in a different tongue.  They talk to different audiences, they talk about different issues, they might as well be on different planets.  Want the latest example?  It comes from the gun control side.

 

The current issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine contains an article entitled, “The Gun Lobbying Group You Don’t Hear About” and it goes on to detail the activities of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, whose national office, ironically, is located right down the road from the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT.

 

The article details the extent to which the NSSF, which represents manufacturers, gun wholesalers and retailers, has of late stepped up its lobbying and PR efforts to match the influence and expenditures of the National Rifle Association.  In fact, the author makes the point that the NSSF’s role in the gun debate has of late become more important because people within the industry have begun to question the role and value of the NRA.

 

I’m not saying that the NSSF is a household word when it comes to pro or con discussions about guns.   And if you’re not a gun owner, or haven’t been to the annual gun trade show (aka the SHOT show) run by the NSSF in Las Vegas, there’s no reason that you should be aware of the organization’s existence or activities.  Furthermore, the NSSF’s President, Steve Sanetti, is a quiet, corporate guy who avoids the media spotlight about as diligently as Wayne LaPierre tries to attract it.

 

For all those reasons, you could argue that an article introducing the NSSF to the readership of a magazine like The Atlantic is a worthwhile exercise in investigative journalism.  There’s only one problem.  The NSSF has of late begun to promote several public campaigns that are not only a break with past industry strategies for defending themselves against the anti-gun crowd, but are designed to put the gun industry in the forefront of the debate about the issue that makes them most vulnerable, namely, the issue of gun safety.

 

Historically, the gun industry’s response to concerns about gun violence, as promoted by the NRA, was to argue that everyone would be safer if they had or were protected by a gun.  Remember Wayne LaPierre’s call for armed guards in schools following the massacre at Sandy Hook?  As a counterpoint, take a look at the new NSSF website promoting its ChildSafe campaign.  It’s direct, it’s clever and it calls for every gun owner to take a pledge to lock up or lack away all their guns – the American Academy of Pediatrics would be proud.

 

Mike Bloomberg campaigned hard for expanded background checks to eliminate or curtail “straw sales.”  For years the NSSF has sent literature and display posters to all its gun dealer members (myself included) promoting its “Don’t Lie For The Other Guy” campaign.  Now they are taking this message directly to the public with full-size, highway billboards that are being mounted in inner-city neighborhoods throughout the United States.

 

Don’t get me wrong.  The NSSF’s newly-found concern about safety and responsibility isn’t without its faults.  The distribution of gun locks, as The Atlantic article points out, was a PR sham.  And their attempt to convince us that military-style rifles are nothing more than the twenty-first century version of the traditional hunting rifle is a joke.  But when was the last time that Michael Bloomberg put up a roadside billboard that reminded people that straw sales were against the law?

 

 

 

Related articles

The Gun Lobbying Group You Don’t Hear About (theatlantic.com)
NSSF Statement on Co Recalls (gunmartblog.com)