BY Herschel Smith

8 years, 8 months ago

That’s what Josh Horwitz would have you believe. Actually, the Huffington Post can’t get their narrative straight. Five days before publishing Horwitz’ piece they published the narrative that background checks of firearms spiked in 2011 and especially towards the end of the year. But let’s note that consistency isn’t the stock and trade of the Huffington Post and move on.

While noting that background checks for firearms had increased, Josh points out that “Thousands of background checks each year result in denials” … “Background checks are performed under a number of circumstances that do not involve gun sales, for example, when an individual pawns a weapon and later redeems it” … “In some states, a concealed handgun permit exempts permit holders from having to undergo additional background checks when they purchase new firearms,” and so on the explanation goes.

That these same exceptions and caveats existed prior to 2011 and also effected data from the previous years (assumed to the same extent unless and until proven otherwise) is irrelevant to Josh. What matters is selling the narrative. But Josh must have missed the memoranda, and presumably there isn’t really any better witness than firearms dealers. A sampling (albeit anecdotal) follows.

There has been an increase in both the sale of firearms and in concealed handgun permit requests in Gaston County, North Carolina, in 2011.

In Kernersville, North Carolina, firearms sales were up as much as 15% over the previous year.

At Adventure Outdoors in the Atlanta suburb of Smyrna, twice as many firearms were sold last month as they did in December of 2010.

In Elkhart, Indiana, Midwest Gun Exchange is seeing a lot of first time families and women becoming involved in the shooting sports and self defense.

In Tucson, Arizona, there are record-setting sales for firearms to women.

At Second Amendment Sports in Bakersfield, California, firearms sales were up 25% from the previous year.

In and around Cleveland, Ohio, local firearms dealers say their sales have been up from anywhere between 20 and 40 percent. A large part of the surge in gun sales has been by women who want to learn how to shoot and defend themselves.

In Fort Worth, Texas, sales of firearms to women have been “through the roof” according to dealers.

In Yakima, Washington, firearms sales climbed by a quarter over the holidays compared to last year.

The Gun Center in Frederick, Maryland, had its best December in 25 years in business — “and not by a little,” owner Bill Kelley said.

At Sharpshooters in Lubbock, Texas, they have seen their handgun sales increase by 10 to 15 percent over the past year.

Sales of firearms to women in Permian Basin, Texas, have doubled.

You see, Josh Horwitz relied on data supplied by the highly biased Violence Policy Center for his analysis. But he is using the data to attempt to dispute a tidal wave of evidence that the second amendment is alive and well with American citizens.

It isn’t clear what Horwitz is attempting to do with his analysis. Perhaps he intends to substantiate the constant assertions by his organization and the Brady Campaign that the NRA “owns” the Congress, and always uses scare tactics to convince people to give more and more of their money to the NRA in order to protect the second amendment – that the real threat isn’t gun control advocates, and in fact, there are fewer gun owners in America. The real threat is the NRA. Perhaps that’s his aim, although it’s an odd, forced, stilted and uncompelling argument.

Then there are those like me who believe that until recently (in American Rifleman magazine), Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox have undersold and soft pedaled the message. They seem to have just recently hit their stride, but this just goes to show that not all of us propagate NRA conspiracy theories or fall prey to them. Many of us are out ahead of them waiting for them to catch up. If the NRA is Horwitz’ target, his analysis fails miserably. If not, then no one knows why he wrote the analysis in the first place. Besides, if there are fewer and fewer gun owners in America, then there is far less need for gun control laws, another unintended consequence of Horwitz’ argument.