Staff Reports
In the United States, gun sales have regularly topped one million for 50 months in a row, which has never happened before. What is causing these sales to go through the roof? Well, gun experts say the change is because people aren't as worried about government gun control as they used to be. They're more worried about their own safety. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) just recently said that Americans have continued to buy guns in shockingly large numbers, with 2,035,410 background checks done just in September. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, this means that more than 1.1 million guns were sold.
After 50 straight months of gun sales over 1 million, the driver of the historic trend appears to be shifting from concerns about government gun control to personal safety, according to firearms experts.https://t.co/FHhByihgKT
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 4, 2023
It's interesting that this rise in sales seems to be driven by new gun buyers, like women and people of color who are becoming more worried about their safety. These buyers are different from people who bought guns in the past, who did so mostly out of fear that liberal leaders would ban guns. Since violent crimes are becoming more common and are often talked about on social media, it looks like the number of people buying guns is not going to stop. More Americans are thinking about protecting themselves by arming themselves.
Two recent events have made the need for personal safety even more clear. The first was when armed thieves stole the car of a Texas lawmaker in a busy part of Washington, D.C. In the second case, a food delivery worker in Virginia was found not guilty of shooting a social media troll who made him feel threatened. Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said, "The disgusting and violent attack on Congressman Henry Cuellar shows why Americans still choose to use their Second Amendment rights." Oliva went on, "Crime rates have not gone down, and criminals continue to target innocent Americans with no consequences."
Justin Anderson, the marketing head at Hyatt Guns in Charlotte, North Carolina, says that when crime rates go up, people usually want to buy more guns. Even though crime rates may not have gone up much in their area, Anderson says that law-abiding people are constantly seeing crimes committed by people who feel safe because the cops aren't prosecuting them harshly. This has made people afraid, which is why high numbers of scared people have armed themselves for safety. Anderson, on the other hand, stresses that the need for more personal safety through gun ownership points to a bigger problem in society. He is worried about how our society is falling apart and what might happen as a result of this scary trend.
The rise in gun sales is definitely a sign that more and more Americans are worried about their safety. Law-abiding people have decided to use their rights under the Second Amendment, even though politicians who want to limit those rights have tried to do so. Lawful gun ownership gives Americans the power to protect themselves and refuse to be victims in a world where crime rates are going up and thieves don't care about people or the law. The rise in gun sales may be good for the economy, but it's also a sad sign of the bigger problems we face as a society.
