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[0] According to new data this month, more American voters report owning a firearm than at any point on record.
[1] The news comes after years of unprecedented gun sales across the country.
[2] In this episode, we talk with a Second Amendment expert about what's driving that surge in which communities are behind the trend.
[3] I'm Daily Wire, editor -in -chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
[4] It's Sunday December 3rd, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
[5] In this episode, Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips, speaks with Second Amendment expert and founder of the reload, Stephen Gatowski.
[6] Hey, Steven, thanks so much for coming on.
[7] So we saw a new poll this month from NBC that shows 52 % of Americans reporting a firearm in their home.
[8] That is a 10 -point jump in the last decade alone.
[9] It seems the spike really started in 2020 and has continued since then.
[10] What do you make of the trend?
[11] Yeah, you know, I think that there was kind of a perfect storm created in 2020, where we saw a lot of chaos from a lot of different angles that gave us.
[12] a lot of different people, a lot of different reasons to buy a gun, you know, just across demographics, across the ideological spectrum, across the political background, you name it.
[13] There was something that happened during that time frame, whether it was the COVID shutdowns, George Floyd, the rioting that happened after that.
[14] All this stuff, I think, contributed to people going out and buying a gun for the first time who'd never actually considered doing so before.
[15] So just how much of the spike do you think can be attributed to the general unrest we saw during the pandemic and then the rising crime rates that followed.
[16] There's a tendency in America for people to want to have basic security for themselves.
[17] And when they feel that society or the government isn't providing that for them, that takes the form of them wanting to do it themselves.
[18] And in America, obviously the top option for that is to go out and buy a firearm because it's like buying a fire extinguisher.
[19] It's not necessarily that they feel they will have to use it.
[20] but I think a lot of people want to have that option.
[21] You see that reflected in polling when people are asked why they buy guns as well.
[22] So gun sales really took off from 2020 through 2022.
[23] Are we seeing that trend slow at all this year?
[24] Yeah, that's one of the things that you also see with gun sales is that they rise in a time of chaos and then they tend to recede a bit after that.
[25] Usually you hit a new floor that was higher than the previous highs, you know, from the last surge.
[26] And so we have experienced that downturn.
[27] If you look at the FBI's background check numbers, gun sales hit records in 2020.
[28] Then they slowly came back down and they had been receding for really three years straight since that point.
[29] And only now in October are we starting to see them come back again a little bit.
[30] You know, they're not falling as they were.
[31] Now October this year was better than the October last year.
[32] And maybe we've settled into that new floor.
[33] So based on polling down, it appears that the demographic where we've seen the largest increase is among black Americans.
[34] What do you attribute that to?
[35] Yeah, well, I think there's been an ongoing trend in America where you're seeing a new kind of gun owner come up, somebody who's younger, you know, you have more women buying guns, you have more minorities buying guns than has been the case in the past.
[36] It's moving from a more rural association with firearms into a more suburban and urban association.
[37] and from a culture that was primarily focused on hunting to one that's primarily focused on self -defense.
[38] You know, not that these doesn't mean that nobody hunts anymore or that self -defense wasn't a reason to buy a gun in the past.
[39] It's just that the priorities are changing a bit.
[40] And, you know, I think that's been happening now for really more like 20 years or more.
[41] But since 2020, that's been accelerated.
[42] You're seeing a lot more people go out and buy guns who never.
[43] bought them before, you know, people from communities where gun ownership wasn't looked on as a positive.
[44] And it's maybe a bit of a snowball effect from that.
[45] You know, you're seeing a lot more people.
[46] And for instance, as you mentioned, the black community who are buying guns and then they're sharing their experience as being a positive one.
[47] And that's driving more people in their community to buy guns too, I think.
[48] So, you know, it's really something that's been a long -term trend, but it's accelerated in recent years.
[49] Gun control advocates have claimed that the increasing rates of gun ownership will lead to increasing rates of gun crime.
[50] Walkers through some of the data on that claim.
[51] Yeah, certainly that's been one of the primary arguments, right?
[52] In the gun debate throughout really history here in America.
[53] And, you know, obviously there was a spike in murder that we saw during 2020, 2021 that was happening alongside the gun sales increase.
[54] But you know, there's always the question of whether or not that spike is because more people were buying guns or more people were buying guns because of the murder spike.
