Merging ATF with DEA is a Really Bad Idea

In the budget outline that President Trump submitted to congress last week, one of the "government efficiency" proposals presented was to merge ATF with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).  During his Gun Talk Radio program on Sunday, Tom Gresham said during the third hour of the program that is a "horrific idea".  

A horrific idea horrible idea. The DEA is famous for violation of civil rights, of individual constitutional rights. They're all about asset forfeiture breaking in taking your stuff baby shooting you in the process. We need SIMP to get rid of the ATF gone.

You don't need to fold it into anything else, and certainly not the DEA. So I'm hoping that the White House gets enough feedback just says this is a terrible idea, and we, as gun owners who helped you get elected, do not want this. We don't want to be dealing with the DEA on firearms related issues.

On yesterday's Bearingarms.com's Cam and Company, senior vice president and general counsel Larry Keane for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) told Cam Edwards that NSSF is strongly opposed to merging the two agencies. 

Biden's Gun Control Will Do Nothing to Prevent Mass Shootings

The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal has this article by Armstrong Williams on Biden's assault on gun owners. In it Williams points out that Biden's wish list only punishes law abiding gun owners while doing nothing to attack the root problems that result in mass shootings.  He says if Biden really wanted to address the issues he mentioned in his remarks commemorating the anniversary of the Parkland school shooting, he would focus on mental health, especially mental health for America's youth.

While the gun ban crowd talks about restrictions on our rights, the firearms community is doing something to address what Williams says should be the focus. With initiatives like Walk the Talk America, which seeks to reduce incidents of suicide involving firearms, and Gun Owners Care, which works to prevent unauthorized access to firearms, gun owners are doing the real work of reducing the misuse of firearms.

March Gun Sales In Virginia Jump 75% Over March 2019.

The Times Dispatch reports that he Virginia Firearms Transaction Center recorded 80,228 transactions in March.  That's a 75% jump over March 2019 and the highest total for any month on record since state police began tracking the data in 1990, according to mandatory criminal background checks on Virginia gun buyers.

The March number surpasses the previous Virginia record of 75,120 transactions in December 2012, which experts said was fueled by fears of increased gun restrictions after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut.

The March record also adds to what has become Virginia’s longest sustained spike in monthly gun sales ever. It began with December’s 73,849 transactions and continued in January and February with 65,839 and 64,070 transactions, respectively.

State firearm dealers say the surging sales can be attributed to the virus scare, along with the lingering effects of increased gun control measures passed by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly.

With so many first time firearm purchasers, the National Shooting Sports Foundation has created the below resource that will help in making the purchase, and safely storing the firearm at home when not in use.

With indoor ranges still considered "non-essential" by Governor Northam, and most outdoor ranges are private gun clubs, it will be difficult for these new gun owners to receive training (VSSA is working to get the Governor to change his order on indoor ranges).  There are resources however that can be helpful.  Gun Talk Radio's Tom Gresham has the "First Person Defender" video series.  There is also Rob Pincus' Personal Defense Network web site which has numerous free training videos as well as videos behind their pay wall.  While not the same as live fire training, you will learn valuable information from such training videos.  Besides the info graphic above, NSSF has a number of resources for first time gun owners.  If you know someone that has purchased their first firearm and you have access to an outdoor range, offer to take them so they can learn to safely use their new firearm.

Lynchburg Police Urge Gun Owners to Lock Their Cars

WSLS 10 News in Lynchburg reports that in the last five years, 118 guns were reported stolen out of unlocked cars in Lynchburg.  Lynchburg Police are urging gun owners to lock their cars.


This is a national problem as well.  The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has produced a “Firearms Safety in Vehicles” brochure with tips and precautions for shooters who sometimes have a gun in their car, SUV or truck. Whether you’re heading to the range for a day of trigger time or carrying concealed, the reminder’s applicable.

A Reminder from NSSF that August is National Shooting Sports Month

NSSF had an amusing way to remind shooters in yesterday's Bullet Points newsletter that August is National Shooting Sports Month, so get out to the range.

So, don't let that ammo go to waste! Take someone shooting.

