Category: Safety

Gun trade groups say more women are becoming licensed firearms owners

Some call it firearm feminism. According to gun trade groups, more women are buying guns than ever before.

One recent survey indicates self-protection is the main reason, but first-time female gun buyers are also citing fear of civil unrest, election uncertainty and the coronavirus as influencing their decision to buy firearms.

Business owner Angela Geotz says she wants to be legally armed if trouble comes her way.

“I just want to be able to protect myself if I have to, my family,” Geotz said.

Geotz is not alone. Jessica Howard is a first-time gun owner.

“There is a lot of crazy stuff going on and I’m a single mother,” Howard said.

Firearm sales to women are up 40% from 2019, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The trade group surveyed gun retailers. The survey finds personal protection is the primary reason and semi-automatic pistols are the most popular.

First-time gun owner Vickie Hayes bought a semi-automatic pistol after someone broke into her home.

“It kind of scared me a little bit, so I thought a good way to protect myself would be to get a handgun license. So, I did and I purchased a gun,” Hayes said.

The firearms industry noticed the surge beginning in March with the coronavirus outbreak.

Since then, concern over civil unrest is the biggest reason for the surge, that’s according to a poll conducted by national firearms group A Girl & A Gun:

  • 14% Riots/Fear of Mobs and civil unrest.
  • 12% Concerns over 2020 Elections.
  • 8% Lack of Law enforcement resources.
  • 7% Pandemic uncertainty.
  • 7% Fear of targeted violence/discrimination.

Continue reading “”

Militias challenge gun laws in Virginia: “It’s about shooting tyrants in the face”

On a cold winter morning last February, a woman named Samantha assembled her AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in the parking area next to Timbrook Public Library in Campbell County, Virginia. Her husband, Chad, had his AR-15 in hand and commented, “I would trust going into a gun fight right next to my wife. I’ve seen her shoot.”

Samantha was one of a handful of women attending the call for volunteers to join a group calling itself the Campbell County Militia. Along with Chad and Samantha (who asked to have their last name withheld), over 200 people were at the event, most of them carrying arms.

Kurt Feigel, a gun rights activist and militia organizer, told the group, “We are here today to send a clear and collective message to any would-be-tyrants that would attempt to disarm us: We will not comply.”

The formation of the Campbell County Militia is part of a larger movement organized by gun rights activists pushing back against gun laws Virginia enacted in 2020. They claim the new regulations, which include a “red flag” law and universal background checks for gun purchases, infringe on their Second Amendment right to bear arms. Virginia lawmakers shelved more controversial proposals that would have banned semi-automatic guns and high capacity magazines. Still, gun rights activists are bracing for a possible future ban.

“We won’t comply. We won’t give up our guns,” said Feigel.

Virginia became a battleground for the gun policy debate after Democrats swept both houses of the state legislature in 2019 on a gun safety platform, consolidating Democratic control of the state government.

Gun policy has long been a divisive issue in the United States. Even as support grows for stricter gun laws, the country remains deeply divided along partisan lines. A 2019 Pew Research Center survey found 60% of Americans think gun laws should be more strict, up from 52% two years earlier. But the same survey also found 80% of Republicans think it’s more important to protect gun rights than to control gun ownership, while just 21% of Democrats agree.

In Virginia, gun rights supporters pushed back against the Democratic legislative majority. Over 90 counties and municipalities in the state passed Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions opposing the enforcement of certain gun laws. And there were calls to form local militias to give their movement some “teeth.”

“If we have the numbers, we can back up the statement — we will not be disarmed,” said Feigel. “[The Second Amendment] is not about hunting. It’s not about self-defense. It’s about shooting tyrants in the face.” Continue reading “”

(Florida governor) DeSantis Pushes To Expand Stand Your Ground Law To Allow Citizens To Defend Against Rioters, Looters

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has reportedly drafted “anti-mob” legislation that would expand the state’s Stand Your Ground law to allow armed citizens defend themselves against violent rioters and looters.

