Category: Safety

Trending Data Among Women First-Time Gun Owners

According to the NSSF, approximately 11 million Americans purchased their first firearm in the past 2 years, and it is estimated that half of them were women. A Girl & A Gun Women’s Shooting League (AG & AG) polled new members who were new gun owners to learn more about them. This article provides trending data among this demographic.

AG & AG offered the same survey to new members over the past two years. If a woman indicated she was a new shooter (acquiring a firearm within the past year), she was asked additional follow-up questions. The responses for the new-shooter specific questions totaled 1,176 women responses in 2020 and 1,706 in 2021, providing a good glimpse into general trends of this specific demographic.

Continue reading “”

Carrying a Gun Is Part of Being a ‘Free American’

Breitbart News interviewed Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) at Turning Point USA’s Americafest and he told us carrying guns for self-defense is critical to the American experience because the founders placed such high value on life.

We asked Biggs, “Why is it important that I can own a gun, carry a gun, that your wife can own a gun, carry a gun, that my wife can do the same. Why is this important?”

He responded by pointing out two reasons, the first of which he described as the “philosophical reason.”

Biggs outlined, “The Founders said this is what we need to have to preserve a free form of government. Their position was, you need to be able to have this militia, this group of citizens, because you don’t want the government to be putting their thumb down on you, because they are just coming out of King George doing that, so that’s number one.”

He then explained: “The second thing is when you start talking about my wife or me or someone else, we’re talking about self-defense, and the first liberty is the right to life. So, if you can’t defense yourself against the bad guys you start looking like the 12 cities in America that have the highest homicide rate in their history.”

Biggs added, “You don’t want to look like that. You don’t want to look like Venezuela. You want to be a free American and the way to be free and reduce crime is to allow people to carry guns.”

Regarding Biggs’ reference of 12 cities that broke their annual homicide records in 2021, ABC News listed those 12 cities but omitted the fact that they are all Democrat-controlled.

The cities are:

  • Albuquerque, New Mexico
  • Austin, Texas
  • Baton Rouge, Louisiana
  • Columbus, Ohio
  • Indianapolis, Indiana
  • Louisville, Kentucky
  • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • Portland, Oregon
  • Rochester, New York
  • St. Paul, Minnesota
  • Toledo, Ohio
  • Tucson, Arizona

When Rich People Are Under Threat, What Do They Reach For?

We’ll grant the point that voting in Beverly Hills was a red spot in the middle of blue, but 44% of the folks would still forcibly take guns away from ordinary people.

So what does it look like when rich people come under threat?

In Beverly Hills, even the purchase of a firearm comes with certain…expectations. The city’s only gun store, Beverly Hills Guns, is a “concierge service” by appointment only, for a largely affluent clientele. And business is booming.

Since opening in July 2020, the store has seen upscale residents from Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills increasingly in a panic following several high-profile smash-and-grab and violent home invasion robberies. The apparent siege has brought in a daily stream of anxious business owners and prominent actors, real estate moguls and film execs, says owner Russell Stuart. Most are arming themselves for the first time.

“This morning I sold six shotguns in about an hour to people that say, ‘I want a home defense shotgun,’” says Stuart, whose store is discreetly located in a Beverly Hills office building, with no sign on the doors, down the hall from a diamond dealer. “Everyone has a general sense of constant fear,  which is very sad. We’re used to this being like Mayberry.”

That fear has the wealthiest of local gentry contemplating every more elaborate security measures: armored luxury cars, safe rooms and bullet-proof glass in their homes. One client asked about creating the “Tony Stark-level” security of a half-dozen automated drones to hover over his house, says Stuart, whose gun store is part of his larger security company, Force Protective Agency. “If you want the Gucci package, it’s going to cost money.”

The security business is experiencing a rebound after a couple of diminished years because of the pandemic. Some firms had their on-site security guards sent home for health and social distancing reasons. Not anymore. 

In Beverly Hills, the craving for additional security dates to the riot that followed an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in May 2020, with unprecedented looting along Rodeo Drive that left broken boutique windows  beneath beloved luxury brands: Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Michael Kors, MCM, Ermenegildo Zegna. Last March, a $500,000 Richard Mille watch was stolen at gunpoint from a diner at the Il Pastaio restaurant.  The Dec. 1 home-invasion robbery and shooting death of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, 81, in her Trousdale Estates home, only accelerated the arms race among the affluent.

I’m shocked.  You mean they want BLM to destroy your city but not their own?  In other news, they are demanding the police do something about it.

Los Angeles Police Chief Michael Moore announced in November he would be setting up a task force to combat home-invasion robberies, which have targeted celebrities and upscale restaurants, according to the Los Angeles Times. Moore indicated the department had not seen violent holdups “like this in decades,” The Times reported.

I wonder where this task force will concentrate their efforts?  Anyway, the rich folks know the police can’t be there all of the time.  They want shotguns.  They want Gucci protection.  They want up-armored cars.  They want drones.