New Pew Research Survey on Gun Ownership

Larry Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) goes through the data in a new Pew Research Survey in yesterday's Daily Caller article.

The Pew Research Center has released an extensive survey measuring American’s attitudes about gun ownership and the results offer a mixed picture. With the usual firearm-related survey caveats in mind, Pew generally appears to have taken a relatively unbiased approach. Covering everything from the demographics of gun owners to views on violence in America and opinions on gun control policies, this 80-page report offers several key takeaways.

In terms of ownership, the results show about 42 percent of respondents live in a household with a gun and another 36 percent report that they would be open to owning a gun in the future. At least two-thirds of respondents have lived in a household with a firearm at some point in their lives.

Personal protection topped the reasons for owning a firearm, with a full two-thirds of respondents citing this as their primary reason. Remaining answers for firearm ownership had hunting at 38 percent and sport shooting at 30 percent. Forty-four percent said they had multiple reasons for owning guns.

As with any survey, it all depends how a question is asked or what background information is given to the subject taking the survey on a particular issue, and this survey is not different.  Read the entire article.  Keene does a great job of breaking down the data and showing why some of the information is good, and some should be taken with a grain of salt.

Help Spread Project ChildSafe Message and Get Entered for Chances to Win Prizes

Kicking off this past Monday, Project ChildSafe, with the support of the National Shooting Sports Foundation and its partners, launched the third annual Friends and Family campaign! Over the course of the next four weeks, NSSF/Project ChildSafe will be giving away amazing prizes from their partners to help spread the message of safe storage and responsible firearms ownership.

Share Project ChildSafe resources, messages and gun safety tips for your chance to win. There are many ways to enter, check out the campaign page today and get involved. Terms and conditions apply.

The first two prize winners were announced on Friday at 3 pm EDT.

Congrats Bill Edmonds & @MarkLaGambina on winning this week's F&F Campaign prizes! You can still enter to win: https://t.co/Q85QqlWWEi pic.twitter.com/2TmVnBiyr6

— Project ChildSafe (@ProjChildSafe) June 2, 2017

Enter for your chance to win during the remaining weeks of the campaign!

Campaign Week 1: May 30 - June 2, 2017

• Prize 1: .22LR AR Conversion Kit, Bravo, w/3 Magazines, courtesy of CMMG Inc
• Prize 2: Crimson Trace CMR-205 Rail Master Pro Universal Red Laser Sight, courtesy of Crimson Trace

Campaign Week 2: June 5- 9, 2017

• Prize 1: Nikon's BLACK FORCE1000 Riflescope, courtesy of Nikon
• Prize 2: Nikon's MONARCH 7i VR Laser Rangefinder, courtesy of Nikon

Campaign Week 3: June 12 - 16, 2017

• Prize 1: ShotLock Shotgun 200M Solo-Vault, courtesy of ShotLock
• Prize 2: ShotLock Handgun 200E Solo-Vault, courtesy of ShotLock

Campaign Week 4: June 19 - 23, 2017

• Prize 1 & 2: RFiD Hand Gun Safe, courtesy of Winchester Safes

Campaign Week 5: June 26 - 30, 2017

• GRAND PRIZE: Bandit 9 Gun Safe, courtesy of Winchester Safes

Winners will be announced on Facebook and Twitter each Friday during the campaign period at 3 pm EDT and followed-up with via email.

VSSA is a proud supporter of Project ChildSafe.

Obama Going After Gunsmiths

Last week's eBullet included an article from NRA's America's First Freedom that detailed the effects of a new directive from the State Department that essentially means gunsmiths must now register as gun manufacturers and pay a fee of over $2000 each year.  On Monday, Frank Miniter wrote about the new directive in Forbes and how Obama is using the bureaucracy to target gun rights:

Imagine a gunsmith getting up from his bench, where he was busy tweaking a gun’s stock for a customer, to answer a call from the State Department demanding he pay $2,250 every year or face the legal consequences, and you see why this is outrageous.

