“This is why the NRA is so extreme: The arsenal owners control it. Poll after poll shows that the NRA’s political positions do not in any way reflect the opinions of gun owners or even rank-and-file NRA members. The NRA is run by and for a group of people who have invested a huge amount of money, time and emotional energy in their gun collections. That takes them far outside the American mainstream but also makes them willing to fight so hard for unregulated guns that it seems completely irrational. But understand, to the arsenal owners, it isn’t.” – Bernie Horn, Gun Ownership Is Declining, So Why Is The Gun Lobby So Powerful? [via billmoyers.com]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

122 COMMENTS

  1. Maybe it’s so powerful because ownership is increasing, not declining. And being right adds strentgh to one’s ability to continue a struggle.

    • Yeah. Same ol’ same ol’.

      Horn’s just blowing more of the usual anti-gun disingenuous rhetoric out his ass trying to demonize an organization supported by millions of American citizens – actual bona fide grassroots American citizens – unlike the façade of smoke and mirrors put up by the billionaire funded propaganda spewing disarmament squad and their meager band of elitist followers.

      Being a civilian disarmament protagonist, certainly in Horn’s view any person who chooses to keep and bear more than one firearm owns an arsenal, particularly if such a ‘gun nut’ also chooses to keep more than ten rounds on hand to feed his firearms.

      I wonder what Horn calls those who, through their blatant misleading rhetoric and civilian disarmament activities, motivate folks to buy their first, and then subsequent guns, making them ‘arsenal’ keepers?
      Bloomberg, Feinstein, Obama and the rest certainly motivated many Americans to acquire and keep ‘arsenals’.

      Citizens support the NRA for many reasons. Certainly high on the list of reasons is the threat these antis present toward extinguishing their right to choose to keep and bear arms.

    • Exactly. So many non sequiturs in Horn’s article. It’s like saying that only folks who have large and expensive book collections are adamantly supporting the First Amendment. After all, newspaper readership is down. (And it really is, unlike gun ownership).

      • Where in the world do they get this shit? I mean, where are any references? He is clearly pulling this crap out his butt, and people are listening, for some reason. What are his credentials to put himself forward as a supreme expert on all things gun and all things NRA and all things political? He has convinced me that he is a fool, but that would not cause me to print his drivel if I were an editor.

        • “Where in the world do they get this shit? I mean, where are any references?”

          “Repeat a lie often enough, it becomes truth.”

  5. The fool actually believes (or pretends to believe) that gun owners give truthful answers to anonymous people calling them on the phone asking them if they have guns in the house!! LOL. What a statist Obama-bot moron.

    • The survey they’re talking about was done by door knockers, can you ever imagine telling some stranger who showed up to your front door that you have items that are worth stealing in your home? Meanwhile, Gallup (phone) polls show the number of households with guns to be around the same (42ish percent) as 15 years ago and I still believe that number is artificially low for the same reason.

      • And the same % of a larger population means many MORE gun owners.

        Even if the % went down, population increased faster than that drop in ownership “rate”.

        • With the constant and large numbers of firearm sales, see, THAT makes sense. Claiming the numbers are going down while guns are flying out the doors of dealers everywhere doesn’t seem reasonable, for some reason. People like this are simply fools.

      • My favorite is when They claim poll results not just of firearms owners, in general, but of NRA members, in particular.

        Not only would very few owners admit to a stranger on the phone or at their door that they own guns, but they certainly wouldn’t divulge that they’re an NRA member. After all, as this guy said, NRA members have the largest arsenals.

        It’s all silliness, anyway, as the NRA is not providing these jack wagons with the membership list. So they’re relying on self-reporting, which is inherently unreliable.

  6. Wow. The ability of some people to be immune to the facts of reality is really breath taking and increasingly disconcerting. Makes me think of Eliot Rodger, when his perceived reality clashed for too long with his actual reality, he acted out. Keeping my fingers crossed though for our anti friends.

  7. One thing is clear … as a new ‘gun owner’, I obviously need to buy way more guns!!!

    • One must keep up with the Joneses, after all. For all you know they could have a secret basement vault that looks like something out of Terminator II.

    • Yep. You really need more than one anyway. Guns are social animals.

      And diversity is a good thing as well 😀

    • Yes, yes you do. Remember two basic rules for new gun buyers:

      If you can’t decide between two guns, buy both.
      You are legally entitled to a MINIMUM of one gun of every type (you define “type”) for every year of your life.

