Category: Born again Cynic!
by Victor Davis Hanson
Almost immediately, three media narratives emerged.
One, semiautomatic weapons, not the killer Audrey Hale, were mostly responsible for the massacre.
Two, the shooter’s transgender identity profile played no role in the killing whatsoever.
Three, the public had no need to know of the contents of the shooter’s “manifesto.”
Why?
The media and authorities apparently assumed Hale’s written rantings tried to justify the murders because of Christianity’s supposed disapproval of transgenderism.
That censored reaction to the Tennessee shooting was quite different from another mass murder committed nearly six weeks later in Allen, Texas by a former security guard Mauricio Garcia.
Within minutes of the identification of the shooter, the media blared that Garcia wore pro-Nazi insignia and was thus a “white supremacist.”
Apparently that narrative was deemed useful to promote the idea of white supremacist terrorists using their semiautomatic “assault” weapons to kill for right-wing agendas.
Yet second-generation Hispanic immigrants, whose parents do not speak English, are not likely “white supremacists.”
The strained effort to make violent “people of color” into white right-wing killers is reminiscent of Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012.
Then the media reinvented the shooter, half-Peruvian George Zimmerman, into a “white Hispanic.” He was transformed into a right-wing vigilante and racist who supposedly hunted down an innocent black teenager.
The media did not wish to portray Martin’s death as a fight between an Hispanic and black teen. Instead, it tried to refashion the shooting as “systemic racism”—to the point of doctoring the 911 tape and photoshopping Zimmerman’s police photo to fit its false narratives.
Recently, an African American man named Deion Patterson lethally shot one and wounded four others in an Atlanta medical waiting room. His own politics, race, and type of weapon were apparently of little interest. So he was simply described as suffering from mental illness.
The media also did not wish to sensationalize either the profile or circumstances of another contemporaneous mass shooter Francisco Oropeza. He executed five of his neighbors, including a young boy and two women.
Only later did we learn that Oropeza was in fact an illegal alien who had been deported four times previously and returned each time through an open border.
Most recently, outrage grew over the homicide of Jordan Neely, a homeless man who frequented the subway and often threatened and occasionally attacked bystanders.
When a would-be good Samaritan and ex-Marine determined Neely’s latest threats to passengers were serious, he subdued him with a choke hold. Tragically Neely died while being restrained.
A media circus followed. Neely was black. The former Marine who held him down was white. So activists and the media immediately cited the death as yet more proof of systemic racism.
The public was lectured that Neely was a talented impersonator, who did professional street imitations of Michael Jackson.
The violent death of his mother, we were told, had traumatized him.
Released subway videos showed him on the floor of the subway, thrashing about while the white Marine held him in a headlock.
Protests and demands for a murder indictment followed.
Then later the inevitable skipped details trickled out, despite, not because of, media coverage.
Neely had been arrested 42 times, including for lewd conduct, with three convictions for violent assaults.
His forte was brutally punching random victims in the face, including a 67-year old woman, and a 68-year-old Hispanic male.
The news stories also neglected to mention that a black passenger helped subdue Neely.
The public learned there might be other, as yet unreleased, videos of Neely earlier threatening commuters.
Death is traumatic enough, without searching for ways to gain political traction from it.
It is eerie how each tragedy prompts a desperate effort to spin narratives of a racist America, where only right-wing killers and vigilantes prey on marginalized people of color and the transgendered.
Once these fables become “facts,” then the media runs with their fables.
– – –
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump and the recently released The Dying Citizen.
U.S.A. – New York Attorney General Letitia James has taken legal action against Mean Arms, a Georgia-based gun accessory manufacturer, for their alleged involvement in the illegal possession of assault weapons in New York. The lawsuit follows the tragic incident in Buffalo, where a shooter used Mean Arms’ magazine lock, known as the MA Lock, to replace magazines in his AR-15 and carried out a mass shooting that claimed the lives of 10 individuals.