As there is no known reason for burdening gunsmiths with this large annual fee, and because doing so requires a strange and expansive redefinition of the word “manufacture,” it seems clear this is just more gun-control politics from the Obama administration.

Miniter mentioned in the article that the National Shooting Sports Foundation is lobbying Congress to step in and fix this problem with legislation.   Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation appeared on NRANews.com on Monday to discuss the issue and how it is causing confusion for gunsmiths and gun owners, and what NSSF is doing to fix the problem.

Study Indicates Programs Like NSSF's Project Childsafe Help Prevent Unintended Firearm Deaths

It is said that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then. So it also seems Bloomberg's mouthpiece, The Trace, stumbles across the truth now and then. The gun ban lobby's favorite online news source has this story about a new study indicating programs like NSSF's Project ChildSafe are effective, because, according to the study people were much more likely to comply when provided with a free device to secure their firearms. Project ChildSafe has distributed millions of free firearm locking devices since the early 2000s. The Trace notes:

To conduct the study, Rowhani-Rahbar and his colleagues Joseph Simonetti and Frederick Rivara combed through electronic databases for research on safe gun storage intervention methods. They focused exclusively on studies that used randomized or quasi-experimental trials — two of the most sound methods of conducting research — and ended up with seven studies that met their selection criteria. Six of the studies used safe storage programs that incorporated counseling on the risks of having unsecured guns in the home, and two of those also provided firearms owners with a free gun lock. One program studied provided whole gun cabinets to participants in rural Alaska, but no counseling — only instructions to lock household firearms in the cabinet and keep its key in a secure location.

The intervention programs that gave participants free storage devices were decidedly more effective. When subjects were given counseling and a cable lock, the share practicing safe storage increased by 9.7 percent. In the program where participants received a free gun cabinet, only 35 percent of the intervention group reported having unlocked guns in their homes in a follow-up report, compared to 89 percent of the control group. Among the programs that provided just counseling, only one produced a significant improvement in storage practices.

“If they didn’t actually give the device to participants — even if they provided a coupon or discount to buy a lock — the interventions didn’t work,” Rowhani-Rahbar says.

Of course the article had to go back to that tired talking point that there is a "dearth of firearms research" something that has been debunked but overall the results of this study that the U.S. Department of Justice made a good decision when it awarded a grant to NSSF last year to support Project ChildSafe.

Is This All There Is?

The National Shooting Sports Foundation's Larry Keane was on the Bill Bennett show this morning and confirmed what Sebastian wrote last night, that today's announcement will pretty much be for "public consumption" but not much substance.  Keane said NSSF is still pouring over what has been released but it does not appear to be much more than what is already being done or had already been proposed.  He also confirmed what was written here yesterday, that it is a reversal of the Clinton era of trying to reduce the number of FFLs.  He said the announcement is just "window dressing" that will do nothing to address the issue the President claims to want to address - "gun violence" and shows a failure of leadership.

Keane did say there is one provision the industry does have an issue with the lost and stolen provision (also mentioned here yesterday).  He said holding dealers responsible for something not in their inventory (i.e. if it is lost in transit from the manufacturer to the distributor to the dealer) makes no sense.

Keane and Bennett rhetorically asked "after all the hype, is this all there is?"

Department of Justice Awards NSSF 2.4 Million for Project Child Safe

The Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance has awarded the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) a cooperative agreement in the amount of $2.4 million to provide firearm safety education messaging and free gun locks through NSSF’s Project ChildSafe program.  From the NSSF press release:

We thank the Department of Justice for its recognition of this important program,” said Steve Sanetti, NSSF’s President and CEO. “We’ll work to build on previous efforts and further raise awareness of the simple precautions gun owners can take to store firearms securely when not in use.”

It's nice to see that the USDOJ has awarded taxpayer money to a group that actually knows something about outreach to gun owners.

More Guns, Less Unintentional Firearms Deaths

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has released the 2015 Edition of the Firearms-Related Injury Statistics and the numbers continue to show even as the number of firearms in the country has increased exponentially in the last six and a half years, the number of unintentional firearm deaths has decreased:

Data released by the National Safety Council demonstrates that unintentional firearms-related fatalities continue to remain at historically low levels. In fact, in the last two decades, the number of unintentional firearms-related fatalities has declined by 65 percent — from 1,521 unintentional fatalities in 1993 to 530* in 2013.