Written after violent rioters caused billions of dollars of damage to America’s cities over the summer, the proposal would expand the list of under Florida’s self-defense law to justify the use of force against rioters who engage in looting or arson that “results in the interruption or impairment of a business operation.”

“The draft legislation put specifics behind DeSantis’ pledge in September to crack down on ‘violent and disorderly assemblies,’” the Tampa Bay Times reported. “Other key elements of DeSantis’ proposal would enhance criminal penalties for people involved in ‘violent or disorderly assemblies,’ make it a third-degree felony to block traffic during a protest, offer immunity to drivers who claim to have unintentionally killed or injured protesters who block traffic, and withhold state funds from local governments that cut law enforcement budgets.” Continue reading “”

Gun Control and Racism: The Laws and Taxes Meant to Limit Minority Gun Ownership in America

“There’s a direct correlation between gun control and black people control.” – Stacy Swimp, President of the Frederick Douglass Society

Every schoolchild knows that the Declaration of Independence declares that the basic equality of man is “self-evident.” The United States Constitution enumerates what the inalienable rights only alluded to by the Declaration. An inalienable right is one that exists regardless of whether or not it is recognized by the state. For example, you have a right to free speech regardless of whether or not the Constitution recognizes it. Thus any restrictions on free speech are curbs of this pre-existing right, not an actual elimination of that right. One of them is the right to keep and bear arms. Another is the right to a speedy and public trial.

However, particularly with the Second Amendment, there’s long been a struggle between the ideals of America and the reality on the ground with regard to race. What’s more, minorities in the United States are disproportionately the victims of violent crime. Both of these things together make it crucial to understand self defense and the Second Amendment from the perspective of race in America.

Part of the problem is that, unlike European nations which grew organically, America is an invention of a handful of Englishmen. They founded the nation on a set of ideas and there has always been a tension between those ideas and the reality. This is, in some sense, unavoidable: reality will always have trouble living up to an ideal. A failure to live up to that ideal in the past according to terms established today doesn’t make the entire project – or any specific part of it – worthless or suspect.

Before we get into the meat of the matter, we should note that the American ideal has expanded the Second Amendment (and the rest of the Constitution for that matter) to de jure include all Americans. One can be skeptical of the notion of “progress” while seeing the moves to repeal race-based restrictions on firearms ownership as big steps in the right direction.

Finally, it is worth noting – and we will do so at length later – that none of the racially-motivated laws on the books in America are uniquely American. Racism, in the sense employed by the average person not the expanded version used by left-wing ideologues, was not a uniquely American institution, but the norm throughout human history. Continue reading “”

A Dark Moment for Democracy Affirms the Need for the Second Amendment

Businesses in major American cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. erected plywood barricades for fear of election day violence. To observers in other countries, the picture of boarded up businesses looked like they came from the third world. To historians, the pictures looked like they were taken from a country descending into tyranny.

We all know who these barriers were built to defend against. They weren’t built to defend against Tea Partiers. They weren’t built to defend against Proud Boys. They were built to defend against Antifa and Black Lives Matter, groups who Joe Biden has repeatedly refused to condemn despite their coordinated violence and property destruction.

Shortly before the election, Biden tweeted that he would ban “assault weapons,” implement “universal background checks,” and enact other allegedly “common sense” gun reform laws.

If he proves the victor, and the Democrats win one run-off race in Georgia, America will see an unprecedented assault on the Second Amendment. A Biden Department of Justice would try to bankrupt gun manufacturers in court. And gun confiscation would be on the table, given that Biden has promised to put Beto O’Rourke, who famously said “Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15s,” in charge of his administration’s gun policies.

Fortunately, over the last six months gun sales – especially to first-time gun-buyers – have shattered all historic records. This is because for hundreds of thousands of Americans, 2020 has settled the gun control arguments they hear so often in the media. The question “what could anyone need an AR-15 for?” has been answered by images of store owners standing guard against a mob with that gun as their neighbor’s businesses burned to the ground.