According to the lawsuit, Mean Arms deceptively promotes the MA Lock as a device that makes weapons compliant with New York’s gun laws. However, it is alleged that the lock can be effortlessly removed, allowing the shooter to add 30-round detachable magazines to the firearm used in the massacre. The Attorney General argues that Mean Arms’ marketing practices and instructions on how to remove the lock contribute to the illegal possession of assault weapons in the state.
Attorney General James danced in the blood of the Buffalo shooting, calling it “one of the darkest days in the history of New York and the nation.” While dramatically claiming that the harm caused cannot be undone, and she aims to seek “justice” for the lives lost by the acts of a madman by now pursuing legal action against Mean Arms.
The NY lawsuit seeks several “remedies”, including a halt to Mean Arms’ operations in New York, restitution, damages, and civil penalties for the company’s alleged violations of state laws. Moreover, the Attorney General intends to force Mean Arms to issue corrective statements regarding the misleading claims made about the MA Lock.
Mean Arms’ MA Lock is designed to lock a detachable magazine in place on a semiautomatic rifle using a shear bolt mechanism. However, the New York Attorney General’s office found that the company provides instructions on how to easily remove the lock on the packaging itself. Online videos also demonstrate the removal process, which involves using a #2 speed out drill bit and a power drill.
The lawsuit reveals that the Buffalo shooter had purchased a semiautomatic rifle with the MA Lock installed and a 10-round magazine in January 2022. Using the common tools and a power drill, he removed the lock, enabling him to attach multiple illegal, under New York law, 30-round detachable magazines. This modification allowed the shooter to continue firing 30 rounds without reloading, as would be the case with the NY arbitrary number of 10 rounds, and according to the AG, that somehow contributed to the increased “lethality” of the attack.
Attorney General James’ legal bullying of Mean Arms is part of her ongoing efforts to claim she is doing something to curb “gun violence” and to force “responsible gun safety laws” on New York. In recent months, her office has wasted taxpayer monies on a statewide gun buyback program and cracked down on online ammunition sellers for “illegal” shipping.
While the lawsuit claims to hold Mean Arms accountable, it is worth noting that laws like New York’s, banning so-called high-capacity magazines have faced legal challenges. Various federal courts, including the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, have ruled such bans to be unconstitutional, citing the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The lawsuit against Mean Arms, however, underscores the Attorney General’s commitment to doing the dirty work of gun banners. The legal action has garnered support from advocacy groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, as well as local leaders, including U.S. Representative Brian Higgins and Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown.
By Fred Riehl and AI technology. Note: This article was generated using AI technology and may contain some automated content and analysis.
“There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army.”—Thomas Jefferson, 1789
What does it say about the state of our freedoms that there are now more pencil-pushing, bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with weapons than U.S. Marines?
Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the IRS, Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities.
Add in the Biden Administration’s plans to swell the ranks of the IRS by 87,000 new employees (some of whom will be authorized to use deadly force) and grow the nation’s police forces by 100,000 more cops, and you’ve got a nation in the throes of martial law.
We’re being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun.
Make that hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of federal agents armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorized to make arrests, and trained in military tactics has nearly tripled over the past several decades.
As Adam Andrzejewski writes for Forbes, “the federal government has become one never-ending gun show.”
While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, federal agencies have been placing orders for hundreds of millions of rounds of hollow point bullets and military gear.
For example, the IRS has stockpiled 4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition in recent years, including 621 shotguns, 539 long-barrel rifles and 15 submachine guns.
The Veterans Administration purchased 11 million rounds of ammunition (equivalent to 2,800 rounds for each of their officers), along with camouflage uniforms, riot helmets and shields, specialized image enhancement devices and tactical lighting.
The Department of Health and Human Services acquired 4 million rounds of ammunition, in addition to 1,300 guns, including five submachine guns and 189 automatic firearms for its Office of Inspector General.
According to an in-depth report on “The Militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies,” the Social Security Administration secured 800,000 rounds of ammunition for their special agents, as well as armor and guns.
