No spike in gun sales after Orlando nightclub shooting

Frightened Southe Califoians mobbed gun stores after the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Beardino, but firearms dealers said Monday that sales haven’t taken off in the wake of this nation’s worst mass shooting in Orlando, Fla.

That seems to be the case throughout the United States.

“There’s been zero uptick in sales nationwide,” Scot Thomasson, a spokesman for the American Firearms Retailers Association in Alexandria, Va., said in a telephone interview. The association represents many of the country’s largest gun sellers.

When asked why dealers weren’t selling more, Thomasson said, “I would say it’s buyer fatigue. The gun industry has been red-hot for the last seven or eight years.”

Vince Torres, owner of Bullseye Sport in Riverside, said he thought sales would take off in response to Orlando, but as of Monday afteoon that didn’t appear to be happening. Customers who walked up to the counter said they weren’t motivated to shop for a gun by the Florida tragedy that took 50 lives.

The situation was about the same a mile or so away at Centerfire Firearms. A man and a woman shook their heads no, when asked if Orlando had coaxed them in.

It was a much different story in December, said owner Jerry Piearson.

“People could relate to it, and it literally hit home with San Beardino,” he said. “We were like every store. We had people lined up. We sold virtually every gun in the store, as far as handguns.”

It wasn’t Disneyland

But Florida is much farther away, and people don’t feel as threatened by it, Piearson said. And he said that may also have been because the shooter, Omar Mateen, seemed to be narrowly focused on “a targeted audience.”

“If it had been Disneyland, people would probably be piling in here,” he said.

Likewise, AllSafe Defense Systems, an Orange-based business that offers firearms training courses, hasn’t experienced the same type of increase seen in the aftermath of the San Beardino shooting, owner T.J. Johnston said.

Johnston, too, said that is likely because Florida is far away and the target in this case was a gay nightclub.

“It was a unique crowd,” Johnston said, rather than the general population of a movie theater or school campus. “A lot of people don’t feel threatened by that, so people don’t feel quite as vulnerable.”

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While he argued that sexual orientation shouldn’t be part of the gun-rights discussion, Johnston said the LGBT community may have extra cause to arm themselves against apparently homophobic assailants such as Mateen.

“They are targets,” he said.

Pink Pistols

Johnston pointed to the Pink Pistols, a national group that’s dedicated to teaching members of the gay community how to arm themselves for protection.

“This is exactly the kind of heinous act that justifies our existence,” Gwendolyn Patton, a spokeswoman for the Pink Pistols, said in a statement Sunday.

“It is difficult, if not impossible, to foresee such an event. But if they caot be prevented, then they must be stopped as fast as someone tries to start them,” Patton said.

However, there were pockets of bustling sales activity around the region.

By 1 p.m. Monday, Jeff Taveer, owner of the Gunslingers Gun Shop in Glendora, said he had sold five handguns.

“Every one of them was a brand-new gun owner,” Taveer said, saying one customer said he wanted a firearm to protect himself from “anti-American Islamic maniacs.”

Taveer, whose shop is closed on Sundays, said he considers five gun sales “really good” for a Monday overall and “incredible” for half a day.

Taveer said much of the customer chatter was about the mass shooting in Orlando.

“I probably had 20 people in today and everybody’s talking about it — not everybody bought a gun,” he said. “Nobody believes that the govement can or will protect them and people are buying stuff to protect themselves.”

Focus on proposed laws

In Yorba Linda, Firearms Training Associates saw an oveight jump in sign-ups for upcoming courses, according to Bill Murphy, a police officer who owns the business with his wife.

“Every time there’s one of these man-made disasters, we always get a spike in business because people start to realize how vulnerable they are and how little they can do to protect themselves,” Murphy said.

There’s been particular interest in an upcoming course the school offers on how to deal with an active shooter situation, Murphy said. That course includes a section on emergency medical management, which he said would be helpful in a situation like Orlando where some victims were held hostage for three hours.

And while there was no disceible uptick in Riverside, Torres said business at his shop has been steady for some time. More than six months after San Beardino, sales are ruing about 25 percent greater than usual.

He attributed that to a flurry of state gun-control legislation.

“The people in Califoia are more concentrated on these bills right now than on what happened in Florida,” Torres said.

And Torres said he’s conceed, too, about the bills.

“If they all pass as a whole, I’ll be selling slingshots,” he said.