If you demand the same thing, 44% of them will tell you to pound sand.

New laws aren’t about gun owner’s responsibilities

It’s been said that all rights come with responsibilities, and it’s something I thoroughly agree with. You have a right to free speech, but a responsibility to use that responsibly. For gun owners, you have the right to keep and bear arms, but you have an obligation to exercise that responsibility.

This isn’t a controversial point of view, all things considered. Oh, we might debate what one’s responsibilities are as a firearm owner, but I think just about everyone agrees that they exist.

So when the editorial board of the Salt Lake Tribune wrote a headline saying, “The right to bear arms comes with responsibilities, the Editorial Board writes,” I didn’t worry too much.

Then I read it and realized they have a different view of responsibilities than I do.

There are no rights that do not come with responsibilities.

It is no threat to the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms to expect people who own firearms to keep their weapons in such a way that they are not likely to fall into the hands of criminals, children or others who have no business bearing them.

As reported recently by The Salt Lake Tribune, Utah is seeing a troublesome surge in both the number of guns stolen and the number of homicides committed with guns. The former statistic jumped 48% from 2011 to 2020, while the latter number tripled. Gun sales are also up sharply and, while that’s not a crime, connecting the dots strongly suggests that many of the people who legally own firearms are not living up to the responsibility of keeping the community safe from their misuse.

There have been attempts in the Utah Legislature to make responsible gun ownership not just a civic responsibility but also a legal obligation. Sadly, but not surprisingly, every attempt to mandate that gun owners secure their arms, or to make giving or lending a gun to someone who later uses in it the commission of a crime something that a person can be sued for, is rejected on the flawed argument that it would impinge on the rights of gun owners.

Of course, the Tribune editorial board doesn’t see an issue with turning a responsibility into a legal obligation. I sure as hell do.

You see, for one thing, we don’t always agree on what’s a responsibility and what isn’t. For another, what makes sense for one person doesn’t make sense for another.

Firearm thefts are up, but how many of those thefts included guns with some kind of gun lock on them? Many gun owners use those simply because gun safes are big, heavy, and expensive. They’re not an option for a lot of people.

Besides, most mandatory storage laws actually accept the locks as being safely stored.

Yet those locks are relatively easy to defeat if one is given enough time.

See, it’s easy to blame gun owners for the problem and to try to push for some law to make them do what you think is right, but what none of those people ever bother to ask is why are you trying to punish the victims of these thefts, anyway?

Honestly, this idea that gun owners are responsible for gun thefts in some way just sounds an awful lot like telling a woman if she hadn’t been in that part of town dressed that way, she wouldn’t have been raped.

Now, I’m a proponent of securing your weapons when not in use. I actually do think it’s the responsible thing to do. But when it gets mandated, it no longer becomes something you can adjust due to your circumstances. You can’t leave a gun available for your responsible teenager to use to defend themselves from a home invasion. You can no longer keep them in various parts of your home in case you need one and can’t make it to where your weapon is secured.

It removes all ability of the gun owner to determine their own needs.

The truth of the matter is that this isn’t about responsibilities. That’s just a frame the Tribune thought to use in order to make their screed less objectionable. The problem for them is that we see through that kind of thing.

For them, our responsibilities are whatever they say they are and we either do it their way or we’re scum.

I’d say the scum are the people who think they get a say in what we do in our own homes.

The Times May Be A-Changin’

Over time, we’ve seen changes in focus by the hoplophobic elements of society. Originally, it was all about banning handguns or at least “Handgun Control Inc.” The “assault weapon”, that is, the AR ban of 1994-2004 followed, with no discernible effect on crime, homicide, etc. Movement mutation continued, with groups dropping wording advocating bans, moving to claims of fighting pure “violence” and promoting gun “safety”.

Now they want to address “root causes” of violence instead of just restricting legal gun ownership, though still advocating extending background checks while “not taking anyone’s guns”. Intervening within high-crime communities, and with those at high risk of committing and becoming victims of violence, is appropriate, though far more difficult than they may imagine.

Throughout, we’ve had no reason to believe that these anti-gun activists have had any real change of heart. Their “conversation” always comes around to the desirability of somehow limiting the rights of law-abiding American gun owners in some way, even if in “just” creating more hoops to jump through in order to purchase, keep or bear our arms.

However, there is a fundamental factor that will trump all their intentions, both open and disguised. That is us, the people (and voters) of democracies. As Andrew Breitbart famously said, “Politics follows culture” and culture is changing. Much of this is due to the past 2 years of violence approved and applauded by “progressive” politicians who thought this would garner minority votes. Their groupthink about ethnicity blinded them to the reality that people of all ethnicities, communities and societies want crime stopped lest it hit them.

People are simultaneously realizing that they can’t count on being protected and must plan to do that for themselves. Thus the huge rise in gun purchases by more diverse buyers than ever, including women, minorities (especially African-American women) and self-described liberals. It’s been speculated that this increase in valuing self-protection with firearms may transfer to an increase in valuing Second Amendment rights—and now, that’s no longer speculation.

