There has been a run on guns in the Connecticut town where a madman armed with a Bushmaster assault rifle turned a grade school into a slaughterhouse.
Requests for gun permits are on track to double this year over last year in heartbroken Newtown, where 20 first-graders and six staffers were massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School last Dec. 14, police said.
And the surge appears to be fueled by worried residents like 66-year-old Nancy Ellis, a soon-to-be gun-toting grandma who claims Connecticut’s draconian new gun control laws are infringing on her constitutional rights.
“The fact that they were reeling in and squeezing more laws made me think, ‘You know what? I want my gun permit,’ ” said Ellis. “I want to exercise my right.”
Ellis, who has not yet purchased a weapon, said she’s a responsible person who has taken shooting lessons. She said she wants a gun to protect herself.
“What am I going to do” when faced with an intruder, she asked. “What am I going to do? Throw water at him? Get a knife? Go get a pair of scissors? When he has a gun potentially?”
As of Wednesday, 211 gun permit applications have been filed with the Newtown Police Department, officials said.
In all of 2012, there were 171 filed with local cops — and that was up 75% from the 99 filed in 2011.
Gun control advocates said most of the permit applications were taken out by gun lovers who wanted to stock up before Connecticut passed strict new gun laws in April.
“It is unfortunate, but a signal to us that our push for common sense gun safety and responsible laws on a federal and state level is being heard,” said Monte Frank of the Newtown Action Alliance.
Over at MD Shooting Sports gun shop in nearby Monroe, co-owner Mike DeLuca said he’s seen an uptick of customers seeking permit applications, ranging in age from 21 to 83.
“People think they are trying to take their guns away from them,” DeLuca said.
A 55-year-old customer, who identified himself only as Russ, said he recently got his permit, adding that gun ownership is a basic American right.
“What happened was beyond tragic,” he said. “But I don’t believe stronger laws are going to stop what happened.”
Michael Capozzielo, who teaches a basic pistol permit course in Newtown, said “everyone who wanted a gun permit got one.”
“People started thinking, you know what, some crazy person can do that, at the supermarket, anywhere and I won’t have anything to defend myself,” he said. “They were also afraid they were going to enact stricter laws and thought they had a small window of opportunity.”
Erin Nikitchyuk, whose 8-year-old son Bear escaped the Sandy Hook savagery unharmed, said she has no use for a gun and “no issue with responsible gun owners.”
“I do think Newtown is like anywhere else,” she said. “I don’t think people are running out to buy guns to offend anyone.”
Still, just as in the rest of the country, guns remain the great divide in Newtown.
That was evident earlier this month when gun advocates and opponents butted heads at a local Starbucks less than 2 miles from the Sandy Hook school.
About 30 gun owners wearing holstered pistols showed up to thank the coffee chain for complying with state and local laws that allow people to openly carry weapons into stores.
