Fears of violent crime and armed right-wing extremists have caused gun sales to shoot up among Democrats across the United States, according to a new report.
After dropping during the 1990s, gun ownership among Democrats is on the rise, and gun groups composed of liberals and progressives are surging, the Wall Street Journal noted Thursday.
A 2023 survey by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions in Baltimore found that more than half of the Democrats who bought guns since 2020 were first-time buyers, compared with less than one quarter of Republicans.
And a 2022 survey by NORC at the University of Chicago found that 29% of people who were registered Democrats or leaned Democratic said they had a gun at home, up from 22% in 2020.
“It’s a group of people who five years ago would never have considered buying a gun,” Jennifer Hubbert, an anthropology professor at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, told the Journal.
Hubbert, who last year received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to research liberal gun owners, said she found gay and transgender gun owners were worried about hate crimes, while Jewish people feared potential attacks by pro-Palestinian groups or individuals.
Black gun owners