The FBI conducted more than 3.5 million gun-related background checks in April, an increase of more than 20 percent during the same month last year. For 16 months in a row, that upward trend has not abated, with the FBI continuing to process a record-setting number of background checks.
Nearly 1.7 million of the applications in April were directly related to the purchase of firearms, also a record, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). Records indicate these are first-time buyers from a range of backgrounds: young, old, black, Asian, Latino, Republicans, and Democrats. When it comes to fear driving the need for a means of self-defense, ideology means nothing. More remarkable is the number of black women seeking to purchase their first firearm.
Even anti-gun NPR (National Public Radio) was forced to admit that these new buyers “feel they must take control of their families’ protection.” In other words, in light of Democrat demands to defund the police, more Americans are realizing that they are now their own first responders in the event of a crisis.
The weapon of choice, not surprisingly, is a firearm the Biden administration is targeting (sorry): semi-automatic rifles, specifically the AR-15-styled firearm. As Jurgen Brauer, chief economist for the Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting group, noted: “Handgun sales declined in April relative to the same month last year, so long-gun sales [really] drove this April’s overall increase.”
According to the NSSF, numerous factors are contributing to the increase in demand, namely fear and politics. The fear comes in two flavors: fear of local street violence in their neighborhoods, and fear that the Biden administration will succeed in removing their primary tool to defend themselves against the violence.
The politics behind the surge is less clear: most buyers are seeking guns for their own protection. A much smaller number realize that Biden’s push for more gun control is part of a decades-long effort to disarm the entire American citizenry as a necessary step toward a totalitarian communist police state.
But state legislators are rescinding restrictive laws just as the Biden administration wants to impose more of them. When Democrat Kansas Governor Laura Kelly vetoed a bill to lower the minimum age to 18 for concealed carry in her state, legislators in both the state House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to override that ruling.
Those lawmakers saw through Kelly’s façade in the defense of her veto, in which she claimed that “allow(ing) more guns on campus is neither safe nor effective,” and that allowing 18 year olds to carry concealed would somehow “drive prospective students away from our schools.”
Neither claim is true, as researcher John Lott and founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, has proven. In fact, schools are safer when there are more guns on campus, making schools more attractive to prospective students, not less so.
Kelly also failed to remember that by the time a citizen reaches 18, he becomes eligible for service in the armed forces, with the emphasis on the word “armed.” One Kansas Democrat who opposed the bill spouted additional nonsense. Louis Ruiz, representing Kansas City, argued that “even though they’re trained, the maturity level of their brain lacks.”
Efforts by anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment politicians who want to reduce and then eliminate the private ownership of firearms in America are, as usual, having exactly the opposite effect: the very people they want to disarm are instead increasingly exercising their Second Amendment–protected rights to purchase, keep, and bear arms.
Best estimates are that Americans now own upward of 600 million firearms. And the best news of all is that corrupt, anti-gun, anti-Constitution politicians don’t know where they might be found.
