A run on guns? 'People feel like they need to have a firearm'
EUGENE, Ore. -- Since recent shooting rampages in Oregon and Connecticut, sales at a Eugene gun shop have spiked and a firearms safety school is busting at the seams with prospective students.
“So, it’s usually a 5 to 10 minute wait,” said Oak Grove Guns owner David Millers said at his shop in Santa Clara on Monday, “but on Saturday the wait was up to two hours.”
Miller said the background check he runs for customers to purchase a firearm has been bogged down since the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
“People feel like they need to have a firearm to walk around the malls and to walk places where they wouldn’t have carried a gun before,” said Miller.
Miller said existing gun owners are stocking up on firearms that they believe might be banned by future gun control legislation after President Obama’s speech Sunday night.
In his address to the nation, President Obama promised to use the power of his office to prevent the kind of senseless violence seen in recent shooting rampages.
"And that brings people in to buy the things that might get banned,” said Miller.
In addition to a spike in gun sales, classes for firearm safety at Defensive Firearms Instruction in Eugene are in high demand.
“In the past, maybe 5 to 10 here and there,” said Defensive Firearms Instruction owner Donovan Beard. “Now we have classes running every single week for the next six months.”
To carry a concealed weapons permit in Oregon, an individual must first pass a safety course like the one offered by Beard’s company.
Beard said business spiked when cuts first came down at the Lane County Sheriff’s Office; again after the Clackamas Town Center Mall shooting; and again after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown.
“I’ve seen an increase in concealed handgun licensing as well as armed security training as well,” said Beard.
"Every man of you who is equipped, follow me..Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon. But if they want to have a war, let it begin here." Lexington, MA, 19 April 1775, as British troops approached on their march to Concord to implement gun control. CAPTAIN JOHN PARKER (Commander, Lexington Militia Company)
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"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption for authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
DANIEL WEBSTER
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." Thomas Paine
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"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." James Madison 1789
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"If ye love wealth more than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may your chains set lightly upon you, and posterity forget that ye were our country men." Â
SAMUEL ADAMS 1776
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"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."Â 1784 EDMUND BURKE
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"Both Oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms." ARISTOTLE
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"Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; ...The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."Â 1857 FREDERICK DOUGLASS (U.S. Marshal, son of a slave)
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"The Constitution Protects us from our own best intentions." ANTONIN SCALIA (Supreme Court Justice)
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"They will never outlaw all of your guns at once. But every 'reasonable' control they can impose without your resistance gives them one more bit of leverage to make gun ownership for you and your children and your grandchildren as difficult as possible." DAVID KOPEL (Civil Rights Attorney)"
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"the only background check I'd support is one on politicians." SHERIFF RICHARD MACK (Sheriff of Graham County, AZ;Â filed suit challenging Constitutionality of the Brady Law)"...
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"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; ...The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes" CESARE BECCARIA.
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"I blame the deaths of my parents on those legislators who deny me my right to defend myself." DR. SUZANNE GRATIA (Both her parents and 20 others were killed by a mad man in the Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, TX, 1991. TX law prevented her from carrying her handgun into the restaurant, so she left it in the car)
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"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state controlled police are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy....If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws." EDWARD ABBEY
@Shofoeshore ---Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), as "Hell is full of good intentions or desires." Just how it got to the road to Hell being paved this way, and not Hell itself, I don't know.
If only the bad guys had guns, how safe would you feel?Â
If more guns made things safer, America would logically have the lowest murder rate on Earth.
@godless anarchist ---best quote in this thread, need to syndicate that if you just made it up.