ABC News ran a story this past weekend as part of its “America in Transition” series that covered the 2020 surge in gun sales.
One of the main takeaways from the report is that of the 21 million guns sold this year, at least 7 million were sold to first-time purchasers and many of those new buyers were women.
Why are women increasingly embracing 2A rights?
Same reason everyone else is. Riots, lockdowns, massive unemployment, calls to defund the police — not to mention the contested results of the presidential election — all create a growing unease about what the future holds for this country.
THE DEMOCRATS DUMPED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF BALLOTS IN THE SWING STATES LATE IN THE EVENING. IT WAS A RIGGED ELECTION!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2020
Mother of three, Trish Beaudet told ABC reporters, “I’ve never owned a gun. I’ve never wanted a gun. I’ve never had a gun in my home.”
“It really bothers me when I watched things on the news, when you talk about the riots, and the looting, and the violence that’s happening,” continued Beaudet, a Florida resident. “Pulling a gun is the last thing I ever want to do, but I want to know that if I need to protect myself, my family, my, you know, my children, that I can do that.”
Erin Hart, a mother of two and a self-described Democrat, echoed those concerns.
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“My nightmare scenario would be being at home alone, middle of the night, and just myself and, you know, the boys, and, and someone coming in to harm us,” she explained. “When things start to hit a little closer home it kind of makes you sit up and think about it.”
Comments like these cannot augur well for the anti-gun lobby’s agenda. For example, the Bloomberg-funded organization Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America must be at the very least nonplussed because the spike in gun sales indicates a shift from moms demanding action (for tougher gun laws) to moms demanding protection, more specifically, moms demand an untrammeled capacity to keep and bear arms.
As Mark Oliva of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association, told ABC News, “People, again, are taking a look at what’s around them, taking stock of their own security and their safety needs, and they’re realizing that their elected officials are abandoning them.”
What’s also happening is more people are recognizing that gun control is not a viable means to keep oneself and one’s family safe during a time of crisis. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles are all cities with the most restrictive gun laws on the books. But those laws did nothing to stop the widespread looting, arson, and violence in the wake of the death of ex-felon George Floyd.
Recent events have exposed what many of us in the gun community have known for a long time. That is, you have a choice to make when it comes to your personal safety. Either you can take responsibility for it and exercise your 2A rights or you can put it in the hands of politicians and anti-gun activists who believe that the best way to protect the public from violent offenders is to disarm law-abiding citizens.
Based on gun and ammo sales in 2020, we know what choice millions of Americans, including women like Beaudet and Hart, are making.