GOODLETTSVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Gun shop owners say they’ve never seen anything like it.
“If you think toilet paper’s bad, this is worse,” said Goodlettsville Gun Shop Owner Phillip Arrington.
“We were in business during the Clinton years, we were in business during Y2K, we were in business during 9-11,” he said, “All of that is what we’re seeing now.”
As COVID-19 cases in the U.S. continue to rise, firearm and ammo sales skyrocket.
In Tennessee, there have been more than 30,000 transactions in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations system in just the last week.
“We started seeing an uptick in sales about a week and a half ago,” Arrington told News 2, “When the stock market took a hit, everybody got scared. That’s when we started seeing the fear.”
“All the stores, everything, shelves are empty, two to three week wait online for ammunition,” said Jeff Beaty, a Hermitage resident shopping for ammo Saturday.
At Goodlettsville gun shop, they’re restocking shelves four times a day.
Arrington implemented a social distancing rule, only 2 to 3 people are allowed in at a time.
Not only are people waiting up to an hour just to get in the shop, but they’re also then waiting two hours for their background check to clear.
“It’s just the systems just so overwhelmed because they’ve never had this volume before. Hundreds of hundreds, thousands, of people going through it,” Arrington explained.
“You never know what people are gonna do if we go on lock-down like other places have,” said Dustin Hollis from Gallatin, “You know martial law takes effect, people wanna take things into their owns hands, they start looting stores and groceries and stuff, the next place they go is other people, and I don’t want to be one of those people that’s not prepared for that if that happens.”
Arrington is also wiping down anything people touch several times an hour.
