INFOGRAPHIC: Pandemic Pushes Gun Sales to Record

RALEIGH – When ‘Shelter-in-Place’ orders started coming down from on high during the initial phases of Pandemic Panic — shelves running bare at stores, the economy cratering — a lot of people thought it wise to get a firearm. The unprecedented events left a pervasive sense that anything could happen, and keeping your family safe in some sort of movie-like dystopia suddenly became a real consideration.

The surge for safety and survival is reflected in the official gun sales info from the FBI, showing a building wave from February (as the panic began to creep in) and March (when the panic came in full force). Minuteman Review has put together an infographic documenting the historic surge in gun sales, state by state, hand guns versus long guns.

Gun sales nationally were up more than 17 percent overall in February according to the data, though in North Carolina the impetus wasn’t really there. North Carolina’s sales decreased compared to February 2019.

Still, a couple states like Illinois were already seeing a surge of 178+ percent. In March, the rest of the country joined them, with overall sales for March 2020 increasing 85 percent over the same month last year.

North Carolina’s March increase was 100 percent more guns sales, doubling the sales from March 2019.

The spikes are mostly of handguns and ‘AR’ style long guns, according to gun sellers, but sales are surging across the board for ammo, accessories, and firearms.

It’s understandable during the pervasive panic that people would want to either, buy their first firearm for protection, or additional firearms for more security. Many, many first time gun buyers sought to secure protection during this coronavirus surge.

But this data only goes through March. We know now that things just became more dire as the weeks of lockdown wore on, as excessive government restrictions strained the population. And then, in late May, the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked two weeks of massive protests and riots the likes of which this country has not seen in a generation or more.

With anarchists and BLM rioters out for revenge, viewing destruction, violence, and mayhem as a justified form of dissent, rioting to the point that our cities looked like war zones, you can bet even more people felt compelled to arm themselves.

Check out the full infographic at MinuteManReview.

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