It’s been more than a decade since gun sellers in Colorado have seen demand this low, as the pandemic-era buying frenzy fully winds down.
Last year, there were 314,904 approved background checks for firearm purchases, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. It’s the lowest sales volume since 2014, and sales are down 35% since hitting record highs in 2020.
Background checks are not a perfect measure of gun sales, because one check could include more than one firearm purchased. But approved background checks are commonly used as a proxy for firearm demand.
The pandemic supercharged gun sales across the country and in Colorado. The combination of protests over the murder of George Floyd, lockdowns, and a presidential election pushed sales to unprecedented levels. In the years since, sales volume has steadily declined.
“When we hit peaks that were so astronomically high in 2020 and 2021, we knew that those numbers were not going to be sustainable, and we knew that they would come back down to Earth,” said Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry trade group.
Oliva said Colorado’s post-pandemic decline generally matches national trends, though this year there are some signs in recent national data that sales may be stabilizing.
“Last month we were 1.6% higher year-over-year than we were last year,” Oliva said. “So we’re continuing to see a good, healthy appetite of firearm sales.”
Wayne Price bought The Gun Room in Lakewood in 2022, so he missed the boom years. But the stories of those pandemic years have filtered down to him. “Everything I heard was it didn’t matter what you had, you could sell it,” Price said.
Price said his business focuses on collectors and unique inventory. He buys from estates and consigns guns, and much of his inventory is used. And he has seen a lot of people come in to offload those pandemic purchases.
“A ton of times in the last four years since I bought (the shop), people bring in guns: ‘I’ve got to get rid of this. I bought it during COVID. I don’t need it.’”
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