Gun background checks drop 10 percent in January

In this photo from Jan. 16,customers line up at the gun counter at Duke’s Sport Shop in New Cas­tle, Pa. The FBI posted new data for gun back­ground checks cov­er­ing through Jan­u­ary 2013 that says gun checks dropped more than 10 per­cent nation­wide, from roughly 2.8 mil­lion in Decem­ber 2012 to 2.5 mil­lion in Jan­u­ary 2013. (Asso­ci­ated Press file | Keith Srakocic)

EILEEN SULLIVAN

JACK GILLUM

The Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The num­ber of fed­eral back­ground checks for firearms sales declined in the U.S. last month, as retail­ers con­tinue to run out of guns to sell dur­ing a buy­ing spree dri­ven by Washington’s new focus on gun control.

Back­ground checks decreased 10 per­cent nation­ally between Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary, with large declines in the South­ern states of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mis­sis­sippi, Ten­nessee and Vir­ginia as well as Texas, accord­ing to an Asso­ci­ated Press analy­sis of new FBI data pub­lished Tuesday.

Firearms sales surged around the coun­try after the Decem­ber shoot­ing spree in New­town, Conn. A gun­man killed 20 chil­dren and six adults at the school.

There were more than 2.78 mil­lion checks in Decem­ber. That was a 12-month peak fol­low­ing an upward trend through last fall. The num­ber fell to 2.48 mil­lion in Jan­u­ary, still a higher fig­ure than any other month than Decem­ber last year.

“You can’t do a back­ground check if a guy doesn’t have a gun to buy,” said Mike Fotia, man­ager at Duke’s Sport Shop in New Cas­tle, Pa. “There’s noth­ing to buy.”

Fotia said man­u­fac­tur­ers and whole­salers can’t fill orders right now because demand is so high.

Gun sales tra­di­tion­ally dip after the rush of the hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son, and the decrease this year is the small­est since 1998 when the fed­eral gov­ern­ment began track­ing fed­er­ally man­dated National Instant Crim­i­nal Back­ground Checks. This year’s smaller decrease con­firms what gun-sellers have reported see­ing: There con­tin­ues to be a higher inter­est in firearms than in pre­vi­ous years, but there have been fewer buy­ers recently because gun stores are out of stock.

“Avail­abil­ity has been an issue. You’re just not able to sell as much,” said Katie Stulce who owns Cham­pion Firearms Corp. in Col­lege Sta­tion, Texas. “We’re prob­a­bly turn­ing away 60 per­cent of the peo­ple com­ing in want­ing to buy something.”

The num­ber of back­ground checks does not nec­es­sar­ily rep­re­sent the num­ber of firearms pur­chased, but gun man­u­fac­tur­ers use these sta­tis­tics to mea­sure the health of the gun indus­try in the U.S.

Louisiana, Alabama and Mis­sis­sippi saw the largest declines in back­ground checks from Decem­ber to Jan­u­ary, by nearly one-third. Those states also saw some of the high­est increases in back­ground checks between Novem­ber and Decem­ber last year.

Even before the New­town shoot­ing mas­sacre and pledges from the White House to curb gun vio­lence with new laws, the gun indus­try was expe­ri­enc­ing a boom in sales. Man­u­fac­tur­ers couldn’t keep up with demand. After New­town, gun sales went up even more. Peo­ple in the gun busi­ness called the rush to buy guns after the New­town shoot­ing a “banic,” mean­ing peo­ple are pan­icked Pres­i­dent Barack Obama would ban guns, said Bill Bern­stein, owner of the East Side Gun Shop in Nashville, Tenn.

The FBI con­ducted more back­ground checks for firearm sales and per­mits to carry guns the week fol­low­ing the New­town shoot­ing than it has in any other one-week period since 1998. The second-highest week for back­ground checks came mid-January as Obama announced sweep­ing plans to curb gun violence.

Bern­stein said that rush changed for him about two weeks ago, when busi­ness started to slow. Back­ground checks decreased by 24 per­cent between Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary in Ten­nessee, while checks went up by 53 per­cent there between Novem­ber and Decem­ber. Bern­stein said sales in his store went down 23 per­cent between Decem­ber and January.

“It felt like some­body just flipped a switch,” Bern­stein said. “One day I had the shop filled with peo­ple, the phone ring­ing off the hook. The next day, hardly anything.”

Posted by AP News on Feb 5 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.