USA Today reported that “Black Friday” background checks associated with firearm sales topped 200,000, which amounted to an 11 percent increase over last year and was close to the record set in 2017.
While not every background check initiated constitutes a completed transaction, suffice to say that business was brisk for gun dealers. The newspaper said the FBI “posted 202,465 checks Friday.” The Tribunist said enough guns were sold on Black Friday in 2016 and 2017 to outfit the Marine Corps.
By no small coincidence this revelation came within a few hours of a report from the Washington state Department of Licensing that shows concealed carry is spiking upwards. In November, according to the report, the agency recorded 6,734 additional active licenses over the end of October. As of Monday, the Evergreen State has 645,373 active CPLs and at the end of October, there were 638,639 active licenses.
That’s something worth watching all over the country because it indicates increasing numbers of Washington residents are “arming up.” So far this year, Washington has added 36,913 CPLs, which may seem remarkable in a state identified nationally as politically “blue.”
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
But that may be changing. There is an intense grassroots volunteer effort gather signatures on Initiative 1094, a measure to the state legislature seeking to repeal gun control Initiative 1639, passed by just under 60 percent of voters in 2018.
Many people have complained they were misled by signature gatherers when they signed, and by the lopsided $5.4 million campaign that claimed the multi-faceted initiative was all about school safety. Instead, the measure now denies young adults their rights under the Second Amendment to purchase a modern semiautomatic sporting rifle, and it invented a definition of a so-called “semiautomatic assault rifle” that literally applies to every self-loading rifle ever manufactured.
There are many other problems with I-1639, including the fact that it created a new crime called “community endangerment” with felony-level penalties, and it requires proof of training to purchase a semi-auto rifle. Critics compared that requirement to an unconstitutional literacy test, and they called the fees associated with the initiative tantamount to a “poll tax.”
The requirements are so far reaching that the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association took the state to federal court. The case is now in discovery and pending before the U.S. District Court in Tacoma.
Meanwhile, a hearing was held Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court on the challenge to a now-changed New York City regulation that prohibited handgun owners from taking their handguns outside the city. Almost immediately after the high court accepted the case for review, the city scrambled to change the law. Critics including SAF’s Alan Gottlieb, contend the city changed the law because officials knew it was egregious
“The only reason that change was made is because the Court accepted the case for review earlier this year, and everybody knows it,” Gottlieb said in a prepared statement. “That maneuver suggests the city knew all along its restriction would not pass constitutional muster, but only changed the law in an effort to prevent a court ruling that smacked it down.”
According to USA Today, “Black Friday traditionally has been one of the busiest for FBI analysts, but this year’s one-day number comes amid rising monthly volumes that are approaching the one-year record of 27.5 million in 2016.”
It’s the kind of news liberal anti-gunners can’t stand.
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