SIG SAUER P226 (courtesy wikipedia.org)

Email blast from the Violence Policy Center re: the Isla Vista shooting:

Dear VPC Supporter,

Like you, I was deeply saddened and outraged when I heard about yet another mass shooting in America, this time in Isla Vista, California. Since last Friday, there has rightfully been a great deal of public attention and conversation about the shooter’s violent attitudes toward women. But another essential aspect of this tragedy cannot be forgotten: This shooting was aided and abetted by an unregulated gun industry that is selling increasingly lethal weapons in order to make a profit . . .

As we explain in a backgrounder we released this week, semiautomatic weapons, like the Glock and Sig Sauer pistols owned by the killer, are the types of firearms most commonly used in mass shootings. Originally designed for the military, semiauto pistols were not aggressively marketed in the United States until the 1980s, when the most popular handgun at the time was the six-shot revolver. In response to declining handgun sales, the gun industry touted the increased firepower and capacity of these guns, using their military and law enforcement pedigree as a key selling point. Elliot Rodger, the Isla Vista shooter, called the Glock he purchased “an efficient and highly accurate weapon.”

As gun companies continue to put increasingly lethal products on the market, today they also give tens of millions of dollars to the NRA to block any regulation of the gun industry or its products. Glock and Sig Sauer are both official NRA “Corporate Partners” that have donated to the organization. At the NRA annual meeting this year, the NRA displayed a “big check” from Glock for $50,000 — just the latest gift from the gunmaker to the NRA.

If reading all this makes you angry, then you’re not alone. This state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue. And our leaders should not wait for the next mass shooting before they answer the call for change.

We hope you will take a look at our backgrounder on the Isla Vista shooting. Please share these resources with your contacts and spread the word to anyone who can help make a difference. And thank you, as always, for your support as we work to end America’s gun violence epidemic. Sincerely,

Josh Sugarmann
Executive Director

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

108 COMMENTS

  1. title should read, ” Needless Hysteria brought to you by Violence Policy Center. “

    • For the purpose of raising more money for the foundation. I’m willing to bet the VPCs largest expense is Mr. Sugarman’s generous salary.

        • +1. Sugarman and VPC, and the people who take what they say at face value remind me of Alice in Wonderland. The Red Queen screams “off with their heads”, and minions scurry to obey.

    • This is one of those contemptible organizations that relies on violence to survive and make money, like MDA. Without violence, the “Violence Policy Center” would have no purpose, not like it has a purpose now. So of course they want to increase violence and crime by advocating civilian victimization, that way violence continues and grows and they get to demand money for their insanity.

      The staggering irony of them blaming others for aiding violence when they themselves are literally trying to do so for a profit…

  2. “If reading all this makes you angry, then you’re not alone.”

    It sure does make me angry…

  3. “increasingly lethal weapons”?

    Like what, a phaser? Railgun? Phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range?

      • What about the almost equally ancient Browning M1911 (or the 1908 Luger or the super-duper-deadly M1918A2 BAR and 1918 Thompson sub-machine gun)?

        • C’mon, guys, you know modern guns are 3x as evil as older guns and will make you up to twice as dead. And that’s by themselves. It’s even worse when they’re held in a human hand.

        • It is a scientifically proven fact that if a gun has wood on it, it is less deadly than a gun with only plastic or aluminum on it.

        • I just replaced the E2 grips on my P226 with Hogue Rosewood. Maybe I should go back to the E2 grips to insure it is sufficiently lethal.

    • I’ve always thought of “lethal” as a discrete value (i.e. true/false) rather than a value on a continuum (e.g. 47.6 milliLethals).
      But maybe that’s because I’m a rational, intelligent person, rather than the head Chicken Little at the Violence Propaganda Creator.

      • Lethal is an analog value. Either yes or no. It’s very hard to be “a little dead.”

        • Most, and that means A LOT, of gun shootings are not lethal. With today’s emergency procedures a lot of people that are shot with handguns are saved.

      • If they’re piggybacking on the killer’s assessment that these sidearms are efficient and accurate, wouldn’t that actually make them less lethal? Being able to put fewer rounds precisely on target to stop a threat would tend to minimize the overkill and collateral damage associated with firing as many rounds as possible in the hope of landing something, wouldn’t it?

