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With the hotly contested 2020 presidential election just weeks away, and featuring two candidates who could not be further from one another when it comes to their views of the Second Amendment, the final call could come down to a handful of votes in a handful of “swing states.”
What constitutes a battleground state differs from strategist to strategist, but most would include Arizona, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as too-close-to-call states.
So when it comes to our gun rights, incumbent President Donald J. Trump is espousing a pro-Second Amendment platform, whereas Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to eradicate the Second Amendment as they push for every type of gun-control law imaginable; it’s beyond clear that this is an issue that will impact swing states.
And based on the response to the turmoil of 2020, the statistics speak for themselves. Most Americans want to keep their constitutional rights intact; especially their right to keep and bear arms. The number of background checks done, via the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), in the aforementioned swing states between January and August shows a bold uptick in gun sales when compared to the same eight-month period in 2019.
Here is how many NICS checks occurred in each state in 2019 and 2020 during that time:
ARIZONA
2020: 453,000
2019: 245,249
FLORIDA
2020: 1,231,540
2019: 772,447
MICHIGAN
2020: 658,000
2019: 306,508
NEW HAMPSHIRE
2020: 114,671
2019: 64,092
NORTH CAROLINA
2020: 569,038
2019: 265,336
PENNSYLVANIA
2020: 896,272
2019: 702,220
WISCONSIN
2020: 457,249
2019: 274,519
Even if we just examine the month of July in the comparison between 2019 and 2020, Biden’s anti-Second Amendment platform is clearly going against the grain.
Arizona shows a 74% spike over 2019; Florida gun checks were up 56%; Michigan is 226%; New Hampshire rose 39%; North Carolina jumped 58%; Pennsylvania’s likely gun sales jumped 63%; and Wisconsin’s were up 79%.
Those numbers are not outliers. Throughout 2020, law-abiding Americans have made it more than clear that the individual right to keep and bear arms is important. Data from the swing states is in keeping with the overall trend.
Yet, despite the importance of capturing those key states, Biden and Harris continue to stand defiant in the face of the continuing growth in gun sales.
Biden touts a plan to outlaw both “assault weapons” and magazines that hold more than a certain number of rounds; though he has not specified what that limit should be on his campaign website, and lawmakers historically struggle to define the term “assault weapon.” One can be certain that Biden’s ban will include some of the most popular semi-automatic firearms in America, like the AR-15. In addition, Biden is shilling for “smart guns,” heralding technology that doesn’t even exist, and which, if it does find its way to market, could be unreliable enough to render guns owned for personal protection useless to those who wield them in times of imminent peril.
Out of touch? Perhaps. Could it cost Biden at the ballot box? Only time will tell.
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