The Trafalgar Group, a non-partisan polling operation, just released a poll in which over 84% of respondents believed that “strict gun laws” either make no difference in or worsen the current surge in retail thefts. Less than 16% believed such laws can make this better.

In November, Quinnipiac found that 48% of those surveyed opposed stricter gun laws versus 47% who support them—following a trend beginning in 2015, now over the tipping point to plurality opposition. Gallup’s polling in November correlates, with a new low of only 52% of Americans caring that “laws covering the sale of firearms” should be stricter (down from a high of 64% in 2019, falling through 57% in 2020).

Meanwhile, ABC/Ipsos found that 66% of Americans disapprove of how President Biden is addressing gun violence (which could imply wanting more or less strict laws). Republicans’ opposition to more gun laws has strengthened, Democrats’ preference for more strict gun laws is lessening, predictably. But the most important political demographic—independents—have shifted dramatically in favor of, shall we say, individual independence on this issue.

In the latest National Firearms Survey published in July 2021, nearly 1/3 of respondents acknowledged owning guns, more than half of those carry them and almost 1/3 of them reported having to use them defensively in one or more of the estimated nearly 1.7 million episodes of self-defense. In 82% of these DGUs, it wasn’t necessary to fire. Almost 80% of these incidents occurred in the defender’s home or on their property, with the rest mostly occurring in public or at work, still a very substantial number.

NSSF also found that 49% more Hispanic Americans (no, none use “Latinx”) purchased firearms in 2020 than in 2019. With 40% of all gun purchases during the past 2 years coming from new gun owners, it’s no surprise that Hispanics (as well as African-Americans) are increasingly voting more for individual rights than for government “protection”.  In Berkeley, California, of all places, the Latino Rifle Association has grown by hundreds of members since 2020. Its “leftists . . . socialists, progressives” members realize that “The police and the government aren’t taking care of me, so I have to do things on my own.”

Funny thing, that’s what conservatives have recognized for generations. And a much bigger organization, the National African-American Gun Association, has added tens of thousands of new members since 2016, accelerating (along with many local gun clubs oriented toward minorities) during the past 2 years.

Even our less demonstrative Anglophone cousins, Canadians and Kiwis, aren’t cooperating any more with government orders to turn in their newly banned guns than Americans have. Neither are turning in their formerly legal, acceptable firearms—only 160 of an estimated 100,000 affected firearms have been surrendered in Canada in a year and a half. In New Zealand, the 2019 ban of most repeating arms “has had no impact on a rise in gun crime and violence”, except for a steadily increasing rate of the offense of still possessing such firearms.

This is precisely the cultural change that precedes and triggers political change. Most Americans already knew that protecting individual rights is the uncompromisable basis of the success of American society and polity. Many others know that now and more are learning. While Donald Trump improved the Republican share of the Black and Hispanic votes (especially among men), this wasn’t about him or the party. It is about the importance of each person’s rights as an American.

Most expect that the Supreme Court will affirm the Second Amendment with a ruling in Bruen voiding New York City’s may- (= non-) issue handgun carry permitting, along with the 8 other states that persist in that tyranny. The “progressive” left will keep caterwauling if they don’t get their way. But should the decision go otherwise, their wailing would be nothing compared to the anger of the majority who are now convinced that individual rights are more important than political correctness. And that would assuredly lead to even greater political change in favor of ensuring those rights.

To paraphrase St. George Tucker, “the true palladium of liberty” isn’t just “the right of self-defence.” The right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense and opposing tyranny is necessary to a free people in a free state. But it is a means to the goal, along with representative democracy lustily embraced, which is “to keep our republic” (h/t B. Franklin). The ultimate mark of liberty is individual autonomy, where the rights of the individual are placed above government’s privileges, which are only bestowed by us individuals.

It’s called ‘sowing to the wind’, as in reaping exactly what you asked for, good and hard.

How Defund the Police backfired.

Over the last two decades, progressives have established a new consensus on crime. Nonviolent felonies like shoplifting and drug possession should be reclassified as misdemeanours. Cities should defund the police and spend the money on nurses, psychologists and social workers instead. Offenders should have minimal involvement with the justice system — and be kept out of jail wherever possible.

But now, rising crime is rapidly undermining the progressive consensus. Homicides rose 30% in 2020, and over two-thirds of America’s largest cities will have had even more homicides in 2021 than in 2020. At least 13 big cities will set all-time records for homicides, including Philadelphia, Austin, and Portland. Meanwhile property crimes in California’s four largest cities rose 7% between 2020 and 2021. Car break-ins in San Francisco declined temporarily in 2020, because Covid emptied the city of tourists, but they have since skyrocketed, reaching 3,000 in November. Many residents have stopped bothering to report crime.

