Look for gun sales to surge in the coming months, a leading Second Amendment group said, as Americans come to grips with Democrats’ ascendance to power on Capitol Hill and in several states.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said the desire to buy could be the biggest since the coronavirus pandemic and President Biden’s 2020 election victory, which also sparked a run on guns.
“We may be about to witness a surge in gun buying not seen since 2020,” said Alan Gottlieb, the group’s chairman.
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He said fears that Democrats will use their new political power to advance restrictions should lead to some Americans rushing to stock up now.
“When you tell Americans they can’t have something, they rush to buy whatever it is,” he said.
John Commerford, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, said he wouldn’t be surprised by a gun surge either.
“When politicians and their well-funded allies signal they intend to restrict the right to keep and bear arms, law-abiding citizens act while they still can,” he told The Washington Times.
He said background check numbers already suggested a rise in interest in gun purchases heading into Election Day.
“That pattern has held for years, and it is not going away,” he said.
FBI data on gun background checks, usually seen as a rough barometer of overall sales, showed a spike in late 2012 and early 2013, after the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting and President Obama’s calls for new gun controls.
Background checks reached 2.8 million in December 2012 and 2.5 million in the following January.
In January 2021, when Mr. Biden was inaugurated, FBI checks topped 4.3 million, and rose to 4.7 million in March 2021.
FBI checks have generally remained above 2 million in the months since.
October, for example, ended with 2.2 million checks.
As Second Amendment supporters recoiled from Tuesday’s results, gun control groups were thrilled, saying they feel they have broken the power of the gun groups.
“Gone are the days when the NRA could swoop into a race and determine its outcome,” said Emma Brown, executive director of Giffords PAC, associated with former Rep. Gabby Giffords, whose shooting at an outdoor town hall in 2011 shocked the nation. “The truth is that voters left, right and center all want to stop dangerous people from accessing guns and making communities less safe.”
She said gun control candidates won “across urban, suburban and rural districts.”
Everytown for Gun Safety, another group, said both the House and Senate will have “gun safety majorities” next year, as well as more governors committed to gun control sitting in state capitals.
The group also bragged about outspending the NRA and notching election wins in Texas, Ohio and Michigan.
“These results put a check on a Trump administration that spent the last year gutting ATF, rearming domestic abusers, and shredding federal gun safety laws,” Everytown said.
Mr. Commerford said gun control groups — heavily bankrolled by Michael Bloomberg — have been spending for years, with little to show for it.
He said more Americans own guns now than ever before, tens of millions of those guns are the AR-15-style rifles gun control groups seek to restrict, and right-to-carry policies are expanding.
“That is not a decline in the right to keep and bear arms. It is the golden age of American gun ownership,” he said.
Mr. Commerford said it was “pure nonsense” to see a gun control mandate out of the election.
The Washington Times tried to reach numerous gun stores in Texas, where Democrats swept through the top state offices in Tuesday’s elections. Calls were met with hang-ups and no-comments.
But Steve Clark, at Clark Brothers Guns in Opal, Virginia, said they saw a rise in interest starting several weeks back, but he figured the political climate was just one of several reasons.
The black powder hunting season just opened and the regular hunting season is about to open. Plus, he said, they’ve seen new interest in suppressors after recent action by a federal court and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives made them more readily available.
Mr. Clark said those other reasons account for most of the rise, but some is likely politics.
“I’m selling a lot of high-end stuff. I’m selling a little bit more to people that just barely know what firearms are but feel like, ‘I’ve got to get one when I can,’” he said.
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