Gun Master Debate

[UltimateApathy]

Reposting all the stuff you've already posted doesn't make it any more valid.

Ignoring all the facts, evidence, and studies only makes you look more ignorant and brainwashed - both funny and pathetic at the same time. You have proved nothing here to support your views, but I have proved everything from negative gun psychology to how freely-available civilian guns devastate third world countries through rampant civil wars and gangsterism to how the availabillity of guns in first world countries results in more serious violent crime to how the NRA uses propaganda to brainwash the masses to how the NRA deliberately tries to kill or distort gun violence related studies and statistics, and much more too. Now go on, keep telling me about how you think cold medicine is as bad for your body as cocaine

 

[UltimateApathy]

Has he ever even noted the fact that guns are used for much bigger purposes than hunting and crime? Like the military? Or police? I haven't read a single thing about that, but I'm not going through his silly copy and paste 50 paragraph bullshit.

Don't bother commenting if you aren't going to bother to read the actual topic. You've got that head-in-the-sand effect going on, mindless minion. :Spin:

 

[UltimateApathy]

http://www.businessinsider.com/gun-industry-funds-nra-2013-1

How The Gun Industry Funnels Tens Of Millions Of Dollars To The NRA

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/gun-industry-funds-nra-2013-1#ixzz2KkefwaVF

The White House and the National Rifle Association are careening toward an all-out battle, with President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday of an expansive new agenda to crack down on gun violence.

Yesterday, the NRA released an advertisement targeting the President's daughters. Today, the President directly appealed to the club's members to break ranks.

One of the most interesting aspects of all is how an association for sportsmen became the prime defenders of assault weaponry.

In its early days, the National Rifle Association was a grassroots social club that prided itself on independence from corporate influence.

While that is still part of the organization's core function, today less than half of the NRA's revenues come from program fees and membership dues.

The bulk of the group's money now comes in the form of contributions, grants, royalty income, and advertising, much of it originating from gun industry sources.

Since 2005, the gun industry and its corporate allies have given between $20 million and $52.6 million to it through the NRA Ring of Freedom sponsor program. Donors include firearm companies like Midway USA, Springfield Armory Inc, Pierce Bullet Seal Target Systems, and Beretta USA Corporation. Other supporters from the gun industry include Cabala's, Sturm Rugar & Co, and Smith & Wesson.

The NRA also made $20.9 million — about 10 percent of its revenue — from selling advertising to industry companies marketing products in its many publications in 2010, according to the IRS Form 990.

Additionally, some companies donate portions of sales directly to the NRA. Crimson Trace, which makes laser sights, donates 10 percent of each sale to the NRA. Taurus buys an NRA membership for everyone who buys one of their guns. Sturm Rugar gives $1 to the NRA for each gun sold, which amounts to millions. The NRA's revenues are intrinsically linked to the success of the gun business.

The NRA Foundation also collects hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industry, which it then gives to local-level organizations for training and equipment purchases.

This shift is key to understanding why a coalition of hunters, collectors and firearm enthusiasts takes the heat for incidents of gun violence, like the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, rather than the companies that manufacture and market assault weapons.

The chief trade association for gun manufacturers is the National Shooting Sports Federation, which is, incidentally, located in Newtown, Conn. But the NRA takes front and center after each and every shooting.

"Today's NRA is a virtual subsidiary of the gun industry," said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center. "While the NRA portrays itself as protecting the 'freedom' of individual gun owners, it's actually working to protect the freedom of the gun industry to manufacture and sell virtually any weapon or accessory."

There are two reasons for the industry support for the NRA. The first is that the organization develops and maintains a market for their products. The second, less direct function, is to absorb criticism in the event of PR crises for the gun industry.

It's possible that without the NRA, people would be protesting outside of Glock, SIG Sauer and Freedom Group — the makers of the guns used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre — and dragging the CEOs in front of cameras and Congress. That is certainly what happened to tobacco executives when their products continued killing people.

Notoriously, tobacco executives even attempted to form their own version of the NRA in 1993, seeing the inherent benefit to the industry that such an effort would have. Philip Morris bankrolled the National Smokers Alliance, a group that never quite had the groundswell of support the industry wanted.

Notably, the tide has shifted slightly in the wake of Sandy Hook, with Cerberus Capital Management's decision to sell Freedom Group, the company that makes the Bushmaster rifle.

But if history is any indication, the NRA will be front and center of the new gun control debate, while gun manufacturers remain safely out of the spotlight.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/gun-industry-funds-nra-2013-1#ixzz2KkeaTrRa

 

[UltimateApathy]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/nra-gun-control-firearms-industry-ties_n_2434142.html

NRA Gun Control Crusade Reflects Firearms Industry Financial Ties

Throughout its 142-year history, the National Rifle Association has portrayed itself as an advocate for the individual gun owner’s Second Amendment rights. In turn, the NRA relied on those gun owners, especially its 4 million or so members, to pressure lawmakers into carrying out its anti-gun control agenda.

In the last two decades, however, the deep-pocketed NRA has increasingly relied on the support of another constituency: the $12-billion-a-year gun industry, made up of manufacturers and sellers of firearms, ammunition and related wares. That alliance was sealed in 2005, when Congress, after heavy NRA lobbying, approved a measure that gave gunmakers and gun distributors broad, and unprecedented, immunity from a wave of liability lawsuits related to gun violence in America’s cities.

It was a turning point for both the NRA and the industry, both of which recognized the mutual benefits of a partnership. That same year, the NRA also launched a lucrative new fundraising drive to secure “corporate partners” that’s raked in millions from the gun industry to boost its operations.

But that alliance, which has grown even closer in recent years -- and includes ties both financial and personal, a Huffington Post examination has found -- has led to mounting questions from gun control advocates about the NRA's priorities. Is the nation’s most potent gun lobby mainly looking out for its base constituency, the estimated 80 million Americans who own a firearm? Or is it acting on behalf of those that make and sell those guns?

According to a 2012 poll conducted by GOP pollster Frank Luntz for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 74 percent of NRA members support mandatory background checks for all gun purchases, a position that the NRA has stridently opposed. “There’s a big difference between the NRA’s rank and file and the NRA’s Washington lobbyists, who live and breathe for a different purpose,” Mark Glaze, the executive director of the gun control group, said.

The questions about the NRA's ties to the gun industry, and whether those ties have influenced its agenda, have come to the forefront in the wake of horrific mass shootings last year in Connecticut, Colorado and Wisconsin.

A week after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults in a Newtown, Conn., school, Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president and top lobbyist, gave a tense, combative performance at a press conference in which he signalled the organization wouldn't budge from its long-held opposition to most gun control measures.




Instead, LaPierre revealed that the NRA favored putting thousands of armed guards in schools to curb shootings. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he said.

The NRA’s deep ties to the gun industry dismays some lawmakers who have introduced gun control bills responding to the mass shootings.

“The NRA is basically helping to make sure the gun industry can increase sales,” Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat and longtime gun control advocate, told The Huffington Post. McCarthy last week proposed a bill that would ban new sales of new large ammunition clips that increase the lethality of weapons like those used in mass shootings in Connecticut, Colorado and Wisconsin.

“No one is challenging NRA members' right to own guns,” McCarthy said. "We’ve had large mass shootings which have [involved] large mass assault weapons clips. These clips aren’t used for hunting.”

McCarthy’s husband and five other people were shot dead in a brutal assault in 1993 on a New York commuter train by a man wielding a gun with a large-capacity ammunition clip.

The Obama administration is reportedly considering a much broader approach to curbing gun violence: bans on assault weapons and large ammunition clips, mandatory background checks on all gun purchases, increased mental health checks and expanded penalties for carrying guns near schools. On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden said that the White House had determined that "executive action can be taken," though the specifics have not been settled.

The administration is also trying secure backing from big retailers like Walmart that sell guns, with an eye to undercutting the influence of the NRA and gun industry allies -- a strategy that might peel off some of their gun-owner grassroots. Walmart leaders announced this week that they will attend a Thursday meeting at the White House.

Gun control advocates who have lagged badly behind the NRA in fundraising and organization are now are accelerating their efforts. On Tuesday, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D), who was badly wounded two years ago in a mass shooting, launched a new gun control political action committee, Americans for Responsible Solutions, to counter the NRA’s legendary financial and political clout with Congress.

The NRA declined to comment. In recent years, it has argued that defending gun owners and the gun industry is one in the same. Any new laws or regulations that would limit the availability of firearms, or restrict who can own them, would violate the Second Amendment, the organization has said. The NRA has said it does support efforts to keep guns out of the hands of felons, those who have been adjudicated as mentally incompetent, or unsupervised children.

The NRA forwarded a letter to The Huffington Post that the group sent to Congress. The letter is signed by Chris Cox, who runs the NRA lobbying arm. “We know that the facts prove gun bans do not work and that is why they are not supported by the majority of the American people,” the letter said. Cox promised that the NRA would adopt a “constructive” stance in the debate, and reiterated past NRA positions that existing laws need to be better enforced.

In 2011, 32,000 Americans died due to gun violence. The homicide rate in the U.S. is about 20 times higher than in other advanced nations.

'YOUR FIGHT HAS BECOME OUR FIGHT'

Close ties between the NRA and gunmakers go back at least to 1999, when the NRA publicly declared its support for the firearms industry as it prepared to defend itself from a rash of liability lawsuits filed by cities and municipalities.

