Dave Workman

Today I’m sort of sharing a headline with my colleague David Codrea because yesterday’s release by the FBI of preliminary crime data for the first six months of this year just poked a mammoth-sized hole in that bag of hot air carried around by gun prohibitionists.

Not surprisingly, since the Seattle Times and other news outlets reported this Monday, there has not been a peep about it from the gun prohibitionist lobby.

According to the FBI, murder in this country declined by 10 percent overall during the first half of 2009, a period of booming gun sales that primarily focused on the purchase of two types of firearms most often demonized by the anti-gun lobby: semiautomatic sport-utility rifles and handguns.

"Anti-gunners have lost another one of their baseless arguments. Millions of Americans bought guns during the first six months of this year, many of them for the first time. Yet with all of those new guns in circulation, coupled with an increased demand for concealed carry licenses around the country, the streets have not been awash in blood, as gun banners repeatedly predict.”—Alan Gottlieb

The National Shooting Sports Foundation commented on the situation here, and also supplied data from the FBI’s National Instant Check System (NICS) here that shows how firearms sales were up, in most months dramatically, from the same period in 2008.

Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, was quick to observe, “What this shows is that gun prohibitionists are all wrong when they argue that more guns result in more crime.”

"Hard facts trump hot air. These people are consistently wrong about our rights. Millions of people bought guns, especially semiautomatic sport-utility rifles that gun grabbers want to ban because they say people aren’t safe with all of those guns in private hands. Well, the people disagree, and so does the data.”—Alan Gottlieb

SAF noted in its press release, “The FBI released data Monday that shows murders dropped by 10 percent from the same period in 2008. Meanwhile, according to data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) shows that during the first six months of this year, gun sales were up. January 2009 background checks rose 28.8 percent over the same month in 2008, February’s NICS checks were up 23.3 percent and in March they were up 29.9 percent over March 2008. The trend continued in April, with NICS checks up 30.3 percent, while May showed a slowdown, up only 15.5 percent, and in June they were up 18.1 percent.”

"As the Associated Press points out, this declining murder rate continues and even accelerates a trend from 2008, when gun sales began to boom in late autumn with the ascension of the anti-gun Obama administration to the White House."

The early 2009 data suggests the crime-dropping trend of 2008 is not just continuing but accelerating. In 2008, the same data showed a nearly 4 percent drop in murder and manslaughter, and an overall drop in violent crime of 1.9 percent from 2007 to 2008.—Associated Press

Somebody at the Violence Policy Center, or the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, or state-level gun ban lobbying groups like Washington CeaseFire will have to scramble and spin hard to explain this. They’ve been pontificating for years that more guns in circulation – especially those evil, black “military-style, semi-automatic assault rifles” – would lead to gushers of blood in the streets; blood through which they seem all-too-willing to dance right up to the doors of state legislatures and even Congress to peddle their message of citizen disarmament. I wrote about this here.

"The most popular firearms selling at that time were handguns and modern sporting rifles (AR-style rifles)--two types of firearms that anti-gunners never miss an opportunity to demonize. Law-abiding handgun owners have been filling concealed carry classes across the country, and AR-style rifles--long a favorite of target shooters--are growing in popularity among hunters as new calibers are introduced for small and big game.—National Shooting Sports Foundation

Likewise, here in Washington State, three anti-gun lawmakers have introduced legislation to ban so-called “assault rifles” when data indicates rifles (of any kind) were known to have been used in only two homicides in the Evergreen State last year. The FBI’s report and NICS data suggests strongly that the proposed legislation is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. I wrote about that here.

The timing of this preliminary data release by the FBI is ironic. Gottlieb and I recently released our latest collaboration, Assault on Weapons: The Campaign to Eliminate Your Guns. This new data only reinforces the conclusions reached in that book.

http://www.examiner.com/x-4525-Seattle-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m12...