The Environmental Protection Agency owns 600 guns. The Smithsonian now employs 620-armed “special agents.”
Even agencies such as Amtrak and NASA have their own SWAT teams.
Ask yourselves: why are government agencies being turned into military outposts?
What’s with the buildup of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies? Even the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department have their own SWAT teams. Most of those officers are under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Justice.
Why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic submachine guns and hollow point bullets? For that matter, why do its agents need ballistic vests and body armor?
For that matter, why do IRS agents need AR-15 rifles?
Why do local police need armored personnel carriers with gun ports, compact submachine guns with 30-round magazines, precision battlefield sniper rifles, and military-grade assault-style rifles and carbines?
Why is the federal government distributing obscene amounts of military equipment, weapons and ammunition to police departments around the country?
Why is the military partnering with local police to conduct training drills around the country? And what exactly are they training for? The public has been disallowed from obtaining any information about the purpose of these realistic urban training drills, other than that they might be loud and to not be alarmed.
We should be alarmed.
As James Madison warned, “We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”
Unfortunately, we’re long past the first experiment on our freedoms, and merely taking alarm over this build-up of military might will no longer suffice.
Nothing about this de facto army of bureaucratic, administrative, non-military, paper-pushing, non-traditional law enforcement agencies is necessary for national security.
Moreover, while these weaponized, militarized, civilian forces which are armed with military-style guns, ammunition and equipment; trained in military tactics; and authorized to make arrests and use deadly force—may look and act like the military, they are not the military.
Rather, they are foot soldiers of the police state’s standing army, and they are growing in number at an alarming rate.
This standing army—a.k.a. a national police force—vested with the power to completely disregard the Constitution and rule by force is exactly what America’s founders feared, and its danger cannot be overstated or ignored.
This is exactly what martial law looks like—when a government disregards constitutional freedoms and imposes its will through military force, only this is martial law without any government body having to declare it: Battlefield tactics. Militarized police. Riot and camouflage gear. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Drones. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Concussion grenades. Intimidation tactics. Brute force. Laws conveniently discarded when it suits the government’s purpose.
The militarization of America’s police forces in recent decades, which has gone hand in hand with the militarization of America’s bureaucratic agencies, has merely sped up the timeline by which the nation is transformed into an authoritarian regime.
Now we find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of administrative, police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military with little to no regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.
This quasi-state of martial law has been helped along by government policies and court rulings that have made it easier for the police to shoot unarmed citizens, for law enforcement agencies to seize cash and other valuable private property under the guise of asset forfeiture, for military weapons and tactics to be deployed on American soil, for government agencies to carry out round-the-clock surveillance, for legislatures to render otherwise lawful activities as extremist if they appear to be anti-government, for profit-driven private prisons to lock up greater numbers of Americans, for homes to be raided and searched under the pretext of national security, for American citizens to be labeled terrorists and stripped of their rights merely on the say-so of a government bureaucrat, and for pre-crime tactics to be adopted nationwide that strip Americans of the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty and creates a suspect society in which we are all guilty until proven otherwise.
Don’t delude yourself into believing that this thinly-veiled exercise in martial law is anything other than an attempt to bulldoze what remains of the Constitution and reinforce the iron-fisted rule of the police state.
This is no longer about partisan politics or civil unrest or even authoritarian impulses.
This is a turning point.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.
If we are to have any hope of salvaging what’s left of our battered freedoms, we’d do well to start by disarming the IRS and the rest of the federal and state bureaucratic agencies, de-militarizing domestic police forces, and dismantling the police state’s standing army.
WC: 1308
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
—————————————————————————————-Its a nice dream but I am not holding my breath on this one! Grumpy
.JPG)
Young American men will be taught the hard way that selflessness, courage, and their masculine instincts will get them 20 to life in prison.
