Horrors! After the San Bernardino massacre on Dec. 2, more Americans are thinking about…defending themselves!

The Washington Post reports:

A new Public Religion Research Institute survey out Thursday finds that two-thirds of Americans say that mass shootings are a "critical" issue facing the country today, with 75 percent saying the same about terrorism. And the shooting in San Bernardino last week represents something of a perfect confluence of those issues: Islamic State-inspired extremists walk into a staff gathering and begin murdering people with assault-style rifles.

Data from Google shows that Americans are dealing with these anxieties in the most quintessentially American way: interest in concealed carry gun permits has exploded to unprecedented levels this month.

Dontcha love Post reporter Christopher Ingraham’s “open carry” superciliousness in his choice of words to describe ordinary people’s reactions to a jihadist mass murder? “Perfect confluence.” “These anxieties.” “The most quintessentially American way.”

Oh, just go ahead and call them “yahoos,” Christopher.

And after assuring the Post’s sophisticated readers that ordinary people’s concerns about terrorism are just crazy “issues” floating around in their “anxiety”-filled heads, Ingraham tut-tuts:

As the chart above shows, the previous peak in search interest in the subject came in the immediate aftermath of the Newtown school shooting. But so far this month, interest in concealed carry is roughly 66 percent higher than it was then. People may be heeding the advice of Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, who said in response to the San Bernardino shooting that "if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in and killed them."

This line of reasoning has become increasingly accepted among the public. A recent Gallup poll found that 56 percent of Americans say the country would be safer if more people carried concealed firearms. The only problem is that the research generally doesn't back up this notion. Social scientists are finding that more guns lead to more gun crime. Loosening concealed carry restrictions is associated with an increase in assault, rape and murder. And most people are shockingly bad at effectively using their guns in a self-defense situation.

Right, so they should just sit back, relax, and enjoy being shot.

And while Ingraham pins the blame for Americans’ increasing interest in arming themselves on Christian conservatives like Jerry Falwell, Amanda Marcotte at Salon blames the gun industry itself. Indeed after reading Marcotte, you might get the impression that Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were on the payroll of the National Rifle Association:

Monday is the 3rd anniversary of the horrific mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that took the lives of 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. For Newtown, it’s a sad day, but for the gun industry that profits off selling cowboy fantasies to paranoid right wingers, the anniversary has a very different meaning: It marks the beginning of a major surge in interest in buying up their deadly product….

In fact, the top four gun makers have earned more than $632 million since the Newtown massacre, according to the New York Daily News. 

Isn’t it fascinating to find out that our betters in the media would rather see us killed by terrorists than fight back?