The Chester County Sheriff’s Office has been working diligently to accommodate the surge in people submitting requests for a gun permit in the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris last week.

Following 46 applications on Monday and 39 on Tuesday, by lunchtime on Wednesday there were already another 20 people who had shown up to request a gun permit. These numbers are nearly double the average from the previous month.

Sheriff Carolyn Bunny Welsh is certain that the increase is directly related to the terror attacks that left 129 dead and over 350 wounded. “People are frightened and more aware of self-defense,” she said.

Bucks County also saw a doubling in the requests for permits, going from a daily average of 20 to 40, while Allegheny County’s Sheriff’s Office ended up so inundated with inquiries and applications that they had to resort to posting a request on their Facebook page imploring people to not call the office, but instead to submit their inquiries by email.

However, this sudden interest in gun permits is not something that is occurring across the entire region, as a similar surge in applications has not yet occurred in Philadelphia, or in Delaware and Montgomery Counties.

Robert Cottrol, a criminal law and legal history professor at George Washington University Law School commented that the increase in gun permits is not a surprising reaction, as it has been a common occurrence with similar incidents or natural disasters in the past. Sheriff Welsh has also noticed similar bumps in the number of permit applications after highly publicized incidents.

Cottrol explains the increased interest in guns for protection, as the reaction of people feeling vulnerable in times of crises, when it might seem to them that the agencies providing their security may be occupied elsewhere, and would therefore have a different focus.

“They looked at Paris and saw a situation where basically, large numbers of police and military personnel were drawn to the different incidents,” he said. “They’re probably thinking, if there’s a similar event here, well, I’m going to have to protect myself.”