A lot of Americans decided to get off the fence and buy their first firearm(s) when a national emergency was declared in March. You can read the accounts of a couple of those people here and here.
They came to decide what many gun owners have known all along. That in a critical situation, with law enforcement officers sick, overwhelmed, or otherwise occupied, Americans are their own first responders. No one is able to rescue you, your family in the amount of time it takes for police to respond to a 911 call in normal times, let alone during a pandemic.
And now, with the nation just starting to emerge from more than two months of lockdowns, the killing of George Floyd has ignited the kind of nationwide unrest America hasn’t seen since the late 1960’s.
State and local elected officials have been wholly unable or unwilling (or both) to deal with the extent of the violence which, particularly in Minneapolis, has expanded far beyond a reaction to the Floyd’s death.
Minneapolis’s feckless mayor could do little more than babble incoherently before television cameras. And Minnesota Governor Tim Walz admitted last night that that he completely underestimated both the motivation behind and the extent of the violence.
From the Star Tribune:
“The absolute chaos — this is not grieving, and this is not making a statement [about an injustice] that we fully acknowledge needs to be fixed — this is dangerous,” Walz said. “You need to go home.”
Implying that organized outsiders, perhaps including anarchists, white supremacists and drug cartel agents from outside Minnesota, were contributing to the chaos, Walz said, “The sheer number of rioters has made it impossible to make coherent arrests. … The capacity to be able to do offensive action was greatly diminished” by the sheer scope and seemingly organized nature of the assaults.
“The terrifying thing is that this resembles more a military operation now as you observe ringleaders moving from place to place,” he said.
“I will take responsibility for underestimating the wanton destruction and the sheer size of this crowd,” Walz said. He said repeatedly that the sheer scope of the crowds and violence have been shocking, and that there was no way for for authorities to anticipate or prepare for such an onslaught.
“There are simply more of them than us,” he said.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz says he is authorizing the full mobilization of the Minnesota National Guard, “an action that has never been taken” in its 154-year history https://t.co/0x8tHbwS8f pic.twitter.com/Xsx8B9JJtP
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 30, 2020
People nationwide have been buying firearms at a record pace since the beginning of March. And last night’s images of rioting, burning, looting, and even some gunfire from Minneapolis, Oakland, Atlanta, Portland, New York and other cities will do nothing to slow that pace.
Breaking: Video shows the moment the New York Police Department was given the green light to arrest protesters in Brooklyn. pic.twitter.com/nFC7qRGNob
— PM Breaking News (@PMBreakingNews) May 30, 2020
We talked to two retailers this morning, one in the midwest and one in the mountain west. Both report significant upticks in sales yesterday. And after last night’s expanded violence, that’s not likely to slow down any time soon.
Americans recognize an increased threat to themselves, their families, their property and their businesses when they see it. Whether it’s from depleted police forces, violent criminals released from prisons, or now, widespread civil unrest, they want and expect the means to defend themselves. And even more people who haven’t taken steps to arm themselves yet are going to do exactly that beginning today.