Americans Responded to Summer of Unrest with Record Gun Purchases

Reuters/Jim Young
Reuters/Jim Young

As the widely-televised Baltimore riots gave way to a summer rife with more civil unrest, calls for widespread violence, and targeted attacks on police officers, Americans flooded into gun stores at such a high pace that they set records for the number of background checks conducted in May, June, July, and August.

While Democrats pushed gun control—seizing on heinous attacks on innocents in Garland, Texas, (May 3), Charleston, South Carolina, (June 17), Chattanooga, Tennessee, (July 16), Lafayette, Louisiana, (July 23), and Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia, (August 26)—Americans recognized that the gunmen in each of these instances fully complied with gun control, passing a background check in all five attacks, only to carry out their criminal plans afterward.

Therefore, rather than trust in gun control, Americans increasingly trusted in the gun.

According to the FBI, there were 1,580,980 background checks in May 2015, which is nearly 100,000 more than the previous record of 1,485,259 in May 2014. Likewise, there were 1,529,057 background checks in June 2015—nearly 150,000 more than the previous record of 1,382,975 in June 2014—and 1,600,832 background checks in July 2015—nearly 200,000 more than the previous record of 1,402,228 in July 2014—and 1,745,410 background checks in August 2015—nearly 200,000 more than the previous record of 1,546,497 in August 2014.

And remember, these millions upon millions of background checks may not even come close to representing the number of guns that were actually sold, as each purchaser can legally purchase multiple guns once a background check is passed.

The bottom line—amid the unrest, the war on cops, and the public attacks on innocents that Democrats seized upon to push gun control bill after gun control bill—Americans went another way, choosing more guns instead of more government control, thereby making the summer of 2015 a record-setting season for background checks for gun purchases.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

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