Firearms are involved in fewer than a ½-percent of all unintentional fatalities in the United States. In a side by side comparison, firearms rank among the lowest causes of accidental injury.

The rate of unintentional firearms deaths has decreased faster than the rate of unintentional deaths caused by moter vehicles and choking. For children 14 years of age and under, unintentional injuries are the leading cause of fatality. Firearms are one of the lowest causes of injury among children.   So much for the anti-rights meme that a gun in the home makes it more likely that a family member will die.

NSSF notes too that the combination of increased number of firearms training courses and safe storage programs have had a major impact on unintentional deaths caused by firearms.  Don't look for the story to be reported in the mainstream media though.

Washington Post Says FBI Background Check Failure Provides Good Argument for Expanding Background Checks

The Washington Post web site carried this editorial last night around 6:00 stating that the FBI's admission it failed to stop the Charleston church shooter from getting a gun provides an argument for "tightened" background checks.

Mr. Comey’s admission should also drive home what should be an obvious point: A tightened, functional background-check system and other simple measures would erect real and practical barriers to people attempting to buy guns for nefarious purposes. If the system had worked correctly in this case, Mr. Roof would have been turned away at the gun store counter. If Congress had tightened up the system’s rules years ago, he would have had a harder time looking elsewhere, such as at gun shows. If federal and state lawmakers weren’t so in thrall to the pro-gun fringe, friends, family members and other potential sources would have faced clear and high penalties for giving Mr. Roof a weapon without taking him to a gun store to get checked out first.

It’s entirely appropriate to talk about imposing basic gun laws in the wake of any mass shooting. All of them underline the fact that guns are shockingly efficient killing machines that no responsible government would ignore. Even if better gun laws wouldn’t prevent every rampage or end street crime, they would certainly cut down on gun deaths from all sorts of causes by making it tougher to obtain and use firearms illegally.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has been urging congress to "Fix NICS" for years.

And the U.S. Department of Justice offered grants to states since 2013 so that they can get their records on prohibited persons more up-to-date.  And yet the FBI still can't get it right.  So, it is a little hard to follow the Post's logic on how this paperwork failure is proof that running more background checks through the system will stop incidents like the one in Charleston from occurring.

Dr. John Lott noted on the Daily Caller on Friday that even if the shooter had failed the background check, due to the fact that he had been planning the attack for six months, he would likely have done what most other criminals do, get a firearm through an illegal source.  Lott also noted that the larger problem is the fact that like any database involving names, there will always be incorrect information:

This is the same problem experienced with the “No Fly” list. Remember the five times that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy was “initially denied” flights because his name was on the anti-terror “no fly” list? His name was just too similar to someone that we really did want to keep from flying. By Obama’s method of counting, that means the “no fly” list stopped five flights by terrorists.

For gun purchases, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives dropped over 94 percent of “initial denials” after just the first preliminary review. The annual National Instant Criminal Background Check System report explains that these cases were dropped either because the additional information showed that the wrong people had been stopped or because the covered offenses were so many decades old that the government decided not to prosecute. At least a fifth of the remaining 6 percent were still false positives.

If anything, the FBI's failure in this case is proof why so-called "universal background" checks won't do anything to deter crime.  The only thing it will do is make people who want to sell a firearm from their personal collection a criminal if they don't abide by this registration scheme.

Bloomberg's Gun Safety Fail

Michael Bloomberg's Moms Demand Action gun ban group, which likes to think of itself as a "gun safety" group, has come up with a new project that appears to borrow from two well known programs, NRA's Eddie Eagle and NSSF"s Project Childsafe, as well as the Brady Campaign's Ask campaign, but in the end misses the target. 

Known as the Be Smart campaign, it brings former child star Melissa Joan Hart out of mothballs to appear in a new video as the spokesperson for the program.  Hart, who was associated with conservative messages during the 2012 presidential campaign has taken small steps into the gun ban movement. She appears to have jumped head first into the movement with this project. Bob Owens of BearingArms.com gave his thoughts on the video yesterday.

