The more gun sales we have in the United States, the more impossible the idea of disarmament becomes. It’s one thing to ban guns, but if you want to round up hundreds of millions of firearms, well, that is a logistical nightmare at best.
And so a lot of gun sales aren’t just good for the firearm industry, it’s good for all of us.
Plus, a robust number of firearms being sold suggests that there isn’t a lot of support for some of the more extensive gun control laws we see proposed.
But do we have a lot of gun sales?
According to the FBI, background checks for gun purchases passed 1 million last month.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the industry representative, said that of 2,152,187 background checks last month, 1,110,696 were likely for gun purchases and transfers, the rest being for carry and other security permits.
“June marks the 47th month in a row that has exceeded 1 million adjusted background checks in a single month,” said the group.
That’s beautiful, man. Absolutely beautiful.
I’m going to assume that pace will continue for at least one more month. That means we’ll be looking at four years of at least 1 million firearm sales per month.
That’s another 12 million guns in law-abiding hands each and every year, at least. With no signs of slowing down, that means that 400 million guns estimate is going to be outdated very soon, assuming it’s not already.
And that, to the consternation of the gun control lobby, is a very good thing.
We just celebrated Independence Day. That’s the day we celebrate armed citizens taking up their guns and repulsing a tyrannical government that was oppressing them. That’s a war that was started when the British strolled up to Lexington and Concord to confiscate guns.
It didn’t work out well for them, now did it?
Because of these gun sales, though, the next would-be tyrant has to think long and hard as to whether they have it in them to tangle with the American people. Each gun sale is another brick in the Second Amendment wall that keeps our nation free.
We don’t need to use them to repel tyrants, either, because they know better. While Admiral Yamamoto never actually said it, the whole “there will be a rifle behind every blade of grass” sentiment is accurate, and I’m damn proud of it.
This is why so many people want to enact gun control. That kind of freedom is scary to them. It means that we have the means to contest literally anything the government does if we find it obtrusive enough, and it terrifies them.
Frankly, the fact that we haven’t seen it yet is a sign that gun owners are restrained to an extreme. That’s a very good thing and I applaud that restraint.
These sales, though, are potentially bad news for gun control.
Contrary to the rhetoric we often hear from the anti-gun crowd, most gun owners don’t want more regulations. Sure, there are exceptions, and a few proposed regulations may sound tolerable to many of them, but when the rubber meets the road and these gun owners look at them, they tend to oppose these measures.
So with over 1 million gun sales per month, there are a lot of new gun owners coming into the fold. They might be anti-gun to start with, which isn’t unusual, but they won’t remain that way for very long. Get enough of them owning guns and the gun debate changes significantly in this country.
I won’t say there won’t be any push for gun control, but it’ll be a hell of a lot tamer than gun bans and heavy restrictions like we currently see.
