By: Gina Morelli
Things are changing now that Donald Trump has won.
It’s not looking good for gun control lobbying groups.
And something big just happened to the gun industry as a result.
Often times when Democrats win elections, gun sales spike as a result of people worrying that gun control will be coming down the pike that’ll make it harder for them to purchase a gun.
The same type of thing typically doesn’t happen if a Republican wins, as people are less worried that the newly elected leader will implement gun control.
However, the excitement over Trump’s victory is apparently so widespread that gun sales have gone up in some places regardless.
There’s seemingly no way to explain this other than exuberance over the fact that Trump won the election and Kamala Harris was defeated.
This is great news for the gun industry, which stands to benefit not only from relaxed policies towards them, but apparently also from increased sales.
It’s also very bad news for gun control lobbyists, who had played a major role in the Biden administration and are now likely to find themselves completely locked out from the White House.
According to WCAX News in Vermont, “Trump’s reelection has Vermonters who swore they’d never own a gun shopping for protection.
“These shoppers say they want to feel safe in a political atmosphere that’s made them feel anything but.”
Of course, the article frames it as people buying weapons to protect themselves from Trump supporters, and they interview a few people who back that up.
But while that might be some people’s mindset in buying a gun after Trump’s victory, there is no evidence that this counts for the overall increase in gun sales after the election.
The article continues, “Gun sale surges are common during contentious elections when people fear restricted access.”
This is a true statement, and it points to the fact that gun sale surges generally involve people who support gun rights, not people who have liberal views and oppose them.
While there are exceptions to this, and this article manages to find a few of those exceptions, they are certainly not the rule, and they likely are not in this case either.
An anti-gun activist in Vermont tells WCAX, “Those trends are common. We’ve seen those at other points in US history, and we’re seeing them today.”
If gun control lobbyists are seeing gun sales go up after the election, that’s bad news for their political agenda.
The central reason is almost certainly not fear of Trump, but even if it is, as the article claims, it’s still going to benefit the gun industry, and hurt the lobbyists who have been pushing against gun freedoms.
It turns out that the demand in America for self-protection is actually quite high, and any group that is pushing against that is going to have a seriously uphill battle in doing so.
Gun sales are apparently spiking after the election, and the gun control lobby does not seem to have a good answer for it.