You may have noticed that the video title, "a conversation about kids, guns and safety" is similar to this one:

But that is where the similarities end.  Bob mentioned via Miguel at the Gun Free Zone blog, some of the technical issues with the Be Smart video, like, what's up with the NYPD police officer locking away the ammunition in the safe but leaving the handgun out, even if it is secured by a cable lock?  Most importantly though, unlike the NSSF video above, the Be Smart video includes no discussion with kids about gun safety.  The NSSF approach of fully engaging your children in the process is what really works.  And, having someone who actually knows something about firearms and gun safety like NRA Mom and World Champion shooter Julie Golob doesn't hurt either.

In the end, the Be Smart campaign isn't really about gun safety, it's about telling people if they have kids, they should not have guns.  With the public's attitude toward firearms shifting dramatically toward the pro-rights side, Moms Demands' new campaign is likely to fall as flat as their annual protests of the NRA Annual Meetings and Exhibits.

Ladies Only Classes Big Hit at Local Range

Friday night, WTVR CBS 6 had this story on the rise of female gun ownership and the popular "Ladies Only" training classes that are a regular fixture at Colonial Shooting Academy:

“You can relate to girls,” explained Kingery. “There’s none of that macho stuff going on – no one being all big man. It’s just girls wanting to learn and doing it properly.”

The report noted recent Gallup Poll numbers that show 23% of all women own a gun, a 10% jump over a six-year period. Add to this a new National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) report highlighted at the 2015 SHOT Show that over a third of women in the study were new gun owners and had purchased their first firearm within the last three years. None of this is really news to VSSA.  Our affiliated clubs commonly "sell-out" NRA Women on Target clinics run by the clubs.

Media Focus on Woman Who Hunt and Shoot

World Champion shooter and Team Smith & Wesson member Julie Golob has this post on her blog on recent CNBC and ABC coverage of women and the shooting sports:

I loved the fact that CNBC chose to talk to so many women, including Smith & Wesson’s Laurel Smith who spoke about the M&P Shield. My closing comment in the piece sums up how I feel about it, that “It’s an exciting time in our industry.” Indeed it is! Focusing on fit and features, the firearm industry recognizes that female shooters and hunters are important!

This week ABC also covered the trend with an interview with Eva Shockey. Eva doesn’t fit the mold that mainstream media tends to showcase as the “typical” hunter and shooter. Neither does former Miss America contestant Theresa Vail, host of a new show coming out on the Outdoor Channel called Limitless, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Benelli 828u launch party. Then there’s Sara Palin. Love or hate her, she has that dynamic personality that mainstream media jumps at the chance to cover. She’s also a hunter that’s passionate about our gun rights.

World News Videos | ABC World News
NSSF noted during last week's Shot Show that self defense is the primary reason women are embracing gun ownership but they also want to learn how to hunt and go shooting with family and friends.

You may recall that Eva Shockey garnered a lot of attention late last year when hunting opponents began attacking her on social media for posting a photo of her and a black bear she had killed during a hunt.  She responded with grace, and even designed a limited edition clothing line with the tag line "I'll Never Apologize for Being a Hunter."

The clothing line was so popular, Shockey has reopened sales. But hurry, if you want one, there are only three days left.

The Changing Face of the Shooting Sports

This graphic from NSSF's Blog puts the lie to the gun ban lobby's claim that all of those gun sales over the last three to four years were current gun owners adding to their own stocks.

Lazy Journalism on Gun Sales

You've probably seen the articles over the past week, most along the lines of this Bloomberg News article about how the sale of so-called "assault rifles" have plummeted.

Plummeting sales of assault-style weapons, also known as modern sporting rifles or “black rifles,” has led to an oversupply of unsold guns and is hitting the bottom lines of the big arms producers. Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. (SWHC) shares yesterday fell the most in more than two years after the Springfield, Massachusetts-based gunmaker slashed its full-year sales and profit forecasts.

