Opinion By Larry Keane
USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- Politicians making sweeping promises they can’t keep is nothing new on the campaign trail. The vitriol as of late – assigning blame for the horrific crimes of sick and twisted individuals to the firearms industry – is something that has become, unfortunately, predictable. It’s part of the political gamesmanship from those who don’t understand our industry or respect our rights or the values for which our industry stands.
The rhetoric went from campaign clatter to all-out industry threats last week when U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a plan she claims would reduce so-called “gun violence” by 80 percent. What her real plan is designed to do is cripple the firearms industry, subvert the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, deny rights to American adults through age-based bans and revive the Obama-era Operation Choke Point. Her version, though, would be a stranglehold.
Senator Warren’s plan paints the firearms industry with a broad brush, blaming the men and women who work in our factories for the deaths of 40,000 in 2017. She doesn’t account that nearly two-thirds of those were suicides and the negligent firearms use resulting in death is at historic lows. She doesn’t want to admit that efforts like our real solutions for safer communities are actually making a difference. Her campaign promises, though, would shift blame, ignore those responsible for horrific crimes and doom us as a society that is both less free and less safe.
Accountability
Senator Warren’s plan, as she puts it, would “rein in an out-of-control gun industry — and to hold both gun dealers and manufacturers accountable for the violence promoted by their products.” The firearms industry makes products for law-abiding citizens. We’re the ones who brought the idea of an instant background check at the retail gun counter to reality. We’re the ones who worked to improve the background checks through our Fix NICS® program and efforts to prevent illegal straw purchases with our Don’t Lie for the Other GuyTM campaign with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Through the Project Childsafe® initiative, our industry partnered with 15,000 law enforcement agencies in every state to provide over 38 million firearms safety kits with free gun locks. We are committed to keeping firearms from those who should never possess them. Our actions demonstrate that much more than political bellowing.
Anti-Gun, Anti-Business
It’s not just that Sen. Warren would throttle the industry. She intends to choke it off completely. President Barack Obama administration’s Operation Choke Point might have been a textbook example of government overreach to illegally and unfairly malign an industry, but Sen. Warren’s plan is a complete rough-shod trampling of laws. She would use the authority of the U.S. Attorney General to investigate and pressure banks and third-party vendors who have business ties to the firearms industry. This isn’t a proposal of someone who is charged with protecting America’s freedoms and free markets. It’s the proposal of a despot aimed as seizing government control of our financial institutions to kill of the industries that person doesn’t like.
Senator Warren would throw up roadblocks to exercising gun rights, starting with a 10 percent handgun and 11 percent ammunition tax. Then she adds on denying civil rights to adults under 21 through age-based gun bans and banning an entire class of firearms, repealing the bipartisan Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (which she’d ensure by ending the Senate filibuster rule) and finishing with her goal of putting firearms manufacturing executives in handcuffs. In Sen. Warren’s plan, it’s not the criminal who is responsible for the crimes they commit; it is the executive.
Senator Warren introduced her plan by listing the towns and cities where unthinkable tragedies have occurred. Here are others she might want to consider.
Sutherland Springs. The murderer in that Texas town was stopped by a law-abiding citizen armed with a modern sporting rifle. Broken Arrow. A 19-year-old in the Oklahoma community repelled a home invasion with another modern sporting rifle.
Anoka. It’s the small town in Minnesota where Federal Premium Ammunition is made. Newington, New Hampshire. That’s the town where Sig Sauer, the maker of the new M-17 handgun for our U.S. military has their headquarters.
There’s too many to list for every police department, in each big city and small town across America. Our police officers carry the sidearms made by U.S. firearms manufacturers, many of those made in a small town in Smyrna, Ga., by Glock.
One more American address Sen. Warren should know: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. Inside and outside of The White House, the agents who protect and safeguard the president, his family, and the men and women who work there are armed with the firearms our industry produces.
Senator Warren makes promises to destroy our industry because we make firearms. We make so much more than guns and ammunition. We make America.