“Your fight has become our fight,” then-NRA president Charlton Heston declared before a crowd of gun company executives at the annual SHOT Show, the industry's biggest trade show. “Your legal threat has become our constitutional threat," he said.

Following the passage of the shield law that dismembered those lawsuits, the NRA launched a new fundraising drive targeting firearms companies the organization had just helped in a big way. That effort, dubbed "Ring of Freedom," paid off handsomely. Since 2005, the NRA drive has pulled in $14.7 million to $38.9 million from dozens of gun industry giants, including Beretta USA, Glock and Sturm, Ruger, according to a 2011 study by the Violence Policy Center, a group that favors gun control.

The Violence Policy Center study cited an NRA promotional brochure about the corporate partnership drive, noting that LaPierre promised that “this program is geared towards your company’s corporate interests.”

Despite the millions of dollars it has collected from the gun industry, the NRA’s website says “it is not affiliated with any firearm or ammunition manufacturers or with any businesses that deal in guns and ammunition.”

Besides its heavy lobbying for the special legal protections for gunmakers and distributors, the NRA pushed successfully in 2004 to ensure that a 10-year ban on assault weapons, enacted in 1994 over strong NRA objections, wasn’t renewed. Since then, annual rifle production by U.S. gunmakers has risen by almost 38 percent, according to federal gun data.

“The NRA clearly benefits from the gun industry,” William Vizzard, a former agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told The Huffington Post. “There’s a symbiotic relationship. They have co-aligned goals much more than 30 or 40 years ago.”

Vizzard noted that the gun industry has evolved slowly in recent decades from a “stodgy and conservative” business, which sold mostly rifles and sporting arms, to one that now traffics in paramilitary weapons and handguns. The NRA and the gun industry “have grown closer as the business has changed,” he said.

The intertwining interests of the NRA and the gun industry are also underscored by the gun company executives on the NRA board.

Among the gun industry heavyweights on the 76-seat NRA board are Ronnie Barrett, CEO of Tennessee-based Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, which makes a military-style rifle sold with high-capacity magazines. Pete Brownell, who heads Iowa-based Brownells Inc., another maker of high-capacity magazines, also sits on the NRA board.

These companies and other gun industry giants have ponied up big bucks to the NRA since 2005, according to a list of NRA corporate partners posted at its last convention.

For instance, Brownells is in an elite group of donors that have given between $1 million and $4.9 million since 2005. Barrett Firearms in the same period chipped in between $50,000 and $99,000.

Another notable donor is Freedom Group, which owns Bushmaster, the company that made the AR-15 military-style rifle used by Adam Lanza in his bloody assault on Sandy Hook. The Freedom Group has donated between $25,000 and $49,000 to the NRA’s corporate effort.

The NRA’s most generous gun industry backer is MidwayUSA, a distributor of high-capacity magazine clips, similar to ones that Lanza loaded into his Bushmaster rifle and Glock pistol. These clips increase the lethality of weapons by allowing dozens of shots to be fired before the shooter has to reload. According to its website, Midway has donated about $7.7 million to the NRA through another fundraising program that dates back to 1992. Under this program, customers who buy Midway products are asked to “round up” the price to the next dollar, with the company donating the difference to the NRA.

While the bond between the NRA and the gun industry has tightened, the NRA’s annual budget of about $250 million is still largely derived from other sources, including membership dues, merchandising and ads in NRA magazines. The magazines, though, are chock-full of gun industry ads.

Still, veteran gun control advocates said the NRA’s links with the gun industry may backfire as it deploys its lobbying to stave off new curbs.

“I think it’s much easier for policymakers to defend the NRA when they’re perceived as efforts on behalf of gun owners,” Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, said. “That equation changes dramatically when they’re seen as defending the gun industry.”

Whether this prediction holds true in the looming debate over gun control remains to be seen. But in the early-2000s, most lawmakers had few reservations about showing their support for the NRA -- even when the organization was lobbying for a law that would carve out a legal safe haven for the gun industry from civil negligence lawsuits.

'HOW'S THE WAR GOING?'

The fight to pass the liability shield law, known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, began after state attorneys general won a landmark $200 billion settlement against tobacco companies on claims they knowingly misled smokers about the dangers of cigarettes.

The success of the smoking cases led more than 30 cities and municipalities to sue the gun industry, citing negligence in the marketing and sale of firearms. The industry also faced increasing negligence lawsuits filed by victims of gun violence.

The most significant of these cases was brought by the families of the 13 people killed or seriously injured over a three-week span by the Washington, D.C.-area snipers, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo. The pair used a .223 Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle, the same model as Lanza. The weapon was allegedly stolen from a gun shop with a history of weapons "disappearing" from its inventory. The victims' families claimed the shop was negligent, as was the gunmaker, for not better policing problem stores.

In 2004, Bushmaster and the gun dealer settled the lawsuit for $2.5 million in a case that gun control advocates hailed as a "major breakthrough."

The gun company warned that cases like this could bankrupt it. Gunmakers described the legal fight in militaristic terms.

"As I walk through the plant, employees stop to ask me 'How's the war going?'" said Rodd Walton, the top lawyer for Sig Sauer, then called Sigarms, at a congressional hearing in 2005. “It's the war we are fighting against plaintiffs filing junk and frivolous lawsuits."

Though the gun industry has its own lobbying arm, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, based in Newtown, Conn., its influence pales in comparison with the NRA, which grades lawmakers on their fealty to the Second Amendment, and runs attack ads against candidates it perceives as on the wrong side of the fight. In the wake of its last major defeat -- the 1994 assault weapons ban -- the NRA mounted a successful campaign to push many of the ban's supporters, especially Democrats from rural areas, out of office.

The gun industry found a ready ally in the NRA, as Heston’s 1999 call to arms demonstrated. To aid its cause in Congress, the NRA enlisted one of its most trusted and powerful soldiers: then-Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, a longtime NRA board member.

The NRA and its allies argued that the lawsuits could destroy the gun industry, thus endangering Second Amendment rights.

"The cost of these lawsuits threatens to drive a critical industry out of business ... jeopardizing Americans' constitutionally protected access to firearms for self defense and other lawful uses," Craig said.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence fiercely opposed the bill to protect gunmakers from liability. "This was entirely a fight for the gun industry and more specifically for the worst actors in the gun industry," said Jonathan Lowry, a lawyer for the organization.

One of the bill's congressional opponents was Rep. Mel Watt. (D-N.C.). "I had no animosity toward guns, I had an animosity for setting precedents for other industries," Watt recently told The Huffington Post. Watt said he didn't understand why gunmakers should gain a legal shield available to no other industry.

But the NRA won the day, handily. Craig, who did not respond to a request for comment made through his lobbying firm, spearheaded the effort to get the bill through the U.S. Senate, where it eventually collected 15 Democratic votes, including that of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

In May 2006, the NRA's lobbying arm awarded Craig the Harlon B. Carter Legislative Achievement Award, its highest honor.

'MASSIVE OBAMA CONSPIRACY'

Since the passage of the 2005 law, ties between the NRA and the gunmakers have deepened.

The gun industry and other large corporate and individual donors chipped in $71.1 million in 2011 to NRA coffers, compared with $46.3 million in 2004, according to a Bloomberg News review of NRA tax returns.

The NRA’s fierce lobbying for other laws -- especially bills that have passed in almost every state allowing the carrying of concealed weapons -- also seem to have endeared the pro-gun goliath to many companies. After Wisconsin passed its concealed carry law, Fifer of Sturm Ruger told analysts in an earnings call that sales in the Badger State should get a boost.

As the debate about gun control moves forward, some analysts said the NRA's hard-line rhetoric benefits the gun industry in another way: it boosts sales.

“The NRA is generating fear,” said Vizzard, the former federal agent. “The industry has learned that the more controversy there is about guns, the more guns sell -- whether it’s a legitimate controversy over a bill, or a trumped-up one like, 'Obama’s been re-elected, they’re going to take away our guns.'”

A case in point has been the NRA’s strident rhetoric about the threat posed by President Barack Obama. The president, to the dismay of gun control advocates, failed to back new gun curbs in his first term, even though he endorsed renewing the lapsed assault weapons ban during his 2008 campaign.

Even so, the NRA's LaPierre fiercely opposed Obama's reelection, warning in late 2011 of a "massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” Interestingly, stock prices for gunmakers Sturm, Ruger and Smith & Wesson jumped in the wake of Obama’s November win.

After the Newtown massacre, sales jumped again. Given the NRA's past rhetoric, the odds are good that it will characterize any new gun legislation as proof that it was right to be wary of the president's motives.

Even so, the NRA would be wise to consider whether its rhetoric and agressive anti-gun control stance might alienate some of its membership, Vizzard said. Historically, he said, the NRA membership "appears to be more amenable," to certain types of regulation than the NRA leadership is.

The NRA’s ability to intimidate legislators at the polls may also be waning after last fall’s election. The NRA spent $17.4 million on the presidential and congressional contests in last year's general elections, according to Open Secrets, the web site for the Center for Responsive Politics. The NRA failed to unseat Obama and lost six out of seven Senate races, where it spent more than $100,000, according to Media Matters.

That gives hope to Rep. McCarthy as Congress begins to consider new legislation, including her bill to ban the sale of new high-capacity clips: “We’ve had members of Congress who’ve stood up the NRA and they’ve survived elections,” McCarthy said.

