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Americans are buying up guns and ammo nationwide, leaving gun shop shelves consistently bare, even in blue states.
Illinois saw a 94% increase in firearm owner identification (FOID) cards from 2019 to 2020, despite being one of most anti-gun states in the nation.
Iowa likewise experienced a doubling in carry permit applications in the same time period.
“Where I usually have 50 guns in this case, there are about four now,” said one gun shop owner. “We will spend more time answering phone calls about ammo than anything else in the day.”
A firearms instructor said that in 2020, he “trained more people than I had in the previous nine years combined.”
Ammunition would have been in short supply anyway with the surge in new gun owners, but what really exacerbated the crisis was the Covid-19 lockdowns which shut down supply lines.
“It’s not just ammunition components,” said Hornady Vice President Jason Hornady.. “It’s little things such as packing tape and cardboard boxes. We can’t ship ammo if we can’t tape the box closed.”
“Even the company that cleans our shop rags got shut down.”
Nearly five million Americans bought a firearm for the first time in 2020, which accounted for 40% of sales, according to CBS 47.
The past year easily eclipsed the recent record-setting year of 2016 which, like 2020, was fueled by the election cycle but, unlike 2020, it wasn’t a year of mass rioting.
The year 2020 has shown even the most apolitical people the precarious nature of modern-day society.