Requests for gun permits are set to double this year after the massacre last year at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
“People think [officials] are trying to take their guns away from them.”
Via Mediaite:
Russia Today reported:
Requests for gun permits in Newtown, Connecticut are set to double this year, as residents fear for a loss of their Second Amendment rights in wake of the massacre there last December that killed 28 people, mostly children.
Local police have already received more than 200 gun permit requests in 2013, and applications aren’t expected to stop anytime soon even as last year’s tragedy at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School remains fresh in the minds of many.
Authorities in Newtown have reported a spike in gun permit requests, and announced that at the current rate these requests will far surpass last year’s. Newtown police have already received 211 gun permit requests this year, and there are more than four months left for this number to increase. Last year, police received 171 requests from January through December. In 2011, they only received 99.
“People think [officials] are trying to take their guns away from them,” Mike DeLuca, co-owner at a gun shop called MD Shooting Sports, told the New York Daily News, sharing the fears expressed by customers seeking gun permit applications. “They want to have a right to own a gun and protect themselves.”
Ever since a gunman killed 26 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December, Democratic lawmakers and White House officials have emphasized the importance of stricter gun control laws, and even tried to ban military-grade assault weapons. But gun activists have long expressed fear that their Second Amendment rights will be violated, and the response to the Newtown massacre prompted many of them to stock up on weapons.