More Lebanon County residents buy guns
Women, disabled among purchasers
LEBANON, Pa. — Gretchen Lager’s fondest childhood memories involved shooting bullets at tin cans and balloons along Slippery Rock Creek in Western Pennsylvania — but one day in 1995, guns became a far more menacing presence in her life.
Her brother-in-law killed his wife — Ms. Lager’s sister — with a deer hunting rifle. He then turned the gun on himself in a murder-suicide that orphaned their 15-year-old daughter. For years afterward, Ms. Lager was stridently anti-gun.
“I have been hating guns with everything I believe — until lately,” she said.
But earlier this year, Ms. Lager recalled those more pleasant childhood memories, “and I thought, ‘there’s something about guns that I really know and love. There’s a mechanical beauty. There’s something fun about it.’ ”
Ms. Lager, 64, who now lives in Hershey, purchased a .22-caliber pistol about two months ago to rekindle her target-shooting hobby and enrolled in a gun safety class at the Palmyra Sportsmen’s Association.
Still, she’s far from the stereotype of a gun owner, decked out in camouflage and stockpiling weapons while waiting for the apocalypse. Ms. Lager hates the National Rifle Association. — “I think they are opportunists” — believes in mandatory training for people purchasing guns and would never want to use her firearm to hurt an animal, much less a person. Instead, she considers herself part of a “silent majority” between two political extremes on guns.
Residentes of Lebanon County in southeastern Pennsylvania are buying guns and obtaining permits to carry firearms with increasing frequency, according to data kept by the Pennsylvania State Police. Local gun stores said many of their first-time firearms owners are, like Ms. Lager, outside of the stereotypical gun-owning demographics, They’re women, older couples, even women over the age of 80 and disabled people.
Why people buy weapons
Steve Wier holds one-onone firearm safety courses for first-time gun buyers at Enck’s Gun Barn in Myerstown and always asks his students why they want the training.
One man had agreed to learn to shoot as a bonding activity with his son. After his son died, he decided to become trained in firearms in his son’s memory. Couples have told Mr. Wier they are looking for a sport they can do together when one of them has a physical problem that prevents other activities.
The most frequent reason is a desire to get involved in competitive shooting, and it’s not uncommon to meet people who want to dress up as cowboys and cowgirls for Western-style weapon competitions. Personal defense is often a secondary reason, but it’s on most students’ lists, he said. Some people consider firearm safety to be like knowing how to swim — good general knowledge even if you don’t plan to carry a gun.
While Lebanon County still has a strong hunting and sport shooting community, the most common reason people are seeking firearms these days is personal protection, local gun sellers said.
Shyda’s Outdoor Center caters primarily to hunters, but center vice president Brad Shyda said interest in hunting rifles is down and purchases of semi-automatic weapons for self-defense are up, even at his store.
“You can tell all their lives they’ve been against guns, but now they want to feel safe,” he said. “They come in and say, ‘I want a 9mm’ — they don’t even know what a 9mm looks like, but they want a 9mm.”
Politics probably plays a role. Fears of Hillary Clinton banning firearms if she becomes president is likely motivating people to purchase guns in the same way President Barack Obama’s two elections led to spikes in gun sales, Mr. Shyda said.
“We’re seeing that deep mistrust everywhere, in every corner of society, whether it be guns, Black Lives Matter, the trans[gender] community,” said Craig Good, an Annville resident and salesman for Elizabethtown-based Lanco Tactical. “Just because [government leaders] say one thing, nobody really believes it because our politicians don’t stand behind it.”
Improvements in the types of tactical semi-automatic weapons available to civilians may also be making such weapons more attractive, said Art Kalbach, a gun salesman for Lanco Tactical. “When I bought my first AR-15, there were two choices: a long one or a short one,” Mr. Kalbach said, but there are many more styles and types of semi-automatic guns available now.
‘Tactic-cool’
Fear of world crises can fuel the fear of guns, but gun store owners admitted such fear can also boost their sales. The world “tactical” has become such a buzzword that Nathan Lamb, owner of Lanco Tactical, jokes about being “tactic-cool,” although he opened his store years before the word became popular, he said.
The word has more to do with a mindset of being “prepared for the unknown” than a type of weapon, Mr. Lamb said. That demographic often is also interested in other products Lanco Tactical offers, such as nonperishable food and survival gear.
Mr. Good said gun owners who want to be able to defend themselves from an increasingly scary world find themselves stereotyped by people who don’t own weapons. He’s heard gun control advocates go as far as wishing someone be shot with their own gun in an attempt to make a point on social media.
“They say unfair things like, ‘all gun owners are crazy.’ I think that’s unfair because they don’t know me. They don’t know that I’m a school teacher, they don’t know my friends, they don’t know the people I associate with,” he said.
“I think people are finally starting to realize that just because it could happen to anybody, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen to you.”
Is there really a trend?
Statistical information about firearm owners is limited due to concerns by gun rights supporters that gun registration would lead to confiscation, so it is difficult to get a handle on the amount of first-time firearm purchasers.
Lebanon County Sheriff Bruce Klingler said in November that he had seen a spike in permit applications after terrorist attacks in Paris, but he said more recently that the trend has leveled off. Statewide, the number of monthly background checks recorded by the FBI for gun permits and purchases spiked in December 2015 and have remained higher than the previous year for each month since.
Margot Bennett, executive director of Women Against Gun Violence, said claims that more people are becoming first-time firearm owners should be treated with caution due to the lack of available data.
“Although gun purchases are on the rise, they are being purchased by fewer households and by people who already own a gun(s),” Ms. Bennett wrote in an e-mail.