 

[UltimateApathy]

Corporately-brainwashed puppets, gotta love 'em,

 

[UltimateApathy]

 

[matt schrauben]

Ignoring all the facts, evidence, and studies only makes you look more ignorant and brainwashed - both funny and pathetic at the same time. You have proved nothing here to support your views, but I have proved everything from negative gun psychology to how freely-available civilian guns devastate third world countries through rampant civil wars and gangsterism to how the availabillity of guns in first world countries results in more serious violent crime to how the NRA uses propaganda to brainwash the masses to how the NRA deliberately tries to kill or distort gun violence related studies and statistics, and much more too. Now go on, keep telling me about how you think cold medicine is as bad for your body as cocaine

Completely delusional. Pathetic really. The fact you even have the nerve to accuse anyone of being brainwashed is just amazing.

 

[Einherjar86]

Ignoring all the facts, evidence, and studies only makes you look more ignorant and brainwashed - both funny and pathetic at the same time. You have proved nothing here to support your views, but I have proved everything from negative gun psychology to how freely-available civilian guns devastate third world countries through rampant civil wars and gangsterism to how the availabillity of guns in first world countries results in more serious violent crime to how the NRA uses propaganda to brainwash the masses to how the NRA deliberately tries to kill or distort gun violence related studies and statistics, and much more too. Now go on, keep telling me about how you think cold medicine is as bad for your body as cocaine

You haven't proven anything, and your cheap shots suggest that you're not actually thinking critically, but rationalizing your own beliefs. This is a common misconception that almost everyone makes. In fact, some researches might say that every time we speak we are rationalizing at least a little bit. You, on the other hand, are rationalizing a great deal. You make no discernible argument, but paste articles and statistics that are poorly presented and also contested. You ignore other comments. You relentlessly attack others whose opinions disagree with yours. In fact, almost everything you post smacks of a pathological commitment to the future justification of your own beliefs. As R. Scott Bakker said:

Human beings are rationalization machines. Some researchers even think we have a module in our brain dedicated to the production of self-serving reasons–confabulations that justify what we do and believe. In other words, we suffer matching compulsions: to judge others, on the one hand, and to justify ourselves on the other. And we all live, to varying degrees, in dream worlds as a result.

 

[Summerian]

Reposting all the stuff you've already posted doesn't make it any more valid.

How would you know if it's a repost or not?
It's not like you are reading anything anti.gun people post, is it?
You're looking at the pics, aren't you?

 

[Dak]

Because I can't have read it if I don't agree? Obviously I did read what was posted because I've pointed out the misinterpretations of the data.

 

[UltimateApathy]

(links to all the various studies mentioned here on the actual website - for those that aren't too myopic and brainwashed to read the truth)

http://www.vpc.org/aboutvpc.htm

Each year, more than 30,000 Americans die in gun suicides, homicides, and unintentional shootings as a result of the ready availability, and accessibility, of specific classes of firearms. Gun violence is more than a crime issue; it is a broad-based public health crisis of which crime is merely the most recognized aspect.

The Violence Policy Center (VPC), a national tax-exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, works to stop this annual toll of death and injury through research, advocacy, education, and collaboration. Firearms are the only consumer product not regulated by a federal agency for health and safety. This unique exemption has been exploited by the gun industry as it has moved to embrace increased lethality as the foundation of its design, manufacturing, and marketing efforts in the wake of the long-term decline in household gun ownership. The VPC believes that the answer to reducing gun violence lies in applying the decades-long lessons of consumer product safety regulation and injury prevention to the gun industry and its products. This approach is detailed in our landmark 1994 publication Cease Fire: A Comprehensive Strategy to Reduce Firearms Violence.

The VPC has a long and proven record of policy successes on the federal, state, and local levels, leading the National Rifle Association to acknowledge us as "the most effective...anti-gun rabble rouser in Washington."

Public policy advances that have emerged as the result of the work of the Violence Policy Center include:

•In 1992 the VPC released More Gun Dealers Than Gas Stations, a study of abuses by Federal Firearms License (FFL) holders. The study revealed that 80 percent of FFL holders did not operate storefront businesses, but sold guns from houses and offices. Many of the study's recommendations were adopted by the Clinton Administration and Congress at the federal level and by many states and municipalities, resulting in a dramatic reduction in the number of gun dealers—from more than 250,000 in 1992 to less than 55,000 today.


•In 1993 the VPC released Putting Guns Back into Criminals' Hands, which exposed a four-million-dollar-a-year federal program that helped rearm thousands of convicted, often violent, felons at taxpayer expense. As a result of the study the program was defunded and remains defunded to this day.


•In 1994 the VPC released its groundbreaking study Cease Fire: A Comprehensive Strategy to Reduce Firearms Violence. Cease Fire introduced a comprehensive, effective approach to regulating firearms in a manner similar to that currently applied to other inherently dangerous consumer products. This product safety approach has been implemented in both Massachusetts and California.


•In 1995, following the Oklahoma City bombing, the VPC focused public and press attention on the anti-government efforts of the National Rifle Association—including the now-infamous "jack-booted government thugs" direct-mail letter. The widespread press coverage the VPC focused on the extremist rhetoric and agenda of the NRA helped stop the organization’s efforts to repeal the 1994 federal assault weapons ban.


•In 1996 the VPC released Gun Shows in America: Tupperware® Parties for Criminals, the first study to identify the myriad of problems associated with gun shows. Following the 1999 Columbine massacre, the VPC helped draft legislation that became the centerpiece of Congressional debate on efforts to close what has now become known as the "gun show loophole."


•In 1996 the VPC was the lead group in building a coalition of more than 35 domestic violence, women's advocacy, religious, and health policy organizations in support of the "Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban." The law expands the list of persons prohibited from possessing firearms to include those convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence offenses. To educate the public and policymakers about the unique role firearms play in domestic violence, each year the VPC releases When Men Murder Women, which details state-by-state the circumstances of all reported homicides of women by men in single victim-single offender incidents. Released during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the studies are used by state and local activists to educate the public on the realities of domestic violence, as well as effective solutions to protect women and children from batterers.


•In 1997 the VPC released Joe Camel with Feathers: How the NRA with Gun and Tobacco Industry Dollars Uses its Eddie Eagle Program to Market Guns to Kids. This VPC report documents the NRA's aggressive marketing to youth, which follows a trail blazed by the tobacco industry. The study is one of numerous VPC reports focusing on the marketing of guns to children by the gun lobby and the firearms industry, as well as the effects of gun violence on children and youth.


•In 1999 The New Press published the VPC's first book, Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America. Making A Killing is a first-of-its-kind exposé, revealing how the firearms industry has used increased lethality in an attempt to resuscitate stagnant gun markets.


•In 2001 the VPC released Poisonous Pastime, a first-time look at the lead threat posed to children and the environment by indoor and outdoor shooting ranges.


•In 2001 the VPC released Voting from the Rooftops: How the Gun Industry Armed Osama bin Laden, Other Foreign and Domestic Terrorists, and Common Criminals With 50 Caliber Sniper Rifles. The study documented for the first time the burgeoning sales of 50 caliber sniper rifles—military bred weapons that can down helicopters and penetrate armor plating, yet are easier to purchase than a standard handgun. In a New York Times exclusive, the VPC study revealed that the Al Qaeda network had purchased at least 25 of the weapons in the United States. Since then, the VPC has continued its focus on the unique public safety and national security threats posed by 50 caliber sniper rifles as detailed in our studies on the topic, including: Sitting Ducks: The Threat to the Chemical and Refinery Industry From 50 Caliber Sniper Rifles; "Just Like Bird Hunting"— The Threat to Civil Aviation From 50 Caliber Sniper Rifles; and, Clear and Present Danger: National Security Experts Warn About the Danger of Unrestricted Sales of 50 Caliber Anti-Armor Sniper Rifles to Civilians.


•In 2001 The New Press published the VPC's second book, Every Handgun is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns. The first-of-its-kind book details the unique price Americans pay for easy handgun availability and was a key tool used by both Washington, DC, and Chicago, IL, in the legal defense of their handgun bans.


•In 2002 a new law was implemented in California requiring that all new handguns sold in the state include child safety devices that meet minimum safety standards. The VPC worked closely with California advocates to pass and implement this first-in-the-nation law which ensured that child safety devices would be effective in protecting children from unintentional gunshot wounds.


•In 2003 the VPC released "Officer Down"—Assault Weapons and the War on Law Enforcement, which analyzed FBI data revealing that one in five law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty was killed with an assault weapon. The study was widely cited by the news media and was a key tool for advocates working to renew and improve the federal assault weapons ban. Advocates in Columbus, Ohio, used the study to help secure passage of a citywide assault weapons ban in 2005.


•In 2005, as the result of the VPC's work revealing the threat posed by 50 caliber sniper rifles, California became the first state in the nation to ban these military weapons. That same year, the VPC's work detailing the threat of 50 calibers was featured on 60 Minutes, Dateline NBC, and other leading news magazine shows.


•In 2006, as the result of the findings of the 2004 Violence Policy Center study Vest Buster: The .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum—The Gun Industry's Latest Challenge to Law Enforcement Body Armor, which warned of the threat posed to law enforcement officers by the .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum handgun round, a new bullet-resistant vest capable of defeating the .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum round was developed to protect law enforcement. The vest has been certified by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) as meeting its Level IIIA soft body armor standards.


