Delaware gun sales surged in December and January thanks to “nontraditional,” or first time, gun buyers.

Background checks for the two month period were up “26 percent” over checks for the same two-month period a year ago.

According to Delaware Online, the surge is due to “nontraditional gun owners” deciding it is time to get a gun. University of Delaware senior Dominique Carpio is a perfect example. She was previously “anti-gun” but became concerned “about becoming a victim of one of the crimes she frequently hears about in New Castle County.” So she went and bought gun with which to defend herself.

Bob Miller owns Miller’s Gun Center and he credited a large portion of the surging sales to the national media’s fixation on high profile shooters. He suggested “there’s a concern (about safety) that’s media-driven.”

He also stressed that there are safety concerns many people never consider–like the safety of real estate agents who are often isolated showing a property or building in suburbia to people they don’t know well or perhaps have never even met. He said there has been a marked uptick in gun sales to such agents and other “business people” who have spent their lives thinking crime would never happen in their area. They “are carrying their guns to and from work now.”

Delaware Coalition Against Gun Violence spokesman Jeffrey Lott commented on the surging gun sales by claiming, “There is no evidence that the number of legally owned guns in Delaware will decrease crime.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.