Blake Reid, right, of Winston-Salem, looks at a handgun Friday afternoon at Gun Country in Mount Airy with the help of shop owner Jason Isaacs.
Sales are going strong at gun and pawn shops in Surry County due to buyers apparently trying to obtain weapons before more-stringent ownership restrictions possibly are imposed by the government.
“Handguns and assault rifles are flying off the shelf — there’s no keeping them in,” said Jason Isaacs, owner of Gun Country on Hadley Street in Mount Airy.
“Sales have been good,” Isaacs added. Friday afternoon, the parking lot of Gun Country was filled and at least 10 customers were inside looking at various firearms.
Similar activity was reported Friday at other businesses around the area, mirroring a situation across the country in the wake of the Dec. 14 shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. That trend has people rushing to buy weapons, sparked by demands for increased regulation by gun-control advocates.
“Yeah, we’ve been pretty busy here,” said Patrick Ornelas, an employee of Rabbit Ridge Enterprises in Ararat, Va., another business that sells firearms. “Mainly bulk ammo and assault rifles,” Ornelas added of the popular sellers at Rabbit Ridge along with handguns. “They’ve spiked a little bit,” he said of the latter.
In light of the Newtown incident, federal officials including President Barack Obama and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) are renewing the call for a ban on assault rifles, given that the gunman involved there wielded a military-style assault weapon.
Some gun buyers simply seem to be trying to obtain certain weapons while they can, agreed Wesley Hawks of the What Do You Want? pawn shop in Mount Airy.
“We are seeing an increase in sales right now,” said Hawks, especially of “high-cap stuff,” (referring to high-capacity magazine) and ARs (ArmaLite rifles). The latter resemble military rifles, but mostly are associated with civilian uses including hunting, competition shooting and self defense.
Both new and repeat customers have been noted at the What Do You Want? shop.
“It’s a mix,” Hawks said. “We’re definitely getting some first-time buyers in.”
Isaacs, the Gun Country owner, said that shop also has “seen quite a few first-time buyers.”
“Home protection is a big thing — personal security is a big thing,” Mark Stanley, owner of a Dobson business, Mark’s Guns & Ammo, said of the motivation for recent gun purchases.
Isaacs acknowledged the sad reality that the brisk gun sales locally and nationwide of late are rooted in the event in Newtown. He would prefer strong business from his normal clientele rather than those simply reacting to a tragedy.
“We love to sell guns, but not under these circumstances.”
Handgun buyers in North Carolina are required to have purchase permits, and undergo a background check. “We have to do a federal background check on every single firearm that goes out of the store,” Isaacs said. It is aimed at making sure people who are convicted felons or adjudicated as mentally ill do not obtain guns.
Those who seek concealed-carry permits also must take an eight-hour course offered through the Surry County Sheriff’s Office.
Attack On Rights
While the Mark’s Guns and Ammo owner said traffic at his store has been busy recently, it’s difficult to pinpoint if that is due to the fallout from Newtown and the threat of increased regulation.
“It’s hard to really say with the time of year it is,” Stanley said. “This is our busy time anyway.”
He does see a common denominator among his customers: “I just think people are exercising our Second Amendment rights.” Stanley said public interest in buying guns generally has been on the increase since Obama was first elected in 2008, although “I don’t see as much of that as we used to.”
However, Stanley, who has been in business for 27 years, suspects a movement is under way by the federal government to erode Second Amendment and other rights.
“Our government is now socialistic,” he charged, offering a quote from Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president: “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
In response to the latest call for banning of certain weaponry, Stanley further referred to a situation in Australia that involved citizens being forced to give up more than 600,000 firearms to be destroyed by the government.
That recovery program cost $500 million and was followed by increases in homicides, assaults and armed robberies, which rose by 44 percent alone, according to information provided by Stanley.
“Criminals didn’t turn them in,” he added of the gun program in Australia.
Reach Tom Joyce at 719-1924 or tjoyce@heartlandpublications.com.
I work in the gun business. I have coached many women as they fired a gun for the first time in my store’s gun range. I have also sold a lot of them their first firearms. Their primary reason for deciding to purchase a gun is usually the same: they don’t want to be easy targets. It is sadly ironic that Nancy Lanza was killed by her own son with her own firearms, but it doesn’t change the fact that guns are used defensively millions of times a year according to a widely cited study conducted by Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck. Nancy’s situation was anomalous.
