It's been more than six years since the mainstream media reported that 20 children and six adults were slaughtered during a mass shooting that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Following the incident, liberals were quick to call for new gun control measures to limit access to firearms; but a report published last year suggests that this attempt at infringing on the Second Amendment actually had the opposite effect.
The recent study on the subject, published by researchers from Wellesley College in Massachusetts, found that during the five-month period following the incident, Americans collectively purchased an additional three million guns. Using data from Google searches for things like how to buy and clean guns, as well as how to get a background check, the team found that the gun control agenda, at least in the case of Sandy Hook, actually led to more guns making their way into private homes.
Phillip Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley and lead author of the study, says that ever since the time that Barack Obama first began publicly calling for increased gun control legislation in January 2013, Americans started making more gun purchases. Gun shows were often packed to the brink, and there was even an ammunition shortage for a time, as millions of people feared that the hammer would soon drop on their constitutional right to bear arms.
When Congress killed Obama's anti-gun legislation in April 2013, demand for guns dropped
Levine's co-author, Dr. Robin McKnight, agrees. He pointed out that the public's exposure to guns actually increased as a result of Sandy Hook, and presumably the many other mass shootings that allegedly occurred during Obama's watch as well. Instead of furthering the agenda to take away Americans' guns, these efforts had the effect of convincing Americans to arm themselves to the teeth in anticipation of having to potentially fend off the federal government's tyrannical, gun-confiscating agenda.
It shouldn't be news to anyone – even insulated university professors like these two – that the threat of gun control is going to push those who value this constitutional protection to stock up their arms. But for some reason it's coming as a surprise to ivory tower liberals that Americans aren't buying the anti-gun agenda hook, line, and sinker. And now that Obama is gone from office, the data shows that we're now seeing a shift back to normal gun-purchasing trends, as Americans are no longer as worried about the government trying to take their guns away.
"At that moment, there was a viable gun control legislation on the table, and from our perspective, that increased the demand for guns," Levine is quoted as saying, referring to the spike in demand for guns following the speech that Obama gave just five days after Sandy Hook.
Interestingly enough, mass demand for guns across the U.S. took somewhat of a nosedive after Congress killed Obama's anti-gun legislation in April 2013. According to the new study, which was published in the journal Science, Google searches for guns, background checks, and other information basically died off at this point in time, suggesting a causal link between the threat of gun control and a rise in gun demand.
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