Conn. part of U.S. gun sale surge
NEWTOWN – In a year of unrelenting crisis and uncertainty, gun sale activity across America has already set a record, with nearly a full month left on the 2020 calendar.
And for the first time since 2016, Connecticut gun sale activity is in line with the nationwide surge, as state figures through November have already surpassed the totals for each of the last three years.
While a surge in firearm sale activity was expected in a presidential election year, with the prospect of a Democratic White House committed to gun control, the record run on guns in 2020 has been fueled by the coronavirus crisis and the summer of civil unrest over the public slaying of a Black man in police custody.
“Police were saying ‘We may not be able to respond to all 911 calls because of COVID’, and governors were releasing (inmates) for fear of contagion in the prisons – people were concerned for their safety,” said
Mark Oliva, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the Newtown-based trade association for the firearms industry. “So people are taking measures to provide for their own security.”
As a result, there are by NSSF’s count 7.7 million new gun owners in America who are breaking the stereotype of the gun owner as a white, middle-aged suburban man.
“We did a survey of our retailers this summer that found 40 percent of people buying guns for the first time were women, which is double what is has been,” Oliva said. “But the biggest demographic jump was a 58 percent increase in AfricanAmericans buying guns for the first time.”
An activist for a leading gun violence prevention group agreed that fear for personal safely is likely driving the record gun sale activity in Connecticut and across the country.
But the activist argued that more guns do not make people safer.
“The gun sales have increased dramatically because of the fear that the NRA and the NSSF have helped perpetuate by spreading misinformation,” said Jeremy Stein, executive director of CT Against Gun Violence. “The real facts and empirical data are the more guns you have the more deaths you have, and just by having a gun in the home, it increases the chances of domestic violence, accidents and suicide exponentially.”
And yet, with one of the biggest months for gun sale activity yet to be recorded, the numbers for 2020 are historic.
Data released by the FBI shows there have been 35 million background checks nationally for the first 11 months of the year, breaking the previous record of 28 million background checks set in 2019.
In Connecticut, nearly 198,000 background checks have been recorded through November – the most since the last presidential election year in 2016, when there were 317,000 background checks.
It’s important to note that background checks do not always represent gun sales, because background checks are required in some states for other reasons, such as concealed-carry permits and silencer sales. In addition, a single background check may cover the sale of multiple firearms.
But because no one tracks actual domestic firearm sales to the civilian market, background checks are the standard used by the FBI to measure gun sale activity.
The NSSF uses a proprietary formula that extracts records from the FBI data to more accurately approximate gun sales. For example, the NSSF formula estimates there have been 19 million actual gun sales in the United States through November – a figure that breaks the previous record of 15.7 million gun sales in 2016.
The federal data is widely used over NSSF data, because the FBI data is an independent indicator of the gun industry’s overall health.
With the Nov. 3 election of a Democrat, industry observers expect gun sales to surge through the holiday season and into the new year, Oliva said.
The reason: Presidentelect Joe Biden has vowed to “end our gun violence epidemic,” with “bans on assault weapons and highcapacity magazines,” an end to “online sale of firearms and ammunitions,” a push for universal background checks, and a repeal of a 1995 law that shields the gun industry from most liability when its firearms are misused, among other measures.
“Biden is pushing for far-reaching measures for a presidential candidate,” Oliva said. “People are watching that and are acting on it.”