A Heavily-Armed Nation

Bob Owens tells us that rush to stockpile guns is still heavily underway where he lives. People are lining up at the local gunshop and the shelves are empty.

I took my daughter to preschool this morning, and on the way back I drove past my local neighborhood gun store.

The owner was standing out front talking to the first customer in line as the clerks inside finished setting up for the daily rush. They would open promptly at 9:00 AM. The speed limit is just 25 MPH in that part of town, and I caught a red light as well, so I had plenty of time to count the number of people in line.

There were 25 souls patiently queued up from the front door down the sidewalk into the parking lot. This is the new normal, and has been for months. Sometimes the line is shorter, sometimes it is longer, and on days that it is cold and rainy, people sit in their vehicles until the store opens, but there is always a line.

I drop in every few weeks or so. Some of the more senior clerks there know my face if they can’t recall my name; this is the FFL (federal firearms licensee) that I most often used when a manufacturer transfers in a rifle or pistol for me to test and evaluate. I haven’t been inside in two weeks, but the last time I was there was the same as it has been from mid-January onward.

There are no AR-15s, no AK-pattern rifles, no M1As, no FALs, nor anything else that might reasonably impersonate a semi-automatic rifle. For that matter, there are no Garands worth their price, nor Enfields, nor Mosins.

Likewise, the glass handgun cases have largely been empties of service pistols. There are still a few, but most tend to be painfully expensive or the dogs that no one wants. Magazines for all of these are gone, of course, as are most common calibers of ammunition.

How much longer will this go on? …

In my estimation, this is the most heavily-armed the American people have ever been. I’m including the World Wars.