Want a gun or ammo? You may have to wait as first-time buyers lead to sales surge

A 60-year-old Wichita area computer programmer, who emigrated from Laos, recently was in the market for a home defense weapon.

He was searching for a 12-gauge shotgun recently at The Wichita Gun Club, where general manager Ryan Ballard said he’s had a boom in first-time gun buyers, who mainly want handguns. Home defense shotguns have also been popular. Ammunition has also been flying off the shelf, leading to national shortages and causing prices to more than double in some cases, Ballard said.

But the man, who didn’t want to be named and owned a rifle 10 years ago, had different reasons than the surge of first-time buyers looking for guns. He wanted a gun partly for home defense, pointing to violence he has seen, such as road rage. But his main reason was to blend in better with coworkers who own and talk about guns, he said.

“In America, you gotta have a gun,” he said, adding he wanted a “big gun” like a shotgun because: “You don’t miss with that gun.”

Gun and ammunition sales rose with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and again after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the protests that followed, Ballard said.

Jerry Romero, owner of JerArms in west Wichita, said that uncertainty about the presidential election and its implications on gun control also has led to an increase in business.

At Cabela’s and Academy Sports, people have been lining up before the stores open to buy whatever ammo comes off the truck. It’s a similar scene across the country.

Record number of people want to buy guns

The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) conducts background checks on gun buyers. It’s the closest database there is for tracking gun sales.

Background checks through September reached 28.8 million, surpassing the 28.3 million for all of 2019 — a record year in data going back to 1998.

Less than 1% of applicants are denied, according to FBI figures.

This year set five of the Top 10 days of most background checks and eight of the Top 10 weeks.

The No. 1 spot in both categories happened in 2020.

Both of the top spots came in March and occurred the week after the World Health Organization categorized the virus as a pandemic.

Shares of Smith & Wesson, one of the largest U.S. gun manufacturers, have more than doubled this year.

The company’s firearm segment had record sales of roughly $230 million and over 584,000 “units” in the quarter that ended July 31, president and CEO Mark Smith said on a Sept. 3 earnings call. The firearm segment includes handguns, rifles and suppressors, according to the company’s website.

“I think the industry in general ... we’re into one of those surges where the industry’s ability to supply is outstripped by the demand,” he said.

Smith, quoting a National Shooting Sports Foundation study, said that 5 million Americans purchased a gun for the first time in 2020.

“Two fastest-growing segments of new gun owners being women and African Americans,” Smith said.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation study found that 40% of 2020 gun buyers were purchasing for the first time, compared to the annual average of 24%.

Semi-automatic handguns were the main purchase of first-time buyers followed by shotguns, the study found. First-time buyers purchased twice as many handguns as shotguns.

“Retailers noted that they are seeing a 95 percent increase in firearm sales and a 139 percent increase in ammunition sales over the same period in 2019,” according to the study released in August.

Who’s buying?

Ballard and Romero said they have had a mix of people coming to purchase ammunition and guns — from novices to lifelong gun carriers.

“It’s probably the most diverse buying I have seen in my time in the firearms industry,” Ballard said. “Young, old, men, women. Just literally everything. African American, Hispanic, Asian, white. Just an extremely broad spectrum of buyers.”

Romero said he’s had older couples come to purchase a gun for the first time. He’s also had a person who stockpiles ammo around his property and a retired officer who didn’t want to carry a gun after his years of service.

Low-price handguns also have been a favorite.

Ammo shortages

Glock 19, a popular handgun, went from a pre COVID-19 retail price of $440 and climbed to $850 before starting to drop back down, Romero said.

But ammo prices have been more likely to see sharp increases in price, he said.

“Literally ammo prices have doubled all (across) the board,” he said, adding 50 rounds of 9 mm went from $12 to $25.

Ballard said people are selling them online for $50 — a price increase from roughly 24 cents a round to $1 each.

Ammo for popular handgun sizes has been the hardest to find, according to interviews with several area suppliers. Assault-style rifle ammo is also difficult to find.

Some ammo for hunting, including 12 and 20 gauge shotguns rounds for bird hunting, are available.

Romero said he’s gone from picking what he wants from each vendor to taking whatever he can get. He’s had instances where he’s been alerted about a vendor having ammunition, only to have it gone by the time he goes to check out online.

“I learned my lesson. You can’t take a sip of your coffee, you can’t go to the bathroom,” he said. “What they had come into stock, in less than five minutes it was gone.”

Chris Metz, CEO of Vista Outdoor — one of the nation’s largest ammunition makers — said in August that the company can’t get bullets to distributors fast enough.

“It’s the leanest we’ve ever seen them in inventory,” he said, adding retailers have said: ‘If everything were just to come to a screeching halt right now, it would take us months just to stock our shelves, stock our warehouses, to get back to a point where we feel comfortable that we have the supply that we need.”

The owner of PJ’s Guns and Ammo makes ammunition at his home in Halstead. Joe, who wouldn’t give his last name, said he has a waiting list for the first time since he started in the 1980s.

He’s had a problem getting primers for handguns. And the cost of brass has more than doubled, he said.

Ballard and Romero said the ammo shortage is a combination of more people target shooting and hoarding.

“People are just really uncertain about the times we are in,” Romero said. ‘And they fell like, ‘I need to be ready.’”

This story was originally published November 1, 2020 at 5:07 AM.