WASHINGTON, DC, July 28 — The surging unrest sweeping the country by mobs of seemingly mindless protestors and rioters, encouraged by progressive socialist insurgents, has triggered a boom in gun sales. First-time gun buyers lead the pack, and some of the most unlikely former anti-gun advocates are behind the rush to arm themselves.
It’s reported that in the month of January alone, gun buys soared by 2.3 million sales. As Los Angeles city councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson put it: “Americans are in an arms race with themselves. There was just as much a run on guns as on toilet paper in the beginning of the pandemic.”
Newsmax tells us that “firearms sales in the past year reached the highest level in half a century, federal background checks show, and 40% of those sales were to first-time gun buyers.”
In an interview with the Washington Post, lifelong Democrat Shakima Thomas said she bought an AR-15 last year and then purchased a handgun because “the world was in an apocalypse.”
She added: “I never felt like I would want to own a gun because of the damage I thought they do to people, but when I started feeling unsafe, all of that changed,” she told the Post.
National Public Radio [NPR] identified the gun buyers as “white, Black, Asian and Latino and come from all political beliefs. And they’re being driven by uncertainty, fear, and a need to feel safe.”
According to one gun shop owner, most of his sales have been for handguns, including semi-automatic pistols.
Seemingly ignoring the growing lawless gun violence in the nation and the desire of law-abiding Americans to protect themselves, President Biden still calls for an outright ban on guns, all guns. During an appearance on CNN last week, he declared: “The idea you need a weapon that can have the ability to fire 20, 30, 40, 50, 120 shots from that weapon, whether it’s a, whether it’s a 9mm pistol or whether it’s a rifle, is ridiculous. I’m continuing to push to eliminate the sale of those things, but I’m not likely to get that done in the near term.”
Unless he’s prepared to seek upending the Constitution by getting rid of the Second Amendment, that won’t happen. Rather it is more likely that there will be an increase in calls for universal background checks and new gun control legislation.
As for stricter gun control measures, the Washington Policy Center points out that “real-world experience shows that adding more gun control does not reduce violent crime. Washington, D.C. has some of the nation’s most restrictive gun control laws, and one of the worst violent crime rates in the country. Britain, Australia, and Canada have all imposed sweeping gun laws in recent years, and violent crime rates have increased dramatically in each country.”
Limiting the ability for citizens to buy guns is a non-starter for a variety of reasons.
First and foremost is the fact that gun control laws don’t reduce violent crime. Do people really believe that criminals will give up their guns because of a law? They will laugh and believe they will have an increasingly “target-rich” environment.
But, perhaps, “an alternative to gun control—mandatory sentences for persons who commit crimes with firearms—will produce greater reductions in crime and require less sacrifice on the part of gun owners than gun‐control laws.”
Meanwhile, it should be noted that you are 21.5 times more likely to die as the result of heart disease (9,691,733 deaths); 18.7 times more likely due to malignant tumors (8,458,868 deaths); and 2.4 times more likely to die from diabetes or 2.3 times more likely to die of Alzheimer’s (1,080,298 and 1,053,207 respectively) than to die from a firearm (whether by accident, homicide, or suicide), according to the Centers for Disease Control [CDC].
Additional evidence that laws regarding gun ownership are futile is contained in a scholarly critique of the rationale for gun control that shows many of the reasons cited for the need of more onerous regulation of firearms are deceptive. One of the deceptive criteria cited is the notion that “homicides are largely ‘crimes of passion committed by otherwise law‐abiding citizens not distinguishable from other people. Therefore, control must be directed at all gun owners rather than select criminal subgroups.”
Other state-based research has demonstrated that gun control laws do not impact gun homicides and other gun-related violence. The state of California has had a comprehensive background check law on the books for 10 years. Researchers at UC Davis School of Medicine have studied gun violence in CA during that period and found there was no change in the number of gun homicides or gun suicides. The researchers use the term “comprehensive background check” instead of a universal background check. And another study by the same authors found that the repeal of comprehensive background check laws in Tennessee and Indiana had no effect on gun homicides or suicide rates in either state.