High Marks For Body Counts?

They say you can’t make this stuff up, but that’s not entirely accurate. You can make it up, but why bother when the truth is crazy enough?

You’ve heard of the Giffords Law Center, the gun control group headed by former Congresswoman Gabriel “Gabby” Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt on Jan. 8, 2011, in a Tucson, Arizona suburb. Six people, including a child, were killed, but Giffords miraculously survived, though she is permanently disabled. Since recovering from the murder attempt, she has become a gun control advocate.

While Giffords’ personal story is worthy of sympathy, when the group named for her declares the state with the highest number of homicides as “Number 1” for firearms regulations, something is definitely haywire, if not completely off the rails. But that’s what happened a few weeks ago when the Giffords group released its annual gun law scorecard. California got an “A” grade, and surprise-of-surprises, there wasn’t a single mention of the Golden State’s 2023 body count: 1,929, according to Statista, a group that keeps tabs on slayings.

Neighboring Oregon got an “A-” from Giffords, and according to KOIN News in Portland, the Beaver State’s rating went up from a D+ over the years from 2014 to 2024. And here’s the reason: In Oregon, they posted 14.1 “gun deaths” for every 100,000 residents, and the state is considered by Giffords to have the 11th strongest gun laws in the country. Reason to celebrate, right?

Uh, not exactly. According to KOIN, “Researchers reported that this rate is about 2% higher than the national average.” Always nice to be above average, eh?

You guessed it, there’s more. On the Giffords website, there is a spot where a person can compare states, and already set up was a comparison between Massachusetts and Wyoming. The Bay State gets an “A,” and the Cowboy State gets an “F.” But before shedding too many tears about Wyoming’s poor showing, check with Statista. In 2023, Wyoming posted 18 murders, while Massachusetts logged 146 slayings. Where would you rather live?

Gun Sales Remain Strong

Not that anyone in the last administration would admit it, but whatever other mark in history Joe Biden may have made, gun sales stayed pretty healthy on his watch.

According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the final figures for NSSF-adjusted background checks related to actual gun sales came to more than 15.2 million. The National Instant Check System (NICS) raw total for the year came to 28,854,176 initiated checks.

“The adjusted NICS data were derived by subtracting out NICS purpose code permit checks and permit rechecks used by states for CCW permit application checks as well as checks on active CCW permit databases. NSSF started subtracting permit rechecks in February 2016,” NSSF said in a news release.

While last year’s numbers reflected a decrease from 2023, here’s the good news. December 2024 marked the 65th straight month when FBI NICS checks exceeded 1 million “adjusted background checks” in a single month.

“Though not a direct correlation to firearms sales, the NSSF-adjusted NICS data provide an additional picture of current market conditions. In addition to other purposes, NICS is used to check transactions for sales or transfers of new or used firearms,” NSSF said. Translation: Biden, despite his administration’s efforts to choke gun sales and erode Second Amendment rights, actually presided over 48 months of steady firearms business. Maybe NSSF ought to give Biden some sort of medal for being a leader in retailing.

Didn’t Think it Through

Remember the allegations over the past few years that AR-15 and similar rifles are “weapons of war?” And do you also remember how the gun ban crowd insisted (and many still do) that the Second Amendment was set up only to enable states to organize state militias?

Here is the amendment’s full text: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” There is no mention about which arms, or what kinds of arms, are protected. The language is encompassing.

Wouldn’t this mean so-called “assault weapons” should actually be at the top of any list of firearm types that the Second Amendment protects? After all, in a national emergency, when the unorganized militia (you and me) would be expected to show up ready for action with our own arms, they better be up to snuff for the battlefield, right?

It’s clear the gang at Everytown and the Brady camp didn’t think their strategy through when they decided to demonize modern semi-auto rifles (and pistols!), or maybe they didn’t expect us to figure out the contradictory nature of their arguments. Oops.

A couple of days before Christmas, Insider delved into recent-at-the-time Gallup data, and right now, with legislatures fired up all over the map, it’s time to take a second look at some of the numbers.

According to Gallup, their early October data revealed the following: 48% of survey respondents have a gun in their home, 47% said they don’t, and 5% “had no opinion” (they declined to answer); 34% of those folks personally own the gun(s) and 15% said the gun(s) belong to another household member; a scant 20% think handguns should be banned except for police and the military, while a whopping 79% support private gun ownership.

Now, here’s one that best illustrates what the Second Amendment is all about. An overwhelming 89% of gun owners told Gallup they own guns for protection against crime, 69% own guns for target shooting, and 55% own them for hunting.

This tends to concur with a Pew Research survey released last July, which said 72% of survey respondents said personal protection was their primary reason, followed by 32% who have guns for hunting, 30% for sport shooting and 15% as part of a gun collection.

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