The argument that “people should rely on the police for protection,” has been countered by the reality that in major American cities our elected officials pro-actively refuse to allow the police the enforce the law. This wasn’t a matter of the police getting there moments too late. What we saw was elected officials refusing to allow the police to enforce the law because they agreed with the political aims of the violent mob. Continue reading “”

Alabama voters approve gun proposal for Franklin County

Alabama voters have approved a constitutional amendment that provides specific protection to anyone who kills someone in self-defense in a church in Franklin County. The attorney general’s office has said Alabama’s “stand your ground” law already applies inside churches. But backers supported Amendment 5, saying more specific provisions for churches in the northwest part of the state.

I’ll take riots in Philly for $500, Alex

Why people are buying guns at a record pace in Pennsylvania in the run-up to Election Day

Charlotte Heller, a 71-year-old grandmother from Lower Macungie Township, was never a fan of guns.

Then came 2020.

This September, Heller and her 73-year-old husband Ira joined scores of other Pennsylvanians in becoming first-time gun owners during a year expected to break gun purchase records across the country.

“Let me tell you, I’ve never liked guns. I was always kind of afraid of guns,” Charlotte Heller said. “I felt like we didn’t need them.”

But 2020, of course, is a year like no other ― fueling gun sales with a combination of factors, experts say. Start with the coronavirus pandemic and shortage of basic supplies, then add a wave of protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and the resulting property damage and violence, and cap it with one of most divisive presidential elections in modern history, and you’ve got a perfect storm for one of the most basic human emotions. Continue reading “”

BLUF:
“Our final analysis finds that race, gender, political ideas, ideology does not matter” in determining gun ownership, Khubchandani said. “What matters is, have you been threatened? Have you been exposed to violence? Do you know someone who was threatened, and therefore, by default, does that make you a little more protective about your own self and your family?”

Health Care Workers Help Drive Gun Surge, New Study Says

When the coronavirus hit American shores, nurses and doctors stocked up on guns, a new study reports.

Researchers at New Mexico State University and the University of Toledo found that being a health care provider was one of the strongest predictors of buying a firearm during the first few weeks of the coronavirus pandemic. Sixty-seven percent of people who reported buying a gun during the pandemic also reported being health care professionals.

“One of the things we should see, in my limited view, is these are people who are civilians who are not criminals and they have seen a lot of unrest in the past six months,” New Mexico State University professor Jagdish Khubchandani told the Washington Free Beacon. “And they want to be on the front foot with their own safety.”

Khubchandani said this surprising finding becomes more understandable when considered alongside the study’s other main finding: Gun-ownership demographics as a whole have shifted during the pandemic.

Gun buyers were more likely to be younger, more urban, more female, and less white. As the gun-owning demographic diversifies, then, it starts to look more like the demographics of health care, one of the country’s largest industries.

“America now has more job opportunities in health care,” Khubchandani said. “Almost 15 percent of Americans today have a job in health care. And as that demographic has changed, so has the gun-owning demographic, and they’ve intersected.”

Khubchandani pointed to two recent surveys finding that between a quarter and half of physicians own guns. He also noted recent real-world examples of health care professionals lining up at gun shops to purchase guns. Continue reading “”

U.S. voters agree on one thing: They’d feel better owning a gun

CHANTILLY, Va. — Like many Americans, two women a thousand miles apart are each anxious about the uncertain state of the nation. Their reasons are altogether different. But they have found common ground, and a sense of certainty, in a recent purchase: a gun.

Ann-Marie Saccurato traced her purchase to the night she was eating dinner at a sidewalk restaurant not long ago in Delray Beach, Florida, when a Black Lives Matter march passed, and her mind began to wander

It takes only one person to incite a riot when emotions are high, she remembers thinking. What if police are overpowered and can’t control the crowd?

Ashley Johnson, in Austin, Texas, worries about the images she’s seen in past weeks of armed militias showing up to rallies and making plans to kidnap governors. The outcome of the election, she thinks, will be devastating for some people regardless of the winner.

