Hopefully the world will provide enough occasions for many more! and if they are not wry enough for the tall claims of this blog, it will certainly be because of my own limits rather than the capacity of the world around us to surprise, provoke, astound, and sometimes leave us apoplectic!
For a timid start let me just point to the big gun story last week on all media - Number of mentally ill banned from buying guns doubles (http://www.cnbc.com/id/22026333/for/cnbc ). On reading the details my heart just bled for the gun industry! Doubles, mind you! not just your anemic 3.5% fall in housing prices, or 1.5% fall in job growth but a full 200% drop!! All the papers and newswires and TV outlets said so (ABC - “..soars..”, Chicago Tribune - “..more than double..”, NBC - “..doubles..”.)
I did a quick mental calculation, but found out the ole batteries needed a little charging and so I’d need to supplement with a calculator or an excel sheet or two.
Here’s the enormity of the NRA’s problem! Out of an US population of 301,139,947, only 218,627,602 unfortunately qualify for owning a gun, being above 20 (18 and 21 are the various cut-offs for hand-guns and rifles etc. - more detail than you want right now?).
Now prior to the VA Tech shooting only 174,863 of these were listed on the FBI ‘gun ban’ databases - i.e. 0.08% of the adult population approximately; and now that these databases have doubled (yes, doubled!) to 393,957 (or 0.18% of the adult population), the gun market is seeing its entire market collapse by a whopping 0.1%!!
Please someone pass this ole biddy her smelling salts!
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