Joe Biden is right about the rise in crime: Blame guns — not police or protesters — for the violence msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
While gun sales have been climbing for decades — they often spike in election years and after high-profile crimes — Americans have been on an unusual, prolonged buying spree fuelled by the coronavirus pandemic, the protests last summer and the fears they both stoked.
As gun sales in the United States continued climbing amid the COVID-19 pandemic and protests, about a fifth of all Americans who bought guns last year were first-time gun owners, and they were less likely than usual to be male and white.
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Washington, May 31
Gun sales in the US have continued amid the Covid-19 pandemic and the nationwide protests, and about a fifth of all Americans who bought arms last year were first-time owners, a media report said.
The New York Times report on Sunday quoted research data from Northeastern University and the Harvard Injury Control Research Center as saying that 39 per cent of American households own guns, and of the new owners, half were women, a fifth were Black and a fifth were Hispanic, reports Xinhua news agency.
The ratio of households owning guns is up from 32 per cent in 2016, The New York Times said, quoting the General Social Survey, a public opinion poll conducted by a research center at the University of Chicago.