What a strange world this has become.

Well, maybe not the whole world, but certainly the United States of America.

Almost on the eve of the 2002 SHOT Show in Las Vegas, a dopey but dangerous anti-gun group, calling itself the Firearms Industry Watch, a project of the Alliance for Justice, has petitioned the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to issue an order preventing the firearms industry from claiming that their products can be used to thwart terrorist acts.

Before I continue further, bear in mind that this singular act of illogic was committed in the same country were we have recently experienced the following:

• Significant numbers of Americans have defended a mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub, claiming that she is a victim of post-partum psychosis;
  
  
• Thousands of Americans phone television and radio talk shows to defend a father who beat to death another father as a result of a senseless squabble over their sons’ hockey practice;
  
  
• Where a 15-year-old boy can fly a light plane into a high-rise office building in a mock reprise of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center mass destruction, leaving behind a suicide note that extols Osama bin Laden, and,
  
  
• Where people defend a 19-year-old American youth who traveled to Afghanistan to join the al Qaeda network of terrorists.
  

Firearms Industry Watch
Given these extraordinary social aberrations, it is not so surprising that the anti-gun propagandists would suggest that the legal, and once highly honored, American firearms industry deserves to be watched and muzzled like so many rabid dogs. Nor is it surprising that the general media would give currency to such a smear campaign.

During the 2000 presidential election campaign, the Hunting and Shooting Sports Heritage Fund ran television spots that referenced the long and patriotic contributions of the American firearms industry to the welfare of the nation, especially in defense against foreign military and political forces that would have enslaved the world, and extinguished the lamps of freedom. However, the 30-second commercials barely scratched the surface of the history of the firearms industry’s place in American society.

Consider such names as Colt, duPont and Remington, for instance, without overlooking Winchester, Browning or Smith & Wesson. These names are world famous, precisely because of their products. All six company names are probably among the top 10 trademarks throughout the world.

Under the leadership of Eleiuthere Irenee duPont, who had learned gunpowder manufacture at a French government mill, a fledgling company began manufacturing quality gunpowder on the banks of the Brandywine River, near Wilmington, DE, in 1802. A company that was capitalized at $36,000 in early 19th century dollars, became a prime supplier of the US government, the American Fur Company, and others attempting to build a new nation in a wilderness. Within 18 years, the e.i. duPont de Nemours Company had 140 employees, and its products were being used to bore tunnels, build bridges, roads and railways.

An industrial dynasty—founded on gunpowder, vision and personal risk—expanded as it branched out into innovative chemical manufacturing and other products. The founder of that dynasty also played an important behind the scenes role in the political decisions of our nation’s early leaders, and future heirs of the duPont name have played a long and honored role ever since, in the nation as a whole and the state of Delaware in particular.

Eliphalet Remington
While the infant duPont company was getting started, Eliphalet Remington, the son of a Herkimer County, NY, blacksmith, began forging rifle barrels in his father’s shop in 1816. Twelve years later, he was doing well enough to establish a factory to make rifles and shotguns in Ilion, NY, where a major Remington Arms plant remains to this day. Remington was a supplier of rifles, shotguns and pistols to the US government and the growing American population—during the Mexican War and the Civil War, as well as in the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries. After the Civil War, the company expanded into other markets, including agricultural machinery, sewing machines and, as early as 1873, typewriters.

During the earliest duPont years, a boy was born in Hartford, CT, who by age 22 had obtained his first US patent for a repeating handgun with a revolving cylinder. In part because of his 1836 pistol, and because of his other products, Samuel Colt became famous worldwide. He was not only a guest in the offices and homes of generals, senators, state governors and American presidents, but of foreign monarchs as well.

Colt and the company he founded were largely responsible for the growth of Hartford, including its museums and other cultural jewels. Before he died in 1862, Colt, the Remington family and other American arms and ammunition manufacturers had helped revolutionize American industry with their production lines concepts and interchangeable, mass-produced parts.

But in the 19th century, just like today, others in the arms industry were also helping to make a better world for all of its citizens. If one stops to consider this arms history and the contributions of industrialists in Sweden, Belgium, France and Italy—many of whose companies are still actively engaged in the industry and exhibiting products at the 2002 SHOT Show—it is ironic that they are attacked today by the likes of Sarah Brady, Josh Sugarmann, Tom Diaz, Andrew McKelvey, Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein. One has to wonder whether any of these people would reject a Nobel Peace Prize because it is funded in part by the arms industry.

Irony Compounded
The claim that the firearms industry must be prevented from claiming that its products could be used to defend against terrorism is so patently absurd that the irony is compounded. Its absurdity also shows how desperate the anti-gunners are in this age of omnipresent terrorist threat.

The anti-gunners tried a similar gambit back in the early 1990s when they petitioned the FTC to prevent firearms manufacturers from running advertisements based on self-defense themes—particularly ads addressed to women. The FTC did not listen then—at least it has not acted on that petition during the decade since it was filed. The FTC is unlikely to act on the new petition for several reasons.

First, people are more interested in their personal and community defense than they were before Sept. 11, and many have been buying firearms and taking instruction in their use.

Second, the military and law enforcement forces that are on active alert, or engaged in deadly combat against terrorist cells, and the governments that aid and abet them, are armed with the same kind of products that the anti-gunners defame—products made by the companies they want the FTC to destroy.

Third, a majority of the pilots who fly the airliners that have been, and could still be, turned into weapons of mass destruction, want to be armed with the products made by the companies in the arms and ammunition industry.

It is a shame that small and twisted people seek to shame an honorable and legal industry that is essential to the future of freedom—not just of individuals but of whole nations. But there is no reason for anyone in the legal firearms industry to feel shame or to defend against this baseless charge.

The industry represented at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas Feb. 2-5 has every right to stand tall and be proud of what it has done, and what it will do in the future. It is not surprising that so many American flags will be a part of the exhibits—even of some of the foreign-based manufacturers.