SIGNS OF A REALIGNMENT? Confessions of a New Gun Owner: Even in suburbia, people are losing confidence the police will keep them safe.

Even in suburbia, many are no longer confident our authorities would or could keep us safe. In a small suburb such as mine, what would happen if even 100 or 200 people bent on violence were to arrive at once? Could our small police force really handle it? Or would we be left to fend for ourselves like Mark and Pat McCloskey in St. Louis, who defended their home and were then treated as if they were criminals?

A few years back, I asked a former colleague whom I knew to be pro-Second Amendment philosophically if he owned a gun. He answered no, and then asked if I had one. I said I wouldn’t know what to write down as my reason for wanting one.

He told me, “Write down, ‘Because I don’t trust the government.’ ” . . .

This year a record five million law-abiding Americans, like us, have become new gun owners. Many don’t fit the stereotype: African-Americans account for the largest percentage jump in gun ownership, while women are 40% of first-time buyers. These new buyers join an even larger demographic: the 43% of American households that already have a gun.

The record gun sales for 2020 may have implications for swing states in November as well. In Pennsylvania alone, the National Shooting Sports Foundation reckons there are 276,648 first-time gun owners this year. To put this in perspective, in 2016 Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes.

You can’t trust the government to protect you from criminals in a lot of places. The next stage is when criminals learn they can’t trust the government to protect them.

Related: Crime Comes to the Suburbs. “Life-threatening crime in elite suburbs like Edina is a new phenomenon, but residents had better get used to it if they continue to support BLM and other anti-law enforcement causes. What do they think is going to happen if law enforcement is dismantled?”