Of course, many crime rates are still below what they were in the Eighties. And progressives are right to say that we shouldn’t panic about rising crime, since past panics contributed to cruel and crude responses, including overly long prison sentences with little in the way of real rehabilitation programmes. That’s why, in the late Nineties, I worked for George Soros’s foundation, among others, advocating for drug decriminalisation, reduced sentences for nonviolent crimes, and alternatives to incarceration.

But today it’s clear that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. In 2000, when I stopped working on criminal justice policy, progressives were advocating mandatory rehabilitation as an alternative to incarceration. Now, progressive prosecutors are simply releasing criminal suspects from custody without requiring rehab or extended probation. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for instance, a man who had run over the mother of his child with his SUV was released on $1,000 bail. Neither he nor his SUV were put under electronic surveillance. Soon after, he killed six people and injured another three dozen — by running them over with his SUV.

Continue reading “”

Polls Show More Hispanics Turning Their Backs on Gun Control, Civilian Disarmament Advocates

An Axios/Ipsos poll showed Hispanic swing voters are concerned about crime, criminal violence and personal safety. That finding wasn’t a surprise to NSSF. Hispanic-Americans, along with nearly every other demographic group, are embracing their right to lawfully purchase and own a firearm. Firearm industry retail survey data revealed this growing trend a year ago. That’s when law-abiding Latinos purchased firearms in big numbers and the demographics of America’s gun owners continued to show growth.

Hispanic-Americans aren’t an outlier community and examples are plenty. Suburban swing voters and other minority groups demonstrated similar patterns as they saw policy failures affecting their safety, fully embraced lawful gun ownership and exercised their Second Amendment right.

The Axios/Ipsos poll asked Hispanic-Americans about their top concerns and crime and violence came in at the number two spot at 30 percent – behind only COVID worries at 37 percent. Per Axios, “The finding is a warning for President Biden ahead of next year’s midterms.” A similar Wall Street Journal poll from a week earlier showed Hispanic voters are turning away from Democrats, typically supportive of more gun control, and are now nearly evenly split between their party preference.

The 2022 elections mark the first regular national Election Day since the 2020 election over which time Americans have seen rampant violent crime in cities across the country, calls to defund the police and for prosecutors to go easy on convicted criminals. It also witnessed historic firearm sales.

Continue reading “”

In America’s violent cities, is self-defense the last civil right?

As much as I love sipping political philosophies like fine wine, now isn’t the time. Of all the important questions to be asked in this manic hour, I offer this one: In America’s violent cities, is self-defense the last civil right or a path to the last rite? As violent crime rises and the leftists’ will to fight it plummets, we who are in the midst of daily destruction must make up our minds.

I don’t care if your chosen self-defense item is a knife (a staple in majority leftist/left anarchist cities), slingshot, baseball bat (a favorite of the friend whom I call a force of nature), bow and arrow, pepper spray, fists, mixed martial arts (aka MMA) or whatever else tickles your tactical fancy, it’s clear we’ve got to have our minds made up. We must be armed, not just with the weapons, but also with the will to defend ourselves. Given current headlines on timelines, it’s a no-brainer.

In New Orleans, a local judge’s mother was recently wounded in crossfire and a congresswoman and state legislator were carjacked days ago in their respective cities. When mayhem touches elites, some targets (that is, ordinary citizens) wonder whether the policies those elites support will change? Let’s let that question hang in the air while we stay focused.

I understand what progressive mayors and prosecutors have done to undermine effective policing and violent career criminal convictions. I also understand change won’t happen instantly even if those same actors got religion on public safety overnight.

Targets (i.e., citizens) still face several waves of attacks from a generation that hasn’t faced consequences for its actions. After what conservatives termed “the Ferguson Effect” following Mike Brown’s death and new de-policing benchmarks set following George Floyd’s demise, we face youth who won’t magically stop rampaging on their won. Violent young people’s lifestyles change only after persistent pressure is applied over time.

Police officers, mayors, prosecutors, and judges are instrumental but not fast moving. We targets (aka citizens) must exercise our last right of self-defense, and loudly defend the right to do so, or what we call self-defense will become the equivalent of a last rite courtesy of violent offenders.

Fortunately, self-defense is instantaneous. It isn’t hamstrung by polling and debates in safe chambers. When targets (citizens) decide self-defense is our last right, we won’t be needing our last rites anytime soon.

A Girl and a Gun club empowers female gun owners

Born and raised in Wyoming, Kathleen Wilkinson, 67, was familiar with weapons but had never done any shooting. That all changed when her husband, a Top Gun pilot, passed away in 2020.

Having moved to Grand Junction in 1978, the newly-widowed Wilkinson decided to visit her sister in Oklahoma at a ranch she managed. While there, Wilkinson decided to try shooting for the first time at the ranch’s shooting range. She was able to borrow a rifle, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, and a .22-caliber revolver. Like a Rambo Goldilocks, the rifle kicked too hard, the 9mm was hard to manage and very loud, but the .22 was just right. With it, she hit the target nearly every time, and that got her hooked.

