The latest report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) released earlier this week shows that the average American’s appetite for a new firearm remains unsatiated. Over the last 20 years, March background checks (groomed by the NSSF to measure just those related to firearms purchases) have doubled, from about 600,000 in 2004 to over 1.4 million last month. That’s four times the rate of growth of the country’s population.
Over the last decade Americans have been buying more than one million new firearms a month, adding an estimated 120 million new firearms to their already sizeable arsenal over that period. According to AmericanGunFacts.com, Americans owned an estimated 400 million firearms in 2017. With the addition of new firearms, that estimate now likely exceeds 500 million.
Some have expressed concern that Americans’ appetite might be slowing a bit, as the March numbers were lower than a year earlier, and those numbers were less than the year prior.
Not to worry. As a “crisis” or “chaos” indicator, background checks in the past have reflected Americans’ worries about an incoming administration levying more and more restrictions on their Second Amendment rights. But not this year.
This year the present resident of the White House continues to push his administration’s agenda to disarm the American people. But the message is getting lost over other concerns, such as the immigration invasion and Biden’s increasingly obvious loss of mental acuity.
On the other hand, his opponent, Donald Trump, continues to make promises that warm the hearts of gun owners, including repealing much of what Biden has issued against gun ownership through his executive orders, and pushing for a national reciprocity law that would turn licenses to carry legal in every state, much like driver’s licenses.
As a result, a current review of the Electoral College standings by RealClearPolitics shows Trump leading Biden, 293 to 245 (with 270 needed to win).
And, of course, Trump continues to remind his adoring fans that the majority of the Supreme Court, thanks to his nomination of three conservative justices during his first term, has not only changed the jurisdictional landscape of the Second Amendment through the high court’s decision in Bruen, but continues to negate efforts by the Biden ATF to inflict further damage on the right to keep and bear arms through pistol-brace and bump-stock infringements.
Any slowdown reflected by the latest report from the NSSF is certainly temporary, and likely can be explained by one or more of the following factors:
- The Covid “spike” in firearms purchases drew future demand for a new firearm into the present;
- The Marxist attacks and street riots have temporarily subsided;
- The “defund the police” movement that followed those riots has largely been replaced by common sense refunding of the police;
- Thirty states now have approved “constitutional carry,” with the result that more than half of homeowners now report that they have a firearm present at home;
- In many cities, crime — including violent crime, property crime, and especially homicides — has dropped precipitously;
- The real number of firearms being purchased is understated by the NSSF, as several states allow the purchase of multiple firearms with a single background check; and
- The continuing destruction of the purchasing power of the currency has pushed the prices of firearms and ammunition beyond the reach of many who are now struggling just to buy gas and groceries.
From a broader perspective, the monthly addition of more than one million firearms to Americans’ arsenals makes the job of disarming them to install a communist dictatorship all the more difficult. As Adolf Hitler famously said:
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms.
History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.
