According to a CNN report based on a recent survey of gun owners, more Americans than ever before are arming themselves for self-defense.
CNN I got it. The survey, released Thursday, surveyed 2,477 “American adults who reported owning a gun between May and June 2023.”
WATCH — AWR Hawkins: A disciplined militia is the foundation for “inviolability”:
The report, citing data from Injury Prevention magazine, found that the percentage of gun owners who cited “personal defense” as a reason for owning a gun jumped from 26% in 1999 to 79% by 2024.
Dr. David Yamane, a professor of sociology at Wake Forest University, suggested that the desire to arm oneself for self-defense is a response to the social unrest America has witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yamane argued that 2020 is a time of widespread anxiety similar to that of the 1960s, when gun ownership for self-defense purposes surged.
Looking back at 2020, it had some of those characteristics: the COVID-19 pandemic, which quickly led to the murder of George Floyd, which quickly led to the Black Lives Matter protests, which quickly led to a crazy presidential election, which quickly led to the riots at the Capitol.
WATCH — Black Lives Matter protesters want injured Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy dead:
On January 12, Breitbart News pointed to figures from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) that said the number of firearms owned by American civilians would exceed 473 million by the end of 2021.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the author and curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is a political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, and the Global Marketing Director for Lone Star Hunts. He was a visiting scholar at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and earned his PhD in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: FollowYou can subscribe to Downrange at breitbart.com/downrange . To contact me directly, please email awrhawkins@breitbart.com