• In 2007 the VPC released the first edition of Black Homicide Victimization in the United States, which analyzes black homicide victimization rates in the 50 states, illustrating the disproportionate effect gun homicide has on blacks in the United States. Now an annual report, the publication is a key public education and policy tool for local community organizations and policymakers.


•In 2008 the VPC released American Roulette: Murder-Suicide in the United States. The third edition of a VPC study first issued in 2002, the publication remains the largest survey of murder-suicide in the United States ever conducted. The study reveals that more than 10 murder-suicides occur in the United States each week and is used by policymakers, professionals, and the news media across the nation.


•In 2009 the VPC released Law Enforcement and Private Citizens Killed by Concealed Handgun Permit Holders, which for the first time tallied non-self defense killings by concealed handgun permit holders. Released during Congressional debate over legislation that would have created a de facto national concealed carry system, its findings were repeatedly cited by bill opponents and on newspaper editorial pages in a successful effort to defeat the measure. That same year, the VPC launched its Concealed Carry Killers on-line resource, which continues to tally non-self defense killings involving persons legally allowed to carry concealed handguns and is updated monthly. The findings of Concealed Carry Killers have been used by gun violence prevention advocates across the nation to help stop efforts to enact or expand lax concealed weapons laws.


•In 2009 the VPC released two studies—Iron River: Gun Violence and Illegal Firearms Trafficking on the U.S.-Mexico Border and Indicted: Types of Firearms and Methods of Gun Trafficking from the United States to Mexico as Revealed in U.S. Court Documents—focusing on the role played by America’s lax gun laws and the easy availability of military-style weaponry on the U.S. civilian gun market in helping feed cartel violence in Mexico.


•In 2010 the VPC released Drive-By America, the only state-by-state national analysis of drive-by shootings, their circumstances, and their victims.


•In 2011 the VPC released A Shrinking Minority: The Continuing Decline of Gun Ownership in America, which analyzes independent General Social Survey data to reveal that household gun ownership is at its lowest level since the 1970s. The analysis reveals that less than a third of American households have a gun and that contrary to assertions by the gun lobby and gun industry that female personal gun ownership has increased, gun ownership by women remains relatively rare and unchanged.


•In 2011 the VPC released Blood Money: How the Gun Industry Bankrolls the NRA which for the first time details how the National Rifle Association receives millions of dollars from the gun industry through an organized “Corporate Partners” program, ending once and for all the NRA’s false claim—stated on its website—that it “is not affiliated with any firearm or ammunition manufacturers or with any businesses that deal in guns and ammunition.”


•In 2011 the VPC released Lost Youth: A County-by-County Analysis of 2009 California Homicide Victims Ages 10 to 24 which uses the most recent data available to rank California counties by their homicide rates for youth and young adults. By comparing county by county the homicide rates for youth and young adults, the study shows the continuing, urgent need for tailored, localized approaches to reducing youth homicide that integrate prevention and intervention while engaging local leaders and community stakeholders.

The Violence Policy Center also regularly submits and joins amicus curiae briefs in a variety of state and federal cases impacting gun laws. Most recently, the VPC joined with other gun violence prevention advocates in the successful defense of a California county ordinance that bans gun shows on county property.

 

[UltimateApathy]

More examples of how the NRA and their fuck-buddies the gun corporations have worked to sabotage federal gun violence research in order to keep brainwashing and selling death machines to the most ignorant and gullible of the American people. Most of the people that have posted in this topic are nothing more than sheep being herded by their corporate overlords to spend more money on devices of death and to spout propaganda like parrots while doing so.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/201...-on-even-as-research-ban-on-gun-violence-ends

The characteristics of gun violence in the U.S. are largely unknown because key federal health agencies have been banned from conducting such research since the mid-1990s.

President Obama, however, wants to change that.

In presenting his plan to reduce gun violence last month, Obama said he would order the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to resume scientific studies of the issue.

"We don't benefit from ignorance," he said.

On Monday, however, the president acknowledged in a speech to the Minneapolis Police Department that he might be in for a fight. "Because for a long time, even looking at the evidence was considered somehow tough politics," he said.

Indeed, opponents on Capitol Hill are already making their concerns heard.

"Gun violence is not a disease," Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a recent speech on the Senate floor. "And lawful gun ownership is not a disease. It is a constitutionally protected, individual right."

But gun researchers say it is long past time that the research resumes.

"We really don't know some of the answers to the critical questions we need to know about [gun violence] in order to have more effective law enforcement and more effective public policy," says Harold Pollack, co-director of the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago.

At the lab, most research on things like underground gun markets and strategies to prevent gun violence has to be done with nonfederal funds. "There's been a chilling effect brought about [by] the constraints that the president spoke about and by the political history of this debate at CDC and elsewhere," Pollack says.

RAND Corp.'s Dr. Art Kellermann, a health policy analyst, is well-acquainted with the political history of the debate.

Kellermann grew up with guns in East Tennessee. "Having a gun in your house was about as controversial as having a washing machine," he says. He says he was quite familiar with the idea of keeping a gun in the house for protection.

"But as a young ER doc, I wasn't seeing too many bad guys shot by homeowners," he says. "I was seeing kids shot by another child while they played with a gun they had found. I saw spouses who had shot one or the other in a family dispute. And I saw older individuals and sometimes teenage kids who used a gun to either take their life or attempt to take their life."

So he and several other researchers set out to study what they saw as cost-benefit analyses of the dangers of keeping guns, particularly loaded guns, in the home.

The findings were all strikingly similar. "On the balance, the risks of a tragedy in the home — a homicide or suicide — were actually increased if a gun was kept there rather than not," he says.

Gun advocates blasted the research.

Michael Hammond, legislative counsel with the group Gun Owners of America, says it appeared as if the CDC "was going to ... basically issue politicized studies with taxpayer funding concerning the Second Amendment issues."

The National Rifle Association all but declared war on the CDC in 1995. (The NRA didn't respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.)

The group first tried to defund the agency's entire injury control center, though research on gun violence amounted to about $2.6 million of a $43 million budget.

The following year, a compromise of sorts was reached. Congressional funders took the $2.6 million the CDC had been spending on gun violence research and ordered that it be used instead to study traumatic brain injury.

It was very clever, says Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., now the ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Department of Health and Human Services budget. "How do you say no to traumatic brain injury?"

But opponents of gun violence research also added language stipulating that "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control."

Obama says his order that the research resume is premised on the legal opinion that gun violence research isn't the same as advocating or promoting gun control.

That's what researchers have always claimed, too. Public health research, they say, is based on making things safer, not on taking them away.

"It's ironic if you think about it," says Kellermann. "The last 20 years we've made spectacular progress with car crashes ... in reducing drownings, smoke inhalation from house fires. And yet we've not banned matches, swimming pools or automobiles."

But neither the CDC nor researchers wanted to take a chance testing the limits of the research ban, says DeLauro, and that essentially shut the research down.

Lawmakers have since expanded the ban — today it covers not only research at the CDC but also other agencies at HHS, including the National Institutes of Health — and they even added anti-gun control language to the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the department is "committed to re-engaging gun violence research" at CDC and NIH.

But the only real way to ensure the research restarts is for Congress to drop the existing language from the annual spending bill and restore funding.

A spokesman for Georgia Republican Rep. Jack Kingston, the new chairman of the HHS spending panel, said the chairman is planning to hold hearings on the matter. "If CDC can show they can do nonbiased and nonpolitically motivated studies, that's something he'd be interested in," the spokesman said.

But like everything else gun-related in Congress, nothing is guaranteed.

 

[UltimateApathy]

Plenty of links on the actual website that further extrapolate and discuss the article below - if any puppets on corporate strings can handle the truth, that is.

How The NRA Stifled Gun Violence Research

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/20...-nra-stifled-gun-violence-research/?mobile=nc

The tragic massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, CT on Friday reignited the debate over the solution to America’s gun problem. President Obama announced that Vice President Joe Biden would lead a task force to examine the available evidence and make recommendations for new policies to prevent the next shooting. But thanks to a concerted, 20-year effort by the National Rifle Association, the available evidence is severely lacking.

While pushing a radical agenda to arm as many people in as many places as possible, the NRA has also maintained a side campaign to quash research into the effects of gun laws. The group successfully lobbied to cut off almost all funding for such studies. The Center for Disease Control, once the main patron of gun violence research, was stripped of funds for firearms research. The agency has not conducted any studies on the matter since 1996. As a result, the debate that arises after each shooting has very little evidence to consider.

Scientists and researchers who want to study why American gun homicides are so much higher than all other developed nations are now dependent on just a few private foundations still willing to brave the wrath of the gun lobby. The NRA has continued its intimidation campaign even as gun violence research becomes virtually nonexistent:


The amount of money available today for studying the impact of firearms is a fraction of what it was in the mid-1990s, and the number of scientists toiling in the field has dwindled to just a handful as a result, researchers say.

The conversation could benefit from improved data on gun possession, acquisition, according to one such researcher, Garen Wintemute. Wintemute was part of a 2011 panel that called for more studies of experimental gun control programs on the local and state levels, as well as more studies on how and where criminals acquire their guns.

Gun control advocates have wasted no time since the elementary school shooting to push for reform, such as bans on assault weapons and on high-capacity clips. The National Rifle Association has preferred to stay silent until their conference on Friday. Still, the group is already trying to stifle the conversation, calling the assault weapons ban “a failed experiment.” But as more NRA-backed lawmakers break from the official line to support gun safety measures, the group may have a hard time keeping others silent.

