Chantilly, VA gun show

Chantilly, VA gun show

You may have noticed in my last several blogs that I am dismayed by the extent to which the pro-gun crowd completely owns the public debate about guns. They get their message out endlessly and continuously, and they get it out regardless of whether anything they say is true or not. If you think I’m over-stating the case, take a look at the recent analysis of Emily Miller’s pro-gun book by Media Matters. Miller is the latest in a long line of NRA sycophants who masquerade as “objective” journalists or researchers, but in reality just parrot the NRA-NSSF line.

So Miller publishes a book promoting the idea that women should buy and carry guns. And she’s immediately interviewed by CNN and Politico who allow her to make false statement after false statement without the slightest attempt to push back or discern whether what she’s saying is actually true. And the reason she published the book? Because while sales of small, concealable handguns have created a new market for gun manufacturers over the past decade, the increase in female ownership of guns has lagged far behind. And the truth is, that with the percentage of families that actually own guns decreasing, the only way that sales can continue strong is to find new sales opportunities within existing gun-owning families, women over 21 being the most underrepresented group. Want an example? Take a look at the photo at the top of this blog. It’s a gun show in Chantilly Virginia and if you want a larger view just click the last-cited link. Or just take my word for it that of the 20 or so customers lined up in front of the tables, every single one is a man.

So the NRA relentlessly pushes its agenda without regards to facts. And who can blame them? After all, their job is to help the gun industry sell guns. They may promote themselves as a training organization, as a public-interest lobby, as a charitable and educational effort, but they don’t operate, shall we say, for the common good. They are basically a marketing group, and they have developed a very successful marketing campaign.

It’s particularly successful because they’re up against nobody on the other side. When was the last time you heard of the Brady Campaign doing anything besides sending their lobbyists up to Capitol Hill? And Brady’s the best of them. Everyone else in the gun control camp is busily hacking away at this piece of research or that which they read to each other and then basically throw away. In the last two weeks alone gun control scholars have issued several serious and detailed reports about the link between gun ownership and violence. One report came out of the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, the other led by medical researchers at NYU. Both reports added additional evidence to support the idea that maybe, just maybe, there’s a link between 250 million guns floating around and high rates of violence with guns. Both reports received the usual, 30-second mention in various liberal media outlets and blogs. Both reports went no further than that.

Had these reports been issued before Newtown and the Navy Yard the NRA would have immediately dispatched one of its academic hirelings to refute them in detail. This time around these reports were ignored. At the same time that these reports were issued, Emily Miller was hosting a book-publishing party in Washington, complete with accolades from Rick Perry, Ted Nugent and Donald Trump. There’s no longer a give-and-take between the pro-gun and the anti-gun crowd. There’s a pro-gun crowd out there celebrating success after success and a pathetic group of gun control researchers talking to themselves.

Anyone ever hear of a group called the Violence Policy Center? They have published a remarkable series of studies about gun violence, all of which are available for everyone to read. The studies are meticulous, detailed and true. And I’m willing to bet you that there’s not a single person reading my blog who’s ever read one of these reports. But why should you bother? After all, you’re not in the business of academic research. Going to a book-publishing party would always be more fun.

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