"Big Boomers" Threat or Menace?

The VPC has its latest whine up:

1. Big boomers are rifle power designed into handguns. During the 1990 to 1999
period, 20 law enforcement officers were killed by gunshot wounds as a result of
rounds penetrating their body armor. All of these rounds were fired from rifles.

So they admit right up front that the vests worn by LEOs work as advertised.However, the big boomer handguns that are now being designed and marketed by the firearms industry have elevated the power of handguns to the level of rifles. Big boomers have thus become “vest busters” and present a deadly challenge to law enforcement body armor’s life-saving record.
The vests were never intended to protect against rounds like the .44 magnum and other cartridges of that class.

2. Big boomers—a serious new threat to America’s public safety officers—are the gun industry’s latest attempt to stop its steady market decline. The American firearms industry has been sagging for decades.

Which would explain why I can't find the gun I want at the gun show, and all the dealers on line all list it as "out of stock". Ditto ammo. The manufacturers all seem to have a significant backlog in production, too. Say, does this "serious new threat" include the 45-70 revolver? I seem to remember that one as having gone into production in the 1800s.

The article drones on and on, shoveling it high and deep.

The gun industry’s cumulative loss of market ground is reflected in a 2006 study, “Public Attitudes Towards the Regulation of Firearms,” released by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago analyzing the prevalence of household firearms. The NORC survey data shows that during the period 1972 to 2006, the percentage of American households that reported having any guns in the home dropped nearly 20 percentage points: from a high of 54 percent in 1977 to 34.5 percent in 2006.

"Hi, Mr or Mrs homeowner, I'm from NORC, not to be confused with NARK, and would like to know how many guns you have in your house."

Yeah, right.

Their graph showing handgun production, shows a huge spike coincident with passage of the AWB, which took a big drop, as Republicans took over the House and Senate in 94. Production showed a steady decline for the next 12 years, with hardly a noticeable blip following 9/11, but began another uptick in 2006 when the Dems took over the congress. They stopped collecting data in 06 for some reason, but I saw frenzied buying at the gun shows peaking only a couple months ago.

One other thing is that if domestic firearm production is declining, then what about imports? Domestic production of everything has been in decline for some years now, but NICS checks are running about 12 million/year or more.
Does this look like an industry in decline to you?
Thanks to Ammoland for the graphic.