Even in the deepest deep blue of “Taxachusetts” — one of the states with traditionally very low per capita gun ownership — firearms sales have not just doubled but tripled in some locations since 2019, WBUR-FM in Boston reported Wednesday.
Overall firearm purchasing in the cradle of the American revolution has utterly skyrocketed, with WBUR reporting that gun sales hit record levels over the past two years.
And this is in Massachusetts, a state that was ranked third in the nation for the lowest gun ownership, behind only Hawaii and New Jersey, according to Rand Corp. research.
The report said nearly 276,000 firearms had been sold in the state from 2020 through 2021. Gun sales in Massachusetts last year were up 57 percent from 2019 and doubled the total from a decade ago, WBUR reported.
Cape Gun Works co-proprietor Toby Leary told the outlet that 2020 and 2021 were “banner, landmark years.”
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“We tripled sales in 2020 from 2019,” Leary said, adding that most customers were first-time buyers and that most “haven’t fully grasped the idea of wanting to own a firearm for defensive purposes, but something brought them here.”
“They feel like they’ve been spurred to do it based on what they see, or their own personal feelings about the world,” he said.
Many of these new gun buyers were hesitant and even outright against gun ownership but were driven by fear to make the purchase, according to WBUR.
The public radio outlet told the story of Frank Garrido, 63, of Taunton, who said he’d always “shied away from guns” but in the wake of the unrest that has spread through big cities and the calls for “police reform,” he decided to arm himself.
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Now Garrido owns six guns, some for protection and some for target shooting.
“If I go to Walmart, if I go to a movie theater, if I go to a church, a gathering with a group of a lot of people, I always carry,” he said.
Cape Gun Works co-owner Brendon Bricklin told Fox News the sales spike also has been driven by “[e]mboldened criminals who face little deterrent in certain states/cities,” “police departments that are stretched thin/short-staffed” and “political uncertainty.”
“And of course the basic need we all have of preservation and protection of family,” Bricklin added.
Leary offers self-defense classes and said many more women and minorities are visiting his store, including even his middle-school lunch lady. “I call them these roving bands of ladies that come in together and they want to shoot on Thursdays,” he said.
“They’re bringing to class the gun that they are most likely going to carry in the real world out there,” he told WBUR.
Leary said he naturally opposes limitations on gun ownership but believes there are risks that come along with millions of guns “floating around the United States.”
“I do believe that the number one thing, as a responsible gun owner, is to ensure that my guns don’t fall into the wrong hands,” he said, “and that whenever it’s in my power to do so, that I can prevent a negative outcome with that firearm.”
As “defund the police” movements and radical district attorneys who refuse to prosecute offenders continue to create seemingly limitless increases in violent crime throughout Democrat-run cities, we can expect gun ownership to continue to increase.
