If gun store owners hadn’t already surpassed every sales record they could have imagined, May sealed the deal.
From the surge that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam started in January to the Corona scare in March, gun sales have been off the charts all year.
New data says that May was no different, with the protests and subsequent riots that began after George Floyd was killed on Memorial Day.
Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting, a private research firm, released their data for May two days ago. Their numbers estimated that more than 1.7 million guns were sold in May.
That’s an 80% increase over last year.
“Yet again, firearms sales have surged in unprecedented ways,” said Jurgen Brauer, the group’s chief economist.
The FBI reported that more than 3 million background checks were run through the FBI’s national instant check system last month. That’s another record — and a 32% increase over last year’s May checks.
Now those numbers don’t match to gun sales perfectly, since one check can cover several guns in a single purchase. Additionally, those who have concealed carry permits don’t have to undergo a NICS check to purchase a gun, having already gone through one to get their concealed carry license.
But still, those NICS check numbers are a pretty good barometer of what gun sales will look like.
Not Just The Stores
The run on guns has gone on long enough that it’s not only the stores that are seeing a boom. No, the stock prices of several gun manufacturing companies are up.
Sturm, Ruger and Co. and others took a big jump Monday after the chaos in cites across the country over the weekend.
That’s exactly what we predicted would happen.
Covid had already stretched the supply lines thin. In fact, Larry Hyatt of Hyatt Guns in Charlotte, North Carolina, said the gun demand prompted by COVID-19 says that inventory has been hard to come by.
“Then you have this looting and rioting causing another demand, and it’s really putting pressure on inventory,” Mr. Hyatt said.
While gun sales are always up during election years due to uncertainty about potential changes to gun laws in the future, this year has so many more factors at play.
According to Hyatt, it’s a three-fold problem: “There’s economic worry, there’s crime worry, and then you got the worry of the coronavirus — it’s [a] triple whammy,” he said.
What are they buying? Handguns. Lots of them. Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting has reported that handgun sales were close to 1 million in May alone! That’s an increase of 94% over last May! Meanwhile, long guns were up by about 66% over last May.
You All Know What To Do
Most of our readers were ‘ready for anything’ before ‘anything’ was even on the horizon. But it bears repeating: if you’re a ‘long time listener, first time caller’….you might want to take steps today to ensure your family’s safety in the months ahead.
This social unrest is just one more reason why our gun rights have to be NON-NEGOTIABLE to our elected officials. They won’t be there to save us when the SHTF, so they need to protect our right to defend ourselves!