Year of lockdowns, protests brings record gun sales

At gun shops across the country, 2020 was a year of wild spikes in sales, especially to new customers anxious about the pandemic and a summer of protests. More firearms were sold last year than in any previous year on record.

But despite the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol and an FBI assessment that extremist groups plan attacks on government institutions in the coming days, government and industry data indicate that the huge surges of buyers seen earlier in the year have not been repeated since the November election.

Gun sales typically soar in the weeks following the election of a Democratic president, as buyers scurry to purchase firearms for fear that the new chief executive will fulfill campaign promises to tighten regulations on gun sales.

But a Washington Post analysis of gun sales in 2020 finds no such surge in recent weeks. Rather, purchases soared last March and April as the effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus led to food shortages, empty streets and millions of lost jobs. Then, firearms sales peaked in July, in the weeks after massive protests against police brutality spread throughout the nation.

Sales continued at a high rate in November and December, but the numbers didn’t come close to spikes seen earlier in the year. December gun sales were the third-lowest of any month in 2020, the Post’s analysis found.

“When people are concerned about their personal security, they buy more guns,” said Phillip Levine, an economist at Wellesley College. “When people are concerned that their access to guns might be restricted, they buy more guns. Last year, we sort of saw both of those things.”

The flood of gun sales — about 23 million over the course of the year — represents a 64 percent increase over 2019 sales, according to a Post analysis of federal gun background checks data. The 2020 numbers include purchases by more than 8 million first-time buyers, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group.

“What we’re seeing is a complicated mixture of all the bizarre things going on in 2020,” said Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a pro-gun lobby group. “The surge of sales started with covid and people worried we could have problems with the food supply. All year, people saw people being beat up and murdered for wearing the wrong hat. The Capitol was just another example of people rioting, and every time that happens, more people buy guns.”

Cherie Dercqu, who owns a nail salon in suburban Pittsburgh, never owned a gun until last year. On Thursday, she bought her 11th firearm, a shotgun she plans to keep behind the front door of her home.

Dercqu, who said she spent her first stimulus check on guns, now packs a pistol in her purse and keeps another behind the cash register at her shop. She’s been going to a range every couple of weeks to practice shooting and said she and her partner intend to keep buying firearms.

“Until this passes, we are buying guns,” said Dercqu, 52. “We’re buying ammo and we’re buying as much as we can. We’re two women. We don’t have a guy at home. I don’t want to feel vulnerable without anything.”

Dercqu began buying guns when the COVID-19 lockdown brought the economy to a standstill, then bought more during last summer’s protests.

“I’ve worked all my life for my business and I’m not willing to give it up to so-called peaceful protesters,” she said. “I’m just preparing for the civil war that is coming. We’re armed to the hilt now. We are prepared.”