Saturday Snippets is a regular weekend Daily Kos feature.
• Americans are buying more firearms this year: According to Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting, a research firm that tracks firearms, Americans bought 16.7 million firearms during the first nine months of 2020. That exceeds firearms sales for all of 2016, the year in which the previous sales record of 16.6 million was set. Handguns make up the majority of purchases. As has been widely reported all year, gun dealers are having a hard time keeping inventories of firearms and bullets on hand. Above average gun sales aren’t unusual in presidential election years, but Kate Linthicum at the Los Angeles Times reports that this year is not only different because of blowout sales but there also is a wider range of buyers.
The usual increase, stoked by the National Rifle Association warnings, comes from fear the election of a Democrat could mean more gun restrictions, including the banning of military-style semi-auto rifles capable of rapid fire from magazines holding 30 or more rounds. This time, according to gun dealers and trade associations, buyers include large numbers of women, Black Americans, and people who identify as politically liberal. Inez Russell, a writer in Santa Fe, told Linthicum she‘s worried about right-wing “militias,” saying “Either side feels like if their side loses, the country is coming to an end. And one side has more guns than the other.” She has been practicing shooting and improving her gun-loading skills.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms and ammunition industries, surveyed gun dealers and found an estimated 40% of customers this year were first-time gun buyers, up from an average of 24% in recent years. Black Americans bought guns at a rate 58% higher than in previous years—the largest increase for any demographic group. At Los Ranchos Gun Shop in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, New Mexico, store owner Mark Abramson said it’s commonplace now for people to walk in and say, “I’ve never owned a gun before.” Meanwhile, Walmart has reversed its decision to remove firearms and ammunition from its sales floor.
Volunteer with NextGen America to send text messages to young voters in 11 battleground states and help them make a plan to vote.
• Some congressional election campaign collectibles from years past.
• The Lancet, the highly respected medical journal, urges Americans to vote for change: In a scathing editorial published Friday, The Lancet called the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic under Donald Trump “disastrous.” It did not explicitly endorse Joe Biden, but it did take note of the nation’s “fraying social safety net, continual erosion of trust in the public sector, the perceived diminished responsibility of the federal government, and political interference with crucial public health apparatus.” It stated, "With so much loss and still more at stake, the 2020 presidential election is the opportune moment for the American electorate to embrace change for the better” and urged voters to "reject the stagnancy of complacency, to exchange a view bereft of intention with a vision of progress, and to rejoin the global community in the pursuit of a more equitable and sustainable future." Earlier this month, another respected medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, slammed America’s "astonishing" failure to get COVID-19 cases and deaths under control, but also did not specifically endorse Biden.
MIDDAY TWEET
• Americans spent 60 million fewer hours commuting during pandemic. So what did they do with the time? According to data from the Census Bureau, they spent 22 million of those saved hours working at their primary job from home.
• Dept. of Cluelessness, Florida Division—A man paid to have a “full contact experience” with a leopard, which obliged: The Florida man paid $150 to the owner of a black leopard. He thought he was going to get to rub the big cat’s belly and play with it, but when he entered the animal’s backyard enclosure, it attacked, injuring him so seriously that he spent a week in the hospital in early September. A report from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said his scalp was “hanging from his head and his right ear was torn in half.” The owner was charged under a law prohibiting full contact with dangerous animals and for maintaining captive wildlife in unsafe conditions.
• This guy, on the other hand, was just minding his own business and might have preferred contact with a leopard:
In one of the surest signs of an impending apocalypse we have yet seen, a New York City man fell about 15 feet into a pit of rats when a sidewalk sinkhole opened under his feet. The ground simply split and swallowed its victim, 33-year-old Leonard Shoulders, as he waited for a bus on Saturday afternoon. Shoulders survived, albeit with a few broken bones, but his family says he is “deeply traumatized.” Which, yes.
• Oil companies show by contributions they’re eager to Keep Republicans in Office: More than 80% of industry campaign contributions in 2020d have gone to Donald Trump or other GOP candidates likely to block climate action. The big contributors? The pipeline company Energy Transfer LP and its CEO Kelcy Warren, and Koch Industries, the privately held conglomerate run by billionaire Charles Koch, who with his late brother has funded climate science denial at propaganda outlets labeled think tanks and science-denying candidates. Those two companies and their executives have contributed more than 20% of the total $110 million in campaign spending this year by the oil industry, its employees, and executives, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
• Real estate investors now want to know how resilient cities are before buying or launching developments: Climate risks are no longer being ignored by real estate investors and developers when deciding whether to buy or build, according to a new report from the Urban Land Institute, whose stated mission is providing “leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide.” Their assessments include scrutinizing how ready local governments are to deal with climate events. Investors “are looking beyond the individual asset and assessing a city’s preparedness for climate change, but the models and metrics they need are still in their infancy,” ULI Chief Executive Officer Ed Walter said in a statement. Real estate professionals aren’t alone in their concerns. In July, in a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, with similar letters to other government agencies, representatives of 61 nonprofits, pension funds, and other investors representing almost $1 trillion in assets sought action on climate:
It is more clear than ever that the climate crisis poses a systemic threat to financial markets and the real economy, with significant disruptive consequences on asset valuations and our nation’s economic stability. This is in addition to the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of people across the country. These threats have the potential to compound in ways we don’t yet understand, with disastrous impacts the likes of which we haven’t seen before.
You lead a critically important agency that has a mandate to protect US market stability and global competitiveness. This carries with it a responsibility to act on the climate crisis right now,and guide our transition to a net zero future.