“In addition to Constitutional infringements and unenforceable requirements regarding magazine capacity, as the sheriffs have pointed out, we believe it will be impossible for citizens to comply with mandated firearms ‘transfers’ through federally licensed retailers,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “Colorado’s federally-licensed firearms retailers are being asked to process these transfers as if they were selling from their own inventory and to monitor both seller and buyer through a state-administered check process that can take hours or even days. They will not be able to recoup the actual cost of providing the service, which is capped at $10, but they will be liable for paperwork errors and subject to license revocation. Not surprisingly, we expect few, if any licensed retailers will step forward to provide this service.”

For this reason and the many others detailed in our joint action with our fellow plaintiffs, these laws need to be struck down,” Keane said.

The firearms retailers bringing suit are: 2nd Amendment Gunsmith & Shooting Supply, Loveland; Family Shooting Center at Cherry Creek State Park, Aurora; Goods for the Woods, Durango; Grand Prix Guns, Littleton; Green Mountain Guns, Lakewood; Jensen Arms, Loveland; Jerry’s Outdoor Sports, Grand Junction; Rocky Mountain Shooters Supply, Fort Collins; and Specialty Sports & Supply, Colorado Springs.

Visit NSSF’s Firearms Retailer Survey Report Web page

For the past five years, NSSF has surveyed federally licensed firearms retailers across the country to find out what products are the biggest sellers and who is buying. NSSF has just issued the latest version of that report from an online survey conducted last month. The data shows which types of firearms and ammunition were most popular in 2012, and at the same time allows retailers to compare their businesses to that of other gun stores across the country.

“What retailers tell us in this survey helps our entire industry assess the current state of the shooting sports market,” said NSSF Managing Director of Business Development Randy Clark. “The NSSF Retailer Survey is an extremely valuable business tool.”

A total of 752 firearms retail businesses located in all 50 states provided responses to the survey. The businesses ranged in size from single proprietors to large outdoor specialty retailers.

One of the most important benefits of the report is that it identifies retailing trends by comparing results from past years’ surveys. “These surveys have given NSSF and industry a valuable benchmark to identify trends during what has been an extraordinary sustained dynamic market for firearms, ammunition and accessories,” said Jim Curcuruto, NSSF’s director of industry research and analysis.

Categories in the report include products sold, sales trends, markets and customers, advertising and online marketing, and shooting ranges and buying groups, among others.

A sample of finding in the new report include . . .

• 84 percent of retailers surveyed reported that overall sales in 2012 exceeded sales from the previous year.
• 76.9 percent of retailers surveyed said sales of AR-style modern sporting rifles in 2012 exceeded sales from the previous year (60.1 percent), the largest increase in the firearms category.
• Retailers surveyed said that 25.8 percent of their customers were first-time firearm buyers in 2012 compared to 25 percent in 2011 and 20.8 percent in 2010.
• For the third year in a row, the number of female customers increased. For the year 2012, 78.6 of retailers surveyed said more women came to their stores, compared to 72.8 in in 2011 and 61.1 in 2010.
• Firearms most often purchased by women were a semiautomatic handgun followed by revolvers, modern sporting rifles, shotguns, traditional rifles and muzzleloaders.

In addition to retailers benefiting from the report, manufacturers can gain valuable insights from the survey results into the kinds of new products they should look into developing.

Curcuruto said that the number of retailers who participate in the survey has grown each year. Retailers who participated in the survey, as well as NSSF Voting Members, receive a free copy of the report.

For more information on this report, please visit NSSF’s Retailer Survey Report Web page.

The bill, Senate Bill 623, introduced by Sens. Jake Corman (R-Bellefonte) and Wayne Fontana (D-Pittsburgh), allows those ages 12 and older to try hunting under the watchful eye of an experienced mentor prior to completing hunter education. Also known as “apprentice hunting,” this try-before-you-buy philosophy is the hallmark of the Families Afield campaign.

As a proud Pennsylvanian who still hunts the same land my family has hunted for generations, I am thankful for the legislature’s support for the future of hunting in the state. This expanded mentored hunting program has the potential to open many doors for new hunters and future conservationists in the state.

Pennsylvania was the first state to pass Families Afield when it established the Mentored Youth Hunting program in 2006. Since then, a total of 34 states have enacted Families Afield changes, resulting in more than 1 million apprentice- or mentored-hunting licenses being sold.

Families Afield was established by NSSF, U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance and National Wild Turkey Federation to bring a new generation of sportsmen to the field. Along with the National Rifle Association and the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, the coalition has worked to pass measures in 34 states since the program’s inception.

