Gun buyers with stimulus checks were buying firearms with renewed frenzy in March, as gruesome mass shootings prompted President Biden to reiterate his call for an assault weapon ban.
“Honestly, last March was absolutely insane,” said Tiffany Teasdale, owner of Lynnwood Gun in Lynnwood, Washington. “We had a two-hour wait almost daily to just get into our store.”
Federal background checks for gun sales reached a new monthly record in March, stoked by gun buyers with $1,400 stimulus checks. Federal background checks totaled 4.69 million in March 2021, reported the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday.
That’s a jump of about 10% compared to March 2020, when the pandemic swept through America, spurring a rise in gun sales as Americans sought self-protection during outbreaks of civil unrest including protests over the death of George Floyd during a police arrest. Last year was a record for FBI background checks, totaling 39.69 million.
This year is on track to outperform 2020, based on federal background checks, which are not the same as gun sales but serve as the closest nationwide proxy. Gun retailers interviewed by Forbes have attributed the March sales spike to stimulus checks.
“Once the stimulus money came out, people were buying again,” said Teasdale. “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.”
Many Americans were buying pistols and shotguns for self-protection. Many others were buying AR-15s to try and get ahead of Biden, believing he’ll make good on his threat to ban assault weapons.
March was also marked by a series of mass shootings, including the killing of four people including a child at a California office complex on March 31, the killing of 10 people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado on March 23, and the killing of 8 people, including six people of Asian descent, in Atlanta-area spas on March 17.
Biden’s plan is to restrict assault weapons like the AR-556 pistol from Sturm, Ruger that was allegedly used by the Boulder gunman. But the violence has also prompted a rise in gun sales, and retailers have reported that they’re seeing more Asian-American gun buyers, seeking protection from hate crimes.
Since the start of the pandemic, more than 8.4 million Americans have purchased guns for the first time, according to estimates from the gun industry group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
“Americans continue to vote with their wallets when it comes to lawful firearm ownership,” said Mark Oliva, director of public affairs for the NSSF. “March’s record background checks shows that President Biden’s demand to enact a ban on AR-15s and the push by Democrats to enact laws that would deny Americans their rights is out of step with Main Street, U.S.A.”
The gun purchases have led to nationwide shortages in ammunition. Every gun retailer interviewed by Forbes is rationing ammunition purchases and some calibers are unavailable.
Gun retailers say their customers are buying compact semiautomatic pistols from popular brands like Glock, Smith & Wesson and Taurus. They’re also buying tactical-style semiautomatic rifles, which gun control advocates and federal regulators refer to as assault weapons, and which gun companies prefer to call modern sporting rifles, or MSRs. The NSSF estimates there are more than 20 million MSRs in circulation.
Following the recent mass shootings, Biden, a Democrat who owns guns, called for a return to the assault weapon ban that expired in 2004 after its 10-year limit ran out. That ban forced assault rifles to lose certain defining features, like the pistol grip and the bayonet lug, and it capped magazine capacity at 10 rounds.
That’s a bit different from what Biden has been proposing, which is to require all assault weapon owners to register them under the National Firearms Act, which lengthens the background check process from minutes to months, and adds a $200 tax. Owners who do not comply could cash in their rifles in a nationwide gun buyback program.
Either way, it spells bad news for AR-15 gunmakers including Smith & Wesson, Sig Sauer, Heckler & Koch, Knight’s Armament, Lewis Machine & Tool, Franklin Armory, Daniel Defense, Noveske and Barrett, to name a few. But for now, the specter of gun control is driving sales.
“Major firearms producers such as Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger are continuing to maximize their production throughput levels in their supply chains to better meet the historically strong consumer demand,” said Rommel Dionisio, gun industry analyst at Aegis Capital Corp.
He said the demand is being driven by “consumer fears of gun control legislation, following President Biden’s recent comments arguing for increased regulatory restrictions.” He said that Smith & Wesson derives roughly 20% of its sales and profits from AR-15s so a ban “would certainly be meaningful for them.”
An assault weapon ban could eventually squeeze small shopkeepers like Al Tawil, owner of Towers Armory, a gun store and range in Oregon, Ohio. He makes his own AR-15s to sell at his store and shoot at his range. He said he was experiencing record sales after the stimulus checks came out, and now he feels like he’s racing against Biden’s gun control plan.
“We’ve got to push the output of ARs, try to make as many as we can,” he said. “We could produce 50 to 60 per week.”
But just how serious is the Biden threat? His Democratic predecessor President Obama tried, and failed, to get a gun control bill passed in 2013, following the notorious mass shooting the prior year where 26 students and educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. A Bushmaster AR-15 was used in that shooting, a brand that Franklin Armory bought last year from Remington as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy process.
“I believe it creates fear and panic to buy ARs and high-capacity handguns, as well as high-capacity magazines,” said Brandon Wexler, owner of Wex Gunworks in Delray Beach, Florida, when asked about Biden’s gun control plan. “AR sales have been extremely strong over the last month.”
High-capacity magazines have been used in mass shootings because it makes it easier to shoot without reloading. This makes them a top target in Biden’s gun control plan, while also fueling sales. But Wexler isn’t worried about a ban.
“At the end of the day, I personally believe it won’t go through,” he said. “I believe the business will completely explode from it.”