John Welcher, the second-generation owner of a Tacoma-area gun store and indoor shooting range, estimated more than 50 percent of his pandemic customers had never purchased a firearm before.
“They’re disgusted that they have to wait,” he said via telephone. “They’ll tell us ‘This is ridiculous. I never knew it was this hard to get a gun.’ This is absolutely in reaction to the coronavirus.”
He said many customers worry about local police being infected and being unable to respond to calls and protect the public.
“Who’s going to protect me now,” is what seems to flash through a lot of minds, Welcher intimated.
Adding to their shock is the discovery they cannot get a concealed pistol license because law enforcement agencies suspended acceptance of new applications, as that process involves taking fingerprints, and that violates “social distancing” guidelines. The process for Washington residents typically runs about 30 days, but until agencies return to business as usual, there is no way for honest citizens to legally carry a concealed handgun.
New Gun Buyers Experience ‘Epiphany’ During Pandemic
When “Instant” Isn’t So Instant
With the NICS system overwhelmed, many gun buyers are experiencing long waiting periods. (Source: FBI)
When thousands of heretofore non-gun owners, including a fair number of liberal gun control supporters, found themselves facing an uncertain future due to the COVID-19 outbreak, they rushed to the nation’s gun stores only to discover they’ve been lied to about the “easy access to guns.”
Anecdotal reports from across the country began surfacing, revealing the panic among these would-be gun owners. Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), perhaps described it best in an interview with Ammoland, noting first-timers discovered background checks weren’t so instant after all.
Many are stories of stunned buyers who found out they really couldn’t walk into a gun shop, plunk down cash for a pistol and walk out the door. In states with so-called “universal background checks,” non-gun owners have apparently learned they can’t even borrow a firearm from a friend or neighbor without a background check.
In California, where some gun stores were closed, the would-be gun shoppers couldn’t even do that because the doors were locked. And despite push back from residents and the firearms industry, many remain that way.
Across the country, many firearms are being purchased by first-time gun buyers.
(Source: National Shooting Sports Foundation)
A call to Melissa Denny, proprietor at Pistol Annie’s Jewelry & Pawn in Bonney Lake, Wash., revealed this has been a prevailing scenario in her area.
“When they’re told they can’t just go home with a (hand)gun, they look at me like I have three heads,” Denny told American Handgunner. “They wonder ‘Why can’t I leave with my new gun?’”
She estimated at least 40 percent of customers in the weeks stretching from late February into mid-April, were first timers.
People who previously supported gun control initiative measures in the Evergreen State “thought they were supporting better background checks.”
“They didn’t think this would prevent them from defending their families,” she observed.
Worse, many people confessed ignorance of a 2018 initiative strictly regulating so-called “assault rifles” requiring proof of training and a 10-day “enhanced background check” before a sale can be completed.
“They didn’t know what I was talking about,” she confessed with disappointment.
She now habitually tells customers it’s because of such initiatives, and voter apathy and/or ignorance, they now face a mountain of red tape before exercising a fundamental right, defined both in the federal and Washington State constitutions.
Thanks to recent initiatives and pandemic buying, this may be the closest Washington
residents can get to “assault rifles.”
Gun new owners will have to wait to conceal carry as law enforcement agencies have
suspended new applications. (Source: CrossBreed Holsters)
Skip 3,000 miles to the far corner of the country. A telephone chat with Scott Wigham at On Target Sports in Orange Park, Fla., found a slightly different situation.
Wigham estimated that over the past several weeks, at least 80 percent of his customers have been first-time gun buyers. While many are aware of recent changes in Florida gun laws, “Some of them really are amazed at the length of the process.”
“There have been cases,” he recalled, “where people were amazed. They believed all the hype and then the come in to buy a gun and have to wait hours because the NICS (National Instant Check System) system is overwhelmed.”
“I think it’s a wake-up call for people involved in the anti-gun movement,” Wigham said. “You just can’t walk into a store and walk out (with a gun) the same day. People are finding out you just can’t order a gun online and have it sent to your house.”
Keane, the NSSF general counsel, said recently the fallout from this national experience has gun prohibition lobbying groups sounding alarms.
“The reason the gun control community is freaking out is because they know they have lost a generation of fence sitters,” he suggested.
That could very well be the case, as anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety has been flooding email inboxes with appeals to supporters to lobby Congress and the White House in an effort to have gun stores declared “non-essential” businesses. Under recent Department of Homeland Security guidelines, gun shops and their employees are considered “essential.” The gun control crowd contends allowing people to buy guns during the pandemic will lead to all kinds of violence.
By contrast, the same groups have been silent on the subject of releasing jail inmates by the thousands just to lower their odds of being infected with the coronavirus.
The Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb is leading the legal charge against gun store shutdowns.
Several gun rights organizations have been busily filing federal lawsuits, challenging orders to shut down gun stores as “non-essential.” One leader in that legal war is Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation.
“Constitutional rights are not subject to a public health crisis,” he said recently. “Our rights are enshrined in the Constitution to protect them from just this sort of political treachery. Closing gun stores won’t cure the coronavirus, and (gun control advocates) know it.”
Reacting to the flood of new would-be gun owners trying to buy firearms, he remarked, “We are encouraged that so many citizens have re-discovered the Second Amendment. The irony is that these good people have suddenly discovered how cumbersome the laws have become. We’re confident they’ll learn from the experience.”
Have you purchased a new gun during this pandemic? Share your experience with us by email at [email protected]
