The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Uptick in gun sale activity in Connecticut
3-month fingerprint ban lifted in June
June was not a recordsetting month for gun sale activity in Connecticut the way it was for the nation as a whole, but that doesn’t mean people here are less interested in buying a firearm for self-protection during these uncertain times.
“The demand is absolutely there, more so now than ever before, as residents of Connecticut recognize their responsibility to protect themselves and their families,” said Holly Sullivan, of Southbury, president of the 37,000member Connecticut Citizens Defense League. “But Connecticut residents who wanted to get a gun permit for the first time were prohibited because there was a ban on fingerprinting.”
Sullivan is referring to the fingerprinting ban imposed by Gov. Ned Lamont as an infection-control measure during the coronavirus surge. Lamont’s mid-March ban on fingerprinting, which was lifted June 15 by a federal judge after the CCDL sued, meant only Connecticut residents with a valid gun permit could buy firearms during the COVID-19 crisis.
As a result, while the rest of the nation was making history in June with 3.9 million firearms background checks, the most ever recorded by the FBI, Connecticut was catching up from the fingerprint ban, registering a modest 18,215 background checks last month.
To put the state’s gun sale activity into context, 18,000 firearm background checks is a relatively high June total when comparing the same month the last three years. The previous two months this year — April and May — saw only 12,986 and 10,935 back
ground checks, respectively.
However, Connecticut’s June number is lower than the 23,000 gun background checks in March, and lower than all of Connecticut’s monthly numbers during the last presidential election in 2016 — where there were as many as 35,000 background checks statewide in one month.
In contrast, the United States has never seen a month like June with so much gun sale activity, reflected in the record number of background requests to the FBI.
The reason? Gun ad19
vocates say anxiety about the coronavirus crisis and the civil unrest over racial injustice is coinciding with a presidential election year, when gun sales typically spike due to uncertainty about gun policy under a new administration.
The Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation estimated 40 percent of the nationwide background checks in June represented first-time gun buyers.
“At the pace we’re going, I would anticipate we’ll exceed previous years, and we could have a record year,” said Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the NSSF. “This pace is not slowing down.”
Oliva is referring to the
million requests in first half of 2020 to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System – a number that is already more than all the background checks for 2011.
At this rate, firearms background checks would surpass the 27.5 million background checks when Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 — the highest total since the FBI began monitoring the records in 1999.
Because no one tracks actual domestic gun sales to the civilian market, background checks are the leading barometer of gun sale activity in the United States. A background check may not always mean a gun sale; some
states require checks for gun transfers or for gun carry permits. In addition, a single background check may be used for the sale of multiple firearms.
The NSSF uses a proprietary formula that extracts records from the FBI data to more accurately approximate gun sales. The FBI data is widely used, however, because it is an independent indicator of the gun industry’s overall health.
The imprecise nature of the background data is a problem for some leaders in the gun violence prevention movement.
“We would like to know who is buying these guns, because there is no indication, other than fear, that buying guns makes
you safer,” said Jeremy Stein, executive director of Ridgefield-based CT Against Gun Violence. “Guns are not the cure for the coronavirus and guns are not the cure for racial inequity.”
A leading Sandy Hook nonprofit agrees.
“Study after study has determined that where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths and more gun injuries,” said Po Murray, chair of the Newtown Action Alliance. “There are significantly more gun homicides and gun suicides than there are defensive gun uses.”
It remains to be seen where gun sale activity will go in Connecticut as the state readies for the 2020
elections.
In some cases, residents can’t get their gun permits fast enough.
In Fairfield, for example, fingerprint demand is so pent-up that the police chief has dedicated a ninehour day each week for fingerprint appointments. Typically, the department would have a window of a few hours open weekly for fingerprints.
“We’re going to keep doing this until we get rid of this backlog,” Chief Christopher Lyddy said on Friday. “It’s been one steady stream, and 95 percent of it is for gun permits.”