U.S. gun sales soar amid pandemic, social unrest, election fears

[snoop1130]

U.S. gun sales soar amid pandemic, social unrest, election fears

By Tim McLaughlin and Melissa Fares

 

Andreyah Garland, a 44-year-old single mother of three daughters and member of the Hudson Valley Nubian Gun Club, opens a case with her Mossberg 590M 12 gauge shotgun as she prepares for a gun training session in Newburgh, New York, U.S., October 13, 2020. Picture taken October 13, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar

 

(Reuters) - Andreyah Garland, a 44-year-old single mother of three daughters, bought a shotgun in May for protection in the quaint middle-class town of Fishkill, New York. She joined a new and fast-growing local gun club to learn how to shoot.

 

She has since applied for a pistol permit and constantly hunts for increasingly scarce ammunition – making three trips weekly to a local Walmart. “They’re always out,” she said.

 

Like legions of other first-time buyers who are contributing to record sales for the U.S. gun industry this year, Garland’s decision to take up arms is driven in part by disturbing news about the coronavirus pandemic, social unrest over police killings of Black people and a potentially contested election that many fear could spark violence.

 

“With everything going on around us,” she said, “you see a need.”

 

Surges in U.S. firearm sales have in recent decades been predictably driven by events sparking fears of impending gun-control legislation, such as the election of a Democratic president or a spate of mass shootings, federal gun background check data show. Industry experts and academics who study gun ownership say such surges came largely among the gun-industry’s core base of white, male and politically conservative customers who often already owned one or multiple guns.

 

That market is widening this year to include a new rush of first-time buyers, including many women, minorities and politically liberal buyers who once would not have considered gun ownership, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen industry experts, academics and gun store owners.

 

“People who don’t normally think about firearms are being forced to contemplate something outside their universe,” said Dan Eldridge, owner of Maxon Shooter’s Supplies and Indoor Range in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines, Illinois.

 

The number of first-time buyers has skyrocketed this year, according to industry analysts, trade groups and the CEO of major gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson Brands Inc, Mark Peter Smith. In a Sept. 3 conference call with investors, Smith estimated that firearms neophytes accounted for about 40% of sales this year, an estimate he called conservative and “double the national average” in past years. In a Sept. 2 call, Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings Inc CEO Jon Barker said the company estimated that 5 million people purchased firearms for the first time across the industry in the first seven months of the year, which matched a recent figure put out by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group, based on a national survey of retailers.

 

In a statement to Reuters, Walmart Inc acknowledged supply shortages in outdoor products including hunting but provided no details of its gun and ammunition sales or inventory. “We are working with our suppliers to make product available for our customers as quickly as possible,” the company said.

 

Among the first-timers is Bailey Beeken, 61, who lives in Riverdale, New York and describes herself as a white, politically liberal, middle-class woman. She started taking shooting lessons this summer, she said, because “whichever way this election goes, it could get really scary, and it could get bloody.”

 

With the pandemic pitting mask-wearers against mask protesters, and police-brutality protests sparking violent street clashes, “I just feel like it’s a powder keg,” she said. “I want to be armed and dangerous.”

 

‘MORE GUNS IS MORE DEATH’

 

Neither gun companies nor the government releases detailed data on firearm sales or the demographics of buyers. The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) - a widely accepted proxy - shows a 41% increase in activity during the first nine months of this year, compared to the same period in 2019, which was a record year. With 28.8 million background checks through the end of September, this year’s surge has already surpassed last year’s all-time high of 28.4 million.

 

Background checks verify that buyers do not have a criminal record or another issue that might make them ineligible to buy a weapon, such as an arrest warrant or a documented drug addiction. Less than 1% of applicants are denied, according to FBI figures.

 

Eight of the top 10 all-time weeks for background checks have happened this year, according to NICS data that goes back to 1998. The top week came in March, when the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus crisis a pandemic. The top month this year came in June, following the late-May killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. 

 

Shares of Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger & Co Inc, the two top U.S. manufacturers, have soared 131% and 59%, respectively, this year. Both companies did not respond to requests for comment.

 

The historically high sales are adding millions of weapons to a nation that already has more guns than people. The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey estimated the number of U.S. guns at 393 million in 2017. That dwarfed the next highest totals of 71 million in India and nearly 50 million in China - countries that both have populations four times the size of the United States.

 

Aside from rising concerns over street violence related to political unrest, surging gun sales can translate to more routine gun deaths, researchers say. Harvard University professor David Hemenway said there is overwhelming evidence that buying a gun greatly increases a household’s risk of suicide, shooting accidents and violence against a domestic partner.

 

“It’s pretty clear that more guns is more death,” said Hemenway, director of the school’s Injury Control Research Center, which studies injury prevention.

