The Daily Signal - As American Gun Sales Hit Record High, Tips for New Owners.

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

Americans are buying guns at a record pace. A surprising number of the sales are from first time firearm owners, says Stephen Gutowski, a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon and a certified National Rifle Association instructor. Gutowski joins the podcast to explain some of the reasons for the spike in gun sales and to offer safety tip for first time gun owners. We also cover these stories: President Trump is threatening to cut federal funding to four American cities that have allowed violence to spike.  White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany says Trump did not tell voters to vote twice. Trump criticized New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his handling of New York nursing homes during the pandemic.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, September 4th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Virginia Allen. Gun sales are at a record high in America right now. Stephen Gutowski, a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon and a certified National Rifle Association instructor, joins the show to explain why Americans are rapidly purchasing firearms and to offer some safety tips for first-time gun owners. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review. or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

Now on to our top news. President Trump is threatening to cut federal funding to four American cities that have allowed violence to spike. On Wednesday, Trump signed a five-page memo requiring all federal agencies to submit a report to the Office of Management and Budget detailing federal funding given to New York, Portland, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Cities that Trump says have not cracked down enough on lawlessness. My administration will not allow federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones.

Trump states in the memo, and the president added, to ensure that federal funds are neither unduly wasted nor spent in a manner that directly violates our government's promise to protect life, liberty, and property, it is imperative that the federal government review the use of federal funds by jurisdictions that permit anarchy, violence, and destruction in America's cities. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio responded directly to the president's memo during a press conference on Thursday. By the way, your words don't carry much weight on this topic because the Supreme Court has spoken. President of the United States can't interfere with federal funding for cities and states just because he feels like it. We have laws in this country.

So if you persist in trying to deny the funding that's keeping New York City going in the middle of this crisis, we will see you in court. And once again, we will beat you in court. President Trump had harsh words for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. In tweets Thursday, Trump tweeted, Governor Andrew Cuomo, of New York has the worst record on death and China virus. 11,000 people alone died in nursing homes because of his incompetence. The president also tweeted, Governor Cuomo should get his puppet New York prosecutors,

who have been illegally after me and my family for years, to investigate his incompetent handling of the China virus and all of the deaths caused by this incompetence. It is, at minimum, a nursing home scandal. 11,000 dead. Heritage Foundation's Dr. Kevin Pham wrote in a recent piece for the Washington examiner. There were very few things we knew about the coronavirus at the beginning, but one of the very few things we knew for certain was that the virus had a particularly deadly effect on the elderly. Yet, the Cuomo administration, as late as March 25th, went ahead and required nursing homes

to admit or readmit patients despite their having a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19. President Trump was accused of telling voters to vote both by mail and in person during November's election. During an interview Wednesday with WECT News, a local Wellington North Carolina station, Trump said, they will vote and then they are going to have to check their vote by going to the poll and voting that way, because if it tabulates, then they won't be able to do that. So let them send it in and let them go vote. And if the system is as good as they say it is, then they obviously won't be able to vote. If it isn't tabulated, they will be able to vote. So that's the way it is, and that's what they should do. In response to the president's comments, Karen Brinson Bell, chairman of the North

Carolina Board of Elections issued a statement saying, it is illegal to vote twice in an election. And added, there are numerous checks in place in North Carolina that prevent people from double voting. Electronic poll books with information about who has already voted are used at every early voting site. If a voter tries to check in who has already voted, they will be prevented from voting a regular ballot. White House Press Secretary Kaylee McAnney explained during a Fox News interview on Thursday, that the president was not telling Americans to vote twice. Well, Salon Gate continues. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed criticism that she went to a hair salon in San Francisco

when salons still weren't allowed to be open indoors. Via ABC 7's Kate Larson. I take responsibility for trusting the word of a neighborhood salon that I've been to over the years many times. and that when they said what we're able to accommodate people one person at a time and that we can set up that time, I trusted that. As it turns out, it wasn't set up. So I take responsibility for falling for a setup. The owner of the salon, Erica Klaus, told Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Per the Hill.

Since this happened, I've received nothing but hate, text messages, death threats. Yelp page is just unbelievable with bad reviews. It's sad that my community is pulling this, saying that I threw her under the bus when I didn't. President Trump, meanwhile, tweeted, Nancy Pelosi says she got set up by a beauty parlor owner. Maybe the beauty parlor owner should be running the House of Representatives instead of Crazy Nancy. St. Louis Mayor Linda Cruson and her husband temporarily moved out of their home due to protests and demonstrations. Per St. Louis today, Crucun told a reporter over text that we have not lived at home for two months. We did it to de-escalate the situation, to save police resources, and importantly, because our neighbors

were being disturbed and threatened. Rioters visited the Cruson home in late June and early July and in August. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who gained national attention, and for wielding firearms outside their St. Louis home when a crowd of protesters entered their property live on the same private street as the Crosons. Apparently, the crowd of demonstrators entered the street to get to the mayor's home. Crucun told the reporter, I ran for this job. My neighbors did not. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Stephen Gutowski on the spike in America's gun sales. Conservative women. Conservative feminists. It's true. We do exist. I'm Virginia Allen, and every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort

through the news to bring you stories and interviews that are of particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to policy and politics. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcast. I am pleased to be joined by Stephen Gatowski, a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon and a certified National Rifle Association instructor. Stephen, thanks so much for being here. Hey, thanks for having me. Last week, you wrote a great piece for the Free Beacon discussing 2020 gun sales in America.

