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Guns for sale in a general store in Virginia, USA
Photo: (FREELENS Pool) Boethling / imago images / Joerg Boethling
More than a million guns sold per week: US citizens have never gotten so many guns as they have since the beginning of the corona pandemic.
In March of last year, purchases exceeded the million mark within a week for the first time; in March of this year they were already 1.2 million per seven days.
This was the result of counts of background data from the US government, reported by the New York Times.
Arms sales in the US have been rising for decades - especially in election years like the previous one and after high-profile crimes.
The now heated trend began, according to the information, with the pandemic.
It continued the following year, when protests against police violence rocked the United States in the summer and violent riots overshadowed the presidential election.
The month with the highest arms sales was June 2020 after the black George Floyd was killed in a police operation in late May.
"There was a wave of purchases like we've never seen before," the New York Times quotes weapons researcher Garen J. Wintemute of the University of California at Davis.
“Usually this kind of ebbs away.
But this time it just goes on. "
Americans who had not yet been among the typical buyers also armed themselves: around a fifth of them had never owned a weapon before.
About half of the new owners were women.
This was the result of evaluations by Northeastern University and a research center in Harvard with 19,000 respondents.
In 2021, 63 percent of gun owners are male, 73 percent are white.
More than a third of households own firearms
"Americans are in an arms race against themselves," the newspaper quoted as quoting Democratic MP Marqueece Harris-Dawson from Los Angeles, where the rise in gun violence has been particularly strong.
"At the beginning of the pandemic, there was as much rush for weapons as there was for toilet paper."
The government figures only reflect a part of the arms sales and even the background analyzes, on which the "New York Times" refers, only cover store sales.
Since sales between private individuals are also closed, actual trade itself exceeds record numbers.
It is estimated that there are around 400 million weapons in circulation in the United States.
Overall, 39 percent of US households now own firearms.
Five years ago it was 32 percent, calculated a research group at the University of Chicago.
Research shows that areas with more guns have more gun kills - including suicides.
It is not yet clear whether the new waves of sales will lead to corresponding increases.
According to Wintemute, factors such as unemployment play a role in this connection.
Legislation in the USA is increasingly simplifying the use of firearms: In May, Texas, the twentieth state of Texas, decided that no special permit is required to carry a handgun.
Irishman