Josh Sugarmann

“The bottom line is, guns beget gun violence...private citizens rarely use guns to kill criminals or stop crimes...For every time a person used a gun to kill in a justifiable homicide, 34 innocent lives were ended in criminal gun homicides...Why does the gun industry persist in its lies? Short answer: to make money...Relying on a gun for self-defense is much more likely to result in tragedy than protection — 34 times more likely, according to our study. Guns don’t protect us. They kill us.”

“Assault weapons and high-capacity concealed carry handguns are the bread and butter of today's gun industry.”

“...the truth is that guns are rarely used to stop crimes or kill criminals...private citizens use guns to harm themselves or others far more often than to kill in self-defense...The fact is that the use of guns in self-defense in America bears little resemblance to the false claims made by the NRA and its gun industry partners. Perhaps most striking is that in a nation of more than 300 million guns, how rarely firearms are used in self-defense.”

“Year after year, our findings are consistent: States with stricter gun laws and lower rates of gun ownership have some of the lowest overall gun death rates in the county. Conversely, states with lax gun laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the nation’s highest gun death rates.”

“In the long-term trends, gun ownership in the United States has been declining steadily since the 1970s. The traditional gun-buying public, basically white males, has been aging and dying off, and there aren't enough replacement shooters to take their place. That's why you're seeing a shift in the industry away from traditional hunting rifles and shotguns evolve to focus on firepower and capacity.”

“The NRA, a trade association for the gun industry masquerading as a shooting sports foundation, has worked for decades to block any policy that could negatively affect the industry’s bottom line. They’ve taken tens of millions of dollars in donations from gun companies that care more about increased profits than protecting public safety.”

“Somehow they managed to make the N.R.A. the victims of the Newtown shootings. I think the average American would be shocked by their language.”

“Today’s NRA is nothing less than a gun industry trade association masquerading as a shooting sports foundation.”

“The grotesque irony? The National Shooting Sports Foundation locale. They’ve taken the lead in working to rebrand assault weapons as modern sporting rifles.”

“Today the NRA receives millions of dollars from online sales of ammunition, high-capacity ammunition magazines, and other accessories through the Round-Up Program, created by top NRA benefactor Larry Potterfield. Potterfield is founder and head of MidwayUSA, which claims to stock “[j]ust about everything for shooting, reloading, gunsmithing and hunting,” including ammunition and high-capacity ammunition magazines. The Round-Up Program encourages buyers to “round-up” their purchase to the nearest dollar with the difference going to the NRA.”

“Today's NRA is a virtual subsidiary of the gun industry. While the NRA portrays itself as protecting the 'freedom' of individual gun owners, it's actually working to protect the freedom of the gun industry to manufacture and sell virtually any weapon or accessory.”

“One of the greatest talents of the National Rifle Association and the gun industry has been their ability exploit high-profile events to pump up gun sales: Bill Clinton, the Brady Bill, the federal assault weapons “ban,” Y2K, September 11th, and now, of course, Barack Obama. Regardless of the event, the solution remains the same: buy a gun. And if industry and gun fan mags are any indication, it should be an AR-15 assault rifle.”

“In the wake of three high-profile school shootings in one week, the last committed by an apparently law-abiding gun owner until he pulled the trigger executing five Amish schoolgirls, America will once again go through the now-predictable exercise of trying to identify any single, possible factor for these gun deaths—except for the guns themselves. On television news, anchors refer to the school shootings as “unavoidable,” as if such mass shootings are the bastard children born of hurricanes and snowstorms.”

“Guns are the second most deadly consumer product, after cars, on the market. Many consumer products, from lawn darts to the Dalkon Shield, have been banned in the United States, even though they claimed only a fraction of the lives guns do in a day.”