US gun sales hit record on controls talk

Gun sales in the US hit a record in the first three months of this year in a surge that's been attributed largely to a spate of mass shootings and the subsequent talk of gun control measures.

Almost 5.5 million guns flew off the shelves for the quarter, with gun retailers saying the latest round of federal stimulus payments sent to householders has helped fuel the rush.

At the current pace, sales could slightly surpass the volume in 2020, when a record 21 million guns were sold, according to the National Sport Shooting Foundation, or NSSF.

The first-quarter sales were up 13 percent from the year-ago quarter－the most guns sold in any three-month period since 1999, which is as far back as the FBI background check data cited by the NSSF goes.

For March alone, the FBI completed nearly 4.7 million background checks, against 3.7 million checks in the year-earlier month, NPR reported.

FBI data shows that six of the top 10 days for instant background checks－which are required by the federal government before a licensed firearms retailer can sell a gun－were in March.

The week from March 15 was the top week for FBI background checks since 1998, with 1,218,002 checks completed in the days following the mass shootings on March 17 that killed eight people－including six women of Asian descent－in spas in the Atlanta area of Georgia.

In the week from March 22, when more than 1 million background checks were completed, 10 people were killed at a grocery story in Boulder, Colorado.

Forbes said gun retailers it interviewed have attributed the March sales spike to stimulus checks as the mass shootings prompted US President Joe Biden to reiterate his call for a ban on assault weapons.

"March was absolutely insane," Tiffany Teasdale, owner of Lynnwood Gun in Lynnwood, Washington, told Forbes.

"We had a two-hour wait almost daily to just get into our store. Once the stimulus money came out, people were buying again. Customers would come in ranting and raving about their stimulus money they just got and how Uncle Sam is helping them to buy more guns."

Eric Wallace, who owns and manages Adventure Outdoors in Smyrna, Georgia, an 80,000-square-foot store (about 7,430 square meters) that advertises itself as the nation's largest gun store, said his store saw a jump in sales in March after the stimulus checks started going out.

Wallace also said some customers have cited what they see as the possibility of new gun control rules following mass shootings this year as the reason to buy a weapon.

In 2020, the record gun sales were widely attributed to nationwide anxiety due to the pandemic as well as social unrest following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Personal safety concerns

"The conditions are different this year," said Mark Oliva, director of public affairs at the NSSF. "There are a lot of concerns about personal safety, but the talk of gun control in Congress is undeniably a factor that drives sales."

"We see this trend often. Whenever high-profile mass shootings occur, people begin stockpiling weapons out of fear that the government will restrict gun rights," said James Densely, co-founder of The Violence Project, a nonprofit research center that tracks public mass shootings in the US.

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal to expand gun rights in the US in a New York case over the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense. The justices said they will review a lower-court ruling that upheld New York's restrictive gun permit law.

The court had turned down a review of the issue in June, before the death of judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The case marks the court's first foray into gun rights since Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court in October, making a 6-3 conservative majority.

Agencies contributed to this story.