Even Anti-Gunners Admit It

The Trace is a pro-gun control news organization backed by anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, and recently the publication acknowledged “Americans’ appetite for firearms remains well above historic norms.”

This is no small admission for The Trace, which was telling readers how U.S. gun sales were “plummeting.” The numbers are down considerably from the big surge during 2020, which brought us the COVID-19 pandemic panic, and the violent demonstrations in many big cities during the “Summer of Love.”

Of course more people bought guns that year. Police ranks were being trimmed, response times were increasing, nightly news broadcasts were loaded with reports of riot-level protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. It’s a natural reaction to trouble that people fall back on the good old Second Amendment. Goes together like Spring and baseball.

Here are some numbers from The Trace which deserve attention.

• In 2020, Americans bought an estimated 21.8 million firearms. Last year, we still purchased an estimated 15.3 million firearms.

• Since 1899, some 500 million firearms have been produced for the U.S. market. The Trace says even with a number of guns that “fall out of circulation each year,” there are “likely more than 390 million guns in civilian hands.”

• A Pew Research poll said 42% of Americans live in households where guns are present. This includes the 32% who say they personally own a gun.

That’s a lot of hardware, and when one considers that fewer than 50,000 firearms were involved in a crime of violence, a negligent homicide, a suicide or homicide in 2022, we are still talking about a fraction of all privately held firearms being misused in any given year. The estimate comes from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and 2022 is the most recent year for which data is apparently available.

Sure, each of these fatalities is a tragedy. Nobody said otherwise. What is being said is that all the talk about “gun violence” being an “epidemic” and “public health crisis” is nonsense. The numbers simply do not support the argument for more gun control, a total gun ban or a ban on so-called “assault rifles.”

As Insider noted last time, the number of rifles — of ANY KIND — involved in all of this mayhem numbers in the hundreds in any given year. Translation: It amounts to a fly speck on the violence chart. Yet, the gun ban bunch wants to rid the landscape of modern semiautomatic rifles. Has anyone ever asked anti-gunners about this disparity? I mean, besides me.

Choke This Down

In 2020, the FBI National Instant Check System (NICS) conducted 39,695,31 — the largest number of such checks for any year since the system went online back in the 1990s.

Now, not all of those checks involved firearms transactions. However, the number indicates a lot of guns went into private hands, as noted above, but there were a lot of guns purchased or swapped at gun shows, or between friends or family members, in states where one can still conduct a private sale without government interference.

Last year, according to the FBI data, there were 28,097,205 NICS checks. As reported above, out of these checks came more than 15 million firearms transfers.

What this tells us is that the notion of gun sales drying up amounts to wishful thinking by the gun prohibition lobby. Apparently, this is some sort of effort to convince the public that gun ownership is losing its allure. Fat chance of that. Just start talking about new gun controls and sales will pick up all over again.

Anti-gunners sometimes literally choke on this information. They would love to declare the Second Amendment dead and buried. The downside of such thinking is the realization that the criminal element will not be part of the equation. They won’t be giving up their guns.

California Mag Ban

In case you missed it, last month a federal appeals court judge in San Francisco — a 2019 Donald Trump appointee — did something unprecedented as a dissenting judge, and it amounted to a firearms lesson for his colleagues who upheld a ban on magazines in the Golden State that hold more than 10 cartridges..

The ruling came as the latest chapter in a case known as Duncan v. Bonta, which will now likely head to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Federal Judge Lawrence VanDyke produced an 18-minute video on the Court’s YouTube channel. He also offered a written dissent, but the video went viral almost overnight. He created the video in his chambers. During the video, he demonstrates visually why he argues against the ban. The appeals court ruled 7-4 that California’s ban is allowed under the Second Amendment, stating the magazine is not a protected accessory and is not considered an “arm.” We’ll see how long that lasts.

If this case goes to the Supreme Court, a pro-2A outcome would be devastating to restrictive gun laws in several states.

When Kristi Noem stepped away from the South Dakota Governor’s Office in January, she made room for a guy who seems quite at home, particularly when it comes to gun rights.

About this time a month ago, Gov. Larry Rhoden — a South Dakota native who came up through the Legislature and ultimately served as Noem’s lieutenant governor — said something when he signed a trio of pro-gun-rights bills into law which ought to be the “Golden Rule” for many of his colleagues.

“One of my favorite things about South Dakota is how free we are — especially when it comes to the freedom to keep and bear arms,” Rhoden said. “We have taken greater actions to defend our Second Amendment rights than any other state. As long as I am Governor, I will continue to defend this basic constitutional freedom.”

Who wouldn’t want a guy like this running their state, eh?

And There’s a Moron!

Just when you think people can’t get more foolish, along comes someone who says “Hold my beer.”

Say “hello” to Corey Whittico of Washington, D.C. Well, actually, say “goodbye” since he’s been booked for accommodations at the graybar hotel for the next seven years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. How did this happen? Chalk it up to sheer stupidity.

Whittico, a convicted felon who can’t legally possess a firearm, was spotted on a live video back in December 2023 by a couple of metropolitan police officers monitoring Instagram. He was sitting in the front passenger seat of a car, aiming his camera through the front windshield, and when he turned the camera on himself, he was holding a GLOCK pistol “that had been outfitted with an aftermarket machine gun conversion device known as a ‘switch.’” The device allows the pistol to fire full-auto, which is bad enough in its own right, but when it’s in the hands of a known felon, it’s a big “Oops.”

D.C.’s finest pulled the car over and had a little chat, which ended up with a lot of paperwork. Whittico and the car’s driver were both arrested. Inside the car, the officers found “three separate packages of marijuana weighing a total of 51 ounces (over three pounds)” plus a loaded .40-caliber GLOCK with the switch, and a 9mm GLOCK equipped with a laser and a loaded magazine holding 26 rounds.”

This was in December of ’23, eight months after he was convicted of robbery in Maryland’s Prince George’s County and sentenced to 10 years in prison. It’s not known why he was still out doing the handgun stunt, but he won’t be doing that for a while!

He pleaded guilty in December, and his sentence was handed down last month. Buh bye!

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