Anti-gun activists are taking a page from the proverbial anti-tobacco playbook. The lead sentence reads something like: “The firearms industry is in decline and faces a dark future; therefore it must attract new consumers, a.k.a. children. The churlish denizens of this industry will do so by designing products for and marketing them to children.”

OK, so maybe I exaggerate slightly in the characterization, but only ever so slightly. Ridiculous as this story-line is, we may be tempted to leave it alone. After all, with the story narrative already established, when a reporter calls or we see a story in print, is it even realistic to think we can and should offer a counter narrative?

Let’s begin with personal experience. For those of us introduced by family members or friends to hunting, target shooting or just plain plinking in our teen-age or (gasp!) even our pre-teen years, as was my experience growing up in Pennsylvania, we know this line of thinking is just wrong-headed. But if the reporter grew up in a city never having picked up a single-shot .22- cal. rifle to plink at pop cans, knows guns only as weapons used in street crime and, has been subject to a steady pater of anti-gun talk from liberal arts professors and politicians – he or she doesn’t know any better.

When an anti-gun activist endorses the shrill narrative in the wake of a tragic, accidental shooting as recently happened in Kentucky, it sounds right to this journalist. It’s up to us to remind this person, and maybe it’s not a reporter, but just someone we encounter in a social setting, that millions of Americans are introduced safely to firearms every year, as they have been for generations, and that we know how to safely use and store them.

As to the state of our industry, well, we have more new customers than ever. Sales have been at record highs, month after month, for nearly three years. And you don’t have to take our words for it. Tell them to Google NICS. In our stores and at our ranges are an increasing number of women and an ethnic diversity that represents America.

As for safety overall, accidents with firearms are the lowest level that they’ve ever been and the National Safety Council has been crunching the numbers since 1903! As for the firearms “marketed to children”, smaller single-shot .22LR rifles have been around for many decades. Ask the Boy Scouts. But were they available in bright colors? No, but neither were many other products before the widespread introduction of plastics. Our industry has actually lagged behind in that regard. Last but not least, you have to be an adult to purchase a firearm. That’s always a good reminder.

So, if a youngster, boy or girl, sees an ad in an outdoor publication for a smaller frame-rifle and asks mom or dad if he or she can get one for a birthday, what exactly is so bad about that? And what better way is there to introduce the safe handling of firearms than with a rifle that’s easier to handle and shoot? Incumbent upon the adult family members is ensuring the safe storage of that rifle, of course. Manufacturers, the NRA and NSSF have provided safety materials and training for years. Accidents are rare, tragedies rarer still, because of these efforts and the level-headedness clearly resident in the vast, vast majority of American households that own firearms.

We have come to learn that there are many of our fellow citizens, some of whom work in the media, unfortunately, who cannot or will not understand that target shooting on a Saturday afternoon is just plain fun and that teaching youngsters how to safely handle firearms de-mystifies them and makes families safer. It does not open an addictive path to irresponsibility, accidents and crime – quite the contrary. And there’s nothing wrong, therefore, in growing our consumer base in this way. It’s part of an American tradition. It’s what families do – if not in New York City or in San Francisco, then in the most of the country.

The next time you see one of these stories, write a letter to the editor or send an email to the program manager and on-air reporter. Take exception. Talk about your own experience. Tell them to talk with others of us. In other words, counter the false narrative. You can even invite them out to the range, if you’re feeling generous and think it could make a difference. But tell them to leave the camera behind and just come out to have some fun. They would benefit from an experience they’ve likely never had.

Chris Dolnack is senior vice president and chief marketing officer for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @ChrisDolnack. 

Many educators show these firearm safety videos to their students before school lets out for summer vacation because during that time children often spend more time at home unsupervised.

The NSSF Firearm Safety DVD offers “McGruff the Crime Dog on Gun Safety” for students in kindergarten through grade 6, “It’s Your Call: Playing It Safe Around Guns^SM” for students in grades 6 through 9 and “Firearms Safety Depends on You^SM,” which covers the ten rules of gun safety and is for audiences of all ages.

Complementing these safety videos and a way to raise awareness about firearm safety at the community level is NSSF’s Project ChildSafe program. Project ChildSafe provides free firearm safety kits that include a gun lock to firearms owners through partnerships with local law enforcement departments. The program shares with gun owners strategies on how to securely and safely store firearms in the home in order to prevent unauthorized access, including by children, at-risk individuals and persons legally prohibited from owning a firearm.

In the ongoing national discussion about firearms, promoting firearms safety and keeping guns out the wrong hands is a topic on which everyone can agree.

