About 4.7 million Americans launched firearms background checks last month – a 36% increase from February, according to the FBI. More than 2 million of those checks were for new firearm purchases, according to the National Shooting Sports Federation, the firearms industry trade group that compares FBI background check figures with data from actual sales to determine its sales figures.
New guns purchased in March make it the second highest month on record for gun sales, according to NSSF spokesman Mark Oliva, who said the threat of impending gun control legislation was the catalyst for the sales surge in recent months.
NSSF data shows last month’s sales were only surpassed by the roughly 2.3 million guns sold in March 2020, when the spread of Covid-19 prompted Americans to collect guns and balls in addition to toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
“It is clear that the gun sales in March were prompted by calls for gun control from politicians to ban entire classes of guns and enact heavy gun laws.” Oliva told CNN Business Thursday afternoon.
House Democrats passed a pair of gun control bills last month that would expand background check requirements on all gun sales and transfers. GOP senators are expected to oppose the measures, which will require the support of 50 Democrats and at least 10 Republicans in the Senate to establish the filibuster-proof majority needed to pass the bills before the President Biden cannot sign them.
Oliva said the continued surge in gun purchases, which last year was largely fueled by African Americans and first-time women gun buyers, suggests that the demographic profile of gun owners American fire is changing.
This year, a continued increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans has also led to an increase in firearms purchases for the first time in this demographic.
“The face of today’s gun owner no longer fits into the neat little box some would like to place gun ownership in,” Oliva said. “The point is, gun ownership in America is more like the country than it ever was.”
The House of Representatives passed the pair of gun control bills on March 11. Five days later, eight people were killed in Atlanta, including six Asian women, in a series of spa shootings. A week later, 10 people, including a local police officer, were shot dead at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. Biden urged the Senate to pass gun control legislation following the two shootings.
There were at least 20 mass shootings in the three weeks after the Atlanta attack.
Gun sales edged down in February after a January surge, which was in part fueled by the Capitol Hill insurgency. January and March are the only two months in which the FBI’s firearms background checks topped 4 million since records were first kept in 1998.
The Covid-19 pandemic, fears of civil unrest stemming from nationwide protests and riots following the police murder of George Floyd last summer have all helped 2020 set the all-time high firearms purchases in a single year.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported the number of people killed in the Atlanta and Boulder shootings. Eight people were killed in Atlanta and 10 were killed in Boulder.
