Empty shelves, empty gun racks: Ammo and gun sales up 139%, stores having difficulty keeping up with surging demand
Arsenio Toledo
Joe Bartozzi, president and CEO of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), said ammunition sales for the first six months of 2020 were up 139 percent when compared to sales during the same time in 2019.
Bartozzi remarked upon this while speaking at the 2020 Gun Rights Policy Conference, which was held online from Sept. 19 to 20 by the Second Amendment Foundation. Bartozzi also noted that gun sales for the first six months of 2020 were 95 percent higher than they were during the same period in the previous year.
According to Bartozzi’s data, nearly five million people bought guns for the first time this year. Forty percent of these first-time buyers were women, and a majority of the buyers cited personal protection as the main driver of their purchase.
The NSSF president is suggesting there may be several reasons for this massive increase in gun and ammunition sales, foremost among them being the anti-firearm rhetoric coming from Joe Biden. Bartozzi suggested that the former vice president believes gun makers to be his enemies, and that Biden has vowed “to bring them down.”
Other driving factors turning people into new gun owners include fears over gun buyback programs, concerns over possible scarcity of goods and services due to the ongoing Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and fears over the inability of local law enforcement to protect them and their property, no doubt fueled by the need to divert more and more police resources to combating the engineered riots. (Related: HHS head spokesperson Michael Caputo tells Americans to “buy ammunition” before election, warns that anti-Trump lunatics will launch an armed insurrection against America.)
Americans have a little over a month before the election and the massive civil unrest that follows it. Listen to this episode of the Health Ranger Report, a podcast by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, and learn about how people can better prepare for the chaos to be perpetrated by radical left-wing domestic terrorist organizations Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
Surge in gun and ammo sales empties out shelves of local gun stores
Gun dealers all over the country are reporting that demand for firearms and ammunition is “through the roof,” and many are being forced to work overtime most nights just to be able to keep up with the demand.
Denine Timlin, owner of Smoke’n Gun Shop in Mount Vernon, New York, said that her supplier of Mossberg 500s, a widely popular shotgun, is “extremely behind” and that they probably won’t be able to catch up with demand until 2023.
“This is usually all stocked,” said Timlin, referring to the empty display racks and shelves that are usually filled with boxes of ammunition. She is constantly on the phone with suppliers to try and get more product out of them in order to meet her customers’ demands.
“I’ve had calls from Chicago, from Nebraska, actually got a call from someone in Canada asking for shotguns.”
Timlin says around 80 percent of her recent customers were first-time gun buyers, many of whom were worried about their personal safety due to the engineered civil unrest and constant demand for cities to defund their police departments.
“A lot of people that did not want firearms and were not in favor of firearms are standing in line at our gun shop saying, ‘I need a firearm.’”
Shooters Supply in West Middlesex, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, is experiencing the same supply and demand problems. Chad Taylor, president of the gun store, said that it’s like Black Friday everyday as customers wait in line outside of their store for a chance to either own a new firearm or to stock up on ammunition.
Even though West Middlesex is a long way away from any of the large cities that have been affected by the riots, many in the town are still purchasing their first guns out of a sense that they need to prepare.
While Shooters Supply is not experiencing the same gun shortage as Smoke’n Gun Shop, bullets are starting to become scarce.
Dean Dlugozima, a customer, said on Monday that he went to Shooters Supply because another store he went to ran out of bullets for his handgun.
“All they had for handguns was one box of .40 caliber bullets, and that was it,” he said.
Jeff Nesbit, owner of Nesbit Guns in Shenango Township and Outlet Firearms in Springfield Township, said that the bullet scarcity is not a recent phenomenon, but has been ongoing for several months now.
“It’s been this way for months,” said Nesbit, who said that stores are experiencing a shortage of ammunition for both pistols and long rifles.
Nesbit predicted that the upcoming presidential election will determine if the ammo shortage will get worse.
“If Trump gets reelected, it will take a lot of pressure off supplies and things will get better. If not, it will get worse, at least for a little while.”
Learn more about the critical shortage in firearms and ammunition, and where the presidential candidates stand on guns and Second Amendment rights by reading the articles at Guns.news.
Sources include:
SEE VIDEO