 

[UltimateApathy]

The simple and obvious facts that many brainwashed minions simply ignore because it conflicts with the warm and fuzzy little world view pushed on them by their corporate puppet-masters:

http://smartgunlaws.org/category/gun-studies-statistics/gun-violence-statistics/

Introduction to Gun Violence Statistics

Posted on Sunday, November 18th, 2012


The United States experiences epidemic levels of gun violence, claiming over 30,000 lives annually, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For every person who dies from a gunshot wound, two others are wounded. Every year, approximately 100,000 Americans are victims of gun violence. In addition to those who are killed or injured, there are countless others whose lives are forever changed by the deaths of and injuries to their loved ones.

Gun violence touches every segment of our society. It increases the probability of deaths in incidents of domestic violence, raises the likelihood of fatalities by those who intend to injure others and among those who attempt suicide, places children and young people at special risk, and disproportionately affects communities of color.

Mass shooting tragedies like the school shootings at Virginia Tech in April 2007 and Northern Illinois University in February 2008 – or the 1993 office shooting in San Francisco that led to the formation of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence – receive significant media attention. However, gun deaths and injuries in the U.S. usually occur quietly, without national press coverage, every day.

Statistics on Gun Deaths & Injuries

Posted on Friday, November 16th, 2012

In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour.1

73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds in 2010.2

Firearms were the third-leading cause of injury-related deaths nationwide in 2010, following poisoning and motor vehicle accidents.3

Between 1955 and 1975, the Vietnam War killed over 58,000 American soldiers – less than the number of civilians killed with guns in the U.S. in an average two-year period.4

In the first seven years of the U.S.-Iraq War, over 4,400 American soldiers were killed. Almost as many civilians are killed with guns in the U.S., however, every seven weeks.5

Homicide

Guns were used in 11,078 homicides in the U.S. in 2010, comprising almost 35% of all gun deaths, and over 68% of all homicides.6

On average, 33 gun homicides were committed each day for the years 2005-2010.7

Regions and states with higher rates of gun ownership have significantly higher rates of homicide than states with lower rates of gun ownership.8

Where guns are prevalent, there are significantly more homicides, particularly gun homicides.9

Suicide

Firearms were used in 19,392 suicides in the U.S. in 2010, constituting almost 62% of all gun deaths.10

Over 50% of all suicides are committed with a firearm.11

On average, 49 gun suicides were committed each day for the years 2005-2010.12

White males, about 40% of the U.S. population, accounted for over 80% of firearm suicides in 2010.13

A study of California handgun purchasers found that in the first year after the purchase of a handgun, suicide was the leading cause of death among the purchasers.14

Firearms were used in nearly 44% of suicide deaths among persons under age 25 in 2010.15

More than 75% of guns used in suicide attempts and unintentional injuries of 0-19 year-olds were stored in the residence of the victim, a relative, or a friend.16

The risk of suicide increases in homes where guns are kept loaded and/or unlocked.17

Unintentional Deaths and Injuries

In 2010, unintentional firearm injuries caused the deaths of 606 people.18

From 2005-2010, almost 3,800 people in the U.S. died from unintentional shootings.19

Over 1,300 victims of unintentional shootings for the period 2005–2010 were under 25 years of age.20

People of all age groups are significantly more likely to die from unintentional firearm injuries when they live in states with more guns, relative to states with fewer guns. On average, states with the highest gun levels had nine times the rate of unintentional firearms deaths compared to states with the lowest gun levels.21

A federal government study of unintentional shootings found that 8% of such shooting deaths resulted from shots fired by children under the age of six.22

The U.S. General Accounting Office has estimated that 31% of unintentional deaths caused by firearms might be prevented by the addition of two devices: a child-proof safety lock (8%) and a loading indicator (23%).23
1.Nat’l Ctr. for Injury Prevention & Control, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Web-Based Injury Statistics Query & Reporting System (WISQARS) Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2010, for National, Regional, and States (Dec. 2012), http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/dataRestriction_inj.html (hereinafter WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2010. Note: Users must agree to data use restrictions on the CDC site prior to accessing data). [↩]
2.Nat’l Ctr. for Injury Prevention & Control, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Web-Based Injury Statistics Query & Reporting System (WISQARS) Nonfatal Injury Reports, at http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates2001.html (last visited Nov. 20, 2012) (hereinafter WISQARS Nonfatal Injury Reports). [↩]
3.Nat’l Ctr. for Injury Prevention and Control, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Web-Based Injury Statistics Query & Reporting System (WISQARS) Leading Causes of Death Reports, 1999-2010, for National, Regional, and States (RESTRICTED), at http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/leading_causes_death.html (last visited Nov. 30, 2012). [↩]
4.U.S. Department of Defense, Statistical Information Analysis Division, Personnel & Military Casualty Statistics, U.S. Military Casualties in Southeast Asia: Vietnam Conflict – Casualty Summary As of May 16, 2008, at http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/vietnam.pdf (last visited Feb. 10, 2012); WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2010, supra note 1. [↩]
5.U.S. Department of Defense, Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) U.S. Casualty Status, Fatalities as of: March 12, 2012, 10 a.m. EST, at http://www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf (last visited Feb. 10, 2012); WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2010, supra note 1. [↩]
6.WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2010, supra note 1. [↩]
7.Id. [↩]
8.Matthew Miller, Deborah Azrael & David Hemenway, Rates of Household Firearm Ownership and Homicide Across US Regions and States, 1988-1997, 92 Am. J. Pub. Health 1988 (2002). [↩]
9.David Hemenway, Private Guns, Public Health 65 (2004). [↩]
10.WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2010, supra note 1. [↩]
11.Id. [↩]
12.Id. [↩]
13.Id. [↩]
14.Garen J. Wintemute et al., Mortality Among Recent Purchasers of Handguns, 341 New Eng. J. Med. 1583, 1585 (Nov. 18, 1999). [↩]
15.WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2010, supra note 1. [↩]
16.David C. Grossman, Donald T. Reay & Stephanie A. Baker, Self-inflicted & Unintentional Firearm Injuries Among Children & Adolescents: The Source of the Firearm, 153 Archives Pediatric & Adolescent Med. 875 (Aug. 1999), at http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/153/8/875. [↩]
17.Matthew Miller & David Hemenway, The Relationship Between Firearms and Suicide: A Review of the Literature, 4 Aggression & Violent Behavior 59, 62-65 (1999) (summarizing the findings of multiple studies). [↩]
18.WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2010, supra note 1. [↩]
19.Id. [↩]
20.Id. [↩]
21.Matthew Miller, Deborah Azrael & David Hemenway, Firearm Availability and Unintentional Firearm Deaths, 33 Accident Analysis & Prevention 477 (July 2001). [↩]
22.U.S. General Accounting Office, Accidental Shootings: Many Deaths and Injuries Caused by Firearms Could Be Prevented 17 (Mar. 1991), at http://161.203.16.4/d20t9/143619.pdf. [↩]
23.Id. A loading indicator, also known as a “chamber load indicator,” is a safety device that indicates at a glance whether a firearm is loaded and whether a round remains in the chamber. [↩]

Statistics on Youth Gun Violence & Gun Access

Posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2012

Firearm injuries are the cause of death of 18 children and young adults (24 years of age and under) each day in the U.S.1

Children and young adults (24 years of age and under) constitute 38% of all firearm deaths and non-fatal injuries.2

In the United States, over 1.69 million kids age 18 and under are living in households with loaded and unlocked firearms.3

More than 75% of guns used in suicide attempts and unintentional injuries of 0-19 year-olds were stored in the residence of the victim, a relative, or a friend.4

A 2000 study found that 55% of U.S. homes with children and firearms have one or more firearms in an unlocked place; 43% have guns without a trigger lock in an unlocked place.5

The practices of keeping firearms locked, unloaded, and storing ammunition in a locked location separate from firearms may assist in reducing youth suicide and unintentional injury in homes with children and teenagers where guns are stored.6

Many young children, including children as young as three years old, are strong enough to fire handguns.7
1.Nat’l Ctr. for Injury Prevention & Control, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Web-Based Injury Statistics Query & Reporting System (WISQARS) Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2010, for National, Regional, and States (Sept. 2012), http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/dataRestriction_inj.html (hereinafter WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2010. Note: Users must agree to data use restrictions on the CDC site prior to accessing data). [↩]
2.Id., Nat’l Ctr. for Injury Prevention & Control, U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Web-Based Injury Statistics Query & Reporting System (WISQARS) Nonfatal Injury Reports, at http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates2001.html (last visited Nov. 20, 2012) (hereinafter WISQARS Nonfatal Injury Reports). [↩]
3.Catherine A. Okoro et al., Prevalence of Household Firearms and Firearm-Storage Practices in the 50 States and the District of Columbia: Findings from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2002, 116 Pediatrics e370, e370 (Sept. 2005), at http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/116/3/e370. [↩]
4.David C. Grossman, Donald T. Reay & Stephanie A. Baker, Self-inflicted & Unintentional Firearm Injuries Among Children & Adolescents: The Source of the Firearm, 153 Archives Pediatric & Adolescent Med. 875 (Aug. 1999), at http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/153/8/875. [↩]
5.Mark A. Schuster et al., Firearm Storage Patterns in U.S. Homes with Children, 90 Am. J. Pub. Health 588, 590 (Apr. 2000). [↩]
6.David C. Grossman et al., Gun Storage Practices and Risk of Youth Suicide and Unintentional Firearm Injuries, 293 JAMA 707, 711-13 (Feb. 2005). [↩]
7.Naureckas, S.M. et al, Children’s and Women’s Ability to Fire Handguns, 149 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 1318 (Dec. 1995). [↩]