About 5 million Americans have become gun owners for the very first time in 2020. Are those numbers normal? No, those are pretty abnormal numbers. In fact, it's a record pace at this point for gun sales in the United States. And from what we know, at least from what the industry says, from surveys that they've conducted, 40% of new sales are going to first-time gun owners, which is how you get that 5 million number. That is very unusual. And I've spoken in addition to what it's called the National Shooting Sports Foundation,

is the industry group. But in addition to what they're saying, I've also spoken to it. number of gun stores and a number of new buyers. And it's certainly something that's completely out of the ordinary. Wow. So what are the manufacturers saying? What are, you know, those that work at gun shops and sell guns? You know, are they pretty surprised by what's going on?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You know, I mean, obviously we're living in fairly unprecedented times generally with the virus and some of the civil unrest that we've seen. and so, you know, guns and gun sales are also a part of that and driven in large part by those events. And so people at gun stores, one store that I've talked to several times is Wex Gunworks down in Florida in Delray Beach. And, you know, he said it's been unlike anything he's ever seen before. I think his quote was, you know, they said that President Obama was the greatest gun salesman of all the time. No, it's actually COVID-19. And I think that you see that reflected as well in big gun companies, too. Sturm Ruger is one of the largest gun companies in the world. It's one of the only publicly traded gun manufacturers in the U.S.

and they reported their sales were simply through the roof. Their CEO said that in his 30 years in the business, he'd never seen anything like it. Wow. So in 30 years of being in gun sales, he's saying this is nothing like I've ever seen as far as the rate and the amount of sales. That's right, absolutely. And their stocks reflect that as well.

The stocks for Sturm Ruger as well as Smith & Wesson, which is the other publicly traded gun company, have absolutely gone through the roof over the past six months or so, which is reflective of that. And they also don't expect it to slow down anytime soon. It's something that is likely to continue throughout the pandemic, but also perhaps even increased in the later part of this year because the other thing that tends to drive gun sales historically have been elections, especially elections where one of the candidates is proposing significant new gun control legislation, which is certainly the case here in 2020. me. Well, and yeah, you mentioned that. And that has been a trend that we've seen in election years, that gun sales go up. But what is different about this year that, you know, all these records are being set and people that have worked in gun sales for so long are saying, I've never seen something like this? Yeah, I think one thing that is really different is really those new, the new gun owners, right?

Because a lot of election-based gun sales, which we really haven't even gotten into yet, I don't think here in 2020. But that was like the big driver in 2016 when there were record gun sales. And in 2013, after Sandy Hook, where there was actually a lot of focus on the potential for new federal gun control laws. You know, you saw a big spike in sales in those time periods as well, but those were oftentimes driven by people who already own guns, wanting to buy firearms that they believed might be, you know, made illegal, you know, by politicians.

Whereas this time around, from everything we're seeing, and this is also reflected in dealer surveys by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, but also from my own interviews with gun dealers and with buyers, first-time buyers, but really they're motivated by the concern for self-defense, concern for home defense, you know, being worried about essentially the uncertainty that comes along with a major global pandemic, for instance, or with the civil unrest that we've seen in the last few months as well. And so I think that's the main difference is that you're seeing a lot of new people come in to gun ownership driven by almost exclusively their desire for self-defense.

And who are these people? Are they mainly, you know, folks that live in rural areas, more urban? Do we know the age demographic? They're actually what has been termed in recent years in the gun-owning community as a part of gun culture 2.0, which is this idea. that gun owners are becoming over time younger, more suburban and urban than rural, and more women and more minorities are becoming gunners as well. Now, that's been a trend that's been talked about for several years now in the gun

owning community and in the gun industry, but it seems to have been accelerated over these last six months here. There was a recent survey, again, by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which indicated that the largest growing demographic among customers, as reported by gun dealers, were actually African Americans, followed by female gun owners. And you've also seen this in evidenced in the actual background check data itself. Now, the FBI doesn't keep that sort of data on race or gender for gun background checks, but what it does keep are the difference in a check that's done on a handgun and a check that's done on a long gun, you know, a shotgun or a rifle. And we're now seeing far more handguns being sold than long guns, which is a reversal

of historical trends. Again, one that's been going on for a while now, but one that seems to have been sped up, which indicates to a lot of experts, at least, and I would agree with this assessment, that more people are buying guns for home defense or for self-defense than they are for traditional activities like hunting. And those sales are happening in more urbanized areas

than they were before as well. Interesting. How did you become a Second Amendment advocate? It was kind of funny. I didn't start shooting until after college. You know, I grew up in Pennsylvania. I grew up in Chester County, which is, you know, outside of Philadelphia, it's one of the Collar counties, right? There's a lot of hunting that goes on out there.