As soon as she returned home, Wilkinson purchased a .22 revolver. While waiting for the background check, she followed the store employee’s suggestion to visit the Rocky Mountain Gun Club (RMGC). Wilkinson discovered the club rented guns and had a Ladies Day open to nonmembers, and immediately made plans to attend.

On her way out, she saw a flyer for A Girl and A Gun Shooting League’s local chapter. It only took Wilkinson one day to decide she wanted to join.

Gun classes

A Girl and A Gun’s (AG/AG) mission is to encourage women of all demographics to be educated about firearm usage and safety and to promote shooting and competitive shooting sports. Events are designed for all levels of experience, from novice to recreational to competitive.

Continue reading “”

These 12 Incidents of Defensive Gun Use Prove Armed Civilians Make Situations Safer

I testified earlier this month at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Chicago on underlying causes of the spikes in gun violence in that city and around the country.

Although Sen. Dick Durbin’s interruptions of my opening statement stole the show in many respects, it shouldn’t be overlooked that the Illinois Democrat also solicited disparaging remarks on the right to keep and bear arms from another witness—Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown.

In direct response to one of Durbin’s questions, Brown remarked that armed civilians make police officers’ jobs more difficult, and that he never has seen a lawfully armed civilian make a situation safer.

This was certainly disappointing and should not take away from Brown’s important points with respect to underlying problems  of prosecutorial leniency and anti-police sentiment that devastates police morale.

But Brown also is quite mistaken about the reality of defensive uses of firearms. Americans—including those residing in Chicago—routinely use their guns to defend themselves and others from crime, rendering themselves and their communities safer from violence.

Almost every major study on the issue has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Continue reading “”

BLUF:
Millions are still moving along the path from reflexive support for gun control to passionate support for the right to bear arms. These voyagers are rapidly changing our culture. Last month’s public opinion polls are already out of date. The shift away from supporting gun-control is accelerating. The shift toward passionate and committed defense of citizen self-defense will be deep and lasting.

The Ruling Class won’t be able to stop it.

Why Political Moderates Walked Away from Gun-Control

Most of us have fired a gun at least once. Many of us have a gun in our home today. Gun ownership has increased steadily over the decades and is now common. Running counter to that trend, Democrat politicians became increasingly hostile towards gun owners in the last ten years. The Democrat party took that position while public opposition to gun-control grew. Today, democrat voters want gun-control as much as ever, but we saw the undecided middle and political independents step off the gun-control bandwagon. Here is why they abandoned the idea of gun-control.

The world became more dangerous.

Continue reading “”

‘The Second Amendment wears lipstick’ — Study shows gun ownership among women on the rise

CLEVELAND — The number of women who own a gun is on the rise. A recent study from Harvard University shows that 42% of gun owners in the country are women. That’s a 14% rise over the last five years. The same study found nearly 3.5 million women became gun owners between January 2019 and April 2021.

“It’s a responsibility. It’s a huge responsibility,” said Amanda Suffecool.

Suffecool calls herself an “accidental activist.” A firearms instructor and radio host, Suffecool is also an advocate for gun rights in America.

“Unfortunately, the world is not the warm, fuzzy place it used to be,” said Candy Petticord.

Petticord is also a firearms instructor and a mom of 12. She started shooting five years ago.

“I woke up,” she said when asked why she decided to buy her first gun. “I realized yes, I’m the mom. I’m the caregiver but I’m also the protector when my husband is away. So the kitchen knives, forks and spoons weren’t going to do the job.”

In the Harvard study, a quarter of the woman who own a firearm said self-defense was the reason they wanted to buy a gun. In another study from the female gun ownership group A Girl and A Gun, the women they surveyed gave many reasons. The top included the cultural upheaval in the Summer of 2020, the 2020 elections, lack of law enforcement resources, and uncertainty because of the pandemic.

Continue reading “”

Idealism is Killing Our Kids at School

Imagine this scenario for a moment. Pretend that we’re at a parent-teacher conference and the child is having problems at school.

T- I’m concerned that your child doesn’t study.
P- Children shouldn’t have to study.

T- I’m concerned about your child’s musical ability. Your child doesn’t practice his instrument for music class.
P- Children shouldn’t have to practice in order to make music.

T- I’m concerned about your child’s physical development. Your child doesn’t put in any effort in PE.
P- Children shouldn’t have to put in effort in their physical education class.

To most of us, this parent is such a naïve idealist that the exchange sounds ridiculous. If this discussion were real then we would be seriously concerned about this child’s future.

I don’t want to be the one who tells you the truth about Santa Claus, but we can agree that the world isn’t the way we want it. Sure, I wish there were a way we could build insightful minds and athletic bodies without effort. We all want that, but Utopia isn’t an option. Refusing to do the work hasn’t moved us toward that ideal. Refusing to do the work has only left us weak and ignorant. That wastes lives.

