The answer to guns, apparently, is more guns.

Following James Holmes’ shooting on Thursday night, applications for conceal-carry permits spiked more than 40%. Denver Post reports the biggest spike came Friday immediately following the shooting, when on that day alone the Colorado Bureau of Investigation approved 1,216 background checks. 2,887 were approved from Friday through Sunday.

No one wants to bring a knife to a gun fight, and now apparently plenty of Coloradans are expecting the average Friday at the movies to turn into a gun fight.

Jake Meyers of Rocky Mountain Guns and Ammo told Denver Post, “a lot of it is people saying, ‘I didn’t think I needed a gun, but now I do’…When it happens in your backyard, people start reassessing — ‘Hey, I go to the movies.’”

Yep, we all go to the movies. The problem with this knife-and-gun-fight logic is that while everyone thinks he is going to be the G.I. Joe to stop the one psycho who opens fire, we forget about the statistical likelihood that if everyone in a movie theater is packing heat, there’s a lot higher chance of a gun fights breaking out in the first place.

Since Friday four people have been arrested in four separate “Dark Knight Rises” incidents when apparently still-high anxiety led to fights, stampedes, and one person yelling “bomb!” It’s not just the James Holmes-s of the world we need to worry about—if everyone in these recent melees was armed, the chance of a trigger getting pulled somewhere in the heat of the moment would be higher.

But even if I can’t convince anyone out there that we just might better off with fewer guns instead of more guns, you have to admit: Out of all the (probably) sane people who bought new guns for defense after Aurora, how many of them bought automatic assault rifles and thousands of bullets? Probably none—because you don’t buy that weapon for defense. You buy it when you’re preparing to go nuts and kill as many people as possible in a movie theater. Can we at least agree to get rid of those?

h/t: [Gawker]