Patrick Sees Trump Win in Gun Sales Surge
While Demographics Suggest the Opposite

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor
August 4, 2020

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick gave the GOP faithful a rare glimmer of hope on Tuesday when he declared that spiking firearm sales across a nation that's living in fear are a harbinger for a President Donald Trump re-election victory this fall.

“Guns sales are a leading indicator pointing to Trump’s electoral success in November," Patrick said. "The millions of Americans who are buying guns will not vote for a candidate who threatens their Second Amendment rights and promises confiscation policies."

But Patrick appeared to jump the gun in his role as the Trump campaign Texas chairman in light of a new study that shows that African-Americans have accounted for the highest percentage of weapons purchases in the United States by far in 2020.

That piece of demographic reality shoots a huge hole in Patrick's reliance on firearm transactions as a gauge for the upcoming election when black Americans will be voting for Democrat Joe Biden in record numbers.

The lieutenant governor's theory about gun sales as a more telling barometer than scientific polling has other obvious problems that he might not have anticipated when he floated it in an email to supporters today. Patrick apparently failed to consider that Americans are arming themselves in record numbers because they believe that Biden's election is inevitable in the election less than three months now.

The polls that Patrick is ignoring show a potential Biden landslide on the horizon with the Democrat him crushing Trump in the popular vote with significant leads in all of the major swing states except Texas and Georgia where he's tied with the president.

Patrick's logic might have another flaw with the assumption that Americans will want to keep the same leader in charge of a country that he says has become besieged with violent crime with Trump in the White House.

"As violence across America erupts -- homicides are up 24 percent in the country’s fifty largest cities -- citizens are taking steps to protect themselves," Patrick contended.

Patrick didn't say how the rash of murders in major urban areas fits into the president's promise of making the country great again like he promised to do. But the Texas Senate president blames Democrats for the shambles that America finds itself in heading into the sixth month of the coronavirus crisis that's destroyed the economy that Trump had incorrectly assumed in January that he could ride on cruise control to a second term.

“Democrat led cities across the nation including Portland, Seattle and now Austin are surrendering the streets to lawlessness and mob rule," Patrick asserted. "With their “Defund the Police” rhetoric escalating, they have sent a clear message that protecting and defending their residents is a low priority."

One of the things that Patrick failed to mention was that southern states that are led by Republican Trump followers like Governors Greg Abbott of Texas, Ron DeSantis of Florida and Doug Ducey of Arizona have been the epicenters for the second COVID-19 surge despite dramatic undercounts that have all but destroyed the credibility of their taxpayer-funded data tracking systems.

The analysis that the Firearm Industry Trade Association unveiled on Monday should give Trump loyalists more cause for concern than they already have if they bother to read the fine print.

The report found that older white men didn't lead the pack in terms of gun purchases during the first six months of 2020 like they always have in the past.

The NSSP study shows a 58.2 percent increase in gun sales among African-American men and women in 2020 compared to 51.9 percent among whites, 49.4 percent for Hispanics and 42.9 percent among Asian-Americans.

While Patrick singles out Austin as a city he claims to be ruled by anarchist mobsters, he overlooked the fact that a Second Amendment advocate was shot to death a fewl blocks from the state Capitol on Congress Avenue while marching with anti-Trump demonstrators. .