Now let me add another line to the dialogue, a conversation that I’ve actually heard.

T- I’m concerned about your child’s physical safety at school. We want to train school staff so they can stop violent attacks in school and then treat the injured.
P- Staff and students shouldn’t have to worry about violent attacks in school.

I wish this was a fantasy story, but that summarizes the complaints I’ve read about protecting our children.

Continue reading “”

Comment O’ The Day
If the environment is more favorable for criminal activity (no cash bail, cheering on property destruction, refusal to prosecute, defunding police, etc.), it should come as no surprise that there will be an increase in demand for guns, both from criminals who seek to exploit the favorable conditions for their endeavors and also from law-abiding citizens who seek to defend themselves from lawlessness.

Only any idiot would think this is a chicken/egg paradox

The Paradox of the 2020 Gun-Sales Spike

In a City Journal piece over the summer, I cast some doubt on the idea that 2020’s massive homicide spike — a 30 percent increase — had been driven by strong gun sales. America has so many guns that even a really strong year for sales doesn’t boost the supply that much, and most crime guns tend to be fairly old anyway.

Most interestingly, places with the biggest gun-sales spikes didn’t also have the biggest shooting spikes, according to a then-new study in Injury Prevention. I further noted, however, some NYPD numbers suggesting that while guns purchased less than a year ago accounted for 10 percent of crime-gun traces in 2019, they were 18 percent in 2020. 

Now we have national data to update both the geographic and the gun-trace findings. Oddly enough, they both hold up. Comparing all of 2020 with all of 2019, the states with the biggest gun-sales spikes were not the same as the states with the biggest homicide spikes. But nationwide, new guns did show up quite a bit more in police departments’ gun traces. 

Here’s a simple, per capita way of comparing changes in homicide rates with changes in gun sales (as measured via background checks for gun purchases, with a few states with quirky data excluded). There’s no obvious connection between the two, and the picture is the same when you plot the percentage change in one variable against the percentage change in the other.


The new trace data, however, are less kind to the latest additions to America’s gun stock. In 2019, about 20 percent of traced guns had been purchased less than a year prior; in 2020, this rose to about 30 percent. (The Trace has some more ways of cutting these numbers here, as does my colleague Charles Fain Lehman here.)  Continue reading “”

 

BLUF:
More than 36 million Americans blew a big fat raspberry at Biden and his gun-banning squad, according to NICS background checks, and that only includes the first 11 months of 2021. It does not include private firearm sales, which are still legal in free states……..
In short, gun sales have skyrocketed. Ammunition sales have skyrocketed.
Public opinion is shifting, the polls are showing, as more and more Americans realize the utility a firearm can offer…………..
This is, however, not the time to celebrate. We are only one executive order away from yet another infringement. Our right to keep and bear arms requires eternal vigilance.

Remain vigilant, friends.

Analysis: Why we will win America’s hearts and minds

These are the most perilous times many Second Amendment watchdogs have ever seen. Our right to keep and bear arms is under constant assault by a troika of would-be infringers: the Biden-Harris administration — the most anti-gun group of bullies to occupy the White House in modern times — the legacy media, which is aids and abets Biden’s every whim regardless of its constitutionality, and the anti-gun industry, which provides the playbook and orchestrates the campaign.

Still, there are glimmers of hope. The light at the end of the tunnel may be dim, but at least it’s visible.

At least for now, things appear to be changing, albeit slowly. Thankfully, a growing number of Americans has stopped listening to the anti-gun forces. In other words, regardless of what Biden, Murphy, or Giffords are saying, the liberal bubble has been pierced by the truth, and worried folks are buying guns.

Over the past months, I’ve talked to dozens of new gun owners. Many described themselves as liberal or formerly liberal. Here’s what they are saying about why they broke ranks with the gun banners and bought guns

Root Cause

New gun owners revealed near unanimity for the main reason they purchased a firearm: the surge of violent crime.

Smash-and-grab robbery gangs, well-publicized home-invasions and the newest media buzzword “follow-home robberies.” have folks terrified they will be ambushed in their home or on their doorstep, in zip codes where these types of crimes are not supposed to happen.

Continue reading “”

Did King County, WA Prosecutor’s Office Just Illustrate Gun Law Failures?

A report from the King County Prosecutor’s Office late last month showing the uptick in gun-related violence in the county that encompasses far-left Seattle only further amplifies the assertion from Evergreen State gun rights activists that gun control laws adopted by citizen initiative, and by the Seattle City Council over the past six years have had the exact opposite effect they were supposed to have.

Beginning in 2014 with the passage of Initiative 594—the so-called “universal background check” measure requiring background checks on all firearm transfers—and continuing with the adoption of a special gun and ammunition tax in 2015, gun control efforts were presented to voters as tolls to reduce so-called “gun violence.”

