For the third straight year, gun sales are estimated to have declined in the state of Colorado based on background checks in the state, but despite the claims of gun control advocates, the decreased sales haven’t led to a decrease in violent crime. Quite the opposite, actually, with violent crime up more than 25-percent since the state imposed several gun control restrictions in 2013.
Last year marked the lowest number of gun sales in the state since 2014, and purchases have steadily dropped since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. Research shows sales tend to increase under Democratic presidents and decrease during Republican regimes.
December served as the most popular month for sales with 37,195 applications, a trend that has remained constant throughout the years as holidays spur demand.
Of the 335,370 background checks conducted last year, nearly 98% were approved, CBI data show. The most common reasons for denial included a potential purchaser having a criminal record for assault and drug crimes.
While gun sales have dropped nearly 12% in Colorado since 2016, they remain 70% higher than they were in 2008, when 196,980 applied for background checks. Sales spiked by 93% in the state during Barack Obama’s eight years in office, part of a massive gun ownership hike across the country.
“When Obama was elected, sure enough gun sales went up,” Eileen McCarron, president of Colorado Ceasefire Legislative Action, said. “But they didn’t just spike — they went up and stayed up.”
McCarron is right about gun sales, but that increase in gun sales went hand in hand with a nationwide decline in violent crime. Unfortunately, Colorado has bucked the nationwide trend, and residents are paying the price for the actions of lawmakers.
Then-governor John Hickenlooper, who’s now running for the U.S. Senate in Colorado, promised residents back in 2013 that his gun control measures would save lives, as did anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who helped ram through the gun control bills in the state legislature without a single Republican backing the measures.
“Extending background checks to cover private sales and limiting high-capacity ammunition magazines are commonsense measures that will keep communities safer without infringing on anyone’s Second Amendment rights,” said Bloomberg. “As lawmakers in Congress continue the debate over how to reduce gun violence in America, they should look no further than Colorado as a model of progress.”
Welp. Here we are almost six years later, and violent crime is way up in the state, including shootings involving teenagers. The police chief in Aurora recently noted that more criminals are using guns in the commission of violent crimes. Bloomberg’s current campaign ads say he’ll “get it done,” but what did he do in Colorado? He got some gun control laws on the books. He certainly didn’t improve the situation on the ground for the good people in Colorado’s worst neighborhoods.
The fundamental premise of gun control is that fewer guns equals less crime. That’s been disproven in Colorado, but anti-gun politicians like John Hickenlooper and Michael Bloomberg will never be called out for the failures of their gun control policies, at least not by their allies in the media.
