Since the beginning of the pandemic, gun sales have been going through the roof, even in liberal strongholds like New York City.
The city is not responding well to the surge in applications.
Even though gun ownership is guaranteed in the Constitution, the licensing division in New York is not approving applications fast enough and many people are being left with no way to defend themselves.
Townhall reports:
Gun Permit Applications Are Soaring in NYC, But There’s One Major Problem
Shootings are through the roof in New York City, and the residents who are not fleeing the Big Apple are applying for gun permits in skyrocketing numbers. The New York Post reports that nearly 9,000 New Yorkers have applied for gun permits amid the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. The problem? Fewer than 1,100 of those applications have been approved, far less than the nearly 1,800 approved during the same time period last year.
They point to this story from the New York Post:
The 8,088 applications for first-time pistol and rifle permits submitted since March 22 — when coronavirus-related restrictions went into effect — represent a threefold-plus increase over the 2,562 submitted between March 22 and Dec. 31, 2019, NYPD statistics obtained by The Post this week show.
But only 1,087 applications were approved …
Meanwhile, the approval rate since March 22 is less than 14 percent, compared to nearly 70 percent last year.
The dramatic drop comes despite an alarming spike in shootings, which are up almost 98 percent this year, and murders, which have risen about 39 percent, according to NYPD data.
Recent weeks have also seen a series of disturbing incidents that led one police source to say that “it’s not surprising more people want guns.”
“People are getting pushed on the subway tracks. People are getting robbed. It’s because crime is going up,” the cop said.
“People want to protect themselves.”
Gun store owners said they’ve been hearing complaints from would-be customers whose applications seem to have disappeared into limbo at the NYPD’s License Division, which was rocked by a corruption scandal in 2017.
“They just stopped doing the investigations and the processing,” said a city gun dealer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In many parts of the country, police have stopped responding for certain crimes.
If the police can’t or won’t protect the people, the people have a right to defend themselves.
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