Statistics on Non-Powder Guns

Posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2012

Non-powder guns, including BB, air and pellet guns, injured 13,851 people in 2010, including 9,252 young people (age 19 or younger).1

From July 1993 to July 2003, non-powder guns caused 40 deaths nationwide.2 Although injury rates for non-powder guns appear to have declined significantly since the early 1990’s, non-powder guns are becoming more powerful and more accurate, and are often designed to appear almost indistinguishable from firearms.3

For additional information about non-powder guns, including background information and state and local laws on the topic, see LCPGV’s Non-Powder Guns Policy Summary.
1.National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Nonfatal Injury Reports 2010, at http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates2001.html. [↩]
2.Jennifer E. Keller et al., Air-Gun Injuries: Initial Evaluation and Resultant Morbidity, 70 Am. Surgeon 484, 484 (June 2004). [↩]
3.Ann Marie McNeill & Joseph L. Annest, The Ongoing Hazard of BB and Pellet Gun-Related Injuries in the United States, 26 Annals Emergency Med. 187, 191-92 (Aug. 1995); Press Release, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, CPSC Chairman Challenges Toy Industry To Stop Producing Look-Alike Guns (Oct. 17, 1994), at http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/PRHTML95/95009.html. [↩]

Statistics on Gun Deaths & Race

Posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2012

Firearm homicide is the leading cause of death for African Americans ages 1-44.1

African Americans make up nearly 13% of the U.S. population, but in 2009 suffered almost 24% of all firearm deaths – and over 54% of all firearm homicides.2
1.Nat’l Ctr. for Injury Prevention & Control, U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Web-Based Injury Statistics Query & Reporting System (WISQARS) Leading Causes of Death Reports, 1999-2009, for National, Regional, and States (RESTRICTED), at http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/dataRestriction_lcd.html (last visited Mar. 8, 2012) (hereinafter WISQARS Leading Causes of Death Reports, 1999-2009; Note: Users must agree to data use restrictions on the CDC site prior to accessing data). [↩]
2.Nat’l Ctr. for Injury Prevention & Control, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Web-Based Injury Statistics Query & Reporting System (WISQARS) Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2009, for National, Regional, and States (Sept. 2011), http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/dataRestriction_inj.html (hereinafter WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2009. Note: Users must agree to data use restrictions on the CDC site prior to accessing data). [↩]

Statistics on Domestic Violence & Firearms

Posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2012

Guns increase the probability of death in incidents of domestic violence.1

Firearms were used to kill more than two-thirds of spouse and ex-spouse homicide victims between 1990 and 2005.2

Domestic violence assaults involving a firearm are 12 times more likely to result in death than those involving other weapons or bodily force.3

Abused women are five times more likely to be killed by their abuser if the abuser owns a firearm.4

A recent survey of female domestic violence shelter residents in California found that more than one third (36.7%) reported having been threatened or harmed with a firearm.5 In nearly two thirds (64.5%) of the households that contained a firearm, the intimate partner had used the firearm against the victim, usually threatening to shoot or kill the victim.6

Laws that prohibit the purchase of a firearm by a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order are associated with a reduction in the number of intimate partner homicides.7

Between 1990 and 2005, individuals killed by current dating partners made up almost half of all spouse and current dating partner homicides.8

A study of applicants for domestic violence restraining orders in Los Angeles found that the most common relationship between the victim and abuser was a dating relationship, and applications for protective orders were more likely to mention firearms when the parties had not lived together and were not married.9

For additional information about domestic violence and firearms, including background information and state and local laws on the topic, see LCPGV’s Domestic Violence and Firearms Policy Summary.
1.Susan B. Sorenson, Firearm Use in Intimate Partner Violence: A Brief Overview, in 30 Evaluation Review, A Journal of Applied Social Research, Special Issue: Intimate Partner Violence and Firearms, 229, 232-33 (Susan B. Sorenson ed., 2006). [↩]
2.Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, Homicide Trends in the U.S.: Intimate Homicide (July 2007), at http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/intimates.cfm. [↩]
3.Linda E. Saltzman, et al., Weapon Involvement and Injury Outcomes in Family and Intimate Assaults, 267 JAMA, 3043-3047 (1992). [↩]
4.Jacquelyn C. Campbell et al., Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results from a Multisite Case Control Study, 93 Am. J. Pub. Health 1089, 1092 (July 2003). [↩]
5.Susan B. Sorenson et al., Weapons in the Lives of Battered Women, 94 Am. J. Pub. Health 1412, 1413 (2004). [↩]
6.Id. at 1414. [↩]
7.Elizabeth R. Vigdor et al., Do Laws Restricting Access to Firearms by Domestic Violence Offenders Prevent Intimate Partner Homicide?, 30 Evaluation Rev. 313, 332 (June 2006). [↩]
8.Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, Homicide Trends in the U.S.: Intimate Homicide (July 2007), at http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/intimates.cfm. [↩]
9.Katherine A. Vittes et al., Are Temporary Restraining Orders More Likely to be Issued When Application Mention Firearms?, 30 Evaluation Rev. 266, 271, 275 (2006). [↩]

Statistics on the Costs of Gun Violence

Posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2012

Firearm-related deaths and injuries result in estimated medical costs of $2.3 billion each year – half of which are borne by U.S. taxpayers.1

Once all the direct and indirect medical, legal and societal costs are factored together, the annual cost of gun violence in America amounts to $100 billion.2
1.Philip Cook et al., The Medical Costs of Gunshot Injuries in the United States, 282 JAMA 447 (Aug. 4, 1999). [↩]
2.Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, Gun Violence: The Real Costs 115 (2000). [↩]

Statistics on Gun Ownership

Posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2012

Americans own an estimated 270 million firearms – approximately 90 guns for every 100 people.1
1.Small Arms Survey, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Small Arms Survey 2007: Guns and the City at 39 (Aug. 2007). [↩]

Statistics on Gun Crimes

Posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2012

In 2007, nearly 70% of all murders nationwide were committed with a firearm.1

In 2007, 385,178 total firearm crimes were committed, including 11,512 murders, 190,514 robberies, and 183,153 aggravated assaults.2
1.U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Key Facts at a Glance: Crimes Committed with Firearms, 1973-2007, at http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/guncrimetab.cfm (last visited Aug. 15, 2010). [↩]
2.Id. [↩]

Statistics on the Dangers of Gun Use for Self-Defense

Posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2012

Using a gun in self-defense is no more likely to reduce the chance of being injured during a crime than various other forms of protective action.1

Of the 13,636 Americans who were murdered in 2009, only 215 were killed by firearms (165 by handguns) in homicides by private citizens that law enforcement determined were justifiable.2

A study reviewing surveys of gun use in the U.S. determined that most self-reported self-defense gun uses may well be illegal and against the interests of society.3
1.David Hemenway, Private Guns, Public Health 78 (2004). [↩]
2.Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Crime in the United States, 2009, Expanded Homicide Data Table 15, at http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_15.html (last visited Oct. 10, 2010). (A “justifiable homicide” in this context is defined by the FBI as the killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen). [↩]
3.David Hemenway, Deborah Azrael & Matthew Miller, Gun Use in the United States: Results from Two National Surveys, 6 Inj. Prevention 263, 263 (2000). [↩]

 

[Dak]

Clearly UA is a brainwashed minion of the VPC. :roilleyes:

This copy/paste/repeat routine is bad enough as it is, and then you obviously don't even read the content, you just scan headlines and assume it backs your drivel. It doesn't.

 

[Summerian]

Clearly UA is a brainwashed minion of the VPC. :roilleyes:

This copy/paste/repeat routine is bad enough as it is, and then you obviously don't even read the content, you just scan headlines and assume it backs your drivel. It doesn't.

Clearly! *rholenthehejs*

But still better than your copy/paste/repeat NRA/republican routine.

 

[Dak]

I haven't voted in over a decade and I don't think I've ever been to the NRA's website. I frankly don't care about the 2nd Amendment. It's the effect, not the cause of reason concerning government, the individual, and force. You haven't a clue what resides outside this false left/right paradigm.

 

[UltimateApathy]

Well take a look here, no-one even bothered to respond to these articles that clearly prove what I was saying about the NRA being the mouthpiece of the American gun manufacturing companies, so I guess it's time for a repost. The American cult-like obsession with civillian gun ownership is not existent anywhere else in the world, and the reason is that some antiquated law has been hijacked by very powerful gun corporations (America produces FAR more guns than any other country) who use their financial and political clout (via the NRA) to spread irrational fear-based propoganda worth millions and millions of dollars amongst the masses, and it's clearly working very well:

http://www.businessinsider.com/gun-i...nds-nra-2013-1

How The Gun Industry Funnels Tens Of Millions Of Dollars To The NRA

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/gun-i...#ixzz2KkefwaVF

The White House and the National Rifle Association are careening toward an all-out battle, with President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday of an expansive new agenda to crack down on gun violence.

