Local gun stores reaching new highs amid election anxiety

Nick Lange remembers a time when he would sell one or two firearms a day. Those days, he said, are long gone.

“The mindset around North Idaho has always been to prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” the owner of Praetorian Armory and Coatings in Coeur d’Alene said Friday afternoon. “That’s kind of what’s going on right now.”

While North Idaho has long championed the Second Amendment, Lange and other gun store owners and managers said they’ve seen a huge spike in sales this year, a trend that started with the COVID-19 pandemic and has since climbed with the upcoming general election Tuesday.

Tumultuous times, he said, bring out an abundance of caution.

“My personal belief is no matter who gets elected, there’s going to be trouble," Lange said. "I think that mindset is having people (re-evaluate) their circumstances.”

All local gun store employees The Press spoke to Friday acknowledged surging sales, though most wouldn’t agree to an interview — not because of a policy, but because of simple bandwidth. With busy storefronts full of customers, most admitted they simply didn’t have time to talk.

Lange’s recall of one to two firearm sales a day dates back to last year. He said those numbers doubled — three to four gun sales daily — after the pandemic struck in March. In the weeks leading up to the election, he said those numbers now hover around four to five sales.

“Six on a good day,” he added.

Nationwide, three out of four voters say they're worried about violence on Election Day, according to a poll released Wednesday by Suffolk University. In September alone, 1.8 million guns were purchased in the United States, a 66 percent jump from September 2019.

Small Arms Analytics, a research firm that studies the industry, said September’s surge represents a seventh straight month of more than 50 percent growth.

That surge has led to declining inventory across the board, a supply-and-demand problem strained even further by Thursday’s announcement by Walmart that America’s largest retailer would temporarily halt the sales of guns and ammunition. It's a response to the killing of Walter Wallace, Jr. by Philadelphia police, prompting civil unrest, looting and damage to several stores, including local Walmarts.

Walmart reversed its decision Friday mid-morning, though the Honeysuckle Avenue Walmart in Hayden still had its stockpile of guns removed from its display cases Friday afternoon, with its employees still under their original strict instructions not to sell guns or ammunition to anyone.

Randy Longnecker, general manager at Cabela’s in Post Falls, directed The Press to its corporate office for additional comment, but he did urge that any depletion in supply has as much to do with where a product comes from these days as the demand pushing its sales.

“I can tell you, the store overall has been really busy, and there are different items in the store that run short,” Longnecker said. “It’s not any one particular area, either. A lot of manufacturers are U.S. products.”

Longnecker said many American manufacturers of outdoor products — “Take sinkers, for example,” he said — had to close during the pandemic. As supply began to dwindle, replenishing shelves became difficult, particularly in the face of rising demand.

That said, Longnecker stopped short of calling the current demand for guns and ammunition a “run.”

“We get shipments of ammo in two to three times a week,” he said. “It just sells fast.”

For smaller shops like Praetorian, keeping ammunition on the shelves has been all but impossible.

“We’re stretched out about as thin as can be,” Lange said. “Our supplier couldn’t get their hands on ammunition, so right now, we’ve just stopped selling it.”

It’s a problem Lange said has swelled since the pandemic began, resulting in a sharp spike in some venues he describes as nothing more than price-gouging.

“You’ll see 500 rounds of 9mm (ammunition) going for $685 at some gun shows,” Lange said. “That’s outrageous. We’re not going to be a party to that.”

Among the notable statistics buried in the numbers are first-time gun purchases. Based on the number of first-time background checks during the gun purchasing process since the start of 2020, 6 million first-time background checks were queried. It’s a number Lange said is unnerving.

“I can’t stress training enough,” he said. “When (first-time buyers) come in, saying, ‘I want to buy a handgun,’ the first thing I ask them is, ‘Do you know how to apply a tourniquet?’ The two go hand-in-hand. It’s just really important to have the proper training.”