Vote4America, working to register voters in time for the November presidential election, reported that more than 10 million hunters and gun owners are not registered. Even a small fraction of them registering and then voting for Trump in November would swamp whomever the Democrats nominate as his opponent in August.
22 Million New Gun Owners
The calculus begins with the number of people purchasing a firearm since Biden moved into the Oval Office in January 2020: nearly equal to the population of the state of Florida!
The Firearm Industry Trade Association (NSSF, formerly the National Shooting Sports Foundation) reported that more than 22 million people have purchased a firearm for the first time since that date. On April 1 this year, Florida’s population touched 23 million for the first time.
Said Mark Oliva, the public affairs director for NSSF: “These are gun owners who, prior to buying a gun, didn’t consider what this right meant to their lives and personal freedom. That will be a consideration in this election.”
He added:
This could be a factor in the upcoming election as people take into account the government’s willingness to infringe upon their rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
Unregistered Gun Owners
According to Vote4America, gun owners not registered in swing states would be more than enough to overwhelm the Democratic nominee. In Pennsylvania, for example, more than 515,000 gun owners aren’t registered to vote. In Michigan and in North Carolina there are 370,000 gun owners in each state who haven’t registered.
How important is this report from Vote4America? In Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona, there are presently more than 800,000 gun owners who aren’t registered to vote. In the contested 2020 presidential election, Trump lost those three states by just 44,000 votes.
The news for Trump gets even better. Estimates show that more than 82 million Americans now own at least one firearm, thanks to the surge of new buyers under Biden. As Oliva explains:
Over the last several years, there [has] been a significant increase of Americans who have chosen to exercise their Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms.
That’s been for several reasons, including concerns for personal safety, rising crime, the refusal of some prosecutors to not lock up criminals and the attacks by the Biden administration to diminish rights through overbearing regulations.
As many of those new firearms owners learn through gun training classes, the reason they remain free to buy, keep, bear, and use firearms is because self-defense is a God-given right guaranteed by the Second Amendment. For many this is a revelation. It is also an incentive now to keep the federal government from taking away their newly acquired firearms.
Gun Owners More Likely to Vote
Gun owners already outvote non-gun owners by double-digit percentages. According to Mark Joslyn, political science professor at the University of Kansas and author of The Gun Gap: The Influence of Gun Ownership on Political Behavior and Attitudes, not only do gun owners outvote non-gun owners, but the gap is widening. Further, the more firearms one owns, the more likely he or she is to vote.
[T]he empirical evidence … represent[s] a strong case for gun owners as an important political group in American politics. Gun owners represent a large group. They exhibit a distinctive vote choice and reliably show up on Election Day.
As a group, they also actively engage gun organizations and politicians on gun policy.… The stronger a member’s attachment to guns, the more likely he or she is to vote, and to vote for a Republican.
He notes in his 2020 book that 80 percent of gun owners self-reported that they voted in the November election. There are an estimated 82 million gun owners in the country, so 65 million of them should show up in 2024.
Licensed Gun Owners Could Swing the Election
Vote4America advisor Baker Leavitt put it this way: “If we could convert 2% of all licensed hunters and get them to vote, GOP would win in a landslide.”
However, as the New York Post warned:
If Republicans don’t address political apathy among their gun-owning base in key swing states, they’ll have far fewer votes in their arsenal to score victories this November.
Incentive to vote will certainly increase as the Democratic nominee, whoever that might be, reveals an anti-gun agenda on steroids. Present presumptive nominee Kamala Harris has shown that the Second Amendment is no obstacle to her intention to disarm Americans.
If four out of five of those 22 million brand new owners of firearms show up to vote on November 5, along with the others who have long been enjoying exercising the right, any Democrat will be obliterated.
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