Gun sales are soaring. And it’s not just conservatives stocking up
SANTA FE, N.M. — Bill Roney was steaming.
The owner of the largest gun store in Santa Fe, N.M., had more customers clamoring for firearms than ever before — but he was running out of guns and bullets to sell to them.
“You’re telling me you’re not receiving ammunition — not a single round?” he badgered a supplier on the phone who had just informed him that everything was out of stock. “Now I don’t want to be grumpy, but I also want my business to continue.”
Firearm stores around the country are in the same situation, with largely barren shelves and gun racks that have been nearly cleaned out.
Americans have purchased almost 17 million guns so far in 2020, more than in any other single full year on record, according to Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting, a research company that tracks firearms.
Higher-than-average gun sales have long been a common feature of presidential election years, as American as brightly colored yard signs and nonstop political advertisements on television.
But this year’s buying spree is different — and not just because it’s bigger.
In previous election years, sales spikes were believed to be driven almost entirely by longtime gun owners who worried that a Democratic president might impose new restrictions on firearms.
This time, the sales appear to be driven by fears of societal instability, and gun shop owners and trade groups say the customer base is much broader, including large numbers of Black Americans, women and people who identify as politically liberal.
“People are uneasy,” said Jay Winton, who works at Roney’s Santa Fe shop, the Outdoorsman, which is out of stock of many varieties of weapons and ammunition, as well as accessories such as gun safes.
“They’re concerned about the long- term path of the country,” he said. “And just like they were hoarding toilet paper, they’re hoarding guns and ammo.”
Left-leaning retirees have been coming through the doors in droves, waiting in lines alongside ranchers and overlooking the blue TrumpPence posters that hang near the hunting rifles.
Winton said many are like the older couple that recently came in to buy a gun for the first time.
“They were self-described Berkeley liberals who said they were preparing for the coming societal collapse,” he said.
Adding to the ammo shortage is Inez Russell, a writer in Santa Fe, who said she was worried about right- wing militias that have staged protests around the state.
“Either side feels like if their side loses, the coun
try is coming to an end,” she said. “And one side has more guns than the other.”
Lately, Russell has been doing more target shooting and working on her gunloading skills.
“I find shooting very calming because you have to really concentrate and be in the moment,” she said. “It is very satisfying to have control in such a tumultuous world.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, economic uncertainty and a summer of civil unrest in re
sponse to police killings of unarmed Black people have raised national anxieties like no time in recent memory, said Florida State University sociologist Benjamin Dowd-Arrow, who studies gun owners.
Nationally, homicides have surged during the pandemic, climbing 15% nationwide in the first half of 2020, according to the FBI. The reasons are unclear, although some observers speculate that it may have to do with the shaky economy or with officers pulling back from their duties because of greater community distrust in police.
Concerns over a chaotic election and the specter of political violence have only further fueled gun sales, with people on the left and the right worried about the months to come.
“We’ve created a powder keg of people who are afraid for different reasons,” DowdArrow said. “When people feel that they can become victimized, they want to protect themselves.”
The FBI performed 28.8 million background checks on people seeking to buy firearms and accessories in the first nine months of 2020 — more than the annual total for any previous year. The total for all of last year was 28.3 million.
Early in the pandemic, factory shutdowns interrupted supply chains for gun makers, but manufacturing quickly resumed to pre- pandemic levels, said Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms and ammunition industries.
Now, he said, “this is an issue of overwhelming demand.”