A New Entry in the Anti-Gun Dictionary

Bogus anti-gun terminology has a long and winding history. The granddaddy of them all is the one you never hear anymore: "Saturday Night Special." They still use "assault weapon" pretty often. "Assault pistol," a term applied to guns like the HK94, and "pocket rocket," a moniker for compact pistols with double-stack magazines, never really caught on.

The newest anti catchword doesn't refer to guns, but their owners. The gun prohibitionists have tied themselves in knots trying to deny that gun ownership is growing, despite record gun sales throughout the Obama years. As a drowning man grabs for a life preserver, they have latched onto data from the General Social Survey purporting to show that gun-owning households have declined to an all-time low.

The federally-funded survey, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, claimed to show that gun ownership has declined from around 50% in the 1970s to 31% today.

Accepting that conclusion requires some real cognitive dissonance, given record gun sales year after year. You or I might take note of other NORC research that shows Americans have record low confidence in government and point out that just maybe, people aren't comfortable revealing their gun ownership status to government-funded survey takers. That, of course, wouldn't fit the anti-gun narrative, which was expertly put forth by Bernie Horn on Bill Moyer's website.

The problem, you see, is "arsenal owners," fiendish gun nuts who own 50 or more firearms. Because they have so much invested in their guns, they are willing to fight harder and contribute more than the gentle Elmer Fudds who own just a shotgun or two.

These "arsenal owners" are, of course, predominantly the arch-villains of the progressive imagination, middle-aged white men. With that tidbit comes the confident conclusion that when all of those bitter old "males" have the decency to die, a new and better multicultural America will happily hand in the guns.

Horn also nicely encapsulates why the antis are so gung-ho for background checks:

"There is a tremendous need for background check laws to cover private sales. The number of potential private sellers with gigantic quantities of guns dwarfs licensed dealers. There are a few more than 50,000 retail gun stores in America. So, there are perhaps 50 private arsenal-owners for every licensed retail gun store."

So if you own 50 or more guns, congratulations! You're now wearing the newest anti-gun label.

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