#gunshop

I haven’t been very active lately and to be honest it’s because I’m fatigued and gun posting just reminds me of work now, but this year has been unlike any other so I felt I needed to share what it’s been like being a gun salesman in 2020 - between COVID-19, riots, protests, and the upcoming election, it’s been pure insanity.

The year started off to a decent start sales-wise, we had the usual post-holiday I-got-christmas-money spending, followed by the traditional post-tax-return impulse buying. I knew with the election coming up towards the end of the year we’d see a pretty large increase in sales around then, but hadn’t expected 2020 to be anything too crazy for the firearms industry. 

Then COVID-19 became a global event.

I’ll never forget the first insane day of sales we had because it fell on Friday the 13th back in March, right around the same time businesses began having to close and people started having to go on unemployment, and unfortunately, on the day Breonna Taylor was murdered. We had a never ending stream of new customers walking in wanting to buy something for home defense, along with our regulars who were just trying to check items off their wishlist before inventory was gone. To say we had to put little effort into making sales is an understatement - everyone thought as people went on unemployment and business shuttered that immediately they would turn to theft and violence, and whatever they could use to defend themselves they wanted it and all the ammo to go with it immediately.

Depending on how many used/estate/trade-in firearms we have we would usually have around 100-130 handguns in stock, and around 80 long guns, along with a decent selection of ammunition. At one point in March we had 5 handguns left on the shelf and about 25 long guns left, all of which were only there because they were either collectible in nature or a dedicated hunting/sporting firearm. Any modern defensive firearm was gone, and all common ammunition calibers were out of stock as well. Even things like magazines, holsters, cleaning kits, safety gear, parts, etc. were getting bought up.

The good news at least was at this point we could still restock inventory. Shipping times were taking much longer than usual since every shop in the nation was hammering distributors with orders, but we were still able to order in product and re-fill the shelves in a reasonable timeframe. By about mid-May sales had slowed back down to around near-normal as we ran out of stuff to sell and everyone began to adjust to living in COVID-19 America. After our first dead week of sales in awhile I thought we were through the worst of it and things would return to normal.

Then George Floyd was murdered. 

Being located within a reasonable distance of downtown Portland put us right near the heart of protests and riots that would eventually draw global attention, and along with it came the panic buying. Business owners, residents concerned about their safety, people arming themself for what they believed was the start of a conflict - they all came in droves. What little inventory we were getting in was leaving near immediately, and with the entire nation seeing similar events happening in major cities the supply chain was gutted quickly.

It’s mid-September now and while we still see the high demand for firearms, the reality is we’re running out of things to sell and unable to restock easily. We used to be able to reserve small stashes of 9mm/5.56 in the back for customers to pick up with firearms, but that’s all long gone now with no ETA on when we’ll get more. Companies we’ve reached out to about becoming new dealers with or backordering some calibers have quoted us Q2 of 2021 on new orders. The few new defensive firearms we do restock sell within a day or two of being put on the shelf, and we’re definitely selling more than we are restocking.

COVID-19 has limited the importation and production of firearms/ammunition so badly that some many I had backordered back in April have still not been filled, and although I check daily on the multiple distributors we use they are getting such limited inventory that everything is being allocated out and not even put on their websites. I just have to hope there is anything good on an allocation email and that I reply quickly enough to get it, or that I’ll get a shipping notice from one of the many backorders we have pending.

The bigger concern for me now has become the general unpleasantness that has spread to nearly everyone. Customers don’t understand why we’re out of all the calibers or firearms they’re looking for and get angry when we can’t just order more for them. First time buyers get frustrated when their driver’s license is expired, or has an old out of state address, and they need something else for us to use to submit their background check. Background check queues that used to take minutes or hours on a busy day to clear now take weeks since over 5,000 people are in line and even though we communicate that, people still impatiently call us every few days to check where they are in line. The first time buyer who didn’t give a damn about the Second Amendment until now is suddenly an expert on their rights and is furious at us because the State Police put a Delay or Denial on their background check.

Don’t even get me started on the masks.

We’ve had more crazies coming out of the woodworks in the last 6 months than the entire 8 years I’ve been in this industry. Between multiple Delays and Denials on a weekly basis, combined with having had to ask a few customers to leave because we didn’t feel confident selling them a firearm or they were rude to our staff, it’s been stressful for the entire crew. One of our regulars who works nights and commutes right by the shop informed us he’d seen two cars parked outside the shop around 3am one morning, and after reviewing the security camera footage, we were definitely being cased. Thankfully all of our firearms are locked up in safes at night, so it’s clear to anyone looking in the windows that there’s nothing they can easily steal if they do get in, but it’s still concerning that someone might try anyway.

With the Presidential election being about two months out I have a feeling we haven’t seen the last of the insanity, not by a long shot. They say an armed society is a polite society, but America is feeling less and less like a functioning society, and more and more people are forgetting how to be polite.