Report: Surging Crime Coincides with Increase in Democrats Embracing Guns

A Newsweek report built upon an NBC News poll and various interviews suggests that liberal Americans are embracing guns as crime surges in 0ften Democrat-controlled cities throughout America.

Newsweek pointed to the November 2023 NBC News poll, noting the poll found “41 percent of Democrat voters said they live in a household with a gun, up from 33 percent in a similar survey conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal in August 2019.”

Newsweek spoke with Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, who said, “As to why household gun ownership increased among Democrats in particular, it may be a response to recent increases in crime rates in big cities, where Democrats claim a larger share of the population.”

Breitbart News reported the NBC News poll, noting that when gun ownership among Democrat voters and Republican voters are put together, over half of American voters–52 percent–say they or someone in their household owns a gun.

Professor Kleck spoke to Newsweek about these numbers, saying, “The percent of American adults reporting a gun in their household was 53% in a January 1994 CBS/NY Times poll, 52% in a March 1989 CBS/NY Times poll, and a statistically indistinguishable 51% in Harris polls back in 1968 and 1971.”

He added, “These were all polls of the entire adult population, not just registered voters, but gun ownership is even higher among the latter than in the former, so the percentages would have been even higher if [sic] those earlier polls had they been confined to voters. In sum, there is nothing historically unprecedented about NBC’s recent result. Seen in a longer perspective, they could reasonably be seen as a return to the U.S. historical norm.”

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 and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.