“Maybe I’m just looking at the news too much, but there are hints of civil war depending on who wins,” Johnson said. “It’s a lot to process.”

In the U.S., spikes in gun purchases are often driven by fear. But in past years that anxiety has centered on concerns that politicians will pass stricter gun controls. Mass shootings often prompt more gun sales for that reason, as do elections of liberal Democrats. Continue reading “”

Study Reports Record Number of Carry Permits in U.S.

A study issued by Crime Prevention Research Center on Sept. 21 reported that the number of concealed carry permits nationwide is now up to 19.48 million, a 34-percent increase compared to 2016’s figure. The continued upswing is particularly noteworthy when the number of states that no longer require law-abiding citizens to secure the license is now up to 17.

Roughly 7.6 percent of Americans have a carry permit, according to its findings. Slightly more than 26 percent of them are female and the number of new women outpaced men by 101.2 percent. There are now five states with more than 1 million people with carry permits. They are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Texas. Per capita, by qualified adult resident, 28.5 percent of the Alabamans have a license—the top figure in the nation. Indiana claims second-place honors with 18.7 percent and Iowa trails in third.

The cost is even going down. John R Lott and Rujun Wang, the report’s authors wrote, “A lot of changes in fees are occurring this year. Arkansas just reduced its fee from $142.11 to $91.9 and Washington from $48 to $36. Indiana’s 5-year license to carry has become fee exempt since July 1, 2020, while Tennessee’s 8-year license fee has dropped from $100 to $65, effective from January 1, 2020. West Virginia also reduced $75 fee for a LCDW to $25, starting on June 1, 2020.”

The number of people with carry permits in 1999 totaled 2.7 million. The figure rose to 11.1 million by 2014, but pales by comparison to this year’s record-setting 19.48 million.

“At the same time that there has been an exponential growth in permits, there has been a general linear decline in murder and violent crime rates,” the co-authors wrote. “Murder rates fell from 5.7 to 5.0 per 100,000, a 12-percent drop. Overall violent crime fell by 29 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage of adults with permits soared by five-fold.”

BLUF:
In short, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is not only not anachronistic — it’s crucial. If the police are defunded or forced to stand down, the only way to protect oneself and one’s property will be to exercise one’s right to armed self-defense.

The Second Amendment is as necessary today as it has ever been

In the summer of 2020, riots and looting broke out across the United States. In cities from Seattle to New York, police were ordered to stand down and let the riots and looting take their course. The lesson from these events is that you cannot rely on the police to protect your life and property from criminal aggression. And that makes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms more important than ever.

The right to defend oneself with firearms against criminal aggression dates back to the days before the U.S. became independent of Great Britain. While that right was often successfully defended in the political process, it took until 2008, in the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, for the Supreme Court to hold that the Second Amendment guarantees against the federal government an individual right to possess firearms and to use them for self-defense within the home. Still, that right has been hanging by a thread because four justices dissented.

The Heller dissenters argued that whatever the original intent of the Second Amendment, the right is obsolete in modern society. They claimed that, while armed self-defense may have been needed when the U.S. lacked the infrastructure needed to provide security for the citizenry, the existence of modern professionalized law enforcement eliminates the need for armed self-protection.

Two years later, multiple large American cities unsuccessfully urged the Supreme Court to allow local and state governments to disarm citizens in McDonald v. City of Chicago. They argued that “in more urban areas that have the benefit of a concentrated and highly trained police force … the need for individuals to arm themselves for self-defense is less compelling.”

Seeking justice outside the courtroom

The riots of this summer undermine this claim. The country hadn’t seen such destructive violence in decades. For example, in Minneapolis, the killing of George Floyd sparked mayhem and lawlessness that resulted in two more deaths and at least $500 million in damage, the most destructive riots since 1992 in Los Angeles.

The chaos that followed Floyd’s killing touched off an unprecedented surge in Minneapolis crime the following month, including more than 1,500 shots-fired 911 calls — twice as many as the same period the year before. Homicides in Minneapolis went up 114%.

