Americans purchased almost 60 million guns during the pandemic
Academic studies find out that one-fifth of American households bought guns during the coronavirus pandemic.
US citizens purchased nearly 60 million guns between 2020 and 2022, according to an analysis by The Trace, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that tracks gun violence in the United States, The Hill reported on Friday.
All the new weapons have fuelled a momentous surge in gun deaths, which reached record highs during the same period.
“It’s a totally different type of gun ownership now,” said John Roman, a senior fellow in the Economics, Justice and Society Group at NORC, a research organization based at the University of Chicago.
“It’s not a rifle stored away somewhere that you take out twice a year to go hunting. It’s a handgun, probably a semiautomatic handgun, that you keep in your bedside table or in your glove compartment, or that you maybe carry around with you.”
Demand for firearms had been growing throughout the coronavirus outbreak.
California, New York, Washington, Alabama and Ohio were a few states, among others, that were reporting sales growth.
Gun control advocates were concerned that due to the pandemic, many new gun owners were lacking the usual access to training on how to handle and store their weapons.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a run on gun shops, as many Americans thought society might collapse.
“There was fear, and real concern, about what happens to the country during a global pandemic,” said Nick Suplina, senior Vice President of Law and Policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control nonprofit.
The activist said the pro-gun lobby National Rifle Association fanned that fear by tweeting out a video of a woman holding a rifle and pushing firearms as a pandemic safety measure.
“You might be stockpiling up on food right now to get through this current crisis,” the woman says. “But if you aren’t preparing to defend your property when everything goes wrong, you’re really just stockpiling for somebody else.”
Some 18 percent of households bought guns between March 2020 and March 2022, according to a NORC survey.
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