BOOMING BUSINESS
Cash register ringing at gun shops across the region
Like milk, bread and eggs ahead of a snowstorm, guns and ammunition were flying off the shelves of area retailers earlier this month as the COVID-19 pandemic heated up.
“We’ve been pretty busy: lots of guns and ammo sales,” Luke Newmaster a salesman at Enck’s Gun Barn, 17 E. Main Ave., in Myerstown, said last week before gun stores were closed by order of Gov. Tom Wolf.
Wolf quietly rescinded that order on Tuesday upon urging from several state Supreme Court justices. Though Wolf’s office did not publicly announce the change, firearms dealers can now sell by individual appointment during limited hours if they adhere to social distancing guidelines and take other protective measures.
“We’re busy for the wrong reason,” Newmaster had said last week. “We want to be busy because people like to shoot, because they enjoy it. We don’t want to be busy because people are freaking out.”
Details of the spread of the coronavirus from Wuhan, China, to the rest of the world mimic the backstory for a zombie apocalypse movie, complete with conspiracies, government inaction and medical breakdowns.
The pistol cases, rifle racks and ammunition shelves are almost as bare at Mother Hubbard’s
cupboards.
Bob Enck, owner of the store, has never seen anything like it.
“I’ve seen it close, but not to this extent,” he said Friday. “It started last weekend (March 14-15), but the last two or three days have been insane.”
Enck said he’s out of some of the most popular types ammunition: 9 mm, .40 caliber, .223 caliber and 7.62x39mm.
“Yesterday, I checked with one of my suppliers and I checked to see what .223 he had in stock,” Enck said. “He stocks 107 (types). There was none. I’ve never seen it that bad.”
Enck hopes to be restocked on ammunition and firearms soon.
“I spoke to one wholesaler this morning and they were only taking orders if we could guarantee we would have somebody here when FedEx delivered them,” he said.
Demand has been so strong that while manufacturers have plenty of guns and ammunition in stock, shipping them to retailers is the latest choke point in the system, Newmaster said.
Newmaster said the response of the sporting public to COVID-19 is even more dramatic than it was
after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
That shooting occurred Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown, Conn., when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children between 6 and 7 years old, and six adult staff members.
“I’ve seen this happen within a couple weeks when Obama was in office and some politician or the media brought up a Second Amendment issue,” Newmaster said. “But that wasn’t like Friday when people were running in here buying thousands of rounds of ammunition and multiple guns.
“The problem now is, there’s this burst of people coming in and we’re having trouble stocking the shelves with stuff.”
Another problem has been that the Pennsylvania Instant Check System, or PICS, the state’s computerized background check system, went down twice March 17.
The state police, who administer PICS, said technology challenges and a surge in requests resulted in PICS twice going offline that day. An isolated server issue was responsible for the morning outage from 8 to 11:30. The second outage happened between 5 and 8:40 p.m., due to a backlog of requests.
Despite the downtime, PICS completed 4,342 transactions March 17, compared to 1,359 transactions on the corresponding Tuesday in March 2019. Transactions include background checks for purchases, transfers, evidence returns, and license to carry applications, troopers said in a press release.
Cabela’s demand strong
The Cabela’s in Tilden Township closed March 17 for store managers to strategize and make sure they were complying with the latest measures ordered by Wolf and state and federal public health agencies responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ed Bartolotta, general manager of the always busy outdoors store at the Hamburg interchange of Interstate 78, said the store closed for a day to catch up with new state and federal virus guidelines but reopened last Wednesday and it was business as usual.
A little busier in the guns and ammunition department, Bartolotta added.
“The demand for firearms has been strong over the last couple of weeks along with ammunition,” Bartolotta said.
Cabela’s has been able to meet the demand for guns and ammo for the most part.
“We do have some struggles with the popular ammunition. We get product in but it doesn’t last very long,” he said.
Both Newmaster and Bartolotta said .223-caliber ammunition for the AR-15 assault-type rifle and
9 mm for handguns have been the biggest sellers and hardest to keep in stock.
Overall, Bartolotta said traffic in the store is above normal for this time of year when shoppers start coming in for fishing supplies in advance of trout season. Normally, trout season begins in early April in southeastern and south central counties but it has been pushed back because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“It’s maybe a little heavier except the focus is not on fishing as it normally is this time of year,” he said. “People are buying things now that they weren’t necessarily going to buy right away before this (coronavirus).
“Guns is the busier part of the story,” he said.
Customers also are going into survival mode, based on their shopping, Bartolotta noted.
“They’re buying lots of camping gear. Camp stoves, propane tanks, freeze dried food. Canned goods are fine but there’s a limited variety. Freeze-dried food is easier to carry in when you’re carrying in your own campsite.”
Not just Berks County
The same is true at Hudson’s Outfitters & Firearms, 1486 S. Hanover St., in North Coventry Township, Chester County.
“Customers are looking for .223-caliber and 9 mm ammo,” said Jordan Weaver, manager. “They’re
after 9 mm handguns, ARs (AR-15 rifles) and shotguns.”
As with other gun dealers, keeping enough of the popular items in stock is the issue, Weaver agreed.
Tom Pinkasavage, owner of Berks Firearms in Exeter Township, said he operates a small operation that does person-to-person gun transfers and transfers to individuals who purchase firearms online.
“We aren’t a conventional retail gun shop,” Pinkasavage said. “We don’t stock any inventory and don’t sell any products.”
“That said, we’ve seen a huge increase in people calling or emailing us looking for a quick place to stop in and buy guns and ammo,” he said. “In brief conversations with some, I’ve learned that people are looking far and wide for ammunition and are unable to come up with anything.”
Pinkasavage said he is also getting inquiries from online gun retailers who have said demand is overwhelming them and availability of firearms for sale is becoming an issue.
“Notices to customers posted on their websites advise that wait times to ship orders may be as much as three weeks right now where a few weeks ago, they would be shipped next day,” he said.
Reporter Jeremy Long contributed to this story.