But the Prosecutor’s office has released data showing the opposite has occurred. Despite the background check initiative, the gun and ammunition tax and more recently, passage in 2018 of Initiative 1639, which prohibits the sale of modern semi-auto rifles to anyone under age 21, plus mandates a training requirement and classifies all semi-auto rifles of any caliber, including rimfires, as “semiautomatic assault rifles,” more people are getting shot and more shots are being fired.

Continue reading “”

My first squad leader in the Army was a font of personal advice.
One I liked a lot is: “Experience is the best teacher and the best experience is someone else’s, because it’s usually less expensive and less painful.”

Lessons Learned From The Rittenhouse Situation

Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong.

I’m going to start by saying this here and now, lest there be any confusion. While he made some decisions I might question later on here, I don’t think that he was necessarily wrong for making those decisions. I have the benefit of hindsight at work here, and I’m not interested in second-guessing him.

However, I do think that cases like his give us all a great opportunity to learn, so that’s what I did.

Here are a few of my takeaways from his case.

Continue reading “”

The Truth is Out on Constitutional Carry’s Impact

There’s an old Monty Python sketch in which a theatrical radio narrator desperately tries to make an exceedingly boring story sound suspenseful and melodramatic. “June the 4th, 1973,” the voice says, “was much like any other summer’s day in Peterborough, and Ralph Mellish, a file clerk at an insurance company, was on his way to work as usual when … dah dum dum … nothing happened!”

The story of the widespread adoption of permitless concealed carry—broadly known as “constitutional carry”—has been similar in nature to the tale of Ralph Mellish.

Despite endless attempts to turn the development into a Wagnerian opera, we are now reaching the point at which nearly half of America’s 50 states have nixed their carry-permitting requirements, and still … dah dum dum … nothing has happened.

There has been no associated spike in related crime in these states. There has been no increase in armed confrontations. There hasn’t even been a rise in the number of bureaucratic infractions. There have been no negative consequences at all, but now more Americans can protect themselves until the police arrive.

And yet, each and every time a new state looks to nix its permitting systems, the usual voices still cry “disaster!” As I write, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives is considering adding Pennsylvania to the list of constitutional-carry states, and, in response, their Democrat governor, Tom Wolf, is alleging all the same things gun controllers have since the late 1980s. “I will oppose any bill that reduces gun-safety measures,” Wolf vowed recently, while describing the proposal as “removing gun-safety protections and making it easier to carry a gun.”

At a certain point in American history, one might have forgiven politicians for claiming such things. By the mid-1970s, the Second Amendment was being ignored as a matter of routine, and when, in the following decade, a serious push to fix this began, nobody was quite sure what would happen. It was, of course, always far-fetched that, when faced with the restoration of their rights, Americans would turn their cities into the “Wild West,” but at least those who were making such predictions could point to the novelty of widespread concealed carry as a justification for their concern.

But now? In 2021? With 30 years of evidence to rely upon, these claims are absurd.

Continue reading “”

Killadelphia Update

Last year, the per-capita homicide rate in Philadelphia was worse than Chicago. It takes a lot of effort to be worse than Chicago, but Philadelphia — a/k/a “Killadelphia” — is up to the challenge, and is now on pace to break the city’s all-time annual murder total of 500, a record set in 1990 at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic. Basically, you could put police crime-scene tape around the entire city; every sidewalk in Philadelphia is covered in chalk outlines of slain victims.

OK, maybe I got a little carried away there, but it’s difficult to exaggerate how deadly conditions are in Philadelphia now:

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said on Monday that whoever was responsible for killing a pregnant woman and her unborn child as she was unloading gifts from her baby shower will face two counts of murder.
The victim, identified as Jessica Covington, 32, was shot 11 times in the head and belly on Saturday night in what police believe was a targeted shooting.

Deputy Police Commissioner Christine Coulter demanded that progressive DA Krasner take action amid a massive surge of gun violence.
‘Children are getting shot, unborn children getting shot, what is the city doing about this?’ she asked.

Police were said to be questioning a suspect in connection with Covington’s killing on Monday, but no arrests or charges have been announced as of late afternoon.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Krasner said Covington’s killing made him ‘sick.’ He said the person or persons who took the pregnant woman’s life and that of her unborn baby will ‘very likely’ face two counts of murder.
He praised police for ‘working nonstop and doing an amazing job with this case.’

Krasner has cut the number of prosecutions for gun crime and cops are blaming him for a huge spike in shootings a homicides.
Police in Philadelphia have made a record number of arrests for illegal gun possession this year – but the suspects’ chances of getting convicted dropped to 49 per cent from 63 per cent in 2017, analysis by the found.
There have been 491 homicide victims in 2021 – a 14 per cent increase from last year’s number of 436, and 283 in 2019.
Krasner boasts on his website that he has cut incarceration rates by 24,800 years, cut supervision by 102,400 years, never used the death penalty and helped exonerate 23 people.
Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has said that Philadelphia’s criminal justice system has become a ‘revolving door’ for repeat gun offenders since Krasner was sworn into office in January 2018.

