For decades, the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex, otherwise known as the gun control industry and their stenographers in the press, have primarily directed their attention and their attacks at the big bad NRA. They even referred to the NRA when talking about “the gun industry.”
It never seemed to matter much that the NRA is a member organization made up of millions of individuals. It similarly seemed to escape their notice that the gun industry — manufacturers, retailers, ranges, etc. — actually had an organization that represents their interests. It’s called the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
But as the NRA has suffered endless self-inflicted wounds, reducing its membership by about 20% and draining it of resources as more and more of its cash has been directed to attorneys involved in hare-brained business ventures and defending its corrupt officers, it’s fallen to other orgs to take up more of the fight against the gun control industry and mount legal challenges in both the pre- and post-Bruen worlds.
It’s gradually dawned on the winged monkeys who craft the gun control industry’s messaging that continuing to demonize the NRA was increasingly a waste of their money, their effort, and their breath.
At the same time, the NSSF has taken a gradually more prominent role in advocating for gun rights in recent years and has stepped up the number of legal challenges it mounts to unconstitutional limits on the right to keep and bear arms. Along with vigorous activity on the part of operations like the Firearms Policy Coalition, Gun Owners of America, the National Association for Gun Rights, the Second Amendment Foundation and smaller regional orgs, the NSSF’s more activist stance has been welcome in world of waning NRA vitality.
That, of course, was bound to elicit a reaction and a re-orientation of incoming fire from the droogs who coordinate the gun control movement in this country. In August, the always vigilant Guardian newspaper fingered the NSSF as “more insidious than the NRA,” exposing the gun industry trade association for having the temerity to represent the interests of its member companies and their customers.
The rising clout of the NSSF is underscored in part by the group’s increased spending on lobbying, which has outpaced the NRA’s lobbying spending in recent years. For instance, in 2020 and 2021, the NSSF reported spending $4.6m and $5m respectively on federal lobbying. By contrast, the NRA spent $2.2m and $4.9m.
Further, the NSSF’s legal muscle has expanded in the last year since the NSSF tapped the former solicitor general Paul Clement as an outside lawyer to fight laws in seven states that limit the protections from lawsuits that were granted by Congress.
Oh, the humanity!
Someone named Elle Hardy exposed the NSSF and the industry of employing “cold-blooded capitalism” and “learned from Big Tobacco”
Watching the extinguishing of the tobacco industry, the powerful gun lobby realised that failure to move with the times would see guns, like cigarettes, becoming a fringe vice that was looked down on by the general public. To survive, the industry would have to persuade citizens that its product is a mainstream commodity. Limiting itself to only the “pale, male, and stale” demographic was not only bad for its image — it was bad for business.
Naturally, it turned to advertising. White men would no longer be the focus. Women, people of colour, and the gay and lesbian communities were targeted with slogans such as “Equality? Brought to you by Sam Colt”, “Gun control once kept freedmen defenseless against KKK”, and, “99.8% of rapists polled prefer you unarmed”.
How do they even sleep at night?
The latest push comes from our Bloomberg-financed friends at Everytown for Gun Control. They’ve just established something called smokinggun.org intended to “hold the gun industry accountable.”
With the new site, Everytown is blowing the lid off of the shady gun industry and its highly questionable practices of building heavily regulated products people want and need, advertising them to potential customers, and selling them through federally regulated retailers.
It’s sure to become the go-to online hub for all of the most concerned suburban wine moms who are looking to stay current on the gun business’s worst, most outrageous practices…you know, like selling products that are responsible for stopping and preventing more than 1.6 million crimes every year.
You can check it out here.
