USCCA Emergency Preparedness Fundamentals Training Program

“The Secret Weapon to Master Ultimate Self-Reliance”

WEST BEND, WI – Ahead of “National Preparedness Month” in September, the United States Concealed Carry Association (USCCA), which provides industry leading self-defense education, training and legal protection to over 400,000 American gun owners, recently launched a new training to help individuals become more prepared in the event of a disaster and confident in their ability to provide for themselves and their families.

Whether it’s a tornado, hurricane, wildfire, civil unrest, a public health crisis or a logistical strike, USCCA’s Emergency Preparedness Fundamentals Training will ensure people have the necessary information and resources to survive when the unthinkable happens. “National Preparedness Month” is recognized each September in communities across the country to encourage Americans and their families to take appropriate steps to educate themselves and prepare for emergencies that could occur in their homes, businesses, schools and communities. Read more

Why Women are Buying Guns

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, gun sales and interest in firearms training have surged. Surveys, studies, and wild guesses have tried to capture the reason why people, particularly women, are purchasing firearms and gun safety training. This article reviews the trends, explores the impetus for the surge, and offers quotes from women who share their stories in their own words.

First, here are the facts: FBI data showed that 2.6 million guns were purchased in March alone (an 85% increase on the same period last year), with Illinois leading with close to 500,000 purchases, followed by Texas, Kentucky, Florida, and California. Ammo.com saw about a 1,000% increase in firearm sales in Colorado, Arizona, and Texas since late February.

Media outlets were among the first to guess the cause of America’s piqued interest in guns. An article in AS stated that it was the “imminent erosion of fire, police and health services [and] fears over looting, violence and burglaries.” Another article article in Salon stated, “the fear is about the economy collapsing, leading to a rise in crime and violence [and] decades of NRA propaganda have convinced people to associate guns with safety.”

To get better insight on the rise in gun sales, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) surveyed firearm retailers about trends that they were seeing. The May 2020 survey results estimated that 40% of sales were to first-time gun owners, and that 40% of the first-time gun buyers were women.

The NSSF survey revealed that personal protection was the primary reason gun owners were buying firearms. Semiautomatic pistols were the most commonly acquired firearm by first-time buyers by a 2-to-1 margin over second-place shotguns. Modern sporting rifles, revolvers, and traditional rifles were also purchased by first-time gun buyers. Read more

The Founders’ Second Amendment Updated

New Foreword for Treatise on the Origins of Our Right to Bear Arms

Oakland, CA—The Independent Institute has reissued the 2010 pathbreaking book The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms by Senior Fellow Stephen P. Halbrook. The new edition is updated with a foreword by Nelson Lund (Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law at George Mason University).

The Founders of the American republic sought to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” as a fundamental liberty. What experiences led the Founders to adopt it, and what did it mean to them? Halbrook has written the definitive account of the origins of the Second Amendment, based on the Founders’ own statements as found in newspapers, correspondence, debates, and resolutions.

Investigating the period from 1768 to 1826, The Founders’ Second Amendment offers the most comprehensive analysis of the arguments behind the drafting and adoption of the Second Amendment, and the intentions of the men who created it. Readers can fully comprehend the Founders’ understanding of what is necessary to guarantee, as the Amendment itself states, “the security of a free State.” Read more

Minority Groups are Exercising Second Amendment Rights

Today’s feature position is contributed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and was written by NSSF Senior VP and Legal Counsel, Larry Keane.

Throw out the stereotypes on American gun ownership. They’re just wrong.

Against the backdrop of historically high firearm sales, one major theme is shattering misconceptions that America’s gun owners are “old white men.” A surge in gun buyers across the country in 2020, more than 2.5. million since March alone, has boosted the diversity of the firearm-owning population.

While surprising to some, it’s not to those in the firearm industry. Today’s gun buyer looks more like the rest of America. They represent all walks of life and those buying firearms today increasingly are women, minorities, and more urban than in previous generations.

