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An Arms Race in America: Gun Buying Spiked During the Pandemic. It’s Still Up.
Preliminary research data show that about a fifth of all Americans who bought guns last year were first-time gun owners....
But beneath the timeworn political cycle on guns in the United States, the country’s appetite for firearms has only been increasing, with more being bought by more Americans than ever before.
While gun sales have been climbing for decades — they often spike in election years and after high-profile crimes — Americans have been on an unusual, prolonged buying spree fueled by the coronavirus pandemic, the protests last summer and the fears they both stoked.
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Many gun store workers reported that last year set records for sales and also that they noticed different types of buyers walking in the door. Thomas Harris, a former law enforcement officer who works at the gun counter at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Roanoke, Va., said that around March last year, the customers he would speak with began to include more white-collar workers, such as people from insurance firms and software companies. He said many of the buyers were not conservative and most had never handled a gun.
Is this where Americans are spending their stimulus checks?
I just can’t explain why there is an uptick in gun sales. Americans just don’t have enough of them?