UPDATE: CNN has since changed the headline and corrected the story.
[ED: Earlier today, CNN Business published a report on the latest gun sales totals in Illinois. Shockingly, they got a number of the most important facts wrong. While it wasn’t quite Don Lemon-level wrong, CNN’s Chauncey Alcorn managed to mangle many of the most important aspects of the story. Maxon Shooter’s Supplies‘ Dan Eldridge was quoted in the story and published the following to the Maxon blog to correct the record.]
By Dan Eldridge
This morning’s report by CNN Business on Illinois Gun Sales Surging is very poor reporting. The author misinterpreted NICS background check totals by state, misquoted me, and missed the real story.
Illinois Gun Sales
No state has seen more gun sales this year than Illinois.
Federal authorities there have completed nearly 4.3 million gun background checks since January, including more than 955,000 submitted last month.
That’s more April gun background checks than the next five highest-ranking states combined.
Texas, which has more than twice the population of Illinois, came in second, with nearly 188,000 April background checks.
Well, actually…no. There are approximately 2.3 million FOID card holders and 350,000 concealed carry licensees right now. The Illinois State Police pings the NICS background check system with FOID/CCL holder re-checks as frequently as nightly. That process generates around 1 million NICS requests per month. These are called “Permit” and “Permit Re-Check” queries.
Currently, actual transfer (firearms sales) activity is more like 50,000 per month. Mark Oliva from the NSSF tried to explain that to the CNN author at length, but to no avail.
States with fewer barriers to legally purchasing firearms, like Florida and Texas, are running approximately three times the transfer-related NICS checks as Illinois, and that is pretty stable.
I did discuss with this reporter how the FOID issuance backlog could have pushed some sales into this year as some FOID applications have been delayed for nine months or more. And maybe a fresh FOID and a stimulus check encouraged Illinoisans to buy their first gun. But it’s very difficult to measure that, and in no way do we have more new FOID holders than there are Texas or Florida gun buyers.
Lastly, I’m pretty sure I didn’t refer to AR-15s as “weapons often used in high-profile mass shootings.” But hey…anything for the narrative. These website-only published stories are done on a very tight deadline, and the quality and depth of the research really suffers.
We will of course continue to be engaged with the media, as will the NSSF. But this sort of reporting is, while sensational, not really helpful in growing our community.
” this sort of reporting is, while sensational, not really helpful in growing our community ”
When did anyone expect CNN to be helpful in growing our community?
“When did anyone expect CNN to be helpful in growing our community?”
The thing is, they are actually helpful to us, inadvertently.
The more they stoke the gun control narrative, gun sales skyrocket… 😉
most people in most states have no idea how that screwy system in Illinois actually works…or doesn’t….
CNN lying again??? Who woulda thunk?
The amount of lies fed to the libs is astounding
The amount of news with held to the libs is astounding
The level of stupidity that it takes not to notice is astounding
The difference between animals and libs is that animals don’t let the dumbest of the herd lead them.
Is it really a lie when they are just spouting crap they don’t understand? Or when they are just repeating the narrative given to them? Let’s say you’re a puppeteer. You have your puppets onstage, doing an act. Does one puppet really lie when it says what you told it to say?
Forget it, that’s getting too deep. You’re right, they’re liars.
The difference between animals and libs is that animals don’t let the dumbest of the herd lead them.
That needs to be a meme……….+1
Lastly, I’m pretty sure I didn’t refer to AR-15s as “weapons often used in high-profile mass shootings.”
How stupid can you be to give an interview to the media (especially Fake News CNN) about guns and not record it on your own phone?
The message savviness on our side is so lame.
The vcdl owning katie couric proves this needs to happen.
“weapons often used in high-profile mass shootings.”
What makes them ‘high-profile’? Oh right because the media wants to fear monger about the type of gun used.
Meanwhile, low-profile mass shootings kill dozens weekly in places like Shitcago, Murdermore, St. Louis, and other Democrat-run cities across the nation and the NPCs in the mass-media machine don’t give a crap.
Those are shockingly stupid numbers by criminal news nutwork…btw I DO NOT believe the state of ILLinois is running FOID cards day n night. They are brokeazz and inept(as well as rampantly corrupt). If I hear 1 more dumbazz claim Chiraq is “gun free”…
…you’ll do what exactly? And be specific.
What you do is deflect. Lightfoot blames Chicagos gun problem on Indiana but reality that just fits her narrative.
“The guns used in Chicago crimes are from Indiana”.
In 2015 it was 3 Illinois gun shops and 1 in Indiana, The one in Indiana was the one and only Westforth Sports of Gary, Indiana!
They have been on Chicago’s radar since 2014.