      • To me a reasonable arsonal includes a carry gun pistol, a pocket carry pistol, a home defense pistol. A carry revolver, a big ass revolver , a home defense SBR , a home defense shotgun, a hunting shotgun, an Ar-15, an ar15 in 300 black out, an AR10, a bolt gun in 308, a bolt gun in 6.5 creedmore, a bolt gun in 7mm rem mag, a 10/22, a bolt gun in 17 wsm, a bolt gun in 25.06 a bolt gun In 243 that’s light for Hunting. A 22 pistol. And then 2 handguns and 1 ar15 ( at least) for the wife and older children. Plus a couple back up pistols and ar s to lend to friends if needed.

        Anything less seams a little defenseless.

  8. On an unrelated note, a recent gun data collection telethon found in states like New York property loss as a result of a marine accident has increased exponentially.

  9. The NRA is so powerful because it’s controlled by lizard people from the planet Xekton IV.

    See, anyone can make up a dumbass hypothesis that has no basis in actual reality…

    • To be fair… Most of us would like the time / money to build a walk-in vault for our toys. I could certainly use one.

        • Remember the scene in The Matrix when they’re getting ready to rescue Morpheus, and the racks of guns go whipping past them? Yeah, that’s a good start in my book. 😀

      • Yeah, something like the underground “rec room” of the survivalist couple in the movie “Tremors”. (“Broke into the wrong rec room that time, sucker!”)

    • When I saw where the article originated from, my first thought was that the people likely to go to such a website is no doubt a subset –probably a small subset–of the people who frequent the NPR website. I don’t think I’m going to bother to be outraged by the antics of that lot.

      • Click-bait. When Progressive SJW websites needs more clicks, they run their peak-derp anti-gun articles. “The only winning move is not to play.” ~ Joshua

  12. Last time I checked, people with arsenals have just as much right to be heard as anyone else. Antis are like muggers: they like their victims to kindly stfu while they take them out.

  13. “NRA’s political positions do not in any way reflect the opinions of gun owners or even rank-and-file NRA members.”

    And yet, five million of us keep sending them $35 dues checks every year.
    Go figure. Maybe we do it just for the free hat or duffle bag.

    • Nah. I’d say he’s actually right there. The NRA haven’t said a peep about legalizing machine guns yet!

    • Let’s be blunt – the NRA is more powerful and relevant because a-holes like Bernie, and the politicians he supports, are trying to take our guns and gun rights away. Most firearms owners are not political firebrands by nature – we want to buy and shoot guns, go to work, go to BBQs, spend time with our families and generally enjoy life. Leave us alone and the NRA loses power and members – because we’ve got better things to do. But as long as Bernie and his ilk are lurking out there, I’ll keep supporting the NRA and other 2A rights orgs.

      Also, that is one really crappy quality dufflebag.

      • The old ones were cheaply made but the newer ones look much better. I got a flashlight too but it was also much more than $35.

  14. Oh goody! We now have a new category of gun villains, “Arsenal Owners.” I thought the antis were adamant that gun manufacturers controlled the NRA. When did this transfer of power occur? Also, the description of arsenal owners means they are essentially collectors, which has to be one of the most benign group of gun owners out there. I would think having collectors in charge of the gun lobby would be the best possible situation for the antis. These are guys who buy guns and lock them up in personal show rooms or shoot them at private ranges. Also, so-called arsenal owners don’t care about most of the gun laws that affect the rest of us. By definition, they already have a ton of guns and they can afford the special permits to get even more, permits that would surely exist in even the most draconian gun control scenario.

    This just shows how ill-informed the antis are and the extent to which they are grasping at straws.

  15. “This is why the NRA is so extreme: The arsenal owners control it.”

    While I like Arsenal, Inc AKs I don’t think they carry that much influence over the NRA-ILA. That’s what he meant, right?

    “Poll after poll shows that the NRA’s political positions do not in any way reflect the opinions of gun owners or even rank-and-file NRA members.””

    I’d like to see these polls. This looks like a poor attempt on this man to try and create divisiveness among gun owners by trying, and failing, to point out that we disagree with each other fundamentally (fuddamentally?)

    “The NRA is run by and for a group of people who have invested a huge amount of money, time and emotional energy in their gun collections.”

    You heard it here: collection = arsenal. My uncle has an arsenal of baseball cards, y’know.

