A rise in firearm sales already fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic has received an added impetus from first-time gun owners who say they fear unrest tied to the November election.
Interviews with industry experts, academics and gun store owners suggest that many women, minorities and political liberals are purchasing guns for the first time, according to reports from Reuters and NBC News.
“People who don’t normally think about firearms are being forced to contemplate something outside their universe,” said Dan Eldridge, owner of Maxon Shooter’s Supplies and Indoor Range in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines, Illinois.
Many new gun owners who spoke to Reuters cited the polarizing election, which is now less than two weeks away.
September conference calls with industry analysts, investors, and executives from the major gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson Brands shed some more light on this developing trend. Mark Peter Smith, CEO of Smith & Wesson Brands, noted that new gun owners accounted for 40 percent of sales this year.
This, Smith said, is still a “conservative” estimate, and it’s “double the national average” of past years sales.
A conference call hosted by Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings CEO Jon Barker revealed i estimates that five million people purchased guns for the first time in the first seven months of the year, “which matched a recent figure put out by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group, based on a national survey of retailers,” according to Reuters.
This skyrocketing trend has been verified by databases, as eight of the top 10 “all-time” weeks for background checks have happened this year, according to the FBI’s NICS data that goes as far back as 1998.
The same database notes that less than 1 percent of applicants are denied.
Moreover, the top week for gun purchase background checks occurred in March, following the World Health Organization’s declaration of the coronavirus crisis into a pandemic.
See Also: Gun Sales Blocked by FBI Checks Doubled in March
The top month for new gun owner purchases this year took place in June, following the late-May killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
Fears of ‘Bloody’ Election and ‘Unrest’
When Reuters reporters interviewed first-time gun buyers, they found that many Americans have been motivated by the looming election and growing political divide to protect their families.
Among the new firearm owners is Bailey Beeken, 61, who lives in the Riverdale neighborhood in New York City. Beeken describes herself as a white, politically liberal, middle-class woman, and added that she started taking shooting lessons this past summer.
Beeken said her primary drive for taking the lessons was because she doesn’t know what’s in store for America following November 3rd.
“Whichever way this election goes, it could get really scary, and it could get bloody.”
Beeken discussed how mask-wearing has become a political statement, rather than an act backed by science. She said the pandemic is “pitting mask-wearers against mask-protesters” and considering the bouts of police-brutality protests sparking unrest and violent clashes in the streets, Beeken said, “I just feel like it’s a powder keg.”
She concluded, “I want to be armed and dangerous.”
Andreyah Garland, a 44-year-old African American single mother of three daughters, explained how she recently bought a shotgun in May for “protection.”
Garland lives in the middle-class town of Fishkill, N.Y.. She told Reuters she joined a “new and fast-growing” local gun club to learn how to use her new weapon.
Since May, Garland has also applied for a pistol permit and constantly hunts for increasingly scarce ammunition—admittedly making three trips weekly to a local Walmart.
“They’re always out,” she said.
In a statement to Reuters, Walmart acknowledged the supply shortages in outdoor products including hunting. However, the retailer didn’t provide any details of their gun and ammunition sales or inventory.
“We are working with our suppliers to make products available for our customers as quickly as possible,” the company said.
‘More Guns is More Death’
Beyond the growing concerns over gun violence related to political unrest in America following the election, surges in gun sales often translate to more routine gun deaths — like homicides, suicides, gun assaults, and accidents, as well as domestic violence incidents with a firearm, researchers say.
Suicides already account for almost two-thirds of U.S. gun fatalities, and nearly 90 percent of suicide attempts using firearms end in death, compared with 4 percent where a gun isn’t used, The Crime Report detailed.
In another recent study detailed on The Crime Report, an analysis of 749 mass shootings showed that 36 percent were committed by males with a history of violence against women, where 46 percent of the shootings involved actual incidents of domestic violence and, according to the report, “about 60 percent were either or both.”
Harvard University professor David Hemenway spoke with Reuters reporters, saying there is “overwhelming evidence” that buying a gun greatly increases a household’s risk of a violent incident involving a firearm.
“It’s pretty clear that more guns is more death,” said Hemenway, director of the school’s Injury Control Research Center, which studies injury prevention.
Additional Reading: Guns Increasingly In the Mix In Right-Vs.-Left Battles
Gun Violence Spike Tied to Rise in Firearms Purchases During Pandemic.
Andrea Cipriano is a TCR staff writer.