  4. Killing 3 with gun qualifies as “mass shooting”

    California is the best known haven of unregulated gun industry….

    Increasingly lethal weapons. well perhaps in self defense bullet design, maybe? But the gun itself has largely remained the same basic design since the early 1900s..

    I only read the first paragraph. That’s all I needed to read.

  5. Lets replace just a couple words in that paragraph:

    Originally designed for the military, -COLT SAA’s- were not aggressively marketed in the United States until the -1880s-, when the most popular handgun at the time was the -BLACK POWDER- revolver. In response to declining handgun sales, the gun industry touted the increased firepower and capacity of these guns, using their military and law enforcement pedigree as a key selling point.

    See what I did there?

    • I found this fundraising letter from Mr. Sugarman’s great-great-great grandfather written in 1875. It reads in part:

      “The Winchester Repeating Arms Co. has teamed with a new lobbying group called the National Rifle Association to sell increasingly lethal firearms to the public. Their model 1873 repeating rifle provides criminals, Indians and Negros with a weapon that give these dangerous people a significant advantage over the US Army, peace officers and law abiding citizens our southern states.. No private citizen needs a weapon that fire multiple bullets without reloading. One shot should be good enough.”

  6. This email blast was aided and abetted by an unregulated gungrabbing industry that is selling an increasingly lethal bill of goods in order to make a profit.

  8. The unregulated firearms industry? He smuggled his guns in from underground shops in Pakistan?

    Oh, not unregulated-unregulated. Just allowed-to-sell-to-civilians-unregulated.

    • Regulated is a Statist word that best translates to English as “choked to death by the government, until the only recourse is turning control over to the government”.
      Ironically, in the US Constitution, the word meant “made regular, common, or consistent”.

      • I like the word “smothered” better. Like an overly-protected mother smothers her child with unregulated “love” (read: “irrationality”).

  10. Funny: No mention of “an unregulated knife industry.” Weren’t half the deaths in this “mass shooting” caused by an unstable person using something besides a firearm? One would think that a policy center with “violence” in the name is working hard to prevent all kinds of violence.

    But it’s evident from their written message that this isn’t true. Which means that there’s must be some other agenda at work here.

    I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure this out.

    • Don’t forget the unregulated auto industry that built his scary black car with a fully automatic transmission and “high-capacity” motor. Who needs 30ms gear shifts and a 2.8L six cylinder to drive to work?

    • ^+1

      Knife industry. Car Manufacturing industry. Law enforcement industry. Movie industry….

  11. I eagerly await their faux outrage at those evil thugs over at Honda and Ford who aid and abet in the tens of thousands killed each year in car crashes because they’re trying to make a profit.

    • Oh, they couldn’t do that.
      .
      The automobile used in this incident was a vehicle liberals covet: A BMW.
      .
      Outlaw Fords and Chevies, sure. But not my BMW!
      .

      • If the Isla Vista murderer had been driving a Prius or Tesla, then it would have put them in a real quandry.

        • He wanted something reliable, but settled for a Beemer.

          “When you absolutely, positively gotta get there.”

        • I fail to grasp the animus towards hybrid or electric cars. No one made anyone buy one. What do you have against superior gas mileage? Are the owners somehow not “doing their part”, i.e., not supporting the petroleum industry enough?

          Stop being so silly.

          • “William Burke says:
            May 30, 2014 at 16:08
            .
            I fail to grasp the animus towards hybrid or electric cars. No one made anyone buy one. What do you have against superior gas mileage? ”
            .
            Well Bill:
            .
            I resent having to pay for your superior gas mileage.
            .
            I resent having to pay for the subsidy the battery manufactures get to produce inefficient batteries to run your “superior” vehicle.
            .
            I don’t much care for your smugness and elitist attitude, nor the foolishness of your statement.
            .
            How’s that?

        • As much as I want to hate a Prius, having had to rent one in SF, I found it was actually not a bad car. I’ve decided instead to focus my hate on the smugness they represent.

  12. “Originally designed for the military, semiauto pistols were not aggressively marketed in the United States until the 1980s, when the most popular handgun at the time was the six-shot revolver.”

    Bull. Semiautomatic handguns have been aggressively marketed since they were first invented. Over century ago. Yet another lie piled on top of lies.