    “That takes them far outside the American mainstream but also makes them willing to fight so hard for unregulated guns that it seems completely irrational. But understand, to the arsenal owners, it isn’t.”

    We haven’t even begun to fight to unregulate guns at the federal level, right now we’re just fighting back the attacks that are encroaching on what we already are allowed to own. What’s his argument here? That we want to protect our arsenals or unregulate guns (by such I suppose maybe he means at certain state levels or NFA/GCA/Hughes)? These are two different fights he is lumping into one.

    And once again the antis prove themselves ignorant.

    • If you choose to believe all of his blather, the response would still likely be “So what?” Surprise, dude, this is not squandering government/tax dollars, if they were not doing what I want, I would not contribute. He’s not claiming anything they do is illegal, immoral, anything at all, he seems to be claiming they are wasting their own time and energy. Which makes me ask, “So what?”

  17. If gun ownership is declining how is the “gun lobby” along with it’s money and power increasing…

    Don’t they have to sell more guns to make more money?

    • Shhh, stop using logic, you might scare the poor little leftist jackwagon. His delicate little heart might not be able to take it.

  18. Even if gun ownership did decline, if there was only one gun owner left, his rights as enumerated in the 2A would still exist. Repeal the 2A, it would still be your right, it would just evidence the tyranny of govt and likeky anger all thise closet former gun owners into discovering long lost guns. Which is why they only push for more infringenents.

  19. Gun ownership may be declining in NY, MA, CT, NJ, RI, and MD, but it is likely increasing everywhere else in the US. I know plenty of first time gun buyers. I don’t know anyone who sold off all their guns to become “gun free.”

    • Who is going to tell a pollster that he/she owns a gun in NY? One will own guns, but will not tell pollsters that.

    • I don’t know anyone who sold off all their guns to become “gun free.”

      That’s because the clumsy fools keep dumping them overboard. 😀

    • Gun RIGHTS have been descreasing in CT – gun ownership not so much, at least based on my totally unscientific observations at local stores and ranges. Of course, we’re now buying a less diverse selection of guns, and totally discriminating based on color.

  20. so is the NRA a corporate shill or an organization run by Arsenal owners? #gunsense is just all over the place.

  21. Bernie is a leftist idiot. Not only does he speak of things he knows not, he advances them as if he is an expert. Audacity is his virtue.

    As far as me and my extended family, gun ownership is increasing. As far as my neighbors, gun ownership is increasing. As far as the gun shops and Bass Pro Shops and other huge chains are concerned, gun ownership is increasing. Along with gun ownership increasing, ammunition ownership is also increasing.

  22. So Mr. Horn, how do you know that firearm ownership is declining in the United States?

    From everything that I have seen and heard, there is no doubt (in my mind) that it is increasing.

    • A couple polls have been released in the last several months. Gallup says it’s up, the General Social Survey says it’s down.

      Guess which one gets mentioned by the MSM?

  24. Remember, folks, you can’t have “arsenal” without “arse”.

    And we got a grade-a ruby red one in that photo at the top of the page!

  25. That’s so weird. If I try to go to a gun range on a Saturday or Sunday mornng, I’d better get there very early. Otherwise, I’m in for a long wait. There are lines out the door at many gun ranges, even in gun-hating CA. Must be all that dwindling gun ownership we keep hearing about from all the borderline-retarded anti-gun journalists.

  27. Wow. Completely ignoring the number of folks who’ve seen the NRA as too willing to compromise, and too slow to get involved in some cases.

    Those of us old enough to remember the NRA going along with the machine gun ban in the 80’s for example.

  28. I’m teaching a NRA First Steps class tomorrow. Nobody told the people that signed up about this research.

  29. What exactly are they calling an “arsenal” at this point? Is it more than own firearm (even if it isn’t one of those “scary black guns”)? Hell, even super Fudds usually own more than own firearm. I agree with a lot of statements above that it is becoming increasingly clear that these people are trying to do little more than demonize all gun owners.

  30. According to Bernie Horn and his ilk anyone who owns more than a single hunting firearm and 5 or 10 rounds on hand owns an arsenal. Hell if they saw my 20 gun collection I am sure it’d be portrayed like I could arm all of ISIS or something

    • Yep, to these leftist antis (is that an oxymoron?) anyone who owns anything more than an expensive handcrafted shotgun that they keep at a country club owns an arsenal. Well, I don’t care if that dirty little leftist jackwagon doesn’t like me, the feeling is more than mutual; I hate filthy gun grabbers.

