According to Firearm Chronicles
You knew it was only a matter of time, right? Back in March, when the first stay-at-home orders were issued and Americans started flocking to gun stores, we were told by gun control advocates that there was no reason to purchase a firearm, because crime wasn’t going to go up even though cities were clearing out jails and telling officers not to make arrests for many crimes. As former ATF agent turned gun control flack David Chipman told the Washington Times just a few months ago:
“If we can imagine how horrible this crisis is … the people who hoarded the guns might decide six months from now – once they see no zombies around but they’ve run out of tuna and beef jerky – that they need the money to buy food,” Chipman said.
Well, it hasn’t been six months, but we’re already seeing a “zombie” outbreak, or at least a surge in violent crime in many American cities. What do you do if you’re a gun control advocates who just a few months ago was dismissive of the idea of civil unrest and a spike in crime? Blame all those new gun owners, of course.
The Washington Post claims two new studies show that the spike in crime followed the first surge in gun sales in the spring, which in turn must mean that those gun sales are responsible for the increase in shootings in Democrat-controlled cities around the country. I’ve already debunked one of the studies a few days ago, but let’s take a look at the second study cited by Post reporter Christopher Ingraham, which purports to document the tie between gun sales and an increase in shootings.
Even the anti-gun study’s authors admit that they can’t prove that the increase in gun sales caused the spike in violent crime, but outlets like the Washington Post will gloss over that inconvenient fact in order to spout nonsense like this:
Taken together, the findings paint a particularly bleak picture of the United States in 2020. Reeling from a pandemic, an economic downturn and a national reckoning with racism and police brutality, many Americans are choosing to arm themselves in the hope, perhaps, of protecting themselves in the event that circumstances get worse.
The research suggests that at least some of the spike in gun purchases is driven by racist beliefs and attitudes among white Americans.
And while many new gun buyers are motivated by wanting to secure their safety, the research also suggests that every gun purchased is a step toward a more violent society.
Yep, you read that right. The increase in violent crime in Democrat-run cities is largely the result of racist white Americans buying up guns, according to the Washington Post, and every gun that’s sold just sends us further along our path towards a dystopian future. Never mind the fact that for decades, violent crime has been dropping as Americans purchased tens of millions of firearms and millions of us obtained their concealed carry licenses. Never mind the fact that gun ownership among non-white Americans is increasing (admittedly, in large part because of concerns over racism). Never mind any and every bit of evidence that doesn’t point to American gun owners as racist rednecks who are shooting up their cities with the new guns they just bought.
Crime is spiking for a number of reasons, but the primary one is that criminals believe they can get away breaking the law. They’ve seen the court closures and the early releases because of coronavirus concerns. They’ve seen a move away from patrolling high-crime neighborhoods. They’ve seen local politicians and community leaders call for defunding police while refusing to hold violent criminals accountable. They’ve seen their neighbors grow more distrustful of police, even as they’ve become more frightened of the emboldened criminals causing such misery in their neighborhoods.
Criminals see these things and believe, not unreasonably, that their chances of getting away with murder (or assault, or robbery) are pretty good right now. The nation’s crime spike has much more to do with blue mayors and governors than new firearm purchases, but the Washington Post and the anti-gun academics it loves to amplify will continue to place the blame on you instead of where it belongs; on the politicians that are failing to protect their cities and the criminals emboldened by that catastrophic abdication of responsibility.