Gun Sales Still Going Crazy
'Panic buying' in state since pandemic, sales up 500% at one store, retailers rationing bullets.
M1911 Pistol Gun. Pixabay License.
The spike in demand for guns and ammunition driven by the COVID-19 pandemic has not subsided in Wisconsin. Gun dealers around the state say they are still having trouble keeping shelves stocked 10 months after the first cases of coronavirus were reported here.
In late March, Pat Kukull of Superior Shooters Supply in the city of Superior told WPR she estimated her gun sales had spiked by as much as 500 percent. In an interview in December, she said the situation has been stressful with demand being “absolutely solid” every day.
Kukull said she prefers when customers looking for firearms have multiple options and her staff can spend more time to educate new buyers.
She said panic buying has forced her to ration bullets to one box per person, and she’s even had trouble getting pepper spray, mace and air rifles.
COVID-19 has been the main driver of panic buying, said Kukull, but protests and riots have contributed.
“And then, like everything else, once somebody knows that they can’t go into a store and buy 2,000 rounds of … ammo like they used to, now it’s starting to feed on itself,” Kukull said.
Troy Dormady has worked at Moe Hardware Hank and Sporting Goods in River Falls for more than 20 years and has never seen demand like this. He said the rush for ammunition started with calibers for handguns like .380 and 9mm. Then Dormady said it spilled over into everything else, even common rifle rounds used for deer hunting.
“I never thought I’d run out of 30-30 shells ever,” Dormady said. “I mean, I had a basement full and, yeah, I ran out of 30-30 shells for a couple of weeks there.”
Dormady and Kukull said ammo production was also impacted by COVID-19. In July, Remington Arms Co. filed for bankruptcy protections in federal court. Dormady said he got a letter from another ammunition manufacturer that it was in talks to purchase the rights to the Remington brand.
“Hopefully by next deer hunting season we should have most of your deer calibers, provided the virus starts to go away and we don’t get any more massive riots,” said Dormady.
Arts said his staff members are asked all the time why ammunition is so scarce and when things will improve.
“You know, we don’t do the sourcing of the raw materials,” said Arts. “We don’t know what their staffing is like. We don’t know what they’re COVID procedures are like.”
He said the firearms industry has been through runs on ammunition and guns before and there’s no telling when things will get back to normal.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking refrigerators or 9mm,” said Arts. “You know, when everybody bought everything that there was, it just takes a while for it to come back.”
Listen to the WPR report here.
Wisconsin Demand For Guns, Ammo Hasn’t Subsided Since Start Of COVID-19 Pandemic was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
I will never own a firearm although I’ve raised Heller-McDonald motions in WI criminal courts. (We’ve just celebrated a decade anniversary of SCUSA’s making Heller binding on the States.) Now this reported spike in demand of all things “firearm” bothers me even more than AR-15s used to hunt pheasants and AK-47s used in our deer season! One guy on Facebook claimed he needed to open carry three – three! – AR-15s in casinos because he wins $27K cash at 21 tables! If gun nuts are buying out the stores in Superior and River Falls out of public fears of the pandemic or BLM protests in Kenosha or Tosa, I think it time to initiate amendment of Second Amendment efforts. Courts certainly should not repeat Wisconsin’s experience where 86% of voters approved a broad gun rights amendment to the State Constitution only to see the Wisconsin Supreme Court play “nod-nod, wink-wink” games largely nullifying the voters’ approved language, Courts should return to heeding the Supremacy Clause even on our rights which universally restrict Government.