      • I think you meant “redundancy”, not “oxymoron”. An oxymoron would be more like “rational anti” .

  31. Thanks for the reminder, Bernie, my membership is about to expire. Time to renew, and flex my arsenal owner muscles.

  32. So people that believe that the second amendment means what it says are “irrational”?

    Which means in the mind of this anti-second/freedom zealot, the Founding Fathers were “irrational”.

    This is classic Socialist/liberal/progressive attempt at mind control. Anyone in Russia that disagreed with the communist/socialist meme was classified as “irrational”and even “insane”. Most of the psychologists/psychiatrists in this country are also liberal/progressive. I have read a number of psychology treatises that say that a citizen carrying a weapon for self-defense is disturbed and needs counseling.

    This is the route liberal/progressives keep pushing. Have the psychiatry field as the new gate keepers for deciding who is mentally “healthy’ enough to carry a weapon for self-defense instead of the sheriffs and the police. Yep, like having the fox guarding the chicken coop.

    In the end, I see it as more evidence of transference.

  33. Howdy fellow Patriots!!!

    I finally got TTAG unblocked on the company firewalls… Looking forward to posting here again… Been in read only (cache) mode way too long…

    Anyway’s.. That’s a pretty weak straw man old Bernie here is trying to prop up IMHO…

    Carry on and God bless….

  34. His analysis finds that approximately 5 million households have 50+ guns. This is obviously a ridiculous output, which means that there is noise and distortion in the numbers that produced that output. A serious academic would review his data and data collection methods, this guy just accepts it at face value and writes an inane article.

  36. This is awesome! I just tried to post a reply on Moyer’s site and got a nice red error box stating I had been blacklisted by Moyers. What an honor!

    It’s funny how closed-minded Libs are. They stick their fingers in their ears and hum loudly to themselves so as not to hear any arguments that refute their positions, all the while complaining that we need to “dialogue” with one another so we can reach “common sense” “compromise”.

  37. The way I’m reading this guy is the more guns you have the more votes you have to pick NRA board members. That’s not how it works, as has been written above. This guy is mad because precipitation isn’t unicorn micturition.

  38. They say gun ownership is declining because of some poll they did. Big whoop there. In this day and age of the government and everybody and their (big) brother wanting to dig into peoples’ lives, would YOU tell some pollster that you owned guns? Maybe some will, but I guarantee you that a lot of other folks won’t. I don’t think that gun ownership has declined, just people willing to admit it. In some places, like California, if people talk about guns they do it in hushed tones, seriously.

  39. “Hi! I am taking a poll for an organization which intends to steal all of your guns at the behest of a billionaire madman. First, do you own any guns, and if so, exactly where do you keep them?”

    Amazing how few people own guns anymore! I guess the grabbers can just retire, in a few more years there will be 500 million guns, but zero owners, everything will be fine.

    • This! When people who want to steal guns ask how many someone have and where that someone keep them; that someone usually lies, and rightly so. The pollsters know that, so they word the the questions to set off red flags and get as many “no” responses as possible…

  40. I especially love this particular line of attack. So what If I have an “arsenal” or not; I can only shoot one of them at a time. Why does it matter if I have 30 or 70, or 200 guns? Do I have 200 arms and a seething desire to go on a bloody rampage? Nope… So, where’s the point? It’s one of the best pieces of rope these losers hang themselves with, because it’s easy to show that they’re doping nothing but being inflammatory because; even if their rhetoric were true, it still doesn’t make a point or carry any meaning. I absolutely love it when they trot out this argument because it’s instant death to their credibility.

    They’re blinded by their extreme desperation, hate, and stupidity, that they don’t realize they’re stepping on their own land mine when they try this angle…

  41. Hah! The same Frank Luntz who was shown to manipulate polls to what he wants on Pen and Teller’s “Bullsh!t” tv show?

    [40K Guardsman]Is that the best you got?[/40k Guardsman]

  42. Most gun owners don’t own just one. Most food owners don’t have just one can of beans in their pantry. Most home owners don’t have just one room in their house, or one piece of tile… Duh.

  43. Ha Ha they were getting their asses kicked so hard they closed the comments.

    This is what the anti-rights extremists do. when public opinion is against them they just plug their ears and shout louder.

  45. So his logic is, because someone owns more than one gun (i.e. areseal), they are more fanatic about supporting the NRA since they have more to lose.

