NSSF, the trade association for the firearm industry, updated retail survey-based estimates and concluded that nearly 5 million Americans purchased a firearm for the very first time in 2020. NSSF surveyed firearm retailers which reported that 40 percent of sales were conducted to purchasers who have never previously owned a firearm.
NSSF tracks the background checks associated with the sale of a firearm based on the FBI’s National Instant Background Check System (NICS). NSSF-adjusted NICS checks for January through July 2020 is a record 12.1 million, which is up 71.7 percent from the 7.1 million NSSF-adjusted NICS January through July 2019. This equates to nearly 5 million first-time gun owners in the first seven months of 2020.
In a lawsuit filed this week, New York Attorney General Letitia James said a months long investigation into the National Rifle Association found extensive “fraud and abuse” and she’s calling for the powerful gun rights organization to be dissolved. Diane talks with Adam Winkler, professor of law at UCLA, about the lawsuit and what comes next.
Institutionally that may be correct, some of the abuses of the NRA executives are pretty aggregious by any accounting. Besides forcing paybacks and resignations of the executives, the NRA 501c3 could be dissolved under state law ⚖ but that doesn’t mean that gun rights advocacy would disappear – the assets of the NRA would be transferred to other gun rights advocacy groups that have a record of being more responsible to their donors.
Some of those groups are far more stronger advocates of the second amendment and are smaller and less wasteful. And people still care about their rights – if the NRA disappears other group like the National Association for Gun Rights or Shooting Sports Alliance may take up their mantle.
Honestly, the pervasive corruption of the NRA as an institution suggests maybe its time for its competitors to take up the mantle and become a more trustworthy source of advocacy and training for gun rights. Just because an institution has been all powerful for generations doesn’t mean it’s above the law or not subject to corruption. Times change and sometimes new leadership is needed.
Some good news for Bugs Bunny: Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam will lose their rights to bear arms in the updated HBO Max version of the beloved “Looney Tunes” cartoon series, according to a recent New York Times interview with the showrunner.
Reports in the Times and other U.S. news outlets in June 2020 about a ban on “Looney Tunes” characters using guns prompted queries from Snopes readers seeking confirmation whether or not the claim is true. It is.
“Looney Tunes” have found a new home on HBO Max as a series of shorts that will feature much of the same violent shenanigans despite eschewing guns, with Fudd attempting to get that rabbit using other methods. The animated children’s series that originated as a series of short film features in the 1930’s started streaming on the platform on May 27, 2020.
In an interview with the Times, Peter Browngardt, who also serves as the executive producer of “Looney Tunes Cartoons,” said: “We’re not doing guns … But we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in.”
As local and state governments across the country have restricted the liberties of their citizens since the coronavirus began its spread, many Americans have found themselves quietly exercising their rights by buying guns in record numbers.
The FBI’s March NICS background data for march was released yesterday and it was every bit as horrific as the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex feared it would be.
The adjusted background check data quantified what we’ve all seen in the photos of Americans lining up — sometimes for hours — outside of gun stores all across the country.
