Today’s NRA is nothing less than a gun industry trade association masq — 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."

"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."

"Contrary to the familiar chatter of the gun industry and the gun lobby, firearms ownership has declined dramatically over the past 35 years. From 1972 to 2006, the percentage of American households that reported having any guns in the home has dropped nearly 20 percentage points: from a high of 54 percent in 1977 to 34.5 percent in 2006. During the period 1980 to 2006, the percentage of Americans who reported personally owning a gun dropped more than nine percentage points: from a high of 30.7 percent in 1985 to a low during the survey period of 21.6 percent in 2006. Or to look at it another way, nearly two thirds of American homes are gun free, and more than three quarters of Americans do not personally own a gun...the political might of both the NRA and the gun industry relies on consistently overestimating the number of Americans who own guns. To publicly acknowledge that the gun culture in America is fading away, and that they are a clear minority, undercuts their political power."

"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 arent enough replacement shooters to take their place. Thats why youre seeing a shift in the industry away from traditional hunting rifles and shotguns evolve to focus on firepower and capacity."

"While the National Rifle Association promotes Mr. Heston as a kinder, gentler face to soften its hard-core image, he is as extreme as the rest of the groups leadership. A Heston speech last December before the ultraconservative Free Congress Foundation in Washington was so hateful that David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, praised it and circulated it on his Web site. In his remarks, Mr. Heston repeatedly invoked "cultural warfare, spoke warmly of "white pride" and attacked "blacks who raise a militant fist with one hand while they seek preference with the other." He also compared criticism of gun owners and the N.R.A. to the Nazi oppression of European Jews. Whether Mr. Heston does the talking or not, the National Rifle Association remains the same extremist organization that blocks sensible gun laws and markets guns to children."

"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."