(Click on the PDF in the following link)
http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/4-gun-shops-responsible-for-selling-guns-recovered-at-20-percent-of-chicago-crime-scenes-150713?news=856943
From my experience Midwest Guns ran a “clean” business, that’s where I was taught to shoot my my dad and I had been going to their range since I was 11 or 12 every weekend. I stopped going after they were sued and had cameras that scanned every license plate of cars that entered their lot. Back when I thought that a bit much.
You cannot be responsible for straw purchases that happen out of the store and off the property at say somebodies house. The common thread between the 3 gun shops that were in Illinois and sued? They were close to Chicago which had zero gun stores.
It wasn’t legal to have a gun store in Chicago and when a lawsuit made it legal, what did Chicago do? They put a tax on guns and ammo therefore keeping any gun store from opening in Chicago. If you cant turn a profit the why bother?
In the end the lawsuit was dropped but this a story of deflection. Instead of going after the people who were doing multiple straw purchases, they went after the stores. The CPD used take many guns off of the streets and take the people who were known gangbangers with guns to Cook County Jail. Most were released on personal recognizance bonds before the cop got off his shift and did the paperwork to back on the street armed again within hours.
To be “specific” maybe Chicago should enforce their laws and perhaps keep the repeat offenders locked up or at least have some sort of trial instead of dropping the charges.
To be “specific” in Illinois this an impossibility. There are no rooms at the Inn. Illinois prisons are at 160% of capacity so there is no place to put criminals. The only people that go to prison are violent repeat offenders who do only a small portion of their sentence.
It’s a “state” problem that trickles down to the street. A cop arrests someone who has a violent rap sheet the size of a ream of paper. That criminal goes to bond court at Cook county jail but the jail is full. The judge releases said criminal because they have to make room for the next shift of criminals. The SA (Kim Foxx) drops the charges because even if they convict, there is no place to put the criminal. There’s no room in the prison system for anything but the most serious criminals. The solution?
Illinois needs to build more prisons BUT that costs BIG money. Since Illinois is bankrupt they don’t have money for that and even the conservatives would scream their heads off if they had to pay more in taxes. That has been JB Pritzkers solution to everything in Illinois, raise taxes and fees. Yet the budget starting 7/1/2021 has a $3 billion deficit so he has to cut programs and steal money from some. One that he stole a bunch from is the firearms fund. (about 30 million dollars)
That’s about as specific as I can get and if I come across as sarcastic, I don’t mean to.
It’s a bankrupt state with a bunch of people fleeing. The FOID and CCW system are all jazzed up because the money was stolen so no budget to hire more to get that back on track and it really isn’t a priority. It isn’t much different in the USA right now, sooner or later you can only print so much money before the whole house of cards comes flying down. https://www.usdebtclock.org/
Hey man, have you got 6 trillion dollars you can loan me?
Why?
Covid.
They run CCLs, not FOIDS, and they actually do.
YES THEY DO and the last time the state showed the number set it was a CCL or CCW rechecked every 14.8 days. (It depends on who is using the term, they are pretty much used interchangeably)
That was in my comment further down, they run a FOID once through the FTIP when you apply and once a year afterwards. (It eventually ends with a NICS check)
The CCLs or CCWs were run every 14.8 days. (Hence “Permit” and “Permit Re-Check”)
The last time that Illinois had FTIP checks and actual permits issued to date was about 3 years ago. I was bored and crunched numbers so that might have changed a little bit since Pritzker took (bought) office.
I have since moved out of Illinois so they can do whatever they want, it doesn’t effect me.
I do love when Illinois and/or Chicago deflects from the real issue which is violent criminals and tries to deflect the issue to actual guns or other states.
“It’s all Indiana’s fault”
CNN is pretty much all CIA and NSA assets now much like most every other news “programming” is. They don’t make mistakes. They set narrative.
In other news, water is still wet and propaganda works.
Yo dummy, why give interviews to the enemy? Hell, even Trump realized (toward the end) that CNN etal are the enemy of what is left of this free republic. The standard response to any request from that bunch should always be FOAD!
Awaiting moderation? Censorship has arrived here too? Lovely…..
Dan doesn’t even know what triggers that “Awaiting moderation” response. It’s done it to me on plain-vanilla comments I have made…
No one at CNN understands anything about guns or the process of getting the legally. On the off chance that someone there actually does, they are too wrapped up in propping up the Democrat party to care. But too many in the population just soak it all up hook line and sinker. It’s beyond disgusting. Lives are being destroyed because of the lies and distortions of the major media networks.
If your listening to CNN that’s your first mistake & the second you’re probably a liberrrrral.
CNN only mangled the facts because they’re not used to working with them.
A foid card, bwhahaha, you call freedom.
cnn is still owned by at&t. when was the last time at&t got anything right?
