A growing number of liberals are becoming gun owners, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Democrats are rediscovering guns due to concerns about personal safety amid increasing crime and a volatile political climate, the Journal reported.

"It's a group of people who five years ago would never have considered buying a gun," said Jennifer Hubbert, an anthropology professor at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, the outlet reported.

In recent years, the Democratic Party has pushed gun regulations, while Republicans have been the party of gun rights.

In fact, the Democratic Party's 2024 platform includes a little more than five pages dedicated to plans for gun safety, improving policing and public safety, rehabilitating people released from prisons and protecting women against violence, ABC News reported.

"All Americans deserve freedom from fear: to be confident that their children will come home safely from the store or the playground, and to know that their loved one will come home safely from their shift policing the streets," the draft platform states.

Still, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who comprise the Democrats' national ticket, both are gun owners. Harris, a former prosecutor, owns a handgun; Walz is an avid hunter.

A survey by nonpartisan NORC at the University of Chicago found that 29% of Democrats or those leaning Democrat said they had a gun at home in 2022. That's up from a four-decade low of 22% in 2010.

In 2022, 55% of Republicans had a gun in their home, up 3 percentage points since 2010.

A 2023 survey by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions showed that among Democrat gun buyers since 2020, more than half were first-time owners.

With guns still taboo among many progressives, some liberal firearm owners say they don't tell friends or relatives that they have guns.

"We have to have harbors and havens," said Randy Miyan, who runs Liberal Gun Owners, a 5,000-member group, the Journal reported.

Former Democrat President Jimmy Carter's grandson, Jason Carter, 49, said there's a need for people to come together about guns.

"There are more people saying, 'Let's look for middle ground,'" said Carter, a lawyer who hunts and fishes. "Let's work to respect Second Amendment rights, but let's figure out ways to make us safer."

Normally a hot issue during presidential election years, the gun issue has been become even more intense following two assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump.

He was grazed in the ear by a bullet during a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and then Sunday, a gunman got close to him at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida.

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