Monte Caylor is making ammunition as quickly as he can in his family-owned manufacturing shop in north Alabama. With about a million bullets ordered, he finishes a bucket of 3,000 to 7,000 every day, six days a week.
“We are just absolutely overwhelmed,” he said. “Two years ago, we were struggling to pay the rent. We have more money in the bank account now than we’ve ever had.”
Gun sellers and others in the industry across Alabama say guns and ammo are disappearing off shelves faster than they can restock as customers react to images of protesters destroying property in places thousands of miles away, like Portland, Oregon.
“It’s the social breakdown. It’s the anarchists,” said Caylor from his shop in Madison. “We’ve got a lot of problems in our country right now with race. The race thing is terrible, but I think it’s just a tool being used by the anarchists.”
Driven by protests
Joe Phillips sells firearms at Mark’s Outdoor Sports in Vestavia Hills outside Birmingham. Customers tell Phillips they’re seeing concerning images of protests and looting in Portland on social media.
“If you can imagine what it’s like buying toilet paper four months ago, that’s the way handguns and ammo is right now,” he said.
Guns and ammo sales are spiking nationally. Last month Americans bought 2.6 million guns, making July the second-highest month on record for gun sales in the United States.
Phillips believes the mainstream media is downplaying the violence going on out West, and the election is in the back of everyone’s mind.
“A lot of people think that if Trump is re-elected that the left will incite riots across Democratic run cities, and if Trump does not win, they are worried about their Second Amendment rights for sure being taken away.”
Phillips is seeing people he doesn’t usually see in his store; single women, Asian Americans, more African Americans, and the elderly purchasing their first ever gun.
“So many people feel like something is going to happen, you almost feel the same way with them whether you truly believe them or not,” he said.
Bullets at Good To Go Ammo in Madison
Surge across Alabama
Alabamians in rural areas like John Buono, an insurance agent in Alexander City, are buying guns because everyone else seems to be on edge.
In May, Buono bought his wife a 380 handgun to take shopping at Walmart where crowds of emotional shoppers are cramped into one-way aisles.
“We got her one of those conceal carry purses that you can carry pretty easily. I think that she just wanted something to where she just felt a little safer going out.”
Buono says his wife is procrastinating on getting her concealed carry permit, and he’s not sure why because she is very private.
“There’s so much fear with coronavirus. The media tells you one thing. The experts say something else. People’s words get spun out of proportion,” he said.
“All it takes is one incident to relight that spark, boom.”
The cost of a starter gun and ammo will set someone back about $500, says Jim Allen who owns Patriot Gun Sales in Montgomery. He says he is able to meet about a tenth of the demand he’s seeing.
Ammo, particularly 9mm, is extremely hard to find. Handguns and shotguns are in high demand and buyers wanting to protect their homes are turning to hunting rifles and other weapons not meant for self-defense.
Incidents like fires in a federal courthouse set by protesters in Portland are fueling the craze, Allen says, and the police seem less effective than before.
“Protesting is great. The violence that they’re trying to pass off to us Americans as protesting, that is what people are arming themselves over,” he said.
“People realize that if an angry mob comes to the front door of their house and starts kicking the door in, the police are not going to be there within two minutes to stop that.”
In years past, most of the customers at his shop were gun enthusiasts. Now he’s seeing people come in to purchase their first gun who are embarrassed to be there.
“I don’t think they really even want to be there buying a gun. These are people that do not want to own a gun, but now they’re seeing all this going on in the news.”
Chain reaction
Nick Cognasi, a gun safety trainer in Prattville, is getting lots of calls from people seeking basic firearm training.
He loves shooting guns but recognizes that for some new buyers, the hobby won’t stick, much like with exercise equipment purchased at the new year.
“Later on, it just becomes something to hang clothes on that need to be folded,” he said.
Gun sales go up and down, and sometimes there’s a shortage, says Cognasi.
When Democrats win at the national level, people stock up on weapons in case there’s new gun control legislation.
In recent years, gun sales have been down. It’s something called the “Trump Slump” in the gun industry, he says.
When there is anxiety about supply, it’s is contagious, like the fear that drives a stock market crash when people start to panic sell, says Cognasi.
“You see one person go into a store and purchase all of the ammunition of a certain caliber,” he said, then you buy some and start encouraging your friends.
“‘Hey, I just watched a guy purchase all this caliber of ammunition, you might want to go pick up some ammunition yourself.‘”
That type of chain reaction is impacting Caylor, the ammo manufacturer in Madison.
Normally, gun range owners re-collect bullets to sell brass back to manufacturers like Caylor. Because shooters are stockpiling bullets in their closets instead of shooting them at the range, materials are running low to produce more bullets.
While Caylor’s business is great, he’s not sure about the country’s future.
“Mob rule is a terrible thing. They don’t respect individuals. They don’t respect property. They don’t respect life,” he said.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty right now. Uncertainty breeds fear.”
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