July marked a record milestone in firearm purchases: It was the 48th consecutive month of gun sales in excess of one million units.

Mark Olivia, head of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, noted the sales numbers were minimum estimates. He added: “This milestone was achieved in the midst of the continuous attacks by the Biden administration which has demonstrated nothing but contempt for the Second Amendment and has twisted the levers of government to impede the ability of law-abiding citizens to legally possess firearms of their choosing. Americans are sending a clear signal each and every month. The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is not up for negotiation.”

In other words, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Indeed, the prospect of Joe Biden becoming president, his shady election, and the resulting surge in violence promoted by Democrats (particularly black-on-black violence) are three factors directly responsible for the surge in consumer purchases of firearms for self-defense.

But what is even more remarkable than the record sales is recent data indicating the number of gun owners in America may be much higher than the numbers the media have reported for years — about 40% of households, according to Pew Research, and two to three times more Republican than Democrat owners.

However, a Rutgers University study published last month in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology indicates that the number of gun owners may be substantially undercounted. According to Rutgers researcher Allison Bond, one reason is because “some individuals are falsely denying firearm ownership, resulting in research not accurately capturing the experiences of all firearm owners in the U.S.” He added, “The implications of false denials of firearms ownership are substantial.” Bond concluded, “It may be that a percentage of firearm owners are concerned that their information will be leaked and the government will take their firearms or that researchers who are from universities that are typically seen as liberal and anti-firearm access will paint firearm owners in a bad light.”

Do ya think? Of course, Rutgers was issuing the study as a warning, not as good news.

According to J.D. Tuccille: “Bond frames the problem of dishonesty among survey respondents as posing a danger to those surveyed since they don’t receive proper firearm safety information. But her deeper concern is with the validity of research into firearms culture and policy in a country where experts don’t have anywhere near as good a handle on the prevalence of gun ownership as they had believed. … Believe it or not, people are reluctant to tell total strangers about their potentially controversial activities. That’s especially true of women and minorities newly among the ranks of gun owners amidst the chaos of recent years. Academics are unhappy that privacy-minded respondents impair their understanding of the world we live in, but such evasion is an inevitable consequence of decades of fiery debate and punitive gun policies.”

So what is the revised estimate of gun ownership? The upper-end data suggests that as many as 60% of Americans could be legal owners of firearms, and the common 40% figure is likely the low estimate.

Finally, after four years of record firearm sales and conservative estimates that more than half of all adults are legal gun owners, it turns out that the fastest growing demographic of new handgun owners is women, and more specifically black women.

Much to the dismay of all those wealthy leftist suburban white women advocating policies to suppress Second Amendment rights – self defense being the primary reason Americans acquire firearms – women are now the fastest growing group of new firearm owners. And given the inconvenient truth that a grossly disproportionate number of murders and violent crimes are perpetrated in urban centers by black assailants on black victims, 30 percent of the women purchasing firearms are black urban residents.

In other words, what we have here is mostly wealthy white privilege suburban women attempting to dictate to mostly poor urban black women, what they can and can’t do to defend themselves.

I suggest a cage match – game on!