Americans Continue to Acquire Firearms at Record Pace

In each of the last 52 straight months, Americans have purchased more than a million firearms. Last month was no exception: On Black Friday there were nearly a quarter of a million firearms sold, and the 1.6 million sold for the entire month was the third highest November sales in history.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) estimates that by the end of this year citizens will have added another 14-plus million firearms to their arsenals. That arsenal is estimated to be approaching 400 million privately owned firearms in the United States.

One question keeps popping up: Why? NSSF spokesman Mark Oliva said it’s partly seasonal, with “the upswing in the number of background checks [occurring] in the later months of the year, which coincide with hunting seasons and the holiday shopping sales.”

But there’s another factor: Crime. Said Oliva:

However, there are many communities with sustained levels of crime that have not abated. Those concerns, along with the punishing anti-gun measures by the Biden administration and threats of more gun control promised by the Biden-Harris reelection campaign, cannot be discounted as contributing factors.

Americans have demonstrated month-after-month, and year-after-year, Second Amendment rights matter, and they are investing their hard-earned dollars to exercise their right to lawfully possess firearms before the right can be further infringed.

Oliva didn’t answer the other question, though: Who is buying them?

According to NBC News, it’s liberal Democrats! Its November survey of gun ownership in the country revealed a startling statistic: 41 percent of Democrats now say they live in a household where there is at least one firearm, up a breathtaking eight percent in just the last four years.

And in the process those Democrats have unwittingly set another record: More than half of all American households now have at least one firearm.

When Newsweek asked retired Florida State University Professor Gary Kleck why, he said that “it may be a response to recent increases in crime rates in big cities, where Democrats claim a larger share of the population.”

Oh, the irony! Democrats vote in progressive DA’s, who emasculate criminal laws, resulting in more criminals being allowed back on the streets, who then continue to commit more crimes! Is anyone making a connection?

NRA spokesman Billy McLaughlin certainly did:

Law-abiding Americans, having witnessed everything from politicians’ attempts to close gun stores during the pandemic to the Biden Crime Wave decimating our communities, see law enforcement being undermined and progressive district attorneys not prosecuting criminals, effectively putting them back on the streets.

This has awakened many Americans to the harsh reality that the responsibility to defend themselves and their family rests firmly in their own hands. The marked rise in gun ownership is a rational response from any citizen who sees the likelihood of them being a victim of crime has increased exponentially.

Progressive DAs have caused a doubling – a doubling! – of gun violence in the Big Apple, and the same ideology of liberals controlling Oakland, California, has caused the same tragedy on the West Coast: Crime there has jumped by 26 percent so far this year, including a 52-percent increase in carjackings.

It’s unclear who said it first — Frank Rizzo or Irving Kristol — but they both have rightly said: “A conservative is a liberal who got mugged the night before.”

However, a liberal doesn’t have to get mugged before he wakes up to the danger progressives have allowed, just to use common sense.