Liberal Focus on Criminals ... and Citizens are criminals

America’s Obsession with Powerful Handguns Is Giving Criminals Deadlier Tools - The Trace:

There are more high-caliber pistols available on the civilian market in the U.S. than ever before. In the last two decades, manufacturers have pumped out huge quantities of these guns, marketing them as weapons perfectly suited for a specific purpose: repelling human attackers.

"The Trace" (arguably, an offshoot of The Daily KOS .. a notorious Liberal blogger who is knee-jerk reactionaryily against the Second Amendment Rights of American citizens) is focusing on the sales records of "high-caliber" firearms.

It's mission statement is:

The Trace is an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization dedicated to expanding public understanding of gun violence in the United States. There is an urgent need for the knowledge that public interest journalism can provide, because in this case one problem — America’s epidemic rates of shooting deaths and injuries, which leave 33,000 people killed annually and another 79,000 wounded — is compounded by another: a shortage of information about the issue. It is The Trace’s mission to close that deficit through daily reporting,investigations, analysis, and commentary on the policy, politics, culture, and business of guns in America.

(Just so we all understand the background of the website.)

Why did The Trace make this statement?

Because it makes the news.

Not because it's a significant factor in The War Against Guns.  It's just another liberal website with the intention to counter Conservative Talk.  They have already established their political stance; now they're pursuing their mission statement.  We could expect no better from them.

The whole thing is (as you suspected) merely a Talking Point which they figure will give them the high ground ... moral equivalence ...because if they talk about POWERFUL HANDGUNS they can make it seem as if standard defensive calibers are somehow A Bad Thing.

Oh, and about that whole ... manufacturers have pumped out huge quantities of these guns    ....  thing?

Well, hell yes!  Any manufacture makes the product which is in great demand by their market.

America ... when's the last time you saw a .22 short?  A .22 Long?  Even the venerable .22 Long rifle has its niche market, which is plinking at tin cans and varmint shooting at close range.   NOBODY today builds a firearm which is restricted to the anemic .22 short or the ineffective .22 Long cartridge.

Of COURSE the demand for more effective (defensive rounds) has increased.  They build the product which sells, and since the recent trend of  'mass shootings' has focused on Public Places, Americans have armed themselves to defend against "The Threat Which Must Not Be Named"!

And since the original article is careful not to define the term "High Caliber", it's logical to assume that (by their terms) the .22 Long Rifle falls within the category.  Or not.

They don't cite the source for their 'statistics'.

And they lament the "... shortage of information about the issue" ??

PS: It's worth your while to see what Herschel has to say about the issue:

The Trace:

I published a story on Monday that has generated some of the strongest pushback — indeed, ridicule — of anything I have reported for The Trace.
My piece examined how gun manufacturing trends influence the criminal market and what changes in the types of guns being produced might mean for public safety. Gun companies are producing a greater number of semiautomatic handguns of the sort used as police sidearms and military service weapons — those that shoot 9mm, .40, and .45-caliber bullets — than in decades past. They are selling them to civilians who increasingly buy firearms for the primary purpose of defending themselves from other people, and believe that more powerful guns will make them more safe.
The increasing prevalence of powerful guns also means that criminals encounter them, and acquire them, more often. I also found in my reporting evidence that illegal buyers prefer high-caliber guns for the same reasons as legal buyers.
Law enforcement officers are recovering more of these weapons at crime scenes, and fewer of the kinds of cheap, small guns that criminals favored during the crime waves of the late 20th century.
The story was based on publicly available data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which shows a sharp uptick in the number of high-caliber guns recovered by police in a short time period, just four years. The data makes clear that in the underground criminal market, the supply of semiautomatic handguns chambered to shoot 9mm, .40, and .45-caliber bullets is increasing faster than the supply of smaller calibers, like the .22.

I STRONGLY suspect that this testimony provided the impetus for the article published at the "The Trace" website.