 

This year’s historic demand has forced buyers and sellers to get creative in finding weapons and ammo, more than a dozen buyers, industry experts and gun-shop owners say. The owner of a shooting range in Monroe, New York, for instance, told Reuters it has started buying ammunition from customers who have stockpiles at home. Online auction sites for guns and ammunition have seen prices skyrocket. Bootstrapping entrepreneurs are hitting estate sales looking for gun collections to resell. In Kenosha, Wisconsin - the site of deadly street clashes after the police killing of Jacob Blake in August - gunsmith Jared Carlson said he has been inundated with calls from would-be customers who can’t find guns or ammo at traditional outlets.

 

Christopher Metz, CEO of Vista Outdoor Inc - one of the nation’s largest ammunition makers - told analysts in August that it can’t get bullets to its distributors fast enough. “It’s the leanest we have ever seen them in inventory,” he said, noting that the lack of ammunition is particularly frustrating to first-time gun buyers.

 

WHO IS BUYING?

 

Gun shop owners and club leaders, in interviews, reported a rush of interest from people who have never considered owning a gun before, often from outside the gun industry’s traditional customer base of conservative white males.

 

Garland, the first-time gun buyer, is a Black woman and a registered Democrat who voted for Barack Obama. But she also expresses deep dissatisfaction with both parties and says she hasn’t decided how to vote in the November presidential election. She’s one of about 125 members in the new and fast-growing Hudson Valley Nubian Gun Club. More than half of members are female, and more than two-thirds are Black, including founder Damon Finch. He said he started the club in March, as the pandemic hit, and saw another big boost in interest after George Floyd’s death. Finch says he now gets 15 calls or emails a day from people asking about joining or getting gun safety training. Many ask him: “How do I use this tool if - God forbid - I ever have to defend my family?”

 

In Boston, innovation consultant Eugene Buff, who is Jewish and politically conservative, got a similar reaction when he posted on Facebook this summer that he was a licensed firearms instructor. His first class was booked immediately, mostly with Jewish senior citizens who feared for their safety because of synagogue shootings and the pandemic. “A lot of them didn’t like guns and feared them,” he said, but now they felt a need for protection that outweighed those fears.

 

Historically, white males are overwhelmingly the biggest group buying guns in the United States. Nearly half of white men in America own a gun, compared to about a quarter of nonwhite men, according to a 2017 study by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

 

There’s not enough data to confirm whether those demographics have substantially changed with this year’s rush of gun-buying, three academic experts on the gun industry told Reuters in interviews. But it’s clear that deep political and racial divisions in this tumultuous year are driving up firearm sales, said Florida State University public health professor Benjamin Dowd-Arrow. In these tense times, he said, buyers across the ideological spectrum view themselves as the “good guys” protecting themselves from “bad guys.”

 

“So all the ‘good guys’ need to go out and buy a gun,” he said.

 

Current events - along with fears of gun-control if Democrats take power in upcoming elections - are also driving sales among traditional customers, said Eldridge, the owner of the shooting range and supply store in suburban Chicago.

 

Eldridge is in the epicenter of U.S. gun-buying - driven in part by spikes of violence in Chicago and incendiary political rhetoric over its causes. Illinois is the top state for background checks, with 5.6 million through the end of September, more than doubling the next highest state’s total.

 

That compared to 4.9 million background checks in Illinois for all of 2019 and 2.8 million in 2018.

 

“You have people sitting in their high-rise apartments and seeing the Walgreens store they go to every day get looted,” he said.

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-10-15

 

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[Lacessit]

I see, the solution to a fire is to extinguish it with gasoline.

[from the home of CC]

that's just in case Biden drops dead on election day..

[YetAnother]

are there limits in the usa regarding number of guns/family ? not maximums, minimums

[nausea]

The true value of guns, it's not for protection against the state, after all they're gonna outgun you at every level if push comes to shove, it's about protection when the state breaks down. 

[sammieuk1]

It comes to something when Asda runs out ammo it must be terrible ???? 

[Lacessit]

5 minutes ago, nausea said:

The true value of guns, it's not for protection against the state, after all they're gonna outgun you at every level if push comes to shove, it's about protection when the state breaks down. 

Question is, will it break down under Biden or Trump?

[pgrahmm]

I miss my Dan Wesson & Marlin 357's ...... Primarily used when out exploring on horseback, but a good security measure to have a mind changer readily available....

[ballpoint]

51 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

Question is, will it break down under Biden or Trump?

It's already breaking down under Trump.

[Lacessit]

2 minutes ago, ballpoint said:

It's already breaking down under Trump.

I didn't want to say that, because the pro-Trump supporters become a wailing Greek chorus.

[scammed]

with peaceful protesters entering private property

by the legitimacy of having numerical superiority,

i would also buy an equalizer

[Captain_Bob]

Thankful to  be "trapped" in Thailand for 16 years. Too many USAers are gun-nut crazy. Trump loves to make his followers angry and scared. He thrives on chaos and the misery of others. 

[Tug]

7 hours ago, nausea said:

The true value of guns, it's not for protection against the state, after all they're gonna outgun you at every level if push comes to shove, it's about protection when the state breaks down. 

