CONTRIBUTED

Now that President Trump is back in the White House and has promised that gun rights will be protected and perhaps even loosened over the next four years, it would seem like the perfect time to purchase firearms.

One might also think that with the pro-gun Republican Party back in power with a government trifecta for the first time since 2018 that pro-gun advocates would be rejoicing and buying as many guns as they can.

But that’s not what’s happened.

Here’s why.

The simple explanation is that Americans tend to buy less guns when they believe that their gun rights are safe. It’s only when Americans have reason to fear that gun laws will be restricted, or when there’s a major disaster or overall uncertainty (such as during the pandemic and mass rioting of 2020), that gun sales tend to go up.

Several years ago, President Barack Obama was often referred to as “the best gun salesman” in the United States. That’s because gun purchases were reaching record highs when Obama was in power, mainly since Americans were gravely concerned that Obama and the Democrats then in office would push through legislation that restricted gun ownership.

Gun owners were still acutely aware of the assault weapons ban and magazine limits that were put in place from 1994 to 2004 under President Bill Clinton, and there were fears that similar legislation (this time without a time restriction) would be passed and signed into law by Obama. That kind of legislation ultimately never came to reality, although there were a couple of instances where proposed legislation was debated and voted on in the Senate floor.

Gun sales again reached highs during 2016 when there was widespread expectation that Hillary Clinton would secure the Presidency and push for stricter gun laws as well, only for the sales to fall once Trump took office. They rose again during the Covid pandemic and social unrest that erupted across the country in 2020, and during the start of Joe Biden’s presidency as well before starting to fall afterwards. Republicans re-gaining control over the House of Representatives also eased worries among the general public that their rights were in danger.

Gun sales have continued to fall since then, and manufacturers have already been responding to the changing market conditions. Research conducted by the Trace, for instance, found that the number of new firearms produced for the U.S. market in 2023 fell to just under 15 million from a high of over 23 million just a couple of years beforehand.

One reason for this could be because the number of first time gun owners is simply less than it was before. When the Covid pandemic hit in early 2020, for example, millions of people in the U.S. purchased a firearm for the very first time in their lives, and that was a big reason why gun sales were so high during that period. The number of people who don’t own a gun has naturally shrunk since then, so there’s a lot less people who are in the “oh no, things are getting bad and I need to get a gun” camp.

Firearms are hardly an uncommon thing in the U.S. In fact, almost half of all households in the United States have at least one gun in the house. The simple fact of the matter is that more people have guns now than ever before (literally), and since many spikes in gun sales are thanks to first time gun owners like we’ve mentioned above, so it makes sense that sales are declining after hitting a peak.

So does this mean that gun sales are likely to continue to fall in the future?

It’s tough to say for sure. On one hand, gun sales are traditionally lower during a Republican-held government and there’s no question that there are less first time gun owners now.

But on the other hand, no one can predict with a 100% degree of accuracy as to what will happen, and if history also repeats itself gun sales are likely to rise again in the event of a major catastrophe or civil/economic precariousness happening later.

For now, however, many gun owners and gun rights organizations are breathing a sigh of relief that President Trump is back in the White House. Not only has the President vowed to protect 2nd Amendment rights during his next four years in office, he’s also promised to loosen gun regulations through measures like introducing National Concealed Carry Reciprocity. It could be a very interesting next four years.