Trigger happy

David Keene is right about mass panic buying of high caliber guns and high capacity ammo clips happening because gun hoarders are afraid President Obama going to take their guns away. But the NRA President is surely lying when he denies the NRA is actively fostering the fear of everything in service of their bottom line. Their own fundraising pitches make a mockery of that absurd claim.

Fear drives sales. The NRA gained somewhere around 100K memberships post Sandy Hook. And let's not forget the benefits to the rest of the gun industry. Panic buying drove up pricing at least fivefold. Gun shops across America are literally empty. Sold out to the last damn bullet.

Profit. The gun industry is making a killing. Unfortunately, literally in the somewhere around 700 gun deaths just in the weeks since Sandy Hook happened. Some were murders; more often they were tragic accidents. Many of those deaths were children. But the answer for Mr. Keene is certainly not less guns.

Keene dismissed policies that would limit the availability of assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, two proposals that are likely to be included in the recommendations of Vice President Joe Biden’s gun task force. “We don’t think any of those things work,” he said. “You should absolutely be able to compromise on things that accomplish the purpose. Our objection to those things is that they interfere with people’s rights without doing anything to solve the problem.”

Hard to convince a guy whose fortunes depend on accelerating gun sales that sensibly restricting access to his product is the solution to firearms abuse.