    And it amazes me that only the people this guy shot matter. The ones that were stabbed? Oh well, if they’d been clever enough to be killed with a gun they’d get some sympathy from the anti’s. Unless maybe he stabbed them with a gun.

    • Zod, nowadays, no matter how many people are killed, if at least one of them was shot, they were all shot. Hence, even though he killed three with knives, and three with a gun, and hit four with a car they were all killed by a gun.

      Also, if a murder is committed without a gun, it doesn’t count.

      It sounds crazy, but a pig named squealer wouldn’t lie. .

    • Yeah, and a lot of the popularity of semi-autos actually traces to the exposure of a lot of folks to semi-autos while serving in the military. Nothing to do with marketing, everything to do with knowledge/personal experience.

    • More than that, becuase two people were shot all victims of this incident are being counted as victims of “gun violence.” More sleight of mind by the slight of mind.

      • 13 were shot, of whom three died, three were stabbed to death, and four were hit with a car, of whom 1 died.

        • Thanks for the info. Didn’t really know the exact tally. I believe the consensus point is still valid: the press has pretty much painted the incident as a “shooting” to the extent that they virtually ignore the fact that over half of the fatalities were non-firearm related. That’s actually one of the reasons I still didn’t know the exact numbers.

    • The first semi-auto pistol ever developed wast the Borchardt C-93 (almost a century before Gaston’s design). It was marketed to both military and commercial buyers from the very beginning.
      Browning’s first semi-auto (the M1900) was sold mostly to civilians (as were some of his other pre-1911 designs).
      Original semi-autos were in small calibers like 7.65 Browning. They lacked the power to impress military procurers enough to replace their revolvers.

      So that VPC statement is absolutely incorrect.

  13. “And our leaders should not until the next mass shooting before they answer the call for change”

    Mr. Josh Sugerdaddy, oops, I mean Sugermann sure got that one right! We need lots of change, especially in Kalifornia.

    Lets start by changing “May issue” to “shall issue”

  14. I call my maverick 88 slug gun “an efficient and highly accurate weapon.” I call my Pietta 1860 Army .44 reproduction “an efficient and highly accurate weapon.”

    A steak knife is even more efficient because it never runs empty and can be used one handed in a pince, and it is almost impossible to miss with at contact distances.

  16. Semiauto pistols were popular long before the 1980s. A quick visit to Gunbroker will provide thousands of examples.

  17. “. . . semiauto pistols were not aggressively marketed in the United States until the 1980s, . . .”
    .
    Bull$hit !

  18. Unregulated hell! I live in Santa Barbara County and my daughter goes to UCSB. It is one of the most regulated and restricted counties in the nation…and it still goes to show no matter how many onerous laws are on the books, when someone is determined to do evil no amount of laws, rules or restrictions will prevent them from doing so.

    To make matters worse, the current sheriff, despite his many words to the contrary, is about one of the most anti-gun in the state. Under his predecessor there were around 1,800 CCW permits in the county. Unfortunately once he was elected (with the help of an NRA blessing and “A” rating which tipped the scales in his favor) he proceeded to revoke them and now we have around 48 permit holders in the county…how’s that for regulation?

    • P.S. This is how Brown got elected with the NRA’s support and blessing.

      http://waronguns.blogspot.com/2006/10/nras-rated-citizen-disarmament.html

      I even changed my vote due to this mailer by the NRA-PVF and later discovered I had shot my self in the foot by voting for Brown. To date we’ve still never found out how the NRA allowed this to go out as multiple requests for information of the NRA by myself and several others have meet with…crickets.

      As utterly and contemptibly disarmed as this county is, we’re lucky that the body count was as low as it was.

      • Seriously, if I saw that flyer, I wouldn’t assume he was actually endorsed by the NRA.

        That’s nothing more than a paid advertisement, of the type that is exceedingly common in politics. All those, “Ballot and vote for” items you get in the mail are paid advertising. Which this is.

        His campaign simply paid to have them sent to people listed as Conservatives in the district, and it says Dear NRA member just to draw you in. Plenty of non NRA members got one as well. They just ignored it.

    • P.P.S. I worked at the mail processing plant just down the road from UCSB where the other mass shooting took place and I knew every single one of the victims. This is why I challenge the cops who comment here about enforcing this trash and who would willingly throw me in a cage for carrying without state sanction because ‘the law is the law and they must ENFORCE the law.”