Spot on imo it allways make me chuckle when the gun nuts start imagining they can take on the government we have our bolt action long guns plus our glock I took my semi auto to the chop saw after parkland in solidarity with the kids can’t imagine needing a assault rifle I’d never hunt another human and let’s hope for a peaceful election and transition 

[Meat Pie 47]

What a banana republic

[RoadWarrior371]

8 hours ago, YetAnother said:

are there limits in the usa regarding number of guns/family ? not maximums, minimums

I suggest a 5 gun Minimum.  Anything smaller than 9mm is considered a toy.   ????

[car720]

Children with guns = dangerous children.

[Isaan sailor]

Got my license to carry and my sidearm during the first Obama term.  A great investment in security and peace of mind.

[mtls2005]

Firearm suicides in the U.S: 23,854

 

Total firearm deaths: 39,773

 

 

Can only use one firearm at a time (safely). Can only kill yourself once.

 

 

 

 

[Stargeezr]

I used to own a Remington 12 gauge shotgun, and a 410 gauge shot gun

plus a Browning 22 rifle for bird hunting. I do miss them all.

Geezer

[Surelynot]

14 hours ago, YetAnother said:

are there limits in the usa regarding number of guns/family ? not maximums, minimums

They should limit the number of guns you are allowed to own to the number of brain cells you possess........ 

[worgeordie]

Building up to another Civil War....?

regards Worgeordie

[Surelynot]

9 minutes ago, worgeordie said:

Building up to another Civil War....?

regards Worgeordie

It's what he wants

[scorecard]

16 hours ago, nausea said:

The true value of guns, it's not for protection against the state, after all they're gonna outgun you at every level if push comes to shove, it's about protection when the state breaks down. 

I guess that really means folks seem to like to vote for crazy, unbalanced and dangerous people who are serial liars and therefore need protection from the crazy and dangerous liars they voted for. 

[ballpoint]

1 minute ago, scorecard said:

I guess that really means folks seem to like to vote for crazy, unbalanced and dangerous people who are serial liars and therefore need protection from the crazy and dangerous liars they voted for. 

In a perverse way, that could be true.  The type of person who wants to be a big man and carry a big gun around for security, will feel even bigger when there actually is a hint of danger, and he can't wait for the day he can fire that gun.  Where's the fun in dressing up like a toy soldier and walking around with your big gun in a civilised, well behaved society?

[cheshiremusicman]

8 hours ago, RoadWarrior371 said:

I suggest a 5 gun Minimum.  Anything smaller than 9mm is considered a toy.   ????

Yes, and in the UK we are not even allowed to 'own' pistols or rifles even if you WERE a member of a licensed gun club which now don't exist. The gun club I was a member of some 40 years ago was only a certified indoor target range for the use of .22 calibre use, something I think they give the kids in the USA. Shotguns licenses are (I believe) still available under special circumstances. A very different scenario to the USA.

When I owned a 22 rifle (single shot) and pistol, I was only allowed to hold 20 rounds of ammunition and this (and where the pistol and rifle action were securely stored) were checked on on a regular basis by the local police force, with the provision that the 'action' of the single shot rifle and the 'clip' for the pistol had to be securely stored in two different locations from the weapons themselves. Gun clubs were disbanded under the UK government rules many many years ago and even our Olympic shooters had to train outside of the UK. This of course, does not stop criminals from obtaining firearms in the black market, but the amateur shooters are denied their sport and gunsmiths have gone out of business many years ago.

[Andy from Kent]

 

It doesn't take a lot to get USA gun sales  on a soaring trajectory.

[bendejo]

9 hours ago, Tug said:

17 hours ago, nausea said:

The true value of guns, it's not for protection against the state, after all they're gonna outgun you at every level if push comes to shove, it's about protection when the state breaks down. 

Spot on imo it allways make me chuckle when the gun nuts start imagining they can take on the government we have our bolt action long guns plus our glock I took my semi auto to the chop saw after parkland in solidarity with the kids can’t imagine needing a assault rifle I’d never hunt another human and let’s hope for a peaceful election and transition 

There was a TV series called Homeland, had an episode where the patriots went up against Federal agents (season 7).  The cherry on top is a character obviously based on A. Jones cowering in the basement.

 

 

[Redline]

17 hours ago, YetAnother said:

are there limits in the usa regarding number of guns/family ? not maximums, minimums

No, some people have big caches of weapons

[Redline]

Get rid of all but the shotguns, and few small handguns, and the police won't be needed as much, and probably won't fire on suspects so quickly.

[connda]

Although I'm a gun rights proponent, I personally don't think that anyone should have control of guns and ammo without a minimum of 20 hours of gun training covering gun safety, gun handling, and legal ramification of the use of deadly force.  All these new gun owners.  What comes to mind are the poster boy and girl for "How Not To Handle Firearms" from Saint Louis.