Handgun License Demand Skyrockets after Mall Shooting

You may recall a previous post that discussed how a law-abiding citizen and his concealed handgun minimized the damage from a crazed Muslim terrorist in a Utah Mall and stopped him from killing even more innocent people.

As an interesting (and logical) follow-up, the demand for Utah Concealed Handgun Licenses has more than doubled after that tragic event.

Concealed-gun demand skyrockets after shootings

Utah's Bureau of Criminal Identification, already overwhelmed by an upward swing in concealed weapon permit applications, is seeing a further wave in demand following the Trolley Square tragedy in February.

BCI Chief Ed McConkie says that after a lag of about two weeks - about the time it takes to attend firearms safety classes and get fingerprinted and photographed - the applications started to pour in for the required criminal background checks.

"It almost doubled after the Trolley Square shootings for a couple of weeks," McConkie says. "We are getting 400 to 500 a day. Before, it was 200-270."

...

This happened after every natural disaster like Katrina... This happened after 9/11 on a national scale... and it's happening again in Utah. This leads to two thoughts I always have:

1) "Good, more people want to protect themselves and their families. It will make it that much harder for another mall massacre to occur in the future."

2) "It's unfortunate that it takes a tragedy for people to realize only they can defend themselves." For example, groups/trainers across the country (and not just specifically for firearms) come into contact with only a small percentage of women that proactively seek self-defense training. Unfortunately, most women survive some type of attack before looking for classes or self-defense tools.

You know what might contribute to this sad fact?

Idiots like this law enforcement officer that was quoted at the end of that article:

If an increased number of Utah citizens are taking comfort in concealed handguns, some police officers are not. Besides the difficulty of differentiating between a well-meaning citizen with a weapon and a criminal with one, Department of Public Safety spokesman Sgt. Jeff Nigbur says officers are trained to respond in life-or-death situations.

"An officer receives a lot of training," Nigbur says. For instance, "Before moving out with guns blazing to help out the situation, an officer is going to take in to account the backdrop - who is behind that drywall that I'm going to put five rounds through? Will a regular citizen consider that? I know an officer does."

Gee, I guess Sgt. Nigbur would prefer that those survivors of the Utah mall massacre (and millions of other citizens that defend themselves every year) were dead.

Good man.