I have become acquainted with many women who protected themselves and their households with a legally owned firearm. Just a couple of weeks ago a would-be home invader tried to break into the home of a young housewife I know. She yelled at the man and told him to go away, but he completely ignored her. His pants were around his ankles and her daughter was sleeping in the other room. Her husband was also asleep and did not hear her screaming. She fetched her nine millimeter handgun and pointed it at the perpetrator through a window. The man quickly fled and was later caught by the police. The moral of the story is that it is unwise to threaten a mother and her children when she is holding a Glock.
The Newtown massacre is a horrific and unusual counterexample of that situation. All of the victims were unarmed women and young children. This is the kind of situation that sickos like Adam Lanza usually look for. They want easy targets and high body counts. Texas Governor Rick Perry pointed this out when he suggested allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons. Perhaps this solution is too extreme for a majority of Americans, but I personally wouldn’t have a problem with it. It wouldn’t have helped Nancy very much, but it might have saved the lives of many of Adam’s other victims. At the very least I would argue that placing more armed security guards or police officers in schools across the country might be a step in the right direction.
Like most murderers, Adam Lanza was a man. In fact, most violent crimes are perpetrated by men. That means women involved in violent crimes are, of course, usually victims. Unfortunately, women are more often than not at a natural disadvantage in physical confrontations with men. Fair or not, it is the truth. Nevertheless, the playing field is quickly leveled when a woman pulls a concealed handgun out of her purse and points it at her would be attacker in self-defense. It is a very effective way to turn the tables, and it at least means an even fight if the attacker is also armed.
I am confident that almost everyone reading this knows at least one woman who has been the victim of a violent crime (i.e. assault, battery, rape, murder, etc.). Women who survive violent crimes are often left with heavily damaged psyches, and aggregately this undermines efforts to create any kind of social equality between the sexes. Guns empower women with the ability to defend themselves against violent attacks, which is why the right to bear arms is a critical women’s rights issue. Sadly, there are still too few American women out there who realize this. In many countries around the world women are brutalized and sometimes even murdered with near impunity on a daily basis. I wish every single one of those poor women could shoot their attackers dead, but they don’t have a “Second Amendment” which makes that possible.
If the headlines are any indication, single women are uniquely at risk of becoming targets for would be attackers. Their assailants often include jealous ex-boyfriends, creepy strangers in bars, stalking coworkers, and the like. A beautiful, intelligent single lady named Heather recently informed me that she decided to purchase a firearm from my store after her ex-boyfriend began stalking her, even after she’d applied for a restraining order. He followed her home one evening and accosted her as she was trying to enter her apartment. Heather barely managed to ward him off with a knife, get inside, lock the door and call the police. He was gone by the time they arrived. The news is chock-full of stories like this that didn’t end quite so fortunately. Personally, I am elated that Heather is now a gun owner.
Liberals deride conservatives for waging an imaginary “war on women” that is centered mostly around access to free birth control and abortion services. That is, to quote Vice President Biden, a bunch of “malarkey.” Conservative men do in fact care deeply about women, especially when it comes to their safety, and certainly believe they should be empowered. I know this is true every time I see a loving husband, boyfriend, father or brother bring his wife, girlfriend, daughter or sister to my gun store to obtain a concealed carry permit or buy a gun. I know this is true every time a female shooter smiles at me when, after heeding my patient tutelage, one of her bullets rips through the bullseye of a paper target for the first time. If you ask me, liberals seem to care more about evading the potential responsibilities of parenthood than empowering or protecting women.
Banning rifles with certain features, which is by itself a feckless endeavor, will likely be the first of many steps the left will attempt in order to gradually implement a de facto ban on firearms in the United States. Liberals make little effort to hide their intent to accomplish this. One need only look at gun laws in liberal bastions like Chicago or New York City, places which have no shortage of violent crimes involving guns despite comprehensive restrictions on gun ownership, to see what their ultimate goal is. In the end this leaves American women at the mercy of an overburdened criminal justice system instead of empowering them to defend themselves and their children with firearms that they are constitutionally entitled to own. Politicians in Washington have all the armed security they will ever need thanks to taxpayers. Most women in this country can’t afford such a luxury.