This Monday, Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV), published what he presumably hopes to pass as an "exposé" of supposedly deceitful claims by the gun industry about the sustained boom in sales. Horwitz writes in the Huffington Post:
The gun lobby doesn't actually provide any gun sales data to the media. The NSSF (the trade association for the gun industry) and the NRA have this data--because gun manufacturers have to understand what their dealers are selling in order to produce the proper amount of product and maximize profits. But the gun lobby has blocked public access to this information for decades. Instead, they offer reporters data on background checks run through the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
There are, of course, numerous problems with Horwitz's thesis here. An obvious one is that although the number of NICS checks does, admittedly, not provide a raw number of gun sales, the fact remains that any dramatic, sustained trend in one direction or the other strongly suggests a similar trend in gun sales, absent some other explanation (which Horwitz has failed to provide).
Moreover, public access to gun sales data has not been "blocked," by the "gun lobby" (that would be us), or anyone else, with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) providing its Annual Firearms Manufacturers And Export Report every year, and the NSSF providing many industry reports all the time. Blogger Thirdpower has more--and boy, things are looking good at Ruger, aren't they?
These inconvenient little facts have not stopped CSGV from relentlessly (some might say tediously) promoting Horwitz's little fantasy on their Facebook page and Twitter feed all week.
Oddly, while CSGV shrilly clamors for more information (information that, remember, is already readily available) from the gun industry about gun sales figures, they seem to have no interest in pressing Attorney General Eric Holder for any information in his possession about gun sales to Mexican drug cartels, facilitated by his Department of "Justice." National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea wrote last month:
The grilling of Eric Holder climaxed at the very end of the day's proceedings, when Rep. Darrell Issa threatened the attorney general with contempt of Congress for his refusal to produce communications and logs . . .
Specifically, the "communications and logs" are a reference to the conspicuous absence among the thousands of documents provided to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation of the "Project Gunwalker" scandal, of a single email from AG Holder. Seattle Gun Rights Examiner Dave Workman has more:
Things began unraveling for Holder when Issa referred to some 5,000 documents that were mostly e-mails. But Issa raised a curious point: Not one of the e-mails was from Holder.
Further pressing, this time by Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ), resulted in Holder admitting that documents after February 5, 2011 "have not been produced, and it is not our intention to produce them."
Apparently, judging from CSGV's silence about this stonewalling, they believe that those investigating the abomination of the DoJ's arming of the drug cartels have no legitimate right to that information.
CSGV has also raised no objections to the State Department, under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, blocking since 2009 public access to information about weapons transferred with her department's approval to the Mexican government (many of which are quickly diverted to the drug syndicates).
It would appear that CSGV is looking for conspiracies in all the wrong places.
See also:
- A journalist's guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part One
- A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker-Part Two
- A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Three
- A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Four
- A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Five
- A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Six
- A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Seven
- A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Eight
- Official Correspondence on the Project Gunwalker Scandal.
- Sharyl Attkisson's stories on CBS
- Government hiding numbers of guns LEGALLY sent to Mexico, diverted to cartels
- Issa threatens Holder with contempt of Congress charge
- Fast & Furious mystery: Holder’s absent e-mails
- More Denial
- @CSGV's Research Skills Suck
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