NSSF’s annual offer of free videos to schools also includes its Conservation DVD that educates students on how wildlife and wild lands are protected, and how hunters support this effort with contributions amounting to more than $1 billion annually. These videos never fail to open the eyes of both students and teachers to the reasons behind the resurgence of wildlife across the country, even in urban and suburban settings. All those white-tailed deer, wild turkey and other game and non-game animals that we see are the result of a unique federal program started in 1937 that has provided billions of dollars to every state in the nation for conservation purposes.

Take advantage of these free NSSF-sponsored educational programs!

The Gallup Poll was released on the same day as a Pew Research Center analysis of government data on violent crime that showed that homicides using guns has fallen 49 percent over the last two decades and violent crime in general had declined 75 percent in the same period. The Pew analysis tracks well with the U.S. Department of Justice report also issued on Tuesday showing similar dramatic reductions in crimes using firearms and a wealth of other data, about which we previously wrote.

Included in the Pew report were national survey results showing that most Americans are unaware that crimes involving firearms have decreased so markedly. To the contrary, 56 percent of Americans surveyed (46 percent of men, 65 percent of women) believe crimes involving guns have increased. Only 12 percent of respondents said the number of gun crimes is lower, while the remainder said they believed it had remained the same or they simply didn’t know.

Given media attention to the tragedies in Sandy Hook, Conn., and Aurora, Colo. in the last year that may not be surprising. We can’t help but think that the continuing popular culture diet of police procedural programs on broadcast and cable television (there are more than 20 on the air at present), as well as the emphasis on crime stories on national and local television news, have played significant roles in this public misperception, as well.

The wealth of information in the two reports, plus the polling data, give everyone in our industry more talking points and facts on which to base our arguments when we encounter legislators, gun control advocates, members of the media, or even friends who have inaccurate views of public policy issues. It is incumbent upon us to counter the skewed or false arguments when we hear them and we can be confident that we are doing so from a factual basis.

But, it’s not as if we haven’t had the preponderance of the facts on our side already. In front of legislative committees from Providence to Sacramento this year, sportsmen and gun owners have turned up to testify in higher numbers and were in command of more factual information than we heard from those advocating for more restrictions on our choices in firearms and our Second Amendment freedoms.

In the Gallup poll results we see that the public, even if it does not have a grasp on the direction of violent crime, as the Pew Center points out, does clearly recognize that effective policy making is best focused on the large economic issues that truly affect us all. Congress should take note.

We are all appalled by the criminal misuse of firearms, but we should all understand that if we are to further reduce violent crime, doing so begins with working from a data-based perspective. To be sure, that is more difficult than posturing for votes and throwing sound bites at the media.

Larry Keane is senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @lkeane.

Reed Exhibitions provided excellent service to NSSF and the customers of the SHOT Show for more than three decades, however, the company’s decision to restrict the sale of certain types of firearms this year at its consumer hunting and fishing show — an event unrelated to NSSF and the SHOT Show — was in conflict with NSSF’s mission to serve the shooting sports industry. As a result, both organizations decided it was in the best interest of the SHOT Show to end their relationship.

NSSF is actively engaged in the process of identifying a new show management company to manage and produce the SHOT Show beginning with the 2014 SHOT Show.

The SHOT Show — the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show — is owned and sponsored by NSSF. It is the largest and most comprehensive trade show for all professionals involved with the shooting sports, hunting and law enforcement industries. The 2014 SHOT Show will be held Jan. 14-17 at the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Las Vegas.

“The members of America’s firearms industry thank Rep. Carter for his leadership in offering a real bi-partisan solution that will help make our families safer,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “Helping firearms owners responsibly and safely store their firearms when they are not in use so that they are inaccessible to unauthorized and at-risk individuals provides a practical and proven way to increase the safety of our homes and communities.”

The Secure Firearms Act will provide up to a $1,200 federal income tax deduction for the purchase of a gun safe, or other safety devices, through Dec. 21, 2014. The act would also prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from using tax deduction claims to produce any kind of gun ownership registration.

As the leading organization to promote firearm safety, NSSF launched Project ChildSafe in 2003 specifically to educate gun owners on their responsibility to keep their guns out of the wrong hands, and provide the tools to help them do so. Through partnerships with law enforcement NSSF has distributed more than 36 million free firearm safety kits and safety information to gun owners throughout the U.S. as part of this program, and between 2000 and 2010, fatal firearm accidents dropped 22 percent. Firearms accidents are now less than 1 percent of all fatal accidents in the United States.

The Secure Firearms Act is also endorsed by the National Rifle Association.

The record setting attendance of more than 80,000 NRA members didn’t appear to agree, but while Kelly is free to voice his own personal position on the issue of gun control, his piece in the Houston Chronicle contained an outright falsehood. In essence, Kelly argues that the NRA is working on behalf of the firearms industry, instead of its membership.

