Stanford Study: Pool of Gun Owners Broadening In California

A Stanford University study shows the surges in handgun purchases that occur after a mass attack are characterized by a large number of female buyers and “first gun buyers.”

This runs completely counter to the left’s perpetual claim that gun purchasers during recent years of record background checks were simply the same old white men buying more and more firearms.

According to CNN, the study shows that handgun purchases jumped 53 percent in California after the December 12, 2012, attack on Sandy Hook Elementary. They jumped 35 percent throughout the state after the December 2, 2015, attack in San Bernardino, while rising 85 percent in the city of San Bernardino proper.

Professor David Studdert led the study, and reacted to the number of first-time gun purchasers by saying, “Households that never previously had handguns now do.” He also told KPBS Public Broadcasting that “women proportionally increase to a larger extent” during the buying surges.

Studdert found that the surges in gun purchasing “lasted about six to eight weeks after each…[attack] before dropping back to normal.” And he suggested the surges in gun purchases may not be what people should focus on when viewing guns via the lenses of public health. He said, “If you are concerned about public health implications of gun ownership, I’m not sure that these spikes are exactly where you want to be looking. There’s an enormous stockpile of guns out there already in households.” The left will be disappointed over this admission as well, especially after they have spent years arguing that purchasing a gun makes the gun purchaser less safe.

For example, on January 25, 2015, Slate reported, “The public’s confidence in firearms…is woefully misguided: The evidence overwhelmingly shows that guns leave everybody less safe, including their owners.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.