[55] And now what we're seeing is, you know, despite those record -setting sales, murder has come down significantly.
[56] So we still have the same number of firearms, you know, in the country, because they don't just go away when gun sales decrease a bit.
[57] You still have its cumulative effect there.
[58] But we're seeing actually at this point, record setting declines in the murder rate in recent months.
[59] Perhaps this year may be the best decline in the murder rate we've seen in recorded history.
[60] So, you know, it's not that that's definitive necessarily.
[61] You know, you always want to try to take a lot of factors into account when you're just talking about these things.
[62] But it's certainly an indication that the murder rate and gun ownership rate is not tied at the hip necessarily, and perhaps even goes the opposite direction.
[63] That's certainly something that you've seen gun rights advocates argued for a long time as well.
[64] So zooming out a bit, what sort of actions have we seen from President Biden when it comes to gun control for people who aren't as plugged in?
[65] Where does he stand compared to recent presidents with regard to firearms?
[66] Yeah, I mean, President Biden has really pushed the envelope in terms of gun control positions.
[67] He ran as a moderate in 2020, but he's governed really to the farthest left extent that you've seen from a modern president, even considering President Obama in there when Joe Biden was vice president.
[68] He has really pushed for things that Democrats had shied away from since the 90s, things like AR -15 bans, magazine limits.
[69] He wants national versions of those.
[70] I know he hasn't been able to get them because he hasn't had significant enough control of Congress to this point.
[71] but it is interesting to watch how he has operated rhetorically.
[72] And then also he has taken some pretty strong steps from using his executive power.
[73] President Trump had instituted the bumpstock ban during his administration through executive power through using the ATF.
[74] And President Biden has kind of doubled and tripled down on that by going after things like pistol braces, which affects really millions of Americans, millions of Americans.
[75] have owned the guns that he's tried to ban through, you know, utilaterally without congressional action.
[76] And then, you know, he's done stuff like go after un serialized homemade firearms, even who can sell guns without having to go get a federal permit, you know, private sales.
[77] He's really taken a lot of executive action.
[78] So he's been pretty aggressive on this front and both in policy and in rhetoric.
[79] And I think he's, we don't see him changing course on that either.
[80] He even created an office to coordinate response to gun violence, which is staffed by somebody who worked for one of the major gun control organizations.
[81] And he also nominated an ATF director.
[82] His first nomination was somebody who worked directly for the gun control organization.
[83] So he's been really, really closely associated with them.
[84] And he doesn't seem to be tracking back to the middle here as we get closer to his reelection campaign.
[85] So in closing, you mentioned one reason we haven't seen more significant action, although we have seen a number of actions taken, but one reason we haven't seen even more is because of a lack of control of Congress.
[86] Hypothetically speaking, President Biden wins re -election in 24.
[87] Democrats gain control of the Senate and House.
[88] What sort of legislative actions might we expect to see at that point?
[89] Yeah, I think a lot comes down then to the fight over the filibuster once again in the Senate.
[90] If the president regains, you know, if he wins re -election, he wins the House, Democrats win the House, and they win a big enough majority in the Senate where, you know, people like Joe Manchin are retiring, cinema may not be there, and those were kind of the key votes to block the elimination of the filibuster, because if you eliminate that, then you'll need 50 votes and it becomes sort of more like the House and whoever controls it can push through whatever they want.
[91] And in that case, you know, yeah, you could see an assault offense ban.
[92] You could see universal background checks.
[93] You could see any number of gun control priorities, make it through if Democrats recapture control of both houses of Congress and they are able to eliminate the filibuster.
[94] Then the question is, you know, what happens with the Supreme Court, too?
[95] Because obviously, another thing Democrats have wanted to do is increase the number of justices on the court so they can tip the ideological balance there, because that's another, it's been sort of a significant bulwark against gun control laws in the last, you know, 10, 15 years.
[96] So it really could be very significant if he's reelected and if they capture control and they do this series of steps.
[97] You could absolutely see very significant policy changes from that.
[98] All right, Steve, and we will leave it there, but we appreciate your time.
[99] Absolutely.
[100] Thank you.
[101] That was Daily Wire, senior editor Cabot Phillips talking with Second Amendment expert and founder of the reload, Stephen Gatowski.
[102] Thanks for waking up with us on this edition of Morning Wire.