Yesterday, the NRA released an advertisement targeting the President's daughters. Today, the President directly appealed to the club's members to break ranks.

One of the most interesting aspects of all is how an association for sportsmen became the prime defenders of assault weaponry.

In its early days, the National Rifle Association was a grassroots social club that prided itself on independence from corporate influence.

While that is still part of the organization's core function, today less than half of the NRA's revenues come from program fees and membership dues.

The bulk of the group's money now comes in the form of contributions, grants, royalty income, and advertising, much of it originating from gun industry sources.

Since 2005, the gun industry and its corporate allies have given between $20 million and $52.6 million to it through the NRA Ring of Freedom sponsor program. Donors include firearm companies like Midway USA, Springfield Armory Inc, Pierce Bullet Seal Target Systems, and Beretta USA Corporation. Other supporters from the gun industry include Cabala's, Sturm Rugar & Co, and Smith & Wesson.

The NRA also made $20.9 million — about 10 percent of its revenue — from selling advertising to industry companies marketing products in its many publications in 2010, according to the IRS Form 990.

Additionally, some companies donate portions of sales directly to the NRA. Crimson Trace, which makes laser sights, donates 10 percent of each sale to the NRA. Taurus buys an NRA membership for everyone who buys one of their guns. Sturm Rugar gives $1 to the NRA for each gun sold, which amounts to millions. The NRA's revenues are intrinsically linked to the success of the gun business.

The NRA Foundation also collects hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industry, which it then gives to local-level organizations for training and equipment purchases.

This shift is key to understanding why a coalition of hunters, collectors and firearm enthusiasts takes the heat for incidents of gun violence, like the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, rather than the companies that manufacture and market assault weapons.

The chief trade association for gun manufacturers is the National Shooting Sports Federation, which is, incidentally, located in Newtown, Conn. But the NRA takes front and center after each and every shooting.

"Today's NRA is a virtual subsidiary of the gun industry," said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center. "While the NRA portrays itself as protecting the 'freedom' of individual gun owners, it's actually working to protect the freedom of the gun industry to manufacture and sell virtually any weapon or accessory."

There are two reasons for the industry support for the NRA. The first is that the organization develops and maintains a market for their products. The second, less direct function, is to absorb criticism in the event of PR crises for the gun industry.

It's possible that without the NRA, people would be protesting outside of Glock, SIG Sauer and Freedom Group — the makers of the guns used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre — and dragging the CEOs in front of cameras and Congress. That is certainly what happened to tobacco executives when their products continued killing people.

Notoriously, tobacco executives even attempted to form their own version of the NRA in 1993, seeing the inherent benefit to the industry that such an effort would have. Philip Morris bankrolled the National Smokers Alliance, a group that never quite had the groundswell of support the industry wanted.

Notably, the tide has shifted slightly in the wake of Sandy Hook, with Cerberus Capital Management's decision to sell Freedom Group, the company that makes the Bushmaster rifle.

But if history is any indication, the NRA will be front and center of the new gun control debate, while gun manufacturers remain safely out of the spotlight.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_2434142.html

NRA Gun Control Crusade Reflects Firearms Industry Financial Ties

Throughout its 142-year history, the National Rifle Association has portrayed itself as an advocate for the individual gun owner’s Second Amendment rights. In turn, the NRA relied on those gun owners, especially its 4 million or so members, to pressure lawmakers into carrying out its anti-gun control agenda.

In the last two decades, however, the deep-pocketed NRA has increasingly relied on the support of another constituency: the $12-billion-a-year gun industry, made up of manufacturers and sellers of firearms, ammunition and related wares. That alliance was sealed in 2005, when Congress, after heavy NRA lobbying, approved a measure that gave gunmakers and gun distributors broad, and unprecedented, immunity from a wave of liability lawsuits related to gun violence in America’s cities.

It was a turning point for both the NRA and the industry, both of which recognized the mutual benefits of a partnership. That same year, the NRA also launched a lucrative new fundraising drive to secure “corporate partners” that’s raked in millions from the gun industry to boost its operations.

But that alliance, which has grown even closer in recent years -- and includes ties both financial and personal, a Huffington Post examination has found -- has led to mounting questions from gun control advocates about the NRA's priorities. Is the nation’s most potent gun lobby mainly looking out for its base constituency, the estimated 80 million Americans who own a firearm? Or is it acting on behalf of those that make and sell those guns?

According to a 2012 poll conducted by GOP pollster Frank Luntz for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 74 percent of NRA members support mandatory background checks for all gun purchases, a position that the NRA has stridently opposed. “There’s a big difference between the NRA’s rank and file and the NRA’s Washington lobbyists, who live and breathe for a different purpose,” Mark Glaze, the executive director of the gun control group, said.

The questions about the NRA's ties to the gun industry, and whether those ties have influenced its agenda, have come to the forefront in the wake of horrific mass shootings last year in Connecticut, Colorado and Wisconsin.

A week after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults in a Newtown, Conn., school, Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president and top lobbyist, gave a tense, combative performance at a press conference in which he signalled the organization wouldn't budge from its long-held opposition to most gun control measures.




Instead, LaPierre revealed that the NRA favored putting thousands of armed guards in schools to curb shootings. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he said.

The NRA’s deep ties to the gun industry dismays some lawmakers who have introduced gun control bills responding to the mass shootings.

“The NRA is basically helping to make sure the gun industry can increase sales,” Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat and longtime gun control advocate, told The Huffington Post. McCarthy last week proposed a bill that would ban new sales of new large ammunition clips that increase the lethality of weapons like those used in mass shootings in Connecticut, Colorado and Wisconsin.

“No one is challenging NRA members' right to own guns,” McCarthy said. "We’ve had large mass shootings which have [involved] large mass assault weapons clips. These clips aren’t used for hunting.”

McCarthy’s husband and five other people were shot dead in a brutal assault in 1993 on a New York commuter train by a man wielding a gun with a large-capacity ammunition clip.

The Obama administration is reportedly considering a much broader approach to curbing gun violence: bans on assault weapons and large ammunition clips, mandatory background checks on all gun purchases, increased mental health checks and expanded penalties for carrying guns near schools. On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden said that the White House had determined that "executive action can be taken," though the specifics have not been settled.

The administration is also trying secure backing from big retailers like Walmart that sell guns, with an eye to undercutting the influence of the NRA and gun industry allies -- a strategy that might peel off some of their gun-owner grassroots. Walmart leaders announced this week that they will attend a Thursday meeting at the White House.

Gun control advocates who have lagged badly behind the NRA in fundraising and organization are now are accelerating their efforts. On Tuesday, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D), who was badly wounded two years ago in a mass shooting, launched a new gun control political action committee, Americans for Responsible Solutions, to counter the NRA’s legendary financial and political clout with Congress.

The NRA declined to comment. In recent years, it has argued that defending gun owners and the gun industry is one in the same. Any new laws or regulations that would limit the availability of firearms, or restrict who can own them, would violate the Second Amendment, the organization has said. The NRA has said it does support efforts to keep guns out of the hands of felons, those who have been adjudicated as mentally incompetent, or unsupervised children.

The NRA forwarded a letter to The Huffington Post that the group sent to Congress. The letter is signed by Chris Cox, who runs the NRA lobbying arm. “We know that the facts prove gun bans do not work and that is why they are not supported by the majority of the American people,” the letter said. Cox promised that the NRA would adopt a “constructive” stance in the debate, and reiterated past NRA positions that existing laws need to be better enforced.

In 2011, 32,000 Americans died due to gun violence. The homicide rate in the U.S. is about 20 times higher than in other advanced nations.

'YOUR FIGHT HAS BECOME OUR FIGHT'

Close ties between the NRA and gunmakers go back at least to 1999, when the NRA publicly declared its support for the firearms industry as it prepared to defend itself from a rash of liability lawsuits filed by cities and municipalities.

“Your fight has become our fight,” then-NRA president Charlton Heston declared before a crowd of gun company executives at the annual SHOT Show, the industry's biggest trade show. “Your legal threat has become our constitutional threat," he said.

Following the passage of the shield law that dismembered those lawsuits, the NRA launched a new fundraising drive targeting firearms companies the organization had just helped in a big way. That effort, dubbed "Ring of Freedom," paid off handsomely. Since 2005, the NRA drive has pulled in $14.7 million to $38.9 million from dozens of gun industry giants, including Beretta USA, Glock and Sturm, Ruger, according to a 2011 study by the Violence Policy Center, a group that favors gun control.

The Violence Policy Center study cited an NRA promotional brochure about the corporate partnership drive, noting that LaPierre promised that “this program is geared towards your company’s corporate interests.”

Despite the millions of dollars it has collected from the gun industry, the NRA’s website says “it is not affiliated with any firearm or ammunition manufacturers or with any businesses that deal in guns and ammunition.”

Besides its heavy lobbying for the special legal protections for gunmakers and distributors, the NRA pushed successfully in 2004 to ensure that a 10-year ban on assault weapons, enacted in 1994 over strong NRA objections, wasn’t renewed. Since then, annual rifle production by U.S. gunmakers has risen by almost 38 percent, according to federal gun data.

“The NRA clearly benefits from the gun industry,” William Vizzard, a former agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told The Huffington Post. “There’s a symbiotic relationship. They have co-aligned goals much more than 30 or 40 years ago.”

