One of my favorite articles not published at LI this year is the New York Times piece flummoxed by and bemoaning the fact that Obama’s calls for gun control go nowhere and serve only to increase gun sales.
More guns were sold in December [2015] than almost any other month in nearly two decades, continuing a pattern of spikes in sales after terrorist attacks and calls for stricter gun-buying laws, according to federal data released in January.The heaviest sales last month, driven primarily by handgun sales, followed a call from President Obama to make it harder to buy assault weapons after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif.Fear of gun-buying restrictions has been the main driver of spikes in gun sales, far surpassing the effects of mass shootings and terrorist attacks alone, according to an analysis of federal background check data by The New York Times.During the previous record month, December 2012, Mr. Obama called for new buying restrictions after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.“President Obama has actually been the best salesman for firearms,” Brian W. Ruttenbur, an analyst with BB&T Capital Markets, a financial services firm, said last month.
This assessment of Obama as “the best salesman for firearms” is proving truer than ever as 44% of American homes now contain one or more firearms.
The Washington Examiner reports that “Pew Research Center, in a poll on guns released Friday, showed that 44 percent of the country has a gun in the house. Some 51 percent don’t.” It’s not clear where the “missing” 5% stand.
It bucks the trend of other polls, namely CBS News, which found that the percentage of gun ownership hovered in the mid-30s.Yes, anti-gun liberals will point out that the majority of households don’t have guns. Yet, the same survey found that 52 percent of Americans prioritize protecting gun rights over new means to control ownership. Moreover, it’s a constitutional right. It’s part of the Bill of Rights, which is immune to public opinion and for good reason.
Interestingly, Republican voters have become more supportive of the Second Amendment since 2008.
Pew’s graphic illustrates:
While Americans are purchasing more guns, they are still susceptible to “slippery slope” proposals like expanding background checks, banning some firearms, and banning terror watch listees from gun ownership without due process. Interestingly, bans on certain weaponry did not reach 50% among millennials.
Townhall continues:
[T]he Pew survey also found majority support for most of the Left’s anti-gun agenda. Eighty-one percent support background checks for private and gun show sales; 52 percent support an assault weapons ban; 50 percent back a ban on high-capacity magazines; and 71 percent back a ban on those on terror watch lists from buying guns.. . . . Another interesting nugget in the data rests with Millennials. The proposals banning so-called assault weapons and high-capacity magazine couldn’t break 50 percent support with this overwhelmingly liberal voting block.
Women, Pew found, were also more likely to support certain weapons-related bans.
The numbers regarding “girls with guns” are hotly debated, but gun manufacturers have relatively recently been catering to women who want to buy their first firearm, are interested in adding a “girly” gun to their collection, and / or take weapons training with the goal of eventually purchasing a gun.
Gun manufacturers are producing guns that are pink and purple and that sport glitter on smaller grips designed with the women’s often smaller hand in mind. As an anecdotal aside, my mother called me after she had visited a local gun shop enthusing about “the cutest gun” she ever saw. It was pink.
The New York Times notes that “gun sales have more than doubled in a decade,” but to be fair, it’s not just Obama’s and the Democrats’ repeated calls for gun control that are driving up sales. With the rise of ISIS and of terror attacks on our own soil under Obama’s watch, Americans feel less safe than they did eight years ago.
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