Why did arms and ammunition sales increase amid the coronavirus crisis?

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US arms sales increase amid coronavirus 0:42

(CNN) - "Gun and ammunition sales soar in Kentucky amid a new coronavirus outbreak."

"Valley's arms sales increased amid the coronavirus pandemic."

"Gun sales soared due to fears of the coronavirus, stores are limiting supplies."

"'It's fuller than Black Friday:' San Diego arms sales boom amid fears about coronavirus."

From Kentucky to Arizona and from northern New York to California, the story is the same: The spread of the coronavirus has created a boom in arms and ammunition sales that has not been seen since the eve of the 2016 presidential election.

According to Ammo.com, an online ammunition retailer, there have been massive increases in its ammunition sales in the past month (compared to the previous month, when the coronavirus was still a theoretical threat to most Americans). In Colorado, the company says, its ammunition sales increased more than 1,000%. That number was as high as 945% in Arizona and 897% in Ohio.

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"While people have accumulated toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and essential pantry items, they have also purchased ammunition at an unprecedented rate," the site read.

In Texas, there is debate among state politicians over whether gun stores qualify as “essential” businesses, meaning that if they did, they would be allowed to remain open amid confinement warnings such as the one currently in place. Dallas County.

All of which raises a basic question: Why?

The answer, if the past is a preface, is fear, although perhaps not the same fear that has fueled the boom in arms and ammunition sales.

The surge in gun sales ahead of the 2016 presidential election was fueled by fears among gun owners that if Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won, she would try to use government levers to withdraw privately owned weapons. (A weapons manufacturing executive told CNN in the second half of 2016 that the sales were driven by Clinton's active campaign "against the legal arms trade.")

Why were people so concerned? Because then-candidate Donald Trump, from at least May 2016 onward, relentlessly pushed the idea that, if elected, Clinton had a secret plan to take away their weapons.

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"Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment," Trump said at a rally in Washington state at the time. "Hillary Clinton wants to take your weapons from you and she wants to abolish the Second Amendment."

Despite the fact that Trump included this statement in a multitude of speeches during the last months of the campaign, independent fact checkers have called this false.

"We found no evidence that Clinton had said verbatim or explicitly suggested that he wanted to abolish the Second Amendment, and most of Clinton's comments suggest otherwise," the PolitiFact article on the subject said. "She has repeatedly said that she wants to protect the right to bear arms while taking steps to prevent gun violence."

(Also: This is not a phenomenon exclusive to Clinton-Trump. In 2016, a CNN note saying "Barack Obama is the best gun seller in the United States," pointed to fears of what the Democratic president could do with weapons in the wake of increasing incidents of mass gun violence led to skyrocketing sales.)

The fear that has fueled gun sales in the past month is not about what a politician could do in terms of gun rights. After all, Trump has repeatedly expressed his love for the Second Amendment during his presidency. In March 2018, he tweeted this:

THE SECOND AMENDMENT WILL NEVER BE REPEALED! As much as Democrats want this to happen, and despite the words of former Supreme Court Justice Stevens yesterday, THERE IS NO WAY. We need more Republicans in 2018 and they must ALWAYS support the Supreme Court! ”

Rather, the increase in weapons appears to be motivated by concern that the spread of the coronavirus in the United States, and the hoarding of food and toilet paper that it has caused, will lead to some type of broader social collapse in which people will have to defend themselves and their families from devastating hordes.

"You have to be protected for all kinds of things," the owner of a gun shop in Oklahoma told the Los Angeles Times. "It seems the world has gone crazy."

In a recent national survey from Monmouth University, nearly 6 in 10 Americans said, without warning, that the coronavirus was "the biggest concern their family is facing right now." ("Job security / unemployment" was the second biggest concern, registering 7%.)

Viewed through that lens, buying weapons and ammunition appears to be a way for many Americans to address the fear and anxiety they feel when the country faces a virus that we have never seen before. Human nature is a funny thing.