Taking Responsibility

The coronavirus pandemic and uncertainty surrounding business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders initially led to more Americans jumping off the sidelines to buy firearms. Certainly, riots and looting spurred on the trend, as did moves by politicians to bend to mob chants to defund the police. Gun retailers said as much as 40 percent of purchases have been to first-time buyers. It makes sense. Local law enforcement is stretched thin and police resources were limited. Criminals were allowed out of jail, many quickly committing crimes again. And prosecutors promised not prosecute criminals the police did arrest.

Law-abiding Americans of all walks of life watched these disturbing circumstances develop and took their safety into their own hands. Numerous examples abound of lawful gun owners standing guard in front of their homes, their businesses and their neighbor’s businesses, often deterring additional violence and crime. For any number of good reasons, women and minority firearm ownership are on the rise and growing quickly.

Maj Toure, founder of Black Guns Matter, promotes African American gun ownership and spends his time advocating firearm ownership and teaching gun safety in urban and minority communities. He spoke to Business Insider about the growth and success of his efforts. “People somehow forget that we have the right to defend our lives with firearms,” Toure said.

The National African American Gun Association boasts membership growth of 15,000 new members in 2020 so far. “A lot of times in our community, we hear a lot of our politicians, unfortunately, say, don’t have a gun. You don’t need a gun,” explained NAAGA founder Philip Smith. “Well, I pushed back on that and say, that’s the very thing that we do need.”

It’s a Woman’s World

Women aren’t just standing by either. In 2003, only 13 percent of women identified as gun owners. Fast forward to 2020 and that number totals nearly 25 percent. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 25 percent of those female gun owners say self-protection is their main reason for owning a gun, and 70 percent say owning a gun is essential for their personal freedom.

After seeing a man outside her window while alone one night, 59-year old Terry Marsh said she would not be in that position again unarmed.

“It’s a very helpless feeling knowing you can’t protect yourself or your family,” Marsh said. “If I had a gun or a way to protect myself it would have given me a little bit of power and I’d have felt secure.”

Women are taking those priorities into their own hands, with home and family safety at the top of Americans’ minds during the current unsettling times. That makes sense and is a welcomed development.

Political Tides Turning

As the numbers of gun owners in America continue to swell, political issues around gun ownership and gun control will manifest these trends. First-time gun buyers have seen firsthand what roadblocks there are to their firearm purchase and are often surprised. Scott Kane, a first-time buyer from California, recently told the Washington Free Beacon about his buying troubles.

“This has taken me, a law-abiding citizen with nary an unpaid parking ticket to my name, over a month,” Kane said. “Meanwhile Joe Bad Guy has probably purchased several fully automatic AK-47s out of the back of an El Camino in a shady part of town with zero background checks. I’m seriously thinking of running for office or something. This state’s gun laws are insane.”

Candidates for political office are beginning to look more and more like the gun-owning population as well. The Wall Street Journal highlighted a record number of pro-Second Amendment women candidates embracing gun ownership and stepping forward to run for office. More than 220 women have filed to run for Congress and 50 of those have already secured their name on the November ballot.

One candidate, Genevieve Collins running in Texas, explained it bluntly. “Being a Texas woman means you know how to shoot, clean, and eat your kill in one day, then throw on your dress and work a boardroom the next.”

As gun control groups like billionaire Michael Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action clamor for more gun control, increasingly more voices of a diverse American gun owner are responding. The impacts will be significant on the future of Second Amendment rights in America.

NSSF launched the #GUNVOTE online resource to help gun owners to register to vote and provide voters election updates and candidate information in order to be more educated about the Second Amendment positions of political candidates. As these positive trends continue, voters need to be informed in the ballot box so they don’t risk their rights.

CCRKBA Tells Seattleites “Arm Up, Demand Resumption of CPL Process”

BELLEVUE, WA – With the Seattle City Council preparing to slash police services, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is recommending that residents prepare for the worst, and as part of that effort they should buy a gun if that’s their choice, and demand that both the Seattle Police Department and King County Sheriff’s Office resume taking applications for concealed pistol licenses.