This week, a brave Marine acted when no one else would to restrain a deranged homeless schizophrenic on a New York City F train who was, by all accounts, terrorizing people and shouting “I’ll hurt anyone on this train.”
“‘I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison,’ screamed the 30-year-old Jordan Neely, who had 44 arrests under his belt and an outstanding warrant for felony assault (he punched an old woman in the face), as he flailed around throwing items of his clothing. ‘I’m ready to die!’ In response, a 24-year-old Marine Corps veteran put Neely in a chokehold, incapacitating him and releasing him after he stopped struggling and passed out,” Inez Stepman wrote.
When Neely died at the hospital, all hell broke loose.
This is not the first time a courageous man minding his own business has put himself in danger to protect others. It’s happened many times, in fact. Toxic masculinity has saved more lives than penicillin.
But in this case, the erratic lunatic was black, the courageous restrainer was not just white but blond and handsome, and worst of all: the lunatic shuffled off this mortal coil when he arrived at the hospital.
Inevitably, the left’s muscle memory of how politically lucrative George Floyd’s 2020 death was for them kicked in. The Floyd Playbook could be run!
AOC fired up her Twitter and called his death a “murder.” Al Sharpton is polishing his diamond cufflinks before his press conference. Neely’s cousins are getting fitted for new suits before their Oval Office visit. Nancy Pelosi has already ordered the solid gold casket and white horse-drawn carriage for the funeral, which will be held after Neely lies in state in the Capitol. Kente cloth scarves are being passed out in the Old Executive Office Building. Kamala Harris’s speechwriter is ripping nitrous balloons as he crafts her eulogy. The whole band is getting back together!
Weakness Is Strength. Courage Is Hatred
In the aftermath, I tweeted this: “Strong men brave enough to intervene publicly when a deranged lunatic is terrifying people are going to be rounded up first; this is brilliant strategy for the Regime. Pick off the bravest and most selfless heroes first. Leave the cowards behind, who will fall in line fast.”
The worse the subway Viking’s fate is, the less likely any of us, the sane ones, will be tempted to lift a finger when they come for us, our friends, or our neighbors. If the Viking gets 20 years on Riker’s Island, plus some prison rapes and beatings for good measure as the guards look the other way — that’ll teach you boys a lesson.
Since literally the morning the first European settlers set foot in the new country, the ethos drilled into American men is to be strong, be brave, and be prepared to protect and defend your family, your homestead, and your fellow man. This is what men are for, after all. This is why God made them stronger than women. Those biceps are not just for deadlifting. Their main purpose is twofold: wielding a spear for the hunt, and wielding your fists or a sword for defense.
It feels like Good Samaritan laws have gone in and out of favor over time in America. For many years after 9/11, no able-bodied man boarded an airplane without first preparing himself to tackle a terrorist if he had to. Does that happen anymore? Or would the passengers laugh and whip out their phones as the terrorist slit a flight attendant’s throat? You will not go to jail for watching someone beat another person to death as you stream it live on social media. That’s perfectly acceptable now, even encouraged.
But every normal man I know would be unable to stand and watch a psycho assaulting an innocent stranger. My future husband once threw the first punch in a bloody fistfight against a much larger, much drunker man who was persistently harassing me and getting in my face late at night outside a bar in New York City. (My husband won, so I married him soon after.)
You Won’t Get In Trouble for Being a Coward
As an avid Twitter user, I probably see a dozen graphic videos a week of men doing the opposite: standing idly by, shouting approval and laughing, cameras out, as violent individuals assault, beat, rape, and shoot innocent strangers. This violence is almost exclusively black-on-white, or black-on-Asian.
In April, such a video made national news: a terrified young woman in downtown Chicago is knocked down and stomped on by a large mob during a “teen takeover” of the city. Where are all the videos showing the white-on-black and white-on-Asian stompings? I’m sure if they existed, AOC herself would be tweeting them out 24/7.
