![]() Clements added that Glock and Sig Sauer, two of the country’s largest gunmakers, have struggled to fulfill orders during the surge, leaving him short on his best-selling handguns. “If we sell a gun to somebody and don’t have ammo, it doesn’t do them any good,” he said. One of his store’s most profitable offerings, an indoor shooting range, has languished in the resulting drought, without any ammunition to provide the hoards of eager first-time shooters. Clements said he’s run out of the 9mm ammunition used in many handguns, as well as the 5.56 rounds typically used in AR-15s. Most retailers interviewed for this story said that, since May, new inventory has trickled in, preventing them from capitalizing on the biggest boon the industry has ever seen. ![]() But, he added, “If you sell 50 guns but only can bring 25 in, it’s gonna catch up to you.” “Everyone thinks it’s great to have a thing like this for gun sales,” said Tony Clements, who runs Trop Gun Shop in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. But the splashy headlines announcing this exceptional performance have belied the reality faced by many retailers across the country, who have had difficulty keeping up with demand, and whose profits often depend on more than gun sales alone. When retail businesses closed to prevent the spread of the virus, gun stores by and large remained open, many in defiance of state orders. ![]() When the stock market tumbled in mid-March, gun company stocks soared. The gun industry has fared better than most since the pandemic began. ![]() “Now the problem is: You can’t get the stuff the people want to buy,” Swadish told The Trace. What might have spurred a roaring recovery instead caused supply shortages that have left the industry struggling to capitalize on the historic demand for its products.įirearm sales are soaring, but manufacturers like Henry and Century Arms received coronavirus relief funds from the federal government. The new surge had quickly cleaned out his inventory, and caught many firearms manufacturers and distributors flatfooted, unable to fulfill orders. But despite the return of an all-time high demand for firearms that month - driven by protests against police brutality after the killing of George Floyd - Swadish still had difficulty turning a profit. It helped sustain Huron Valley Guns until Michigan began a gradual reopening in June. The program was established to arrest climbing unemployment figures, and inject businesses with funds to pay employees while profits suffered from the pandemic. To stay afloat, Swadish joined hundreds of gun retailers across the country and applied for a loan through the Paycheck Protection Program. By the end of April, he found that the increased gun sales were hardly a lifeline he was $40,000 in the red. Swadish ignored the order, though he closed the shooting range, restaurant, and barbershop that he operates inside his store. When he reopened, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued an order closing all nonessential businesses, including gun stores. Owner Ed Swadish thought, briefly, that the new customers might protect him from the careening American economy, which in the coming months would swallow north of six million jobs.īut then an employee came down with a fever, and Swadish closed the shop for two weeks. Lines snaked through the store’s cavernous, multilevel interior, past an extravagant mural of George Washington, around a model Liberty Bell, to its entrance, where taxidermied deer heads line the walls. ![]() In March, Huron Valley Guns in New Hudson, Michigan, caught the front end of a national surge in gun buying. ![]()
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