Gun owners have fired up “unprecedented” sales of assault weapon ammo in the days after the carnage at a Connecticut elementary school.
Brownells, the world’s largest supplier of firearms accessories, announced less than a week after the Dec. 14 tragedy that it had sold 3-1/2 years worth of magazines for the AR-15 assault rifle in just 72 hours.
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Newtown gunman Adam Lanza used a military-style Bushmaster AR-15 and carried several 30-round magazines as part of a shooting spree that left 26 people dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School, police said.
Pete Brownell, president of the Iowa-based, family-owned company, wrote on AR15.com that “the demand for magazines actually exceeded the ability for the system to keep up with the volume that was being ordered.”
“We’re working like crazy to get these orders to you as quickly as possible,” Brownell said, adding that “we ordered more material yesterday that will allow us to up production again in the coming weeks.”
Brownell didn’t speculate what’s ramping up sales.
AP Photo
Emmett Kelly, owner of Gun Emporium in Conroe, Texas, holds an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. Kelly says his business has seen such a considerable increase in sales of semiautomatic rifles such as the AR-15, AK-47 and MAC-10 that the weapons are becoming harder to stock .
A post on Guns.com, which covers industry news, said the demand has helped to drive up prices for rifles and rifle accessories, and some vendors are charging “five times what the average rate was just a few weeks ago.”
“The threat of regulation has dramatically upset the normal flow of production and distribution,” according to the post.
Leading that charge is President Obama and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who plans to reintroduce a bill next month in Congress to ban assault weapons. The previous 1994 ban expired in 2004.
While Democratic lawmakers have expressed support for stricter gun control laws, some key Republicans have expressed doubt that another ban would ensure safety, including in schools.
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The National Rifle Association has instead proposed posting armed security in every school in America.
In the meantime, some U.S. gun sellers say they’re experiencing a major uptick in sales and are even thanking the Democrats for pushing a renewed ban.
“They’ve been off the charts. Absolutely skyrocketing,” Chuck Nesby, a firearms instructor at NOVA Firearms in Falls Church, Va., told ABC News. “If I could give an award to President Obama and Sen. Feinstein, (they) would be salesperson of the year.”
“We’re completely out of the so-called assault weapons, semiautomatic firearms that are rifles,” Nesby said, adding that about 40% of sales are to women and seniors.
Stockpiling and interest from first-time buyers appear to be going on elsewhere in the country, according to ABC News.
“We have never seen anything like this,” said Larry Hyatt, a Charlotte, N.C., gun shop owner. “We have the Christmas business, the hunting season business, and now we have the political business.”
eortiz@nydailynews.com
