“This is Madness”: Media Angry As Gun Sales Surge from Riots, Defund the Police, COVID-19

The media has appeared to be angry at Americans' practicing their Second Amendment right to protect themselves and their families.

Multiple media outlets have covered the surging gun sales in a negative light.

An LA Times editorial referred to the surging sales as "madness":

Now for the most troubling part. Since the start of the pandemic, Americans are buying more guns. The FBI says it conducted a record 3.7 million background checks for would-be gun buyers, a loose proxy for firearm sales, in March as lockdown orders spread across the nation. In April the checks dropped to 2.9 million but rebounded to 3.1 million in May. The monthly average for 2019 — itself a record year for background checks — was 2.4 million. So even as we get fresh studies connecting possession of firearms with increased risk of gun violence, accidental shootings (usually by children) and suicides, we are adding more firearms to the nation’s already numbingly large privately owned arsenal of some 300 million guns (no reliable count is available) owned by about a third of the population.

This is madness.

One bit of good news came Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a range of cases that could have further expanded the court’s (ill-considered) view of the 2nd Amendment, morphing the right to own a firearm for protection in the home into a right to carry a firearm wherever you go. Many states already allow that as a matter of policy, which is dangerous enough. (California generally bars openly carrying a firearm, and limits possession of a concealed weapon to people who have been issued licenses, usually by a county sheriff.)

Even if people believe in a 2nd Amendment right to own firearms, it’s not unreasonable to ask that they support laws barring firearm access to those who pose a risk to themselves and others, requiring safe storage of weapons in the home, and other reasonable measures to try to reduce the number of gun victims. And given the increased risk that the gun you buy today may become your own cause of death, you might want to rethink why you believe you need a gun in the first place.

A Mercury News article suggested that people aren't buying guns to protect themselves. Rather, it appears to suggest that people are buying guns for suicide because of COVID-19:

The recent coronavirus lockdown caused a surge in gun sales in California. There were 164,000 background checks for gun purchases in March — a 72% increase over the month earlier and one of the highest months in the past two decades. May was the third-highest amount of background checks to purchase guns and ammo in the history of the program.

[...]

A depressed person buying a firearm should be a warning sign. And anyone trying to assess or help a depressed person should ask about a recent gun purchase or intent to purchase one.

However, suicide after purchase did not account for all of the differences in risk. Just over half of gun suicides occurred after the first year of ownership. This implies that the person did not purchase the gun with the intent to commit suicide.

This study also could not assess the benefit of the 10-day waiting period in California. Suicide can be an impulsive decision and many states have no waiting period to purchase a firearm. It is possible that a 10-day waiting period actually saves some people from suicide as they might seek help or change their mind during that time frame.

While suicide is certainly an important topic, polls and surveys suggest that the vast majority of new gun purchasers are doing so to protect themselves and their families.

The calls to "defund the police" have grown louder in recent weeks.

Rather than calling to end police brutality or to REFORM law enforcement, radicals want to end police departments altogether in some instances.

CNN confirms the skyrocketing sales are due to fears of social unrest:

Coronavirus-fueled fears of social unrest already had Americans panic-buying guns and bullets at record rates earlier this year. That was before the police killing of George Floyd caused an international uproar, leading to protests that, at times, descended into riots, arson and looting in cities across the United States.

Those circumstances and the rise of the Defund the Police movement championed by Black Lives Matter activists have led to higher sales for firearms and ammunition dealers.

Firearms dealers across the country have reported a recent spike in sales, citing the unrest following police brutality protests in support of George Floyd and calls to defund the police as catalysts, according to gun industry analyst Rob Southwick, founder of the market research firm Southwick Associates Inc.

"Anything that can cause people to feel unsafe in relation to possible physical crime to self, others and property can drive firearm sales," Southwick told CNN Business.Background checks for firearms purchases reached an all-time high in March and maintained record highs for April and May, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade association that monitors gun sale-related background checks to track industry trends.

Semi-automatic handguns outpaced shotguns by a two-to-one margin as the weapons of choice among first-time gun buyers, according to gun merchants surveyed by NSSF.

The latest national background check stats won't be available until July, but since Floyd's death on Memorial Day, NSSF Director of Public Affairs Mark Oliva said gun sellers have reported a sales spike similar to the one caused by the coronavirus.

"You're seeing a reaction to people's concerns about being able to provide safety for themselves and the ones that they love," Oliva told CNN Business.

More than 6.5 million gun-sale background checks were conducted from January 1 through April 30, according to the latest NSSF research, which showed a 48% year-over-year rise from the same period in 2019. Firearms retailers surveyed by NSSF in May estimated that 40% of their sales came from first-time gun buyers.

Hopefully the calls to defund the police never come to fruition.

But if they do, then Americans have a Constitutional right to protect themselves and those that they love.

No one has a right to violence, but everyone has a right to self defense.