An Assault Weapon Gambit Backfires
” As the Daily News recently reported, gun manufacturer Black Rain Ordnance has produced, with great fanfare and borderline glee, a modified AR-15 assault rifle that complies with the strict gun law pushed through by Gov. Cuomo in 2013, the SAFE Act.
Proudly labeling the firearms “New York Compliant” rifles, the company’s website boasts 17 different models that hold the state legal maximum of 10 bullets.
While billed by Black Rain Ordnance as an in-your-face response to what the company says is New York’s “continual trampling of the Second Amendment,” that’s just marketing hype aimed at those unhappy with the law.
“Make a political statement, buy our gun!” would be one translation.”
Here is a sample of the Statist Daily News’s thinking …
” Think a little harder, and this gunmaker’s logic backfires badly. The production of Black Rain, in fact, proves that the SAFE Act is not only no actual threat to gun rights, but is a perfectly reasonable law.
Wrong oh pompous Government Shill , the fact that Black Rain can engineer , manufacture and market a rifle of similar performance to the traditional AR-15 within the confines of the SAFE Act demonstrates beyond dispute the capricious , arbitrary and idiotic nature of the legislation itself .
” Even for two guys sitting at a table, the technology was simple. And putting it together made clear that Cuomo’s goal is reasonable: to make prolific firing more difficult by having a permanently attached magazine, and limiting the number of bullets it can hold without reloading.”
In another glaring error , Professor Spitzer is incorrect in thinking that the Black Rain “NY Compliant” rifle has a fixed magazine . Not true Prof … while the gun is sold with a NY legal 10 round mag it will accept ANY AR-15 magazine on the market of which there are millions , if not hundreds of millions in domestic circulation .
Let us not dwell on the magazine error , surely the learned professor got the rest of the facts right , he is after all , part of our noble “elite” . He continues thus …
” Two-thirds of the nation’s 300 million guns are long guns, representing hundreds of makes — and while assault weapons have been big sellers in recent years, estimates from 2012 peg the total number in circulation nationwide at about 4 million.”
Who’s estimates would they be Mr Spitzer ? Here is some data on NICS checks run by the FBI from Nov 1998 to Jan 2012 . Now we’ll admit that not every check results in a sale but conversely not every approval results in the sale of only one firearm .
Here is the FBI’s monthly breakdown of all NICS background checks by state from 1998 through March of this year , and here is the data on NICS denials from the same period …
A quick reading of the charts and a little math , not Common Core , real math , reveals a rejection rate of less than 1% or to be precise 0.7023669976087205 % . That leads us to the conclusion that at least 155 million guns have been sold between late 1998 and the present .
If two thirds of those were long guns to use the professor’s own number , that means 103,333,333 million long guns were sold domestically during the period in question and if we take a low ball figure of even 1% of long gun sales being comprised of AR type weapons that still gives us a total more than two and one half times his 4 million figure .
We have deliberately used a low number in our estimation yet some data from ATF suggests that AR sales as of 2008 anyway made up 22% of all rifle sales . Ponder the total number of AR’s in circulation if you use the 22% figure Professor .
” The BATFE recently released U.S. firearm manufacturer production data showing that during 2008, AR-15s
accounted for eight percent of all firearms and 22 percent of all rifles made in the U.S. and not exported.
The number of AR-15s in 2008 — over 337,000 — is staggering, but may have been topped in 2009. And,
at the current rate of production, the total number of AR-15s in the U.S. will exceed 2.5 million some time
this year, and that doesn’t even count production before 1986, the figures for which are not available.
… the numbers of AR-15 manufacturers and the AR-15s they produce are at all-time highs. AR-15s have been popular for decades and that popularity is growing in leaps and bounds for a variety of reasons. Innovations relating to defensive rifle use now center on AR-15 carbines. Bar none, the AR-15 in its various configurations is the leading marksmanship training and competition rifle in the country, and there are more kinds of training and competition opportunities built around the AR-15 than ever before. And the advent of new cartridges that
fit the AR-15 platform, and which are legal for hunting deer-sized game in most states, are rapidly making
the AR-15 one of the most popular hunting rifles in the country.”
Last but not least one needs to consider the fact that there are other millions of semi-auto “military style” rifles of non-AR type that are currently held by private citizens as well . Ruger alone has sold nearly a million mini-14’s and that doesn’t take into account other manufacturers like HK , Springfield Arms , FN , Kalashnikov , Galil and many others .
Of course all of these are impacted by the ban and do nothing to skirt Cuomo’s draconian “middle of the night” knee-jerk legislation , we merely point out the facts to show the futility of the State notion of mandating safety and the wisened old Ivory Tower denizen’s efforts to help .
If we were betting individuals we would put our money on the 10 million total over Spitzer’s 4 million number all day long .
NICS applications by state
Click heading to sort table. Download this data
UNITED STATES 156,577,260 16,808,538 53.94 Alabama 3,749,099 350,780 73.30 Alaska 714,007 72,904 102.09 Arizona 2,675,937 290,868 45.35 Arkansas 2,514,731 207,363 70.98 California 10,714,573 981,798 26.29 Colorado 3,736,952 361,385 71.59 Connecticut 1,810,014 208,250 58.24 Delaware 256,059 25,098 27.89 District of Columbia 2,170 398 0.66 Florida 5,957,840 699,974 37.16 Georgia 4,559,627 386,562 39.80 Guam 5,934 819 Hawaii 121,737 15,414 11.31 Idaho 1,243,607 115,927 73.79 Illinois 8,399,271 923,920 71.95 Indiana 3,300,627 404,259 62.28 Iowa 1,530,528 128,293 42.06 Kansas 1,673,605 175,427 61.36 Kentucky 15,118,518 2,329,151 535.78 Louisiana 2,987,951 266,593 58.65 Maine 790,550 79,418 59.83 Mariana Islands 296 5 Maryland 1,239,350 117,432 20.30 Massachusetts 1,567,707 185,202 28.25 Michigan 4,817,185 370,960 37.56 Minnesota 3,516,313 385,075 72.51 Mississippi 2,390,007 180,121 60.65 Missouri 3,804,462 432,060 72.06 Montana 1,253,675 115,893 116.95 Nebraska 742,160 70,454 38.50 Nevada 1,076,544 123,943 45.83 New Hampshire 894,061 108,531 82.42 New Jersey 634,408 75,804 8.61 New Mexico 1,338,322 121,882 59.00 New York 2,849,970 290,299 14.97 North Carolina 4,427,820 415,284 43.44 North Dakota 590,720 73,878 109.51 Ohio 4,918,014 526,684 45.65 Oklahoma 2,841,850 307,245 81.71 Oregon 2,347,894 222,795 58.04 Pennsylvania 8,156,636 835,293 65.68 Puerto Rico 115,421 13,772 3.70 Rhode Island 169,915 20,180 19.17 South Carolina 2,320,334 265,276 57.21 South Dakota 744,106 73,658 90.20 Tennessee 4,166,503 432,200 67.98 Texas 11,724,997 1,196,176 47.37 Utah 2,967,949 198,091 71.37 Vermont 310,812 29,662 47.39 Virgin Islands 9,320 370 Virginia 3,524,638 371,267 46.27 Washington 3,631,035 444,762 65.96 West Virginia 2,059,912 191,550 103.30 Wisconsin 2,974,560 413,842 72.71 Wyoming 587,027 53,480 94.73
Curious viewers can read the rest of the Professor’s tripe here
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