The gun manufacturing industry produced about 4.5 million firearms in 2008, the year before Obama was elected president, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (still known as ATF). In 2013 the industry produced 10.8 million, an increase of 140 percent in just five years.
This, according to Erich Pratt, spokesman for the pro-gun group Gun Owners of America, gives President Obama quite a distinction:
The ATF report confirms what we already know: that Barack Obama deserves the “Gun Salesman of the Decade” award.
People have been rushing to buy firearms because they’re afraid that Obama will take away their Second Amendment rights.
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They’re right to be afraid. Even as an Illinois senator, Obama inveighed against the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the individual right to keep and bear arms. As president, after the Newtown shooting, he conducted a frontal assault, proposing bans on more than 100 types of “assault” weapons, and a national background check. Despite that assault stalling in Congress in April of 2013, his enthusiasm for further incursions never wavered.
His secretary of state signed the UN Arms Trade Treaty in September of that year which, under Articles 2 and 3, would prohibit the right to own, buy, sell, trade, or transfer “all means of armed resistance” (a clear indication of just what the totalitarians running the UN fear the most), as well as “ammunition fired … by the conventional arms covered under Article 2.”
ObamaCare requires that healthcare providers submit patient data concerning ownership of guns to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The president’s list of 23 “actions” demanded under an executive order included directing his attorney general “to review categories of individuals prohibited from owning a gun to make sure [that] dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.”
His ATF tried to ban “green tip” rounds, and his Social Security Administration is now trying to determine just how to limit disability recipients’ rights to own firearms.
Obama’s import ban of the Kalashnikov-made AK-47 semi-automatic rifle in July 2014 gave further proof, if any be needed, of his determination to limit Americans’ right to keep and bear arms.
There are plenty of other incentives driving the purchase of firearms by American citizens as well. There are the Supreme Court decisions that clarified not only an individual’s right to keep and bear arms but to use them in defense of himself and his family. Eight states now allow “constitutional carry” (concealed carry without a state license or permit), and the sport of clay trap-shooting has taken off among high schools students as the next “cool” thing.
As David Workman, the senior editor of Gun Mag published by the Second Amendment Foundation, expressed it:
Barack Obama is the stimulus package for the firearms industry. The greatest irony of the Obama administration is that the one industry that he may not really like to see healthy has become the healthiest industry in the United States.
The ATF data doesn’t reflect the current enthusiasm driving that industry, either. If background checks are any proxy for gun ownership, then the 16 million-plus checks in 2011, the 19.6 million checks in 2012, and the 21 million checks in 2013 not only portend increased ownership of firearms among Americans, but a trend that likely will push the industry to even higher highs. As just one example, following Obama’s executive order banning AK-47s in July 2014, RWC Group, the licensed importer for the Kalashnikov company, told the faithful attending the Shot Show in January this year that it would shortly be starting a new company to be known as Kalashnikov USA to build the weapon here. In its announcement, the company said: “Shooters can expect extremely high-quality firearms at competitive price points, with supplies uninterrupted by import issues.”
American citizens, increasingly aware not only of their Second Amendment-protected rights but also the threat of them being abrogated by the Obama administration, may also be expected to acquire, keep, and become familiar with the use of an increasing number of firearms into the foreseeable future.
At the moment, best estimates are that more than 100 million households have a least one firearm at home, with the total ownership exceeding 300 million, thanks to the efforts of anti-gunners like Obama and his czars.
Photo of President Obama: AP Images
A graduate of an Ivy League school and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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