Vizzard noted that the gun industry has evolved slowly in recent decades from a “stodgy and conservative” business, which sold mostly rifles and sporting arms, to one that now traffics in paramilitary weapons and handguns. The NRA and the gun industry “have grown closer as the business has changed,” he said.

The intertwining interests of the NRA and the gun industry are also underscored by the gun company executives on the NRA board.

Among the gun industry heavyweights on the 76-seat NRA board are Ronnie Barrett, CEO of Tennessee-based Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, which makes a military-style rifle sold with high-capacity magazines. Pete Brownell, who heads Iowa-based Brownells Inc., another maker of high-capacity magazines, also sits on the NRA board.

These companies and other gun industry giants have ponied up big bucks to the NRA since 2005, according to a list of NRA corporate partners posted at its last convention.

For instance, Brownells is in an elite group of donors that have given between $1 million and $4.9 million since 2005. Barrett Firearms in the same period chipped in between $50,000 and $99,000.

Another notable donor is Freedom Group, which owns Bushmaster, the company that made the AR-15 military-style rifle used by Adam Lanza in his bloody assault on Sandy Hook. The Freedom Group has donated between $25,000 and $49,000 to the NRA’s corporate effort.

The NRA’s most generous gun industry backer is MidwayUSA, a distributor of high-capacity magazine clips, similar to ones that Lanza loaded into his Bushmaster rifle and Glock pistol. These clips increase the lethality of weapons by allowing dozens of shots to be fired before the shooter has to reload. According to its website, Midway has donated about $7.7 million to the NRA through another fundraising program that dates back to 1992. Under this program, customers who buy Midway products are asked to “round up” the price to the next dollar, with the company donating the difference to the NRA.

While the bond between the NRA and the gun industry has tightened, the NRA’s annual budget of about $250 million is still largely derived from other sources, including membership dues, merchandising and ads in NRA magazines. The magazines, though, are chock-full of gun industry ads.

Still, veteran gun control advocates said the NRA’s links with the gun industry may backfire as it deploys its lobbying to stave off new curbs.

“I think it’s much easier for policymakers to defend the NRA when they’re perceived as efforts on behalf of gun owners,” Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, said. “That equation changes dramatically when they’re seen as defending the gun industry.”

Whether this prediction holds true in the looming debate over gun control remains to be seen. But in the early-2000s, most lawmakers had few reservations about showing their support for the NRA -- even when the organization was lobbying for a law that would carve out a legal safe haven for the gun industry from civil negligence lawsuits.

'HOW'S THE WAR GOING?'

The fight to pass the liability shield law, known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, began after state attorneys general won a landmark $200 billion settlement against tobacco companies on claims they knowingly misled smokers about the dangers of cigarettes.

The success of the smoking cases led more than 30 cities and municipalities to sue the gun industry, citing negligence in the marketing and sale of firearms. The industry also faced increasing negligence lawsuits filed by victims of gun violence.

The most significant of these cases was brought by the families of the 13 people killed or seriously injured over a three-week span by the Washington, D.C.-area snipers, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo. The pair used a .223 Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle, the same model as Lanza. The weapon was allegedly stolen from a gun shop with a history of weapons "disappearing" from its inventory. The victims' families claimed the shop was negligent, as was the gunmaker, for not better policing problem stores.

In 2004, Bushmaster and the gun dealer settled the lawsuit for $2.5 million in a case that gun control advocates hailed as a "major breakthrough."

The gun company warned that cases like this could bankrupt it. Gunmakers described the legal fight in militaristic terms.

"As I walk through the plant, employees stop to ask me 'How's the war going?'" said Rodd Walton, the top lawyer for Sig Sauer, then called Sigarms, at a congressional hearing in 2005. “It's the war we are fighting against plaintiffs filing junk and frivolous lawsuits."

Though the gun industry has its own lobbying arm, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, based in Newtown, Conn., its influence pales in comparison with the NRA, which grades lawmakers on their fealty to the Second Amendment, and runs attack ads against candidates it perceives as on the wrong side of the fight. In the wake of its last major defeat -- the 1994 assault weapons ban -- the NRA mounted a successful campaign to push many of the ban's supporters, especially Democrats from rural areas, out of office.

The gun industry found a ready ally in the NRA, as Heston’s 1999 call to arms demonstrated. To aid its cause in Congress, the NRA enlisted one of its most trusted and powerful soldiers: then-Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, a longtime NRA board member.

The NRA and its allies argued that the lawsuits could destroy the gun industry, thus endangering Second Amendment rights.

"The cost of these lawsuits threatens to drive a critical industry out of business ... jeopardizing Americans' constitutionally protected access to firearms for self defense and other lawful uses," Craig said.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence fiercely opposed the bill to protect gunmakers from liability. "This was entirely a fight for the gun industry and more specifically for the worst actors in the gun industry," said Jonathan Lowry, a lawyer for the organization.

One of the bill's congressional opponents was Rep. Mel Watt. (D-N.C.). "I had no animosity toward guns, I had an animosity for setting precedents for other industries," Watt recently told The Huffington Post. Watt said he didn't understand why gunmakers should gain a legal shield available to no other industry.

But the NRA won the day, handily. Craig, who did not respond to a request for comment made through his lobbying firm, spearheaded the effort to get the bill through the U.S. Senate, where it eventually collected 15 Democratic votes, including that of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

In May 2006, the NRA's lobbying arm awarded Craig the Harlon B. Carter Legislative Achievement Award, its highest honor.

'MASSIVE OBAMA CONSPIRACY'

Since the passage of the 2005 law, ties between the NRA and the gunmakers have deepened.

The gun industry and other large corporate and individual donors chipped in $71.1 million in 2011 to NRA coffers, compared with $46.3 million in 2004, according to a Bloomberg News review of NRA tax returns.

The NRA’s fierce lobbying for other laws -- especially bills that have passed in almost every state allowing the carrying of concealed weapons -- also seem to have endeared the pro-gun goliath to many companies. After Wisconsin passed its concealed carry law, Fifer of Sturm Ruger told analysts in an earnings call that sales in the Badger State should get a boost.

As the debate about gun control moves forward, some analysts said the NRA's hard-line rhetoric benefits the gun industry in another way: it boosts sales.

“The NRA is generating fear,” said Vizzard, the former federal agent. “The industry has learned that the more controversy there is about guns, the more guns sell -- whether it’s a legitimate controversy over a bill, or a trumped-up one like, 'Obama’s been re-elected, they’re going to take away our guns.'”

A case in point has been the NRA’s strident rhetoric about the threat posed by President Barack Obama. The president, to the dismay of gun control advocates, failed to back new gun curbs in his first term, even though he endorsed renewing the lapsed assault weapons ban during his 2008 campaign.

Even so, the NRA's LaPierre fiercely opposed Obama's reelection, warning in late 2011 of a "massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” Interestingly, stock prices for gunmakers Sturm, Ruger and Smith & Wesson jumped in the wake of Obama’s November win.

After the Newtown massacre, sales jumped again. Given the NRA's past rhetoric, the odds are good that it will characterize any new gun legislation as proof that it was right to be wary of the president's motives.

Even so, the NRA would be wise to consider whether its rhetoric and agressive anti-gun control stance might alienate some of its membership, Vizzard said. Historically, he said, the NRA membership "appears to be more amenable," to certain types of regulation than the NRA leadership is.

The NRA’s ability to intimidate legislators at the polls may also be waning after last fall’s election. The NRA spent $17.4 million on the presidential and congressional contests in last year's general elections, according to Open Secrets, the web site for the Center for Responsive Politics. The NRA failed to unseat Obama and lost six out of seven Senate races, where it spent more than $100,000, according to Media Matters.

That gives hope to Rep. McCarthy as Congress begins to consider new legislation, including her bill to ban the sale of new high-capacity clips: “We’ve had members of Congress who’ve stood up the NRA and they’ve survived elections,” McCarthy said.

 

[UltimateApathy]

Clearly UA is a brainwashed minion of the VPC. :roilleyes:

This copy/paste/repeat routine is bad enough as it is, and then you obviously don't even read the content, you just scan headlines and assume it backs your drivel. It doesn't.

Quit whining about about how the facts, studies, and statistics that I posted don't support my point of view if you can't prove how. The articles I posted there clearly reinforce my argument to anyone to anyone with at least half a working brain. Intially in this topic I discussed the matter in terms of logic and rationality and you criticized and mocked such discourse and asked me to post facts, studies, and statistics to prove what I was saying.
So then I did do just that: I posted facts, studies, and statistics, and you promptly tried to dismiss them with your own "beautiful mind" logic - even though you had already dismissed such discourse as meaningless when I was doing it. And now when I am posting relevant data to support my argument it even becomes a "copy and paste routine" in your very addled and confused mind, even though that's exactly what you asked for before. Such hypocrisy and illogical thoughts and irrational behaviour is often found amongst brainwashed pawns of propoganda - ever heard of the phrase "willfully ignorant"?

 

[Dak]

You haven't posted a single study showing cause-effect between gun ownership and increased crime rates (although I can certainly show a correlation between restricted private ownership and increase crime rates). You have failed to dispute the correlation between the increase in gun purchases in the last 5+ years and the decrease in crime. All these studies you've posted, like the links between race and gun violence, or links between illegal guns and their uses etc, all point to a different common denominator: The War on Drugs (not to mention the "War on Poverty").