Second Amendment critics tell people to rely on the police for self-protection. Where were the police during this crisis? The mayor ordered them to stand down, leaving Minneapolis residents and business owners to their own devices. The same thing occurred during riots and looting in Chicago, Columbus, Louisville, and Portland. Continue reading “”

First I’d change ‘rather than ‘ to ‘as well as those suitable for‘ individual self-defense’.

Second, a point that can be made from that last sentence is that Tench Coxe’s  “...every terrible implement of the soldier are the birthright of an American” means exactly that.
The NFA’34 & GCA ’68 restrictions, regulations and bans on automatic and destructive device firearms, among others, are unconstitutional

The State’s Monopoly of Force and the Right to Bear Arms

In debates over the Second Amendment, the conventional view is that the government ought to possess a monopoly of legitimate force, subject to the right of individuals to act in emergency self-defense. Many treat the non-defensive circumstances in which our system decentralizes force as holdovers from days of nonprofessional police and soldiers. When it comes to the Second Amendment, many believe that the only legitimate reason individuals may bear arms today is for individual self-defense against isolated criminal violence (e.g., an occupied home invasion).

This symposium article attacks the monopoly of force account, justifying the continued relevance of American law’s decentralization of legitimate force. This article argues that decentralization of force remains important for three reasons. First, despite the rise of professional police, American law enforcement still enforces law below desirable levels. Underenforcement of core crimes is particularly a problem in disadvantaged and rural communities and during times of civil unrest. Decentralization of force helps mitigate the underenforcement problem. And decentralization may be a better solution than simply providing more police because many areas where law is underenforced also (paradoxically) suffer from the effects of overcriminalization. Increased police presence could make the overcriminalization problem worse without solving the underenforcement problem. Second, American law has a mismatch between public duties and private rights. While providing effective law enforcement is a public duty, it is not a private right. Individuals, thus, have no effective claim that the government adequately enforce the law or protect them against unlawful violence. And any attempt to create such a private right would create profound separation of powers concerns. Consequently, self-help and private law enforcement are the best remedies when governments undersupply needed levels of police protection. Third, even if the “government” has a monopoly of force, it does not follow that government officers are the only ones in whom the government’s monopoly may be vested. The “government” is an incorporeal entity whose power must be exercised by human agents. Agents do not perfectly carry out the tasks of their principals; some government officers commit malfeasance and nonfeasance. The decentralization of force provides a remedy for such abuses of office.

Ultimately, the article concludes that the individual right to bear arms still has relevance for public defense and security. This fact should warrant consideration when determining the scope of the right, including that the arms protected by the Second Amendment should continue to include those arms whose primary value is public security rather than individual self-defense.

The Second Amendment as a Guard Against Government-Sanctioned Tyrannous Factions

The rioting and looting that occurred in American cities during the summer of 2020 highlights an heretofore ignored aspect of the Second Amendment—the Framers’ concerns about the danger of factions.
The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, through which the Second Amendment applies to the states, witnessed first-hand freedmen and white Republicans being subjected to terrorist campaigns supported or accommodated by local law enforcement which the “Redeemers” controlled politically. Similarly, the riots and looting of 2020 illustrate that even today, local government officials can be complicit in law-enforcement using political, unequal criteria in determining whether and to what extent to preserve and enforce law and order.
Reviewing the events of Summer 2020 suggest that the individual right to self-defense is not only still important, but remains a necessary check on violent factions allied with corrupt local government.

This paper argues that the Second Amendment carries a particular force and has special application when individuals must defend themselves and their property against tyrannous factions that operate with the direct or indirect support of government.
The Second Amendment counters faction in two ways: it protects the individual right of self-defense against violent factions; and it checks the power of government to oppress its citizens through violent factions. Although the Constitution as a whole embodies a concern about faction, the Second Amendment provides unique protections against the abuses of faction by giving citizens the right to defend themselves from criminal aggression when the government will not.

Learn to Practice Situational Awareness.

