Georgia Gun Owners
Most dangerous thing in our inbox this morning: the above promo from the Second Amendment group Georgia Gun Owners, which is giving away a free AR-15 assault rifle to one lucky member on February 7. You get a carbine! You get a carbine! You get a carbine! The AR-15 was the weapon used by gunman Adam Lanza in last month’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. It was also among the firearms included in the 1994 assault weapons ban (and subsequently legalized when the ban expired nine years ago). Per a press release, the GGO “hopes to alert, activate and mobilize gun owners in every corner of the state to oppose the Feinstein Gun Ban and others being touted in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere across the country.” (The entry form adds: “Void where prohibited.”)
In compliance with federal law, the lucky winner will be subjected to a background check—although the federal background check database is woefully incomplete. But the larger context, as the New York Times reported on Friday, is that rumors of impending gun control legislation are really the best thing that’s happened to the firearms industry in a long time. Dealers across the country are running out of arms and ammunition, and background checks for new gun purchases—which tracks closely to overall gun sales—increased 58.6 percent in December 2012 compared to December 2011. As a gun seller in Des Moines, Iowa, told the Times: “If I had 1,000 AR-15s I could sell them in a week.”