There's the kind of area where, you know, they give you off for the first day of hunting season. But I was never into firearms growing up. My family was never into it. And it wasn't until I moved down to D.C. and started working down here as a writer that I went to who was called Fun Day at the Media Research Center where I worked when I first came to D.C. And one of the activities there was ski shooting with a pump action 12-cage like Remington, you know, 870 type of show. shotgun, which is the total, of course, wrong gun for that sort of activity. But it didn't matter because it was a lot of fun. And so I got into it. And it's one of those things where with guns, as with, you know, maybe a lot of different hobbies, but this happens pretty commonly with

firearms where you start off, you like it, and then you realize that, oh, okay, I have this gun, but this gun would be better for this particular activity, right? or this gum would be better for this activity. And you just go down a rabbit hole. And that's how it got me personally. I just started to really enjoy firearms. You know, something that you can also work with with your hands. You know, there's a lot of great engineering that goes into it.

And so I like building AR-15s. The AR-15 I have on the wall here behind me is one that I built myself. I have another build that I'm working on. And so that's another fun aspect to it. You know, I like to work on my car. I like to build guns. I like to build computers. You know, there's a lot more to firearms than just the shooting aspect,

although that part is clearly the most fun, especially if you can go out and do some of the things that I've been able to do, like shooting machine guns or shooting fireworks, targets and explosives and shooting from helicopters, all these fun, different things. that I've been able to do with my time at the free begin. Yeah, so cool. So, I mean, it's neat.

You've been in this world of, you know, the Second Amendment and guns and firearms for so long. But I want to, for a second, if you would, just let me play the devil's advocate for just a moment. Aren't you concerned that with so many first-time gun owners purchasing firearms that we're going to see more shootings? I mean, tensions are really high in the nation right now. So shouldn't we be concerned that so many people are buying guns? I mean, that's an interesting question. I don't know that I would expect a lot of first-time gun owners to be involved in a lot of additional, you know, shootings. What I would concern me more, frankly, is whether the first-time gun owners are getting proper training needed to prevent accidental shootings or even, you know, suicide.

in terms of the risks that come along with owning firearms, you know, suicides by firearm, first of all, they make up two-thirds of gun deaths, which a lot of people don't realize that, you know, when that number, that 40,000 gun deaths a year number gets thrown around, a lot of people don't realize what the context isn't given that two-thirds of those are by suicide. And so that's, you know, a valid concern. if you're a new gun owner, you should ensure that you're, one, getting good gun safety training so that you don't accidentally hurt yourself or someone else because guns are not toys, right? I mean, they're not.

And they require a great deal of responsibility on the gun owner's part to learn how to properly use their firearm. And then also there's a responsibility on the mental health side of things as well to make sure that you're keeping up with your mental health because firearms, while they might not cause you to commit suicide, if you use them in your suicide attempt, you're more likely to successfully carry out that attempt, which is something you have to keep in mind as a firearms owner. But in terms of violent crime increasing or even justified self-defense shootings, increasing, seems unlikely outside of areas that are directly impacted by, you know, some of the, some of the rioting that we've seen. And even there, you know, the rioting is horrible.

And it's always a terrible situation, even if you're justified in having to shoot someone else to defend yourself. But I will say that they haven't, compared to rioting in the past in, say, 1968, we haven't seen a major uptick in casualties from the rioting that we're seeing now, thankfully. And I wouldn't expect to, for that to really change much. Yeah. So you reference one of the most important aspects for new gun owners being getting that instruction on how to properly use their firearm. Where can they go to receive that kind of instruction and get that information? That's a great question. One reason that it's more of a concern now, other than just that there appear to be a lot more new gun owners

than normal, is also that we're dealing with, you know, the pandemic still, and the restrictions from that mean that it's more difficult to go and get in-person training than it would normally be. And so there are some alternatives on that front where you can do online training. There are some sheriffs, your local sheriff might be offering some. I know that some sheriffs throughout the country have done that online firearms training there's some good resources on youtube as well but also i believe the nr a itself um is offering an online uh version of its you know major gun safety courses uh i would say that nr a safety courses are the most ubiquitous option out there like if you have a local range near you where you're going to shoot you probably

