Some dealers said an unusually high proportion of sales have been to first-time gun buyers. “We attribute it mainly to the virus scare,” said Hyatt, whose gun store has seen sales increase 30% to 40% percent since late February. The agency processed more background checks in February than it had done in all but two other months since it started performing the queries in the late 1990s. January, when most confirmed cases of the virus were still mostly overseas, also saw a sizable increase in background checks, up 25% from the same month last year. Still, those moments can spur devotees to their favourite gun store, said Lowder, a retired brewery worker and truck driver who had come from Lenoir, North Carolina, to buy an AR-15.

Source: bd News24 March 16, 2020 16:30 UTC