Lamont restricts gun sales amid increase induced by coronavirus

NORTH BRANFORD — A number of people seemingly have become interested in buying a gun amid the coronavirus pandemic, as purchases in Connecticut have spiked in recent days.

But they’re going to have to wait their turn.

Gov. Ned Lamont Thursday required in an executive order that sales be made by appointment, describing the change as the latest safety measure required to fight the spread of the virus.

At Connecticut Sporting Arms LLC on Foxon Road, Arnie Willhite experienced a boom in recent days. He said Tuesday he had been seeing five to six times his normal business, leaving his shelves virtually bare.

“We pretty much got wiped out on our inventory,” said Willhite. “It seems like every time something happens to make people afraid of the future, they go out and buy stuff.”

Most of the sales have been pistols and shotguns, typically used for home defense, Willhite said, with a significant number of patrons buying a gun for the first time.

Willhite, who has been operating the business for 15 years, said he had never experienced a run of sales quite like this.

The closest thing was a jump after the Sandy Hook mass shooting in 2012, but that was an incident that prompted concerns in a specific area, he noted. This has frightened a much wider group of people, he said.

Mark Oliva, director of public affairs with the Newtown-based National Sports Shooting Foundation, said there are preliminary indications that sales have increased across Connecticut, although the FBI has yet not released the number of background checks conducted this month.

He believed an “eye-popping” number of sales have taken place.

Lamont confirmed that trend in his executive order, saying there have been 19,943 purchase or transfer authorizations so far in March 2020, up from 12,572 in all of March 2019.

The jump is in keeping with the past, Oliva said. He said gun purchases have been increasing generally since last April, and noted there are often spikes in sales after natural disasters.