Minnesota is coming off a year of record-breaking background checks for gun sales coupled with statistics that show record low violent crime.

CBS Minnesota reports that “the state set a new record for firearms background checks” in 2017. That record follows the issuance of a record number of Minnesota concealed carry permits–71,156–in 2016.

Amid these gun purchases and concealed carry permit issuance records something else was happening–crime was falling. That state’s “violent crime rate hit a 50-year low in 2016.”

In other words, while the establishment media and Hollywood celebrities are pushing gun control as an answer to crime, Minnesotans are are buying guns and violent crime is receding.

CBS Minnesota refers to this scenario as a “reality check.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.