'Surprising': Gun ownership on the rise among liberals according to a new report

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The Wall Street Journal reported this week that more and more liberals are buying guns, calling it a "surprising" trend among a group of voters that typically support restrictions.

For a piece published Thursday, the outlet looked at new gun ownership data and spoke to experts and several Democratic gun owners to understand what’s behind this trend.

"American gun culture has long been dominated by conservative, White men. Now, in a marked change, a burgeoning number of liberals are buying firearms, according to surveys and fast-growing gun groups drawing minorities and progressives," The Wall Street Journal reported.

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A recent Wall Street Journal report found that Democratic voters are the "most surprising" new group of gun owners in America. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The piece opened with the example of lifelong Democrat and gun restriction supporter Michael Ciemnoczolowski, who recently bought his first firearm.

Ciemnoczolowski, a liquor store clerk in Iowa City, Iowa told the journal that he bought the weapon because he’s worried about "street crime, armed right-wing extremists" and voiced his fear of U.S. politics getting worse.

"Domestic politics have grown increasingly acrimonious," he told the media outlet. 

The Journal noted that Democrats have historically been gun owners, but started trending away from having firearms in the "early 90s" when "increasingly divisive political battles over the role of firearms in American society led the Democratic Party to become an advocate for gun regulation. Republicans became the party of gun rights."

Now they are "rediscovering guns," the piece noted, citing statistics showing that Democratic gun ownership is on the rise from record lows.

"Twenty-nine percent of Democrats or those leaning Democrat said they had a gun at home in 2022, up from a four-decade low of 22% in 2010," the report said, citing a survey conducted by the University of Chicago’s NORC research group. 

According to another set of numbers from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, of all the Democratic voters who bought guns after 2020, "more than half were first-time owners," the piece stated.

Lewis and Clark College anthropology professor Jennifer Hubbert told the Journal, "It’s a group of people who five years ago would never have considered buying a gun." 

The rise in gun ownership among liberals may be why Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris now bills herself as a gun owner, where she used to talk about supporting mandatory gun buyback programs in 2019. 

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Vice President Kamala Harris joked about being a gun owner during a campaign event with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday night. (YouTube screenshot)

During the latest presidential debate, she touted how herself and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., are both gun owners.

And in a campaign event with Oprah Winfrey Thursday, Harris told the media mogul, "If somebody breaks into my house, they're getting shot." 

The piece also described how this swath of liberal gun owners is "much more diverse" than it was in the 90s, stating, "Four decades ago, Democratic gun owners were typically White men, including auto or steel union workers who grew up hunting."

"Gun dealers saw the largest increase in Black Americans buying guns compared with any other racial group in 2023, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry group," the report stated, noting that women comprised half of new liberal gun owners between 2019 and 2021. 

The outlet spoke to pro-gun liberal Tom Nguyen, a Los Angeles resident who founded a pro-gun group for liberals on Facebook in 2020 because many of them were worried about that year’s unrest regarding the pandemic and presidential election. 

"People were hungering for a space that was not this hyperaggressive, male-dominated, toxic gun world," Nguyen said, adding that he instructs 300 people a year on how to handle firearms. 

Alejandra Mendez, a gay woman who takes Nguyen’s class, told the Journal she gets criticism from her fellow liberals for owning four firearms. "I don’t understand that rhetoric of ‘protect my right’ and not protect the rights of other people," she said, arguing that she has the right to own guns, just like they have the right to free speech.

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The Journal also got a quote from former President Jimmy Carter’s grandson, Jason Carter, a former Georgia state senator and hunter who spoke at the Democratic National Convention last month about finding middle ground in America on the gun issue.

He told the Journal, "There are more people saying, ‘Let’s look for middle ground. Let’s work to respect Second Amendment rights, but let’s figure out ways to make us safer."