This is the problem with Democrats talking tough on gun control. You hear them talk about “getting guns off our streets,” but they don’t want to prosecute the people who are actually committing crimes with those guns — because all the criminals are Democrats.

Dana Pico at First Street Journal has been following the grisly “Killadelphia” death toll, and Ed Driscoll at Instapundit calls attention to the role of “progressive reforms” in the nationwide crime wave:

[Milwaukee County DA John] Chisholm, who was elected in 2007, supports deferrals for some misdemeanors and “low-level” felonies in order to cut down on incarcerations. And he’s taken credit for inspiring a new wave of prosecutors in cities like San Francisco, St. Louis, and Philadelphia who have enacted similar reforms. Chisholm congratulated San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin following his election in 2019, and the pair spoke at a forum earlier this year on the status of the progressive prosecutor movement.

Chisholm and other progressives support reforms to the cash-bail system, which they say criminalizes poverty. He has acknowledged that his reform-minded approach could put murderers back on the streets of Milwaukee.
“Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into [a] treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill somebody?” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2007. “You bet. Guaranteed. It’s guaranteed to happen. It does not invalidate the overall approach.”
The Milwaukee DA said his office recommended $1,000 bail for [Waukesha massacre suspect Darrell] Brooks following his arrest on Nov. 5 on charges that he punched his girlfriend in the face and hit her with his vehicle in a gas station parking lot. The woman is identified only by her initials in court papers, which indicate they have a child together. Brooks was also charged with eluding police officers when they arrived to take him into custody.

What Democrats don’t want to admit is that crime is a people problem. It is easy to focus on guns, but the inanimate object does not kill people. Democrats have trained their media allies to mindlessly repeat the phrase “gun violence,” but my guns are not involved in violence. My podcast partner John Hoge has a rather substantial arsenal of firearms, none of which has ever been involved in “gun violence.”

Rhetoric that demonizes law-abiding gun owners is necessary to the Democratic Party agenda of absolving themselves and their constituents of responsibility. Nothing that goes wrong in Philadelphia — or Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, etc. — is the fault of the people directly involved, because those people vote Democrat. The voters who elect Democrats must be held blameless for their problems, and the blame must be transferred to scapegoats — which is why phrases like “white privilege” and “systemic racism” have entered the political lexicon.

The kind of “reforms” implemented by Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner are aimed at ending the “racial injustice” of putting criminals in prison, as if there were something deliberately unfair about the demographic profile of the prison population, as if law enforcement and the court system were letting white criminals go unpunished. Well, where are all these white murderers in Philadelphia? What has Larry Krasner done to end the “white privilege” that lets these perpetrators get off scot-free?

These are rhetorical questions, obviously. The population of Philadelphia County is 44% black and 34% non-Hispanic white. Fifteen percent of the county population is Hispanic and 8% are Asian. But these other demographic groups are not implicated in the “gun violence” epidemic that has Philadelphia on pace to set a new homicide record.

In 2020, Joe Biden officially won Pennsylvania by a margin of 80,555 votes. He got 603,790 votes in Philadelphia County.

So the dishonest blame game will continue, and the bodies of homicide victims will keep piling up in “Killadelphia,” because Democrats like Larry Krasner don’t want to arrest the criminals whose votes elect them.

David French’s Irrational Fear of Guns is No Reason to Outlaw Open Carry.

Instead of asking why a then-17 year-old was there helping to guard a business and putting out fires, the question should be why the governor didn’t call out the Guard in the same way he is before this verdict. The question should be how elected officials failed to protect the community they represented and made a teenager feel like he needed to go and offer what protection he could as a substitute. My grandfather was Kyle Rittenhouse’s age when he signed up to serve on the USS Alabama in WWII. Men a year older can openly bear arms to fight overseas but not to defend their own communities when rioters are allowed to turn a town into a war zone?

Rittenhouse had every right to be in Kenosha. His father lives there. His grandmother lives there. He works there. His rifle was there too, (not driven across state lines) despite media’s best intentions to turn Rittenhouse’s short 20 minute drive from his mom’s house in Antioch to Kenosha into the modern journey of Odysseus. In fact, you might argue Rittenhouse had more of a reason to be in Kenosha than the rioters from California or Oregon.

It makes no sense that [David] French is arguing against open carry by citing the case of a teenager (the court determined he was legally open-carrying a rifle) who can’t carry concealed because a) how do you carry a rifle concealed and b) he’s too young to purchase and carry a handgun, much less carry it concealed.

No law-abiding person should feel persuaded to forfeit their rights because someone harbors an irrational fear of the inanimate object they possess. A person’s comfort level doesn’t determine the extent to which a right can be exercised. If you dislike open carry then carry concealed, but no one has the right to determine for others how they may lawfully carry.

— Dana Loesch in Kyle Rittenhouse Isn’t a Villain and There Is Nothing Wrong with Open Carry