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'Fear on top of fear': Why anti-gun Americans joined the wave of new gun owners
National
‘Fear on top of fear’: Why anti-gun Americans joined the wave of new gun owners
Pandemic, police violence, calls to ‘defund the police’ fuel surge of first-time buyers
By Marc Fisher, Miranda Green, Kelly Glass and Andrea Eger
July 10, 2021
All his life, Jabril Battle was anti-gun. Then came the pandemic, the lockdown, the shortages and a feeling that at any moment, things could blow. Battle bought a Beretta.
Drawn to last summer’s protests against police violence, Savannah Grace found herself face-to-face with a camo-clad officer’s long gun. She’d always hated guns, but went out and got a Glock 45.
In blue cities and red suburbs alike, firearms purchases soared last year — to the highest level in half a century, based on federal background checks. A striking portion of those sales went to first-time gun buyers — 40 percent, according to the firearms industry’s trade association. Other studies show first-timers accounting for more like a fifth of sales in 2020, but that’s still unusually high, retailers said.
Overall gun ownership nationwide jumped from 32 percent of Americans to 39 percent last year, according to University of Chicago survey data — well under the 50 percent level of half a century ago, but the biggest jump in recent decades.
From the downtown streets left empty by the pandemic’s shutdowns to the sharp spike in homicides and the nationwide conflict over the role and behavior of police officers, a disorienting and often frightening year drove many decisions to buy guns, according to dealers and buyers alike.
{snip}
Green reported from Los Angeles, Glass from Champaign, Ill., and Eger from Tulsa. Kevin Armstrong in Newark and Victoria St. Martin in South Bend, Ind., contributed to this report.
About this story
Editing by Amanda Erickson. Copy editing by Stu Werner. Design and development by Jess Eng. Photo editing by Tristen Rouse.
Marc Fisher https://twitter.com/mffisher
Marc Fisher, a senior editor, writes about most anything. He has been The Washington Post’s enterprise editor, local columnist and Berlin bureau chief, and he has covered politics, education, pop culture and much else in three decades on the Metro, Style, National and Foreign desks.
‘Fear on top of fear’: Why anti-gun Americans joined the wave of new gun owners
Pandemic, police violence, calls to ‘defund the police’ fuel surge of first-time buyers
By Marc Fisher, Miranda Green, Kelly Glass and Andrea Eger
July 10, 2021
All his life, Jabril Battle was anti-gun. Then came the pandemic, the lockdown, the shortages and a feeling that at any moment, things could blow. Battle bought a Beretta.
Drawn to last summer’s protests against police violence, Savannah Grace found herself face-to-face with a camo-clad officer’s long gun. She’d always hated guns, but went out and got a Glock 45.
In blue cities and red suburbs alike, firearms purchases soared last year — to the highest level in half a century, based on federal background checks. A striking portion of those sales went to first-time gun buyers — 40 percent, according to the firearms industry’s trade association. Other studies show first-timers accounting for more like a fifth of sales in 2020, but that’s still unusually high, retailers said.
Overall gun ownership nationwide jumped from 32 percent of Americans to 39 percent last year, according to University of Chicago survey data — well under the 50 percent level of half a century ago, but the biggest jump in recent decades.
From the downtown streets left empty by the pandemic’s shutdowns to the sharp spike in homicides and the nationwide conflict over the role and behavior of police officers, a disorienting and often frightening year drove many decisions to buy guns, according to dealers and buyers alike.
{snip}
Green reported from Los Angeles, Glass from Champaign, Ill., and Eger from Tulsa. Kevin Armstrong in Newark and Victoria St. Martin in South Bend, Ind., contributed to this report.
About this story
Editing by Amanda Erickson. Copy editing by Stu Werner. Design and development by Jess Eng. Photo editing by Tristen Rouse.
Marc Fisher https://twitter.com/mffisher
Marc Fisher, a senior editor, writes about most anything. He has been The Washington Post’s enterprise editor, local columnist and Berlin bureau chief, and he has covered politics, education, pop culture and much else in three decades on the Metro, Style, National and Foreign desks.
14 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Almost as good as the tobacco marketing plan.
Create an arms race, make people scared of people with guns to sell more guns.