In this terrible, ugly, upside-down, zero-trust society I’ve been forced to raise a family in, I have developed new survival rules. I have instructed my husband and son to be cowards. That’s right: to do nothing if they are in a situation where a dangerous psycho is threatening violence to a stranger.
I have begged them to sit on their hands; to be one of the people who just watches, runs away, or calls 911. It goes against every chivalric instinct in their bodies, but I do not want them dead or in jail. Instead of being hailed as heroes for saving some old lady’s life, they would be tried as killers and put away for life.
My teenage son informed me he won’t go along with my surrender monkey ethos and is prepared to defend himself and others if he has to. This is a dangerous virtue for a boy to have in a blue city in 2023! Does he want his mother to get gray hair? Doesn’t he know how much good hair colorists cost these days?
I have failed as a mother because I forgot to teach my sons to be cowards.
This week’s watershed event on the New York City F train illustrates the blackpilling utility of my new rules. “Son, you see that damsel in distress over there getting her teeth kicked out by that filthy homeless man? You just sit tight and get off at the next stop and tell the nearest social worker. It’s not your problem.”
Podcaster Aimee Terese tweeted: “A man threatening the safety of everyone else in a tiny, highly populated, contained space, is a liability to himself and to others. The marine is a hero, and we need more men like him, which is why the left is wetting the bed about it. They don’t want that ethos to catch on.”
Courage and Nobility Will Be Punished
Neely was lynched by a racist and this racist will be made an example of. This is a teaching moment for Democrats — young American men will be taught the hard way that nobility, selflessness, courage, and their masculine instinct to defend the innocent are bad. Don’t be like this former Marine!
Mohammed Atta’s immortal words to the doomed passengers of American Airlines Flight 11 were “Just stay quiet and you’ll be okay.” Of course, it only applies to some of us. The raving maniacs on our subways, in our parks, and on our buses are free to live their best lives.
Democrat politicians have made forced passivity the new rule for normal people out in public. We are all cuckolds now. After all, what other sane choice do we have?
Federal investigators said whistleblowers exposed the matter.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives intentionally overstated the duties of multiple workers so they could be classified as law enforcement agents and be paid more, according to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel report this week.
Federal investigators say the agency has been making such overpayments since 2003. And over 100 jobs in the agency’s human Resources department and other departments were falsely labeled as criminal investigators, according to the Washington Times.
The investigators allege that roughly $20 million was wasted on overpayments in a five-year period, according to a letter for the special counsel office Tuesday to President Biden.
Fifty employees who held positions that were misclassified have either been reassigned or have retired, according to the letter, obtained by CNBC that also states whistleblowers helped expose the matter.
“I thank the whistleblowers for coming forward with these very serious allegations and am pleased that under [Office of Personnel Management] oversight, ATF has initiated corrective measures,” special counsel Henry Kerner said.
Kerner said progress is being made toward fixing the problems, but acknowledged the process is slow.
“While I find the report to be reasonable, progress toward full resolution has been slow, which may be attributable to the long-standing nature of the problems and the entrenched culture reinforcing ATF’s practices,” he said.
Miracle Star Vaughn, a 27-year-old woman from North Liberty, Iowa, was sentenced last week to serve one year and a day in a Federal prison after pleading guilty to making false statements during the purchase of several firearms, according to an ATF press release.
Vaughn lied about her drug use on an ATF Form 4473, court documents show. Two of the firearms she purchased were later found in the possession of convicted felons, one of whom is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to possession of a firearm by a prohibited person.
Vaughn’s 366-day prison sentence was the product of a plea agreement. After she completes her prison term, she must serve an additional three years of supervised release.
The false statements Vaughn made about her drug use are similar to the false statement Hunter Biden allegedly made on Oct. 12, 2018, when he answered “No” on an ATF Form 4473, when asked;
“Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
Hunter Biden’s drug usage is well known and well documented, especially by him.