Americans are NOT free. Government in the US does not respect any human rights at home or abroad. Every single part of the Bill of Rights is violated at the federal, state, and local levels each day by the police — backed up by “our” military, which stands ready to turn its weapons against the American people as soon as the order is given. It has done so many times in the past. So much for that oath to protect the Constitution, eh? The Constitution is DEAD..
And why should I thank veterans of any war fought since WWII? Whom did they fight who was a threat to me? Were the VC or the Taliban going to invade Iowa and take over the Wal-Marts and Best Buys? Gimme a break. I don’t sleep peacefully in my bed at night, and the reason is because America has turned into a police state, thanks to the “War on Terror,” the “War on Drugs,” and all who contribute to these anti-American abominations.
I’m pretty sure that all of this wrong when it comes to the numbers. There are 2.3 million FOID card holders and they don’t nearly get checked as often as the 350,000 concealed carry permit holders.
If take 4 months and FOID cards you get 9.2 million NICS checks and rechecks. The numbers stated are 4.3 checks since January. Those aren’t CNNs numbers, those are from Illinois. There is NO WAY they are rechecking FOIDs every day, the math doesn’t add up.
The people that are constantly rechecked are the CCW holders and even that isn’t daily. It’s around every two weeks for ““Permit” and “Permit Re-Check” queries.”
Those queries go through the IL FTIP system first which checks a bunch of stuff in Illinois before doing a FBI NICS check. Basically all the criminal courts in Illinois, the IDHS and the such. Illinois will revoke your CCW for two DUIs or if you fail a drug test even it’s a drug test for employment. (for those who question this “(6) whether the applicant has failed a drug test for a drug for which the applicant did not have a prescription, within the previous year, and if so, the provider of the test, the specific substance involved, and the date of the test”) 72 holds and any kind of order of protection or restraining order.
Here is the Illinois statute on the Concealed Carry Act:
https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/98/098-0063.htm
Add to that the state knows immediately if you move out of state when you get a DL or ID in another state.
I got a letter in less then two weeks to send my FOID and CCW back to the ISP when I moved out of Illinois
To put it in simple terms a FOID is like a prostate exam but a CCW is like a colonoscopy. Either way you have to drop your pants and they get to play around down there, so you had better keep your ass clean.
A good CCW instructor will tell a class immediately that you have to sign away all of your HIPAA rights so if there is anything on there that you think will disqualify you, it probably will so leave class and your money will be refunded. This sparked a bunch of questions right at the start of the class:
My ex wife and I went to counseling, does that disqualify me?
My child died in a car accident and I was on Prozac for a few months, does that disqualify me?
I took Lunesta or Ambien because I had insomnia from changing shifts, does that disqualify me?
This was years and ago and from memory but the instructor had no answers to these questions.
Its on a case by case basis so any one could be yes.
Now with Illinois in a complete state of chaos and coming nowhere near the processing times for either FOIDs or CCWs I would think that they should be doing checks on applicants instead of rechecks.
OTOH those rechecks are probably automated so that’s not whats causing the chaos, It’s the fact the firearms fund has been raided to help balance the state budget of a bankrupt state.
Second Amendment RIGHTS are pretty low on the Illinois list of priorities unless you count stripping people of their rights, that’s pretty high.
BTW: I can only think of a couple of people that post on here that would watch or believe CNN so whats that about?
would seem the Illinois “system” is designed to come down hard on those trying their best to be law abiding…while completely ignoring the elephant in the room…and if you don’t have enough prison space consider leasing some from states that do…
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But we can all agree that CNN corrected the reporting is good, right?
That’s how it supposed to work, if they make a mistake they should correct it publicly, as they did.
Corrections are an important part of journalism that many news outlets engage in every day, for instance here’s this item:
“The right-wing media outlet Newsmax, which amplified former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of election rigging and widespread voter fraud, said on Friday there is no evidence that Dominion Voting Systems and one of its top employees, Eric Coomer, manipulated election results in 2020.
“Newsmax subsequently found no evidence that such allegations were true. Many of the states whose results were contested by the Trump campaign after the November 2020 election have conducted extensive recounts and audits, and each of these states certified the results as legal and final,” the company said in a statement published online that will also be broadcast.“
As for me? I am known as a dirty troll, and as such I spread lies and falsehoods.
Also I like to cut, cut, cut and paste!
Cut and Paste!
Cut and Paste!
It wasn’t a mistake and they didn’t “mangle” anything. CNN lied. They’re not a news organization, they’re propagandists. CNN and the rest of the Establishment media are no different than Pravda or Izvezdia. They are a cancer on our Country.
There are so many people leaving that state it looks like one way roads leading out! Business are heading everywhere but there!🖕💩👜🐀🦨 dems have condemned that state to a top hellhole contender along with Cali🖕You, and Newyorkistan!