CNN Money is reporting that the busiest May ever for NICS background checks for firearms sales has now been followed by the busiest-ever June:

Background checks for gun sales spiked 11% in June compared to last year, making it the busiest June ever, according to the FBI’s background check data. Last month the FBI conducted nearly 1.53 million background checks, which are required for all in-store purchases, but not for sales at gun shows or between individuals. That’s the highest volume of checks in June since 1999, when the FBI started keeping track. Gun background checks have climbed annually since 2003 with the exception of just three years, one of which was 2014, indicating a clear jump in gun sales. Michael Bazinet, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry group, said the increase is driven in part by the influx of more women and first-time gun owners into the market.

Yes, we know the article is entirely incorrect in claiming that background checks aren’t required at gun shows, and that FFLs must conduct background checks wherever they do business. But that isn’t the most impressive part of the story.

What Michael Bazinet notes at the NSSF is the real story. Gun sales are not being driven by threats of more gun control laws, but by a greater number of first-time gun buyers, particularly women and minorities in urban areas, a trend that began to take off several years ago and which is now really beginning to snowball.

People are completing NICS background checks and buying firearms are a higher-than-ever rate because they simply want to own guns for their own personal empowerment and enjoyment.

I can’t begin to tell you how important this really is.

We have a rabidly anti-gun President. We have a national Democrat Party that is dominated by the radical anti-gun left. The mainstream media and Hollywood left, which have almost immeasurable cultural influence and shape much of what we perceive as our reality, are dramatically anti-gun.

Despite all this influence attempting to dissuade, cajole, and even bully Americans away from gun ownership, American citizens are choosing to buy firearms and buy into “gun culture 2.0” at what appears to be an accelerating rate.

Unlike the prior generations where the tradition of gun ownership was typically passed down father to son in mostly rural environments and focused on rifles and shotguns used for hunting, these new gun owners are increasingly coming from the suburbs and urban areas, and are typically focused at first on self-defense handguns and then self-defense carbines before branching out into hunting and sport shooting guns.

Both at the range and on the firing line, new shooters spanning every possible demographic group are becoming members of the pro-gun, pro-liberty tribe because shooting is fun, and shooting is empowering.

It’s quite amusing that gun control supporters and politicians continue in their attempts to blame “the gun lobby” for the continuing increase in firearms ownership. They’re really convinced that only fear can sell firearms.

It’s fine with me if they keep chasing that delusion. The smiles I see on the firing line keep telling me otherwise.