Despite strong gun sales, NRA membership apparently shrank in 2020

Evidence that many people may be withdrawing their financial support for the National Rifle Association given its recent troubles.

Trent Steidley

2020 was a gangbusters year for gun sales with a likely 20 million total gun sales. And the gun industry has been willing to say this is a strong sign of future support for gun rights going forward. An August press release from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) even inferred that at least 5 million new gun owners had been created by late 2020 and that “These first-time buyers represent a group of people who, until now, were agnostic regarding firearm ownership. That’s rapidly changing, and these Americans are taking hold of their God-given right to keep and bear arms and protect themselves and their loved ones.” So does it follow that strong gun sales in 2020 are going to translate into strong(er) support for gun rights from the public?

That is probably what the leadership of the The National Rifle Association (NRA) would be hoping for. The NRA…

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Bloomberg SPH vs. Breitbart: Battle of “Alternative Facts”?

Some thoughts on credible and incredible critiques of research on gun violence from my Gun Culture 2.0 blog of possible interest to the “gun curious.”

Gun Culture 2.0

Imagine my surprise this morning when I saw an incredible claim circulating that researchers from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health had conducted a study of fatal mass shootings in the United States but had “omitted one of the most often cited mass shootings in U.S. history.”

As it turns out, this claim actually was in-credible, as in, not credible.

Screen cap of https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/02/18/johns-hopkins-study-no-evidence-assault-weapon-bans-reduce-mass-shootings/ on 2/19/2020.

I don’t read Breitbart so I don’t know if this error represents a legitimate mistake or a pattern of Kellyanne Conway-esque “alternative facts.” But I learned of the Breitbart article through another blog I follow, so I do know the error is already reverberating through the pro-gun echo chamber online.

Screen cap of https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/02/18/johns-hopkins-study-no-evidence-assault-weapon-bans-reduce-mass-shootings/ on 2/19/2020.

Insofar as the author of the Breitbart piece cited the Johns Hopkins press release rather than the (open access, publicly accessible) original…

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