The president’s son enjoyed taking pictures of himself smoking crack cocaine and cavorting with prostitutes while brandishing a handgun. [airgun] Several years before he allegedly lied on the ATF form, Hunter Biden was booted out of the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine, and both he and his father have spoken openly about his crack cocaine addiction.
Lying on a Form 4473 is a federal felony and should be punishable by up to 10 years in prison, even for a president’s son.
At the time of his pistol purchase, Hunter Biden was living in Delaware and dating Hallie Biden, the widow of his late brother Beau. Police have said Hallie became concerned about Hunter’s mental health after he purchased the weapon. She allegedly placed the pistol in a plastic bag and tossed it in a dumpster behind a high-end grocery store, which is across the street from the Alexis I. du Pont High School and could have easily been found and misused by a child.
The FBI and the U.S. Secret Service became involved in the incident, but the full extent of their participation is not known. David Weiss, the U.S. Attorney for Delaware, has been investigating Hunter Biden’s firearm purchase and other alleged crimes for more than five years, but so far, no charges have been filed.
Takeaway
This case further illustrates how federal agents are more than willing to act like medieval palace guards rather than professional law enforcement officers if a Biden is involved.
Hunter Biden should be subjected to the same standard of justice that Miracle Star Vaughn received, if not more. After all, the 53-year-old unemployed drug addict is a negligent discharge just waiting to happen. His own videos show him holding a cocked 9mm Beretta [airgun] with his finger on the trigger, after smoking crack in a motel room with naked prostitutes. It’s only a matter of time before Hunter puts a round in someone.
If the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, the Department of Justice or the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware want to retain even the smallest shred of credibility, they need to follow the law, not the politics, and take enforcement action, regardless of whether the one with the smoking pipe or the smoking gun is a president’s son.
This story is presented by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and wouldn’t be possible without you. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support more pro-gun stories like this.
About Lee Williams
Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.
The sales of firearms, especially AR-15-style rifles, unexpectedly turned up last month, apparently driven by efforts in several states to impose gun bans.
Industry officials reviewing the latest FBI background check information said that states planning gun bans or moving to change the rules governing firearms purchases saw massive jumps in April sales.
In Washington state, where the governor just signed a law banning the sale or transfer of AR-style rifles, background checks for April sales surged to 71,272 compared to 49,641 in April 2022, a 43.6% increase, said Mark Oliva, the spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
The industry trade group found a surge in Illinois, where it recently won a federal court decision to block a ban on modern sporting rifles. There, Oliva said, sales background checks increased 11.7% in April.
(Image via the NSSF)
Ditto in Oregon, he said: “Oregon, a state with a legislature and governor’s office hostile to lawful firearm ownership, totaled 43,574 adjusted background checks in April 2023, compared to 27,921 a year ago, representing a 56.1% increase.”
Even states that moved to change the rules to buy guns saw a big sales uptick before any new regulations began to take effect.
“Notably, North Carolina’s legislature overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a bill that repealed the state’s antiquated Jim Crow-era permit-to-purchase a handgun scheme which immediately reverted the state to using the FBI NICS system to verify all handgun sales,” Oliva said. “North Carolina came in with 68,181 background checks in April 2023, compared to 18,967 in April 2022, a 238.4% increase.”
In recent months, concerns about safety drove sales highs, and that is continuing to add to the records. But Oliva said the difference in April was the threats from the government to take away gun rights.
SEE THE LATEST POLITICAL NEWS AND BUZZ FROM WASHINGTON SECRETS
“April’s uptick of 1,369,296 FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verifications shows that there continues to be a steady appetite for lawful firearm ownership even as certain state governors and legislators are taking radical measures to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens to possess firearms, especially the Modern Sporting Rifle,” Oliva said in a reference to AR- and AK-style rifles.
“These figures show that when Americans are concerned that government authorities will deny them the full spectrum of their Second Amendment rights, they will respond by exercising those rights. It also shows that when barriers to lawful firearm ownership are torn down, law-abiding citizens will exercise their right to lawfully purchase firearms,” he said.