Those of us who teach don’t have too much difficulty helping a student learn to shoot well enough to defend themselves. It is also relatively easy to teach a student to do speed loads and clear malfunctions. The real challenge is trying to teach that student to spot a criminal attack early enough that there is time to prepare and respond.

Too many people just don’t pay enough attention to what is going on around them. And then, in many cases, they may see it but not understand what is happening. This is the reason that so many criminal attacks seem to occur at such close range.  In most cases, if the citizen were more observant and understood what was being seen, the criminal would never get that close.

Citizens will often look at a police video and wonder why the officers were using the level of force that they were when it seems to unnecessary. The citizen is seeing it, but not from the same level of experience and training that the officers are. People who have survived a robbery, rape or assault, are seldom difficult to convince that they need to take a greater interest in their personal safety. But, that is a high price to pay for education and it assumes that the citizen will survive — which, as we know, is sadly not always the case.

The first step is to force yourself to be more observant of things that are going on around you. When walking out of the restaurant, into the dark parking lot, you are scanning the area instead of listening to your friend’s funny joke.  You are looking for things and people that appear to be out of place: that group of what appears to be street punks standing next to the cars in this high-end eatery; the person who is looking at you but turns away when he sees that you’ve noticed; the guy coming out of the darkness, asking for directions.

The person who has some street experience has a leg up on understanding the criminal mind because he has already seen crooks in action. But, the average citizen can also increase his knowledge on the subject without having to learn by being a victim. I highly recommend getting some books, videos or training classes on body language because the crook will nearly always give himself away if you know what you are looking at.

In addition, take the time to study reports of actual criminal attacks. What was the first clue that a victim should have seen? What mistakes did the victim make that set him up for the attack? It will often become clear that the victim simply wasn’t paying attention.

I live in an area that has a lot of rattlesnakes, yet I’ve never been bitten. Early on, I learned what rattlesnakes looked like and what they are capable of. Then, having a healthy respect for those rascals, I determined to be extremely observant and careful. I can teach you to shoot and run your gun, but I can’t make you pay attention to what is going on around you. Hopefully, you will teach yourself to watch and understand those snakes that walk among us.

Comparing the Global Rate of Mass Public Shootings to the U.S.’s Rate and Comparing Their Changes Over Time

The U.S. is well below the world average in terms of the number of mass public shootings, and the global increase over time has been much bigger than for the United States.

Over the 20 years from 1998 to 2017, our list contains 2,772 attacks and at least 5,764 shooters outside the United States and 62 attacks and 66 shooters within our country. By our count, the US makes up less than 1.13% of the mass public shooters, 1.77% of their murders, and 2.19% of their attacks. All these are much less than the US’s 4.6% share of the world population. Attacks in the US are not only less frequent than other countries, they are also much less deadly on average. Out of the 101 countries where we have identified mass public shootings occurring, the United States ranks 66th in the per capita frequency of these attacks and 56th in the murder rate.

Not only have these attacks been much more common outside the US, the US’s share of these attacks has declined over time. There has been a much bigger increase over time in the number of mass shootings in the rest of the world compared to the US.

Defending Against Riots and Mobs. A short history lesson Massad Ayoob

What with the way most smart people won’t even talk with pollsters,  I’d say the numbers are higher.

22% of Gun-Owning Households Have Added A Gun Since Anti-Police Protests Began

Over one-fifth of Americans who have a gun in their household have added one since the Black Lives Matter anti-police protests began in late May and feel safer because they’ve done so.

Forty-three percent (43%) of American adults say they or someone in their household owns a gun, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey.(To see survey question wording, click here.)

Of these Americans, 22% say they or someone in their household has purchased a gun since the violent anti-police protests began.

Fifty-four percent (54%) of adults who live in gun-owning households say they feel more safe with a gun in the house, although that’s down from 61% in February 2018. Only seven percent (7%) feel less safe. Thirty-eight percent (38%) think the presence of the gun has no impact on their personal safety. Continue reading “”