Kelly summarizes the point by saying, “The NRA leadership’s top priority is to make sure the corporations that make guns and ammunition continue to turn huge profits. Their top priority isn’t you, the NRA member.” And this outright lie is gaining more traction through its repetition, as seen here in a subsequent editorial in the same paper.

Of course, the NRA is not, nor has it ever been, the representative body of the firearms industry. The NRA is an organization of individual members advocating on their behalf. And while this paper and many others apparently consider the insinuation to be some kind of insult, NSSF proudly claims the role as the true representative of the firearms industry.

NSSF is the industry’s voice – representing more than 8,000 manufacturers, wholesalers, firearms retailers, shooting ranges, and more. NSSF keeps close tabs on the legislative and regulatory issues affecting the industry and goes to bat every day to promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports industry.

So in a letter to the editor shown below, we tried to keep it simple by illustrating the difference between NRA members and NSSF members at a venue like the NRA convention. And then we pointed out there’s really no reason to be surprised when the legislative objectives of the NRA and NSSF overlap.

So far the paper hasn’t published the letter, but if the media can’t understand these simple points, I suppose that next we’re going to have to draw them a picture.

To The Editor:

Of the thousands of words you printed during last week’s NRA convention, none were more inaccurate and ill-informed than your parroting of Mark Kelly’s claim that the NRA is catering to its “paymasters” in the gun industry, versus its own membership.

The voice of the firearms industry is the National Shooting Sports Foundation, with a record number of more than 8,000 members ranging from the largest manufacturers to the smallest family-owned gun store. At NSSF we are proud of our mission to promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports. The lawful commerce in firearms allows for the exercise of the Second Amendment.

The NRA, on the other hand, works for its now five million individual dues paying members to protect the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. If its members disagreed with the NRAS’s actions its membership rolls would be decreasing, not increasing. In fact, polling of NRA members reflects overwhelming support for the group’s positions.

Here’s the key difference. If your reporters visited the NRA’s exhibit hall last week, the people in the aisles were NRA members. The people manning the booths and the companies they represent were NSSF members. Given the obvious fact that the NRA’s members are also our customers, it shouldn’t surprise your editorial board to learn that NRA’s and NSSF’s respective legislative positions are often aligned.

Larry Keane is senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @lkeane.

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The U.S. Department of Justice Tuesday issued a report that provides further evidence that the use of firearms in violent crimes has dropped dramatically nationwide over the past 20 years. This trend has occurred even as firearms ownership has increased significantly.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report, homicides due to firearms fell 39 percent between 1993 and 2011. The use of firearms in crimes without fatalities dropped an even more impressive 69 percent during the same period. By the numbers, firearm-related homicides dropped from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. Nonfatal firearm crimes in this period declined from 1.5 million in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011. Read the full report here.

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These findings support the earlier released FBI’s Uniform Crime Report showing similar reductions in the violent crime rate.

Interestingly, the new report confirmed earlier data that less than 1 percent of state prison inmates who used a firearm in their crime had obtained it at a gun show. Instead, about 40 percent of these inmates obtained their firearms from illegal sources such as theft or through a drug deal, while 37 percent got their guns from a family member or friend.

Of the firearms used in the offenses that put those inmates behind bars, rifles were employed only about 1.5 percent of the time.

The new report also found that from 2007 to 2011, about 1 percent of violent crime victims, some 235,700 people, used a firearm in self-defense. Another 103,000 used a firearm to protect their property.

What does the data is this report say about the focus of gun control advocates on extending background checks to private-party firearms sales at gun shows or their fixation on banning modern sporting rifles? The short answer is that the data we continue to see in this study and others demonstrate that those approaches are unresponsive and ineffective public policy responses if the goal is to truly continue progress in crime reduction.

We would hope that this report would cause gun control advocates to at least question their pursuit of ill-directed new legislation, but we will not hold our breath. Likewise, we do not expect state legislatures in Connecticut, Maryland or Colorado to reverse bad lawmaking.

We also will not expect the Obama administration to cite this study done by the professional civil servants of the Justice Department since it does not support their political agenda. Nor will we expect extensive news media coverage, although we were pleased to see some articles and commentary.

NSSF and others will cite this report to help convince those policymakers who can be persuaded to stop and look at the data before acting or responding to emotional appeal. Our goal as a society should be to pursue policy that will truly work to further reduce the criminal misuse of firearms and to avoid making laws that work mainly to restrict and punish the law-abiding. Plato said it best: “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”

Larry Keane is senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @lkeane.