    Fail. Liberal logic fail. Failure to understand the second amendment, gun ownership and freedom. There is no difference in the NRA member and 2A supporter who has 1 gun than the 2A support with 10. You either support the 2A or you don’t. It’s a philosophy, a mind-set. Not an economic decision.

  46. Well, to be fair, most news reports call three guns and 100 rounds of ammo an “arsenal”, so maybe this jerk is right.

  47. Key paragraph: Bernie’s Bio.

    Opinions: Only slightly smoother than your average, crudely-constructed propaganda piece.
    Appears Mr. Horn has advanced himself beyond the masses of those who, due to societal influences / lack of personal achievement & etc., remain in the early stages of arrested development ( read: naturally-occurring / low-level / average ‘liberals’ ) and positioned himself within the upper tier layers of Handlers.
    Inferences and statements made in under ‘Our Analysis’ clearly indicates that he’s also trolling for usable and potentially insightful information of which he’s not yet aware about normal firearm-owning people.

  48. He’s not only a boot licker but an idiot.

    The people with large amounts of money invested in collections usually *support* regulation. Talk with someone who owns a few transferable machine guns, 9/10 of them would fight tooth and nail to keep the Hughes amendment and the FOPA in place. To order to protect their investment in something that would absent of government interference cost 1/100 of what they paid for it.

  49. Didja’ here about the low-life muslim Illinois National guardsman who plotted to kill 150 at the Joliet ARSENAL? Oh wait…wrong arsenal…

  50. “Bernie Horn, Gun Ownership Is Declining”. Do these mindless idiots even live in the same dimension as the rest of us. I was raised to believe ANYONE demanding you believe something that has been PROVEN to be incorrect or a lie was simply mentally handicapped.

  51. On my street alone, in a Los Angeles suburb, about 5 out of 8 homes have a gun that I know about.

    Here is the thing, until a couple of years ago my dad would have denied owning a gun. Heck I didn’t know he did, but he has since at least 1978. Even the police don’t know about it, even though it was “registered” and bought in CA, records before 1996 are spotty. Dollar to donuts I know at least 2 (my dad and a neighbor two doors down) have and will deny ownership if a stranger asks.

    Now maybe we are an anomaly. and gun ownership is rarer. But I doubt it. I also cannot count the number of guns we have discovered after someone has died, that no one knew owned a gun. My grandmother once expressed distaste at me owning a gun, but when grandpa died we found several in just one of his houses. My other grandfather had 2 handguns in his home, unknown to us. A great aunt had 2 handguns (she was a tough old lady, still kept the leather holster clean and oiled at the age of 87). No one knew that. And I have encountered many acquaintances who have come to me after finding firearms in the estate of a deceased relative, it seems to happen every other time, and who knows of the cases no one told me about. Even our rarely spoken of liberal branch of our family, our great aunt who was in San Francisco had one.

    Anecdotal, but it paints a certain picture.

  52. “We can get an idea of the number of households that own substantial arsenals of guns by examining data from a poll of gun owners conducted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz for Mayors Against Illegal Guns.”

    This quote alone is suspect.

    https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/progressivemajorityaction/pages/342/attachments/original/1426384013/NORC-handout-2015.pdf?1426384013

    Reading the survey data, I couldn’t find any info on where they conducted this survey, or the sample size, or how they conducted it (phone, e-mail, mail. face to face) – this may or may not be important. Also, I can’t find this survey on the NORC website.

  53. Comments are closed under his article. Figures since about 98% of them called him out on the totally false bullshit he was spewing.

  55. Yeah… it’s the same three guys buying all the guns at my LGS. The “arsenal owners.”

    Yep… whenever I see customers walking up to the counters, the sales clerks are wont to say, “YOU? Again?”

  56. The “Poll after poll shows that the NRA’s political positions do not in any way reflect the opinions of gun owners or even rank-and-file NRA members.” is meme I have heard for many years. These guys never show the polls because they don’t exist. If this was true statement the NRA would have been gone by now. Most disaffected NRA members are people who think the NRA is too weak.

  57. Yup, I’m guilty of trying to acquire an “arsenal,” but I prefer the word armory. Whenever I see Barry’s ugly hem-hawing, Teleprompter-reading puss on TV, I need a fix and I go to my local gun store or check Bud’s to ease the pain. I buy something and feel much better afterwards! It’s starting to add up. Never had that same feeling when Ronnie was president.

Comments are closed.