Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch says affluent seniors are buying up handguns in the face of the growing terror threat.
“You can’t believe in my community of people 60 and over buying handguns. Everywhere you look, wealthy 60-year-old people are buying handguns,” he recently told
CNBC.
The buying frenzy is in response to the growing terror threat but is also indicative of the fact that people are just “sick” of having gun control pushed on them, said Welch, a former titan of industry and longtime Republican supporter.
Welch believes Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has tapped into such frustration,
Breitbart explained. “In my view, Donald Trump has touched an enormous nerve. We’re sick of Washington.”
Gun sales in the U.S. have surged since the recent terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, CNBC reported. Two weeks after the Nov. 13 Paris rampage, more Americans had their backgrounds checked purchasing guns on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, than any day on record, according to the FBI. The 185,345 requests represented a 5 percent increase from the same time last year.
Welch did, however, draw a distinction between handguns and the type of assault weapons used in Paris and San Bernardino. "Machine guns, and some of these [AK-style rifles] shouldn't be out there," he said.
Meanwhile, the White House is courting the nation's governors and other officials to push for the president's gun control plans, with Vice President Joe Biden leading talks about better enforcing gun laws at state and local letters.
"I think what people are realizing, and I have realized as governor, is that we have a tremendous number of tools at our disposal to take action," Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who signed an executive order of his own on guns in his state in October, told
USA Today.
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