The NRA & guns for Christmas

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December was a bumper for month for gun sales in the United States…

 

 

The FBI recently released extraordinary statistics on festive gun buying in the US which have indicated that December may have broken the record for the number of guns bought in any one month. Over 1.5 million background checks were carried out by the FBI, the highest ever, with 500,000 of those in the six days before Christmas. The previous record was only set as recently as November.

It’s impossible to tell from these figures exactly how many weapons were bought as many buy more than one gun, but only 1.3% of checks result in refusals. It has been suggested that the sales indicate a high number of firearms being given as Christmas presents, a truly bizarre concept to the average person in the UK.  It isn’t clear whether the rise indicates an increase in the number of gun owners or whether the majority are current owners adding to their collections but either way the statistics are alarming.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has claimed that the surge is a result of people feeling a greater need for self-defence. A spokesman said:

I think there’s an increased realisation that when something bad occurs, it’s going to be between them and the criminal.

Even the most casual observer will be aware of the track record of “America’s foremost defender of Second Amendment rights,” and the reality is dramatically different. Many have emphasised the role of NRA scare-mongering about the Obama administration’s supposed intention to introduce tighter gun controls. Indeed, a quick scan of the organisation’s website (an enjoyable exercise, I strongly recommend it) reveals many articles that back up that point, among them a step-by-step guideto Obama’s apparent campaign strategy.

First, he will neutralise gun-owners as a political force (how exactly this will be done isn’t explained). With those pesky gunslingers dealt with he will be able to win a second term. This time there will be no need to answer to voters as he won’t be running for election again. With that in mind he will:

launch a full-scale, all-out assault to rip the Second Amendment out of the Bill of Rights.

As evidence the author points to, among other things, the fact that Obama has loaded his administration with “anti-gun zealots.”

This is not the first time that gun sales have surged as a result of the gun-lobby provoking fears that laws will change. In the six months following the election of Obama, sales were so high that there was a national ammunition shortage and shops in some parts of the country were almost out of assault weapons. More disturbingly, there was a similar reaction after the January 2011 shooting in Tuscon, Arizona in which 6 people were killed and 14 wounded. The event triggered a spike in gun sales nationwide. The increase was particularly pronounced for precisely the type of weapon used by the killer, Jared Lee Loughner, the Glock 19.

I hope that the NRA rhetoric is actually proved right; that the Obama administration demolishes the power of the gun lobby and that tougher gun legislation is introduced. Unfortunately to predict that this will be the case would be as ridiculous a declaration as the Fox News assertion that Obama is a socialist or the Muppets are a communist conspiracy; and like Fox News, it doesn’t matter how loudly I say it or how many times I repeat it, it still won’t be true.

The main problem is that the NRA and the rest of the gun lobby, as absurd as they may seem, genuinely hold significant power. In a country where almost 9,000 died in murders caused by firearms in 2010, the NRA portrays itself as a civil rights organisation. Today, there are estimated to be around 250 million guns in the US, and one in four adults are firearm owners. The NRA has 4 million members, pours millions of dollars into electoral campaigns, and has often been credited with having a significant influence on congressional races. It has also been argued that the anti-gun lobby’s influence is exacerbated by the US electoral system: gun owners are disproportionately “swing voters” and disproportionately live in rural battleground states.

All of this represents a massive obstacle to those campaigning for more gun controls, and means that the president and other leading Democrats are usually almost silent on the issue. The current administration has continued this trend so the NRA characterisation of the president is completely misleading and unjustified.

This will remain so for the foreseeable future. Democrats remember clearly events of 1994 when Bill Clinton and Democrats in the House of Representatives pushed through a landmark bill that featured a ban on assault-style weapons. In the November mid-terms the Democrats paid the price and lost control of the House and Senate. Clinton and others claimed that NRA campaigning had a big role in the results. When the bill came up for congressional reauthorisation in 2004, it failed.

With this in mind, the Obama administration will continue to tread carefully. The politics of gun control hasn’t gotten any easier and to make matters worse for Obama, NRA hostility has been accompanied by criticism from the less powerful gun control lobby, with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence awarding the president a symbolic “F grade” in 2010 for his concessions to the gun lobby and lack of leadership on the issue.

Gun nuts don’t fret; another year will pass and your constitutional rights will remain untouched. Rest assured, as you peel back the wrapping paper on Christmas day, you will still be able reveal something hard and shiny from your nearest and dearest. Perhaps when you do you could spare a thought for the 9,000 that will surely have lost their lives in gun violence between now and then.

 

Paul Hunt writes on subjects including international relations, human rights and international development, you can find him on Twitter @PaulJ_Hunt