In the wake of last week’s singing of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill which included a third round of stimulus checks, gun store owners are gearing up for a spike in sales at a time when firearm purchases are already on the rise.
“Stimulus check equals gun money,” said Brandon Wexler, owner of Wex Gunworks in Delray Beach, Florida, told Forbes Magazine. “I do anticipate that when people get a stimulus check they will spend it on firearms, accessories, high-capacity magazines and ammo, if they can get it.”
Americans bought a lot of guns in 2020, and for good reason. The pandemic, raging violence across major cities, and the prospect of the most radical gun-grabbing president candidate in the history of our nation getting “elected” seems to have caused many Americans to stock up on weapons and during the first round of stimulus checks, it was clear that this was where many opted to spend their money.
Ohio gun store owner Al Tawil told Forbes that his weekly sales at Towers Armory “jumped by about 20% right after mid-April 2020, when many Americans received the first $1,200 stimulus payments from the federal government.”
“We’re expecting another big sale when the stimulus comes out,” he explained. “They’ve got the extra money and people go indulge themselves with something they can’t normally afford. Some people want a car. Some people want a gun.”
The business owner also told Forbes that semiautomatic pistols are selling out quickly as his customers seek them for self-defense. Brands like Taurus, Sig Sauer, and Glock are difficult to keep in stock.
Meanwhile, other customers are after AR-15’s in light of Biden’s gun control platform which seeks to ban the popular and widely-owned rifle. This is making it difficult to stock ammunition.
There’s a good chance many of you reading have already been well aware of the difficulties in purchasing ammunition or these types of firearms over the past year.
The Post-Millennial notes:
According to the FBI, federal background checks totaled 2.91 million, a 25 percent jump from the year before after Americans received their stimulus payments in April 2020. Federal background checks jumped 34 percent in December 2020 after Americans received their second round of stimulus payments, Forbes reported.
The United States saw a record high purchase in gun sales as the coronavirus pandemic swept through the nation’s cities. Background check statistics conducted by the FBI conclude that there were a total of 39.69 million background checks last year. While background checks are not the same as gun sales, the federal data serves as the closest nationwide proxy.
According to an estimate from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, more than eight million Americans bought a gun for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic last year.
Gun manufacturers are also prepping for the surge in sales as customers receive their third round of stimulus checks.
Smith & Wesson CEO Mark Smith said in an earnings call with analysts last week that he expects as much.
Larry Hyatt of Hyatt Guns in Charlotte, North Carolina also noted that any moves made by Congress could further impound already increasing sales.
“I am sure we will get a spike,” he said. “If gun legislation is introduced at the same time, it could be huge.”
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