Chaos, riots, looting, job loss, COVID-19 and protest have been gripping communities all over the country in recent months. Locally, the unrest seems to be propelling sales of guns and ammunition.
Sales at Grandpa’s Pawn and Gun, 104 Ninth Ave., have tripled since the onset of the pandemic, owner Rod Brandenburg said. Sales were starting to slow, but a second surge began after riots broke out across the country amid protests over the death of George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis on May 25.
In March, 13,000 people were awaiting approval to purchase a gun from Grandpa’s, according to Brandenburg.
“April, May, June and July are usually the slowest times, and I’m having to settle for stuff I normally wouldn’t buy,” Brandenburg said of the Grandpa’s firearms inventory.
“Guns have gone nuts. I’ve had customers that have never owned guns break down about being scared.”
Not everyone who walks into Grandpa’s wanting to buy a gun immediately walks out with a firearm in hand.
Federal law requires licensed dealers to conduct background checks on buyers prior to sales, which in Colorado are done by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. The CBI on March 23 reported requests for background checks had increased by 227% from the same time period in 2019.
Background checks are taking anywhere from three days to months, according to Grandpa’s staff. Federal law calls for background checks to be completed in three business days, but licensed dealers can “release firearms outside of this window,” the CBI stated in its March post on the state website. “However, the CBI strongly encourages firearms dealers to hold firearms until background checks are completed.”
The increase reverses a three-year trend of slowing gun sales. The Denver Post, using state data on the number of background checks, in February reported that last year “marked the lowest number of gun sales in the state since 2014, and purchases have steadily dropped since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016.”
Colorado has 92,345 registered gun owners, according to the World Population Review.
Chris Beardsley, 31 of Longmont, has been around guns since he was a boy and said he was “raised to shoot, safety was installed in my head.”
Beardsley said he stocked up on ammo a month or so before the pandemic and has continued to do so since riots arose from the protests over Floyd’s death.
“It only takes one person out of a group of 20 to not be peaceful. You don’t ever want to have to use this stuff but it’s better to have it and not use it, than to not have it,” he said.
Longmont Public Safety Chief Mike Butler said there has not been a rise in crime since gun sales have gone up, but unease has grown.
“There are events that upset the equilibrium of society, and people are scared not knowing what the future might hold,” he said.
Studies show that 90% of violent crimes are committed by someone known by victims rather than strangers, and Butler emphasized that Longmont is still a safe place to be. “This is a great community, people here are warm and welcoming.”