      As events have shown here twice now in my area, I’m better off carrying without sanction and taking my chances than begging the likes of Brown and all of his enforcers for permission and find myself in this situation. The only thing worse than getting killed like this is getting killed knowing that I have both the means and the training to defend myself and others all because a politician like Brown feels I’m unworthy.

    • It’s funny, Wayne La Pierre got gutted by both sides for recycling the “Mortal Kombat” speech from the early 90’s, but no one on their side ever points out the flaws and irrelevance of the Kellerman and CDC studies from the same period. Hey grabbers, Ace of Base called, they want their gun studies back!

  20. Still no word from Shannon Everytown? or did I miss it? Ya know, I’m kinda wondering if folks at large, at least in this case, have kind of caught on to the fact that this wasn’t really a “mass shooting”–despite the headline-writers’ best efforts, at some point the news accounts generally acknowledge that three were stabbed and three were shot.

    • Watts hasn’t gone anywhere, just give her time. And 3 for 6 doesn’t matter when it’s “if just one life could be saved”, especially if it could have been an educated tony elitist liberal progressive ‘person of importance’ in training rather than a GI, commoner, or inner city dweller.

  21. They just keep spreading lies and misinformation. Sadly our side doesn’t get the true message out to the uninformed and undecided well enough to combat the propaganda.

    • It’s not for lack of trying to get the full, true message out.

      When we’re up against a libby progressive press that only reports one side of the story and ignores or glosses over anything that goes against their biases, it’s an uphill battle.

      Thank God for the internet, and TTAG.

  22. I’m literally angry with rage!! Glock could’ve given me that big check to use in order to get this damn gun shop runnin at full tilt.

  23. All mass shooters were meat eaters. Therefore all meat eaters are collectively guilty for the crimes of the shooters.
    1) All meat eaters should pay reparations.
    2) To stop the mass shootings we must ban meat eating.

  25. As usual, the VPC ignores the violence perpetrated by police using guns killing innocent American citizens. Gun control is NOT about public safety, it’s about protecting themselves, the parasites in government.

  27. Sounds like they are leaning back to the hand-gun ban hysteria from the 70’s and 80’s.

  29. “This stabbing was aided and abetted by an unregulated knife industry that is selling increasingly sharp and pointy things in order to make a profit . . .”

    Until they decide to restrict access to Ginsu knives — I mean, for the love of all things holy you can buy a deadly Ginsu knife over the internet with no background check! — then clowns like this can, hmm, let’s see, what’s the term I was looking for…tip of my tongue. Oh. Yes.

    Bugger off.

  30. Sugarman, Ditlow, Claybrook, Nader, Jackson/Sharpton all spawn of the same cesspool.

    • Hey, be nice and respectful – cesspools have feelings too, they don’t want to be associated with those people 🙂

  31. Blah blah blah. Blame everyone but the 22year old shooter…and stabber…vehicular assaulter. All in a state with some of the worst gun in ‘Muruca.

  32. More junk from the Victim Propagation center. It must be fun to have such a vivid imagination to come up with such crap.

  33. I guess they forgot that that alleged $50,000 check to the NRA from Glock GmbH represents about .0001976% of the NRA’s budget in 2011.

    Just like Mother Jones, the members of the VPC (and all of their alleged supporters) never in their lives even attempted — much less actually passed — any high school or college-level statistics classes.

    Being an engineering student myself, my whole life is numbers.

  36. I need help! I’m running low on snide comments. My failsafe reliance on the second amendment is threadbare as more and more idiotic articles are written and idiotic laws are proposed. It’s driving me crazy. Wait, did I say crazy? Is the NSA reading this? I was just kidding. Who’s that knocking at my door?

    Remember the Alamo!

    Forget The White House!!

  38. I wonder if the VPC stooges would be surprised to learn that GLOCK’s first military products were actually knives. By the time the G17 was delivered, at the request of the Austrian military, GLOCK’s big product line investments were spades and a field knife with a saw.

    Sure, the G17 was successful with the Austrian military and with Norway’s, but it’s the product’s engineering, innovation and durability that then endeared it to civilian and police customers in the U.S., not its Austrian and Norwegian military affiliations. GLOCK’s prominence in competitive shooting competitions bears this out, as well. Nobody after losing a match would take any comfort whatsoever in knowing that some grunt on duty in Oslo happens to carry the same GLOCK brand GLOCK as he does.

