Larry Keane, Senior Vice President, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, wrote a great article Friday highlighting just how Hillary Clinton plans to sacrifice real American jobs in her quest to cut off the head of “the gun lobby”.

Hillary Clinton has a list of industries she intends to wreck if elected president simply because she doesn’t like them. “We are going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” Clinton said at a CNN Town Hall back in March. Later, when she was confronted by an out of work coal miner, she apologized saying her statement was taken “totally out of context.” But it was not at all out of context and coal miners know that her original comment reflects her true agenda.She has made no such retraction of her repeated remarks about “taking on the gun lobby” and never will.  When Clinton says the “gun lobby,” she means everyone associated with the industry, from manufacturers to retailers – and much like the coal industry, it’s quite clear that she wants to put many of you reading this today out of business. She doesn’t care about the collateral damage of your employees losing their jobs.

Throughout her primary campaign Clinton has bashed Bernie Sanders for supporting the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a law that prohibits firearms manufacturers and gun dealers from being sued when criminals misuse products that were sold lawfully. She has also accused Sanders of caring less about victims of gun violence, simply because he has said that allowing such lawsuits would effectively prohibit lawful commerce.Let’s be clear about motivations here — the Clinton camp is calculating that emotionally laden deliveries of her position will win her support among segments of the Democratic base, despite the fact that her position is well outside the mainstream of American public opinion.

Here is the hard economic fact. Attempting to put gun makers, retailers and related businesses out of business through lawsuits or legislation is a real attack on a big part of the American economy.

The total economic impact of the firearms and ammunition industry in the United States increased from $19.1 billion in 2008 to $49.3 billion in 2015, a 158 percent increase, while the total number of full-time equivalent jobs rose from approximately 166,000 to almost 288,000, a 73 percent increase in that period.

On a year-over-year basis, the industry’s economic impact rose from $43 billion in 2014 to $49.3 in 2015, a nearly 15 percent increase while total jobs increased from approximately 263,000 to almost 288,000, a 9 percent increase in the same period. These are good jobs, paying an average of more than $50,000 in wages and benefits. Our industry was one of the few bright spots throughout the last recession and is more vibrant than ever today.

The irony is that some significant portion of our industry’s growth has been driven by the incessant political rhetoric about penalizing the industry for the acts of criminals. But if Hillary is elected to the White House, rhetoric will become action. Your business and your workers could be the ones who pay the price.

Check out the NSSF Blog for more information.