are going to be exposed to the availability of there's going to be NRA courses available for you, most likely at that range by some NRA instructor. There's also an NRA instructor's website where you can look up local classes. They are, you know, whatever you think of the NRA from the political side, they are legitimately the largest gun safety organization in the sense that they certify hundreds of thousands of firearms safety instructors throughout the country and all those instructors offer classes now it's so like for instance myself I'm certified to teach the basic pistol course the NRA's basic pistol course it's a certification process like you you don't you don't have to be

an NRA member or or you're not working for the NRA if you get certified to teach their classes it's just that the NRA has the most widely available gun safety courses out there, and they offer a wide range of them. There are also, of course, more advanced options as well from a lot of different high-end firearms training programs like gun site in Arizona or, you know, Rob Pinkis offers a bunch of classes. He's a renowned firearms instruct. There's a lot of those sorts of options as well. But most people, if you're taking a, you just bought a handgun for self-defense, you'll be good if you, you'll be good at least get the basics. If you go and look up your local NRA basic pistol course and take that for like $150 or whatever, you do it over a weekend. You come

out knowing a lot more about gun safety on the other side. So for anyone who's listening, who's thinking, hmm, maybe, maybe I should consider buying a gun, but they just, they don't know where to start. They're thinking, I don't know what the laws are in my state. I'm not exactly sure where to go, how to go about this. What are some resources you would recommend to them? Yeah, I mean, I think in that case, if you're considering buying a gun, because frankly, there are 50 different laws to contend with because we have 50 different states and they all have their own specific gun laws on possession, on how to buy, on gun carry, all that stuff is different state to state. I mean, you know, there's a lot of consistency to it as well.

The federal system governs much of it. But, you know, it can be different even just right across the border, something you did in the state that you're from can be a felony in the state next door when it comes to gun possession even, sadly. But the best thing to do if you're looking to buy a gun right now and you're new is just go to your local gun shop or call them and ask them. They'll have the knowledge about. about how the process works in your particular jurisdiction.

Because like I live in Virginia, right? And the process here in Virginia is extremely different from the process right across the river there in Washington, D.C., where, you know, D.C. has some extremely strict laws, and there's a lot of complications that go into how you get a gun legally in the city, especially handgun. Handguns tend to be more heavily regulated throughout the country than long guns. And so, you know, there's extra steps and complications that go into that. And the best person to ask is generally going to be your local gun store, your local licensed dealer.

And what about gun storage? You know, especially if you have kids in your house, you might be thinking, well, I would love to have a gun, but it makes me really nervous to bring a firearm into my home when I, you know, maybe have a seven-year-old running around. Yeah. No, I mean, that's an absolutely legitimate concern, right? You have to think about when you're buying a gun that, again, it's not a toy. This is a tool, and it's potentially dangerous, right? Dangerous to not just you or someone that might be trying to attack you,

but also to your loved ones if they don't understand how to properly handle a firearm safely. Or if they're children, and they can't learn that at their young age yet, you have to make sure that you're taking the proper precautions to ensure that they don't get access to your firearms so that there's no chance that they could hurt themselves, right? And I think the best way to go about that, again, your local gun store is going to be a really good resource for a first-time buyer. Generally, they're very welcoming people. In my experience, a lot of gun stores are going to be willing to talk to you and give you advice and guidance, Same thing goes for, you know, certified instructors. We'll generally try to help you through any questions you have.

But most gun stores are going to have gun safe options for you. There's a lot of products on the market in terms of gun locks. Also, every modern firearm that you buy new today comes with a gun lock, at least a basic level cable lock that you can lock up your gun with and ensure that without the key, nobody, you know, a child is not going to have access to your firearm without your permission, right, or your oversight. And so at the very base level, if you buy a new gun, you will have a basic lock that comes with it, but there are many additional options like gun safes or more advanced locks that allow you to get from the locked position to a loaded position faster, while remaining, you know, very, very safe in terms of children having access. So I would say, you know, talk to your local gun stores, see what options they have for gun locks

and gun safes. Do your research online. There's a ton of reviews on YouTube and in gun magazines. And then, you know, make an informed decision about how you want to store your firearms, especially if you have kids, because that is a very legitimate risk. It's a concern. but it's one that can be managed properly if you put in the work and research. Steven, we really appreciate your expertise on this.

How can our listeners follow your work? Yeah, you can find all my writing at the Washington Free Beacon. So if you go to Freebeacon.com, all my pieces will be there. You can also follow me on Twitter at Steven Gatowski. That's S-E-P-H-E-N-G-U-T-O-W-S-K-I. It's a Polish name. not as rare as I used to think. There's a weirdly large number of Kataski's out there in the U.S.

but still can be a little bit complicated for the non-polish among us. Well, we'll be sure to link that in this show. Stephen, thanks so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify,

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