  39. Technically, a mass shooting, as defined by the FBI, is where a minimum of FOUR people are shot to death, so unless you count the shooter, the Isla Vista shooting doesn’t count as a “mass shooting.” And, just as many people were killed by a knife in this act of violence, so is this a “mass stabbing/shooting”? School shootings like this account for less than 4% of mass shootings, but they are the ones that get all the media attention. This knee-jerk reaction is typical and so predictable. Humans have the innate propensity for violence programmed into them. Cain killed Abel with a ROCK. More people are killed with baseball bats and knives than guns. And let’s not forget the shooter in Santa Barbara also tried to kill people with his CAR, something else that kills more people than guns. Stop blaming the TOOL, start blaming the actual WEAPON, which is the PERSON behind the gun.

    • Maybe Cain killed Abel at the behest of the NRA–National Rock Association….Seriously, I love it when people actually bring facts to the table– thanks!

  40. VPC, Sugarman, the Brady Bunch……all exist and acquire mega dollars trading on the blood and bodies of the victims of government provided “gun free zones”. They are lower than whale feces, utterly without character or credibility. The NRA needs to be more militant. There are NO Constitutional gun laws in this country.

  41. Of course the dishonest Josh Sugarman doesn’t mention that (A) the killer murdered his first three victims with a knife and injured several more with his car (not even his precious “backgrounder” mentions this) [1], (B) the guns that the killer used are not assault weapons as California has one and they were legal and that none of the recently proposed bills would have stopped this [2], (C) California already has strict gun control laws, having been given an A- rating by the Brady Campaign [3] and (D) mass shootings are statistically rare events and make up a VERY small portion of all murders [4]. On top of that, he goes into the usual anti-gunner diatribe that the NRA and gun industry are only in this for the money, the only “evidence” (if I dare call it that) that he provides for this is the typical appeal to motive crap with the fact that they make money off of selling firearms and that they give money to the NRA (yeah, they’re so evil for supporting an organization that supports their right to manufacture and sell firearms). Also, he once again criticizes certain firearms and neglects to mention some important information: the police used to primarily use revolvers up until a few decades ago [5][6] (he just BARELY acknowledges this but twists it into a talking point when he says “using their military and law enforcement pedigree as a key selling point”). This next one (from the “backgrounder”) I LOVE: “The Austrian Glock 34 pistol has an extended barrel for greater accuracy.” Yeah, God forbid that anyone besides a mass shooter would want to make sure that a gun is accurate and reliable. I mean, if you’re using a weapon for self-defense you certainly don’t need one that WORKS. What country to do you think this is?

    “If reading all this makes you angry…” Indeed Josh, it does. Because you are a f^*&ing liar who dances on the graves of these innocent victims (yeah, I went there, YOU deserve it). People like you are a perfect example of why gun rights advocates and gun owners don’t trust those on your side of the debate and that distrust is well deserved. You have no one to blame for it but yourselves. To accuse people of not caring about innocent people and only being interested in protecting their “toys” or “making money” etc. is absolutely despicable. If you really believe that there needs to be a “conversation” about guns and gun control but we’re not having one, you certainly aren’t going to get one now (though, in actuality, we have had this conversation, with Heller and McDonald, and your side lost [7]).

    One last thing, Sugarman and his clones like to talk about guns as if they should only be in the hands of the police and military, but I never recall hearing them talk about police brutality or the unconstitutional/immoral use of drones by the U.S. government or criticize the companies that make those (even though they probably get their money to make those through taxpayer dollars rather than the free market) [8].

    [1] http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/24/justice/california-shooting-deaths/
    [2] http://reason.com/archives/2014/05/28/gun-controls-false-promise
    [3] http://www.bradycampaign.org/sites/default/files/SCGLM-Final10-spreads-points.pdf
    [4] http://michaelsiegel.net/?p=5958 (most relevant point at the bottom where it says “update”)
    [5] http://americancopmagazine.com/legacy-when-cops-carried-revolvers/
    [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver
    [7] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/the-us-already-had-a-conversation-about-guns-and-the-pro-side-won/266335/
    [8] http://reason.com/blog/2014/05/20/nra-holding-national-police-shooting-cha

Comments are closed.