About National Shooting Sports Foundation
The National Shooting Sports Foundation is the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting sports industry. Its mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports. Formed in 1961, NSSF has a membership of more than 10,000 manufacturers, distributors, firearms retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen’s organizations, and publishers. www.nssf.org
Warren stole a high paying job from other women of color by falsely claiming she was a woman of color – does that not make her a racist and bigot? She gets busted and now apologizes, however this too is phony as she makes no offer to return the funds stolen, (obtained under false pretense), or donate said funds to Native American causes! Any woman of color who applied for the same job Warren was awarded from Harvard should sue her! She pulls ahead of Sanders – not surprising as he advocated women having sex with husbands only obtained orgasms… Read more »
Warren names places where mass killings have happened. How about if she named the drugs that nearly every mass murderer of the last 30 years was either on or withdrawing from: Prozac, Xanax, Ambien, Trazodone, Zoloft, Paxil, Ritalin, Luvox, Effexor, Celexa.
Thank you Big Pharma.
Do away with the “gun free zones” which are “killing fields” and a lot of the mass shootings will cease. One shot fired in retaliation against the El Paso shooter would probably have sent the punk scurrying. Many stores now have a sign that says it is unlawful to bring a gun into their store unless it is a pistol carried by an individual with license. I frequent those establishments, because I feel safer. It keeps the bad guys guessing….
This is a classic example of what some modern political theorists term “fatal arrogance.” Progressives of all stripes suffer from it. If you have read your Greek philosophy think Hubris. When you think you have collected such a massive volume of wisdom that it is now safe to dictate public policy from upon high at the Moral Mount Olympus you are suffering from hubris or fatal conceit. Think of all the popularly supported common sense solutions that now founder on the rocks of reality: the War on Poverty; the War on Drugs; the War on Islamic Fundamentalists; its cousin the… Read more »
@wjd, I think that I can guess what her plan might be.
A more subversive plan. The pattern is unmistakable and the goal remains the same.
Headline: “When Gun Control Fantasies Go Off the Reservation”
In an article featuring Lizzy “Fauxcahontas” Warren….PRICELESS!
It is amazing how much Warren and the other Democrats don’t know about firearms and the 2nd Amendment. Apparently they believe that the longer they are in office, the more expert they become on any subject and the more qualified they are to address solutions to problems that don’t exist. They like to create fantasy scenarios where they miraculously save the American public from imaginary threats or find solutions that are worthless, but still garner them votes and support from their liberal supporters.
The industry that’s out of control is the charlatan politician industry. The best thing you can do is stay in the race, and get your head handed to you in the primary, and drop into obscurity where you belong. The issue is PEOPLE. Fix the broken people problem. Take the mentally ill off the streets. Keep the criminals in jail and stop with the plea bargains. The only NICS fix we need is to modify HIPAA to make sure people with violent pasts and violent tendencies are in the database. We have 22,000 gun laws in the US. When all… Read more »
Based on her merit alone, she should be removed from office and banned from anything government.
Pocahontas And The Rest Of The Demonrats Want To Destroy America As We Know It. Guns, Cars, Knives, and Other Items Used to K_LL Are NOT The Problem, Human Beings With NO Respect For Life, Liberty and The Pursuit Of Happiness are The PROBLEM. FIX the Problem!!!!!
Push it! Maybe we’ll wake up and urinate on the bedfire maybe not
If I follow that same line of reasoning, it’s Jack Daniels fault that I drove drunk and wiped out a family in their mini-van.
Another know-nothing woman…
Do away with the “gun free zones” which are “killing fields” and a lot of the mass shootings will cease. One shot fired in retaliation against the El Paso shooter would probably have sent the punk scurrying. Many stores now have a sign that says it is unlawful to bring a gun into their store unless it is a pistol carried by an individual with license. I frequent those establishments, because I feel safer. It keeps the bad guys guessing….