Both agencies stopped accepting new CPL applications more than three months ago, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, while processing renewals has continued. But this has left new gun owners unable to apply. Gun sales have spiked nationally due to the pandemic panic and civil unrest in downtown Seattle. City residents travel to gun shops in neighboring communities for their purchases to escape Seattle’s regressive gun and ammunition tax, said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb.

“While the city council may believe crippling its police department is a politically smart move,” Gottlieb observed, “it’s going to directly impact public safety. Nobody should be surprised when more people buy guns and apply for carry licenses, only in Seattle and King County, applying for a CPL hasn’t been possible since March. Read more

Galco’s Hidden Open Carry Options

PHOENIX –

Effective concealment is difficult when hot weather arrives and we wear fewer
layers of clothing. One solution is holsters carried openly that don’t look like holsters – what we at Galco call “hidden open carry”. This category includes day planners, and Galco offers three distinct variations.

Masquerading as a day planner, the Defense Planner™ opens to reveal a handgun and spare ammunition. Galco’s smallest planner, it measures only 8 ¼” long by 6 ½” wide and fits compact defensive handguns, retailing at $97.

The Hidden Agenda™ hides a handgun and spare ammo while also being a fully
functional day planner. The separation of holster compartment and business tools offers complete discretion. It comes with a calendar and pad of ruled paper, measures 9 1/4 ” long by 7″ wide, and fits most full-size and compact defensive handguns. It retails at $172. Read more

CCRKBA: No Private Security for MN Citizens

12500 N.E. Tenth Place ? Bellevue, WA 98005 • www.ccrkba.org

BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today advised residents and especially Minneapolis business people to arm themselves after the City Council voted to disband the police department, yet is spending thousands of dollars providing private security for three council members.

“What’s happening in Minneapolis is a reprehensible act of hypocrisy,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “While council members are planning a lengthy process of developing what they call a ‘new public safety model,’ what are the citizens supposed to do? They’re not getting private security protection. That’s apparently a perk only for three council members who claim to have received threats since the killing of George Floyd last month. Read more

Gun Purchases Mean Responsibility

By Glen Wunderlich

The roaring 20s are back!  Anarchists have boldly taken over a section of a major metropolis in Seattle and have declared it free of police.  It’s another example of what can happen when the rule law is ignored by authorities and Americans are taking notice in an unprecedented manner:  Guns are being sold at a record pace.  Millions of law-abiding citizens – particularly first-time buyers – have bought their first guns during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which is the trade association for the firearm industry, shows year-over-year increases of 80 percent in March and 69 percent in April 2020. These strong increases led to more than 6.5 million NSSF-adjusted background checks in the first four months of 2020, up 48 percent from 4.4 million during the same period in 2019.

These first-time gun buyers are estimated to represent a whopping 40 percent of gun sales, as reported by retailers.  This is an increase of 67 percent over the annual average of 24-percent first-time gun buyers that retailers have reported in the past.

Retailers noted that 40 percent of first-time gun buyers in the first four months of 2020 were females. The main purchase driver among the group was personal protection, followed by target shooting and hunting. Also of note was that 25 percent of first-time buyers had already taken some form of firearms safety course and 63 percent inquired about taking a firearms safety course in the near future.

Paralleling these statistics is another interesting bit of reality based on the most recent reporting from NSSF.  The report demonstrates that as lawful firearms ownership in America continues to grow, unintentional misuse of firearms is falling. During the 25-year period covered in this report (1993–2017) unintentional firearm-related fatalities have declined by 68 percent.

“As an industry that prioritizes firearm safety, it is extremely good news to see this record decline in gun-related accidents,” said Joe Bartozzi, NSSF’s President and CEO. “It’s gratifying to know that our industry’s gun safety efforts, including our long-running Project ChildSafe firearm safety education program, are contributing to helping save lives.

