“If you hear more calls for firearms restrictions, we see an increase in gun sales, especially from people who buy before they couldn’t,” said Rob Southwick, founder of the market research firm Southwick Associates.
It’s too early to know how the successive shootings will affect firearms sales, industry experts say. Reliable figures from federal background checks won’t be released until next month. But if history is a guide, arms dealers and manufacturers can expect a surge in demand.
“I don’t have to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense action that will save lives in the future,” said Biden. the background check system by closing loopholes, as areas he would like to see in Congress.
The pattern of surging arms sales following mass shootings has remained true regardless of which political party is in power: fear of future restrictions forces gun owners to stock up.
Shortly after that shooting, President Donald Trump pledged to ban shot stocks – attachments that let shooters fire essentially semi-automatic rifles continuously with a single pull of the trigger. At his direction, the Justice Department later banned bump stocks in the United States, despite objections from gun lobbies.
“It’s a long-standing pattern,” said David Kopel, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
The firearms industry wants to hear the results of the Boulder mass shooting investigation before proposing solutions, said Mark Oliva, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group in the arms industry.
“We want the investigation process to work properly,” Oliva told CNN Business. “We urge Congress and the White House to do the same.”