The tone of the report is that because of the lower sales, those manufactures who are publicly traded on the stock market saw their share prices lowered.  The problem is the media (and Wall Street for that matter) want to compare sales to the way-out-of-the-norm year of 2013. Sales numbers last year were driven in large part by Obama's gun control push.  What people in the industry do is look at trends.  NSSF looked at the last five years of sales without 2013 included, and found that 2014 sales are still higher than 2012, 2011, and 2010:

From January through July 2014, NSSF-adjusted NICS figures total 6.95 million background checks against 6.85 million for 2012 and 5.64 million in 2011. In 2013, the seven-month figure was 8.81 million and the annual total was a record 14.8 million. Multiple factors account for last year’s sales surge, including a fear of additional firearms-ownership restrictions, which came to pass in states such as New York, Connecticut and Maryland, as well as increasing interest in owning firearms by women and former servicemen and women.

Tom Gresham mentioned the Bloomberg article on his Sunday radio program and called it just plain lazy journalism.  He's right.  It would not have taken much for the Bloomberg reporter to do what The Huffington Post did for their article and contact NSSF.  You don't get the message that there are more gun owners and sales are still higher than previous years until the last line of the Bloomberg article.  By then, the "gloom and doom" meme had be put in place.

Gun Amendments Bogging Down Sportsmen's Bill

Roll Call reported shortly before 1:00 PM today that the Bipartisan Sportsmen Act of 2014 (S. 2363), a legislative priority for NSSF, is about to collapse under the weight of gun amendments, some of which are aimed at endangered Democrats in red states under pressure in an election year, and it's not just pro-rights amendments.

There are firearm policy amendments being lined up on both sides. That includes everything from the interstate transportation of ammunition to a sweeping overhaul of gun control in the District of Columbia. That last amendment has been filed by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

On the other side, Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin wants to impose stiff criminal penalties for “straw purchasers” of firearms, citing the spate of violence last weekend in Chicago in a Wednesday morning floor speech. Other Democrats  advocating firearm safety are working on proposals as well, including Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn.

Roll call noted that Durbin is itching to have a debate on gun control and hopes that a "filibuster" does not prevent it.  It's likely that both sides could end up bringing the underlying bill down if it looks like one side or the other may prevail on gun rights or gun control.

Project ChildSafe launches S.A.F.E. Summer Across America Campaign

VSSA is proud to partner with  Project ChildSafe and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) to promote the “S.A.F.E. Summer Across America” campaign. The campaign will focus attention on the importance of safe firearm storage—particularly while children are home from school and more likely to be unattended.

NSSF is implementing S.A.F.E. Summer to further spread the message of Project ChildSafe and help prevent firearm accidents, theft and misuse. "S.A.F.E." serves as an acronym for Store your firearms responsibly when not in use; Be Aware of those around you who should not have unauthorized access to guns; Focus on your responsibility as a firearm owner and Educate yourself and others about safe firearm handling and storage. The effort is focused on providing education and tools that helps gun owners take responsible action to keep their families and communities safer.

 Educational materials and resources are also available through the Project ChildSafe (www.projectchildsafe.org) website and social media, with tips on safe firearm storage, brochures, and information on the variety of safe storage options available.

Last week, the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) launched a public service announcement campaign to get gun owners to lock up their firearms when not in use. VSSA is betting however that S.A.F.E. Summer Across America will be better received than the approach taken by NCPC and BJA.

NSSF launched Project ChildSafe in 1998 (prior to 2003 the program was called Project HomeSafe) as a nationwide initiative to promote firearms responsibility and provide safety education to all gun owners. While children are a focus, Project ChildSafe is intended to help young people and adults practice greater firearm safety in the home. The program has provided more than 36 million free firearm safety kits to gun owners in all 50 states and five U.S. territories. That's in addition to the more than 60 million free locking devices manufacturers have included with new firearms sold since 1998 and continue to do today.

Project ChildSafe was originally supported by federal grants provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. Since 2008, when this funding was cut, the firearms manufacturing industry has solely funded the Project ChildSafe program through the members of NSSF.