The weekend following the February 16 bomb threat at New Hope schools, Golden Triangle Defensive Tactics held one of its most-attended classes in months.
In the past year, defense class training has been increasing throughout the Golden Triangle region, especially following such incidents that have made the nightly news or find their way onto social media, according to Defensive Tactics operations manager and instructor Chad Kingsbury.
“There are more people who are now seeking training than we’ve seen the past year or two at the same time slot,” he said. “…I don’t like to say that folks are scared, but there’s not necessarily a better word for it. People are concerned for their safety. People are concerned about crime in our town.”
The increase in local training follows a nationwide trend: Gun ownership on the local, state and national level is on the rise, according to FBI statistics.
The FBI ran 252,372 background checks prior to gun purchases in 2015, up from 214,829 the year before. The numbers were even higher in Alabama — at 737,509 in 2015, up from 621,305 in 2014.
Golden Triangle Defensive Tactics’ most popular classes are the eight-hour courses required by Mississippi law for anyone applying for an enhanced conceal carry permit.
The enhanced permit requires training by a licensed instructor and allows the holder to carry a firearm in more locations.
“2015 was the biggest year that we’ve seen in the state of Mississippi for applications,” Kingsbury said.
As of Feb. 1, there were 78,954 active concealed carry permits in Mississippi, according to a representative from the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. Of those, 36,109 were enhanced permits.
There were approximately 43,000 total (concealed and enhanced) permits in the state as of the end of 2011, according to a 2012 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. That’s an 83 percent increase since 2011.
Being prepared
April Sellers, a lifelong Columbus resident and mother of four, was one of the students taking the Defensive Tactics shooting course the weekend following the New Hope bomb threat. She took the course to be able to apply for an enhanced concealed carry permit.
Sellers said she grew up in a family full of males and was taught to use hunting rifles. However, handguns are an entirely new realm for her.
She’d bought a Ruger SR9 a few years ago, but only recently decided she needed to learn to use it.
Though she doesn’t know if crime is actually on the rise in the community or not, she said she has become more aware of crimes like the New Hope bomb threat and shootings in Columbus, and wants to be prepared.
“The public is being made more aware of crimes that happen in our city,” Sellers said, adding she’s thankful to the increased media coverage for making her more knowledgeable about what is going on. “I just want to be prepared in case I am ever in a situation where my safety is in jeopardy or my children’s safety is in jeopardy.”
Stories like Sellers’ are part of a broader trend, said firearms salesman Gary Dedeaux, owner of Gary’s Pawn and Gun.
He thinks the increasing number of gun owners is a sign of the times. Dedeaux has been selling firearms for 38 years and said the market for guns is bigger than it has ever been. Part of it is, he said, may be because the sporting aspect of the industry has grown — more people are shooting handguns for sport than ever before. But, he said, there’s also economic and political uncertainty — and the increase of mass shootings over the last several years — that has people seemingly more uncertain about their own safety than they have been in the past, he said.
“Sandy Hook,” Dedeaux said, referencing the massacre of 20 elementary students and six faculty members at a public school in Connecticut in December 2012. “I think that got everybody’s attention.”
In the month following Sandy Hook, the number of firearm background checks the FBI ran in Mississippi nearly doubled compared to the year before. December 2012 meanwhile, had the highest number of background checks in all of that year.
Likewise, in December of 2015, right on the tail of massacres in Paris and San Bernardino, the FBI ran the highest number of background checks in the state in the past three years, at 44,727.
Dedeaux says it tends to be the bigger gun markets in places like Texas and other areas with large demographics that see the largest increases in gun sales after a high-profile mass shooting. Both he and Kingsbury mainly see the increases in customers at their own businesses following local incidents of violence or crime.
Dedeaux believes his customers just want to be prepared.
“Conceal carry has been up considerably over the years…I think it’s because people are more aware of their surroundings,” he said. “This stuff is happening…What I call ‘crazy crime,’…somebody jacked your car just because they think you’ve got money or something…I’m pushing 60-years-old and when I was a kid this stuff didn’t happen in these towns, in our towns…Now it just seems like it happens all the time.”
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