If you are a conservative you undoubtedly have one or more friends who don’t just own guns, but love guns, live guns, and breathe guns. Driving to the store this morning I was behind a minivan that had replaced the traditional stick-family decal with one showing all the guns he or she owns. Now, if you are a progressive you probably know someone who owns at least one gun. Actually, you probably know several people. They just haven’t gotten up the courage to tell you yet.
And more and more of these gun owners, both overt and covert, are planning on taking them along when they leave their homes. According to a report this month by the Social Science Research Network, the number of concealed-carry permits has risen by 48% since 2016. That’s 21.52 million, in case you’re interested in the hard numbers.
Before someone cites the upcoming Supreme Court case as the reason for the uptick, let me reiterate that applications have been trending up since 2016. There are those I am sure, who would like to get their permits before the decision is handed down, but the increase indicates that people have been feeling less and less safe for years. And can you blame them? They have an ever-increasing number of reasons.
The oncology nurse who was knocked to the ground by a mugger in Times Square has died from the head injury she sustained. One person died and multiple people were injured following a shootout in a St. Paul, Minn., bar. A man in Hawthorne, Calif., was pulled from his truck and beaten to death. And that was apparently in response to his attempt to run people over after an argument.
Those are just the headlines from this weekend. I didn’t even get into the drug stores in the Big Apple that are pretty much empty due to the shoplifting sprees that can be directly linked to New York’s bail reform law. One Manhattan resident went so far as to say it looked like a Third-World country.
Out of 21.52 million permit applications, I’ll wager that not all of them were Trump voters. I suspect that even some of the most vocal progressives are secretly worried about current the state of the nation for. They’ve worked so hard to achieve utopia but may be wondering why their vision seems farther away than ever before.
But we defund the police, and the DOJ is investigating parents who have the temerity to question the actions of their local school boards. Our government seems more concerned with controlling the people who are upset, concerned, or scared than it is addressing the conditions that have given rise to the problem. The powers that be are more focused on preventing people from owning guns than trying to honestly deal with the issues that are driving those people to want them. Should it be any wonder that more people trust themselves than their government to protect them?
Source: PJ Media
