Shooting Outshoots Golf

The lamestream media told you:

Golf tournament this, Tiger Woods that, new high-tech putter blah blah, Master's Tourney scheduled, Women's Open, 19th hole drunkenness, all-day coverage, whispering at the putt, PGA, LPGA, now this word from our sponsors.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Firearm and hunting gear sales grew 4.1% in 2006, to $3.7 billion, to reach the number two spot in national athletic and sporting goods sales. This forced golf, at $3.66 billion, down into third place. Only exercise equipment had bigger sales than firearms/hunting gear.

"Bias and deception in the news takes many forms," according to sources close to the Uninvited Ombudsman. "This one is very subtle but very effective. Give a ton of exposure to one elite white-collar "sport" and make it seem mainstream, then totally black out another bigger sport, and pretend it doesn't exist, even though people spend more money on it. The impression the public gets then completely distorts the policy debates."

This is easily measured when the same "news" outlets conduct polls, and find the poll results closely match the stories they hand out, which surprises no one but the uninformed. Many poorly informed "news" consumers inaccurately take it for granted that golf is big time and shooting sports are marginal backwoods hobbies of fat toothless beer-guzzling destitute bubbas in dirty t-shirts living in shacks. This despite the proliferation of high-end firearm megastores like Cabellas, Bass Pro and Academy nationwide.

2006 Sales: Athletic and Sports Equipment
1. Exercise - $5.22 billion
2. Hunting and firearms - $3.71 billion
3. Golf - $3.66 billion
4. Athletic goods team sales - $2.62 billion
5. Fishing tackle - $2.22 billion
6. Camping - $1.53 billion
7. Optics - $1.01 billion
8. Snow skiing - $615.0 million
9. Billiards / indoor games - $570.9 million
10. Tennis - $419.8 million

Included in the hunting- and shooting-related equipment category are firearms ($2.18 billion in 2006 sales), airguns ($224.1 million), ammunition ($977.1 million), knives ($51.8 million), paintball guns/packages ($220.9 million) and reloading equipment ($52.0 million). A study conducted by author Alan Korwin found that Americans buy between five and nine billion rounds of ammunition yearly, none of which goes into crime. "So where does it go?" asked one reporter, incredulously. Downrange, buddy, downrange (and into storage...).

Tags: hunting, golf, sports equipment

Comments

[JOHN HADDOCK]

Thank you Alan for the good research on firearms and other sport expenditures! You are to be commended. I am a reloader and you are correct, it goes down range. I reload everything from .32 to .45 and all the magnums, even .357Sig.
Liz Eden is my wife and a good shooter.

Thanks again.
John

[JOHN HADDOCK]

My wife, 74, is a darn good artist in oils who started painting when she was 18.
She has painted far more than shown on her website.