NYT: New Gun Owners Less Likely ‘to Be Male and White’

In a column highlighting the surge in gun sales, the New York Times admitted, new gun buyers are less likely “to be male and white.”

The Times pointed to data from Northeastern University and the Harvard Injury Control Research Center showing roughly one fifth of all gun purchasers during 2020 were fire-time buyers. Of those first-time buyers, “half were women, a fifth were Black, and a fifth were Hispanic.”

With the shifting demographics and first-time purchases,  Northeastern University and the Harvard Injury Control Research Center also noted that more American households now own guns.

Breitbart News spoke with National Shooting Sports Foundation’s public affairs director, Mark Oliva, about the modern gun buyer.

Oliva said:

Gun buyers today are shattering the preconceptions that gun control continues to perpetuate. The bottom line is there’s no neat little box into which those who oppose gun ownership can fit today’s gun owner. Those notions were buried in 2021 when over 8.4 million people purchase[d] a gun for the first time. There was a 58 percent increase of gun purchases by African Americans in 2020 over 2019. Hispanic Americans increased gun purchases in the same time by 47 percent. Asian Americans purchased guns at a rate 43 percent higher in 2020 over 2019.

He added, “Firearm retailers reported in surveys that these new buyers purchases firearms overwhelmingly for concerns of personal safety. The bottom line is today’s gun owner includes younger Americans, more women, more minorities. Today’s gun owner doesn’t just look like the rest of America. They are America.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.