Those Phantom Gun Sales

The anti-gun leaders keep trying to deny that more people are buying guns. Even when they finally concede that maybe there’s a smidgen of evidence from the NICS numbers, they claim that it’s just current gun owners buying more guns because we are all crazy and paranoid.

However, an interesting report came out of the NRA Board Meeting yesterday morning. And, no, it wasn’t just the news we broke on Twitter about the record-setting 73,740 NRA members attending the Annual Meeting & Exhibits. Kayne Robinson, Director of General Operations, told the crowd that they have seen a surge of training demands and had to really focus attention on being able to easily sell materials to the thousands of instructors across the country since the early days of the Obama guns sales surge. If you thought things were tapering off with Obama’s first term coming to a close, don’t be fooled.

So far in 2012, Kayne reported that the NRA sales are running about $265,000 above what they expected at this point in the year.

Yes, people are buying guns. New shooters are getting involved. People are taking the training classes to become safe and proficient shooters. Current shooters are coming out to support all of these new folks. Though the media likes to argue that NRA leaders don’t really have any solid foundation or following, about 1,500 grassroots supports came out to the National Friends of NRA Banquet to raise $450,000 for the NRA Foundation programs which put a particular focus on youth- and women-focused shooting programs. Across the country, local banquets are running 14% ahead of their expected fundraising goals. If most committees are like the one I have served on, there’s statistically only one way to raise more money – have more attendees.

While we were visiting with John Frazer, the Director of Research for ILA, in the NRA booth on the show floor, a gentleman who is active with his local VFW came up to ask about who he could talk to about funding a new shooting league. I gave him the information about how to find his local Friends group to put in a grant request since that’s the type of stuff I know our regional Friends committees love to support.

But remember, our opponents say we’re just making it up. There aren’t any new gun buyers seeking training. No shooters are really looking to become active. Current gun owners aren’t really any more involved with gun groups than they have been before. It’s funny how hard the anti-rights crowd has to work to ignore all of the mounting evidence that we are not only winning, but we plan to continue that winning streak far into the future as long as possible.