With approximately 100 million gun owners in the country, the data demonstrates that firearms can be safely owned and used and accidents can continue to be minimized, as long as secure storage guidelines are followed. “Securely storing firearms when not in use is the No. 1 way to help prevent accidents, thefts and misuse,” said Bartozzi.

A “hidden” gun is not a safely stored gun. There are a variety of safe storage options available, ranging from free gun locks provided by Project ChildSafe to full-length fireproof gun safes. Using any safe storage device will always be better than using none.

Theft of guns from parked vehicles has become a serious concern across the country.  Officials urge gun owners to store their firearms securely when left temporarily in a vehicle by using a locking device that can be affixed to the vehicle, such as with a cable attached to the metal seat frame, to help keep guns out of the hands of criminals. The glove compartment or console of your car or truck, even if lockable, should not be considered a secure storage device, as it can be pried open easily.

Although preventing kids from finding unsecured guns can help prevent a tragedy in any home, keeping guns out of all the wrong hands is just as important. Unsecured firearms are easy targets for thieves and for a person with suicidal thoughts.

Lock boxes are one of several options for safe and secure firearm storage, and they provide a solution for those who choose to keep firearms for home security and want quick access to them, while denying access to unauthorized persons, including children. Some use biometric technology to provide access without a key.

Having regular conversations with your children about gun safety, whether you own guns or not, is important in case they encounter an unsecured gun at a friend’s house, outside or anywhere beyond your supervision. Parents talk to kids about other important issues, like drugs, alcohol and sex, and talking about firearm safety should be no different. This should be a regular conversation between parents and children. NSSF’s video “Talking to Kids about Gun Safety” covers the basics of how to talk to children of different ages. Even if you don’t have kids, this video can be a good resource to share with friends, family and neighbors who do.

With firearms ownership comes personal responsibility and it’s all yours.

 

 

Federal PUNCH Defensive Handgun Ammunition

ANOKA, Minnesota – – New Punch draws from Federal Ammunition’s decades of experience designing the world’s finest defensive handgun loads. The bullet’s skived jacket and soft lead core produce the best expansion and penetration in its class, while its nickel-plated brass and sealed primer deliver the reliable feeding and ignition needed for powerful personal protection. Now available in the top five, most popular, self-defense chamberings on the market. Shipments of this product have begun to arrive at dealers.

“Simply put, we know more about making duty and defensive bullets than anyone,” said Federal Handgun Ammunition Product Manager Chris Laack. “We used that knowledge and experience to create a product to specifically meet the needs of self-defense with a handgun. The result of that hard work is Punch.”

Rather than developing a single bullet design for all five loads, the team at Federal evaluated each caliber individually and determined which bullet design and weight would work most effectively for each load. Since the bullets weren’t specifically designed to perform in FBI protocol testing, Laack and his team spent time tuning each Punch load to meet the needs of the self-defense shooter—namely reliable expansion and enough penetration. Read more

Pandemic Sparks Growth for USCCA

Record Waves of New Gun Owners Turn to Wisconsin Company for Training and Legal Protection During Coronavirus Crisis

WEST BEND, WI – It started with the record gun sales in March. But for one Wisconsin company, the surge didn’t end at the gun store counter.

Massive increases in new gun buyers also launched unprecedented demand for more self-defense training and legal protection resources from the United States Concealed Carry Association (USCCA), based in West Bend. The USCCA now boasts more than 350,000 members after experiencing its second-highest growth rate in company history last April, surpassing even the boom in membership it saw in March.

“Americans are having an epiphany about firearms ownership and what it means to be protectors and providers for the people they love,” said Tim Schmidt, president and founder of the USCCA. “As the impact of the coronavirus has spread in recent weeks, many Americans began to evaluate their own personal security. They began to consider what they would do or how prepared they would be if they were ever forced to protect themselves and their families. That is why we are seeing so much renewed interest in self-defense education and gun ownership.” Read more

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