Colorado residents appear to be buying more guns in the wake of a theater shooting that left 12 dead and 58 wounded last week.
According to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, background checks for gun purchases have spiked in the days since police say James Holmes opened fire on an Aurora movie theater, killing 12 and wounding 58 more.
On July 20, in the hours after the rampage at the Century Aurora 16 theater, CBI conducted 1,216 background checks. That’s more than the previous two Fridays this month, when CBI did an average of 850 checks.
On Saturday and Sunday, the trend continued.
CBI said it conducted 1,243 checks Saturday and 428 Sunday. The previous Saturdays this month averaged 889 checks, Sundays averaged 309.
While background checks spiked in the days after the shootings, gun sales in Colorado were already up this year compared to 2011.
Last year CBI ran an average of 710 background checks on Fridays in July, a figure that even before the shootings had jumped almost 20 percent this month.
Saturdays and Sundays were also up this year compared to last year. In 2011, the typical Saturday in July saw 705 checks and Sunday saw 222. This year, those figures were up 25 percent and 40 percent, respectively.
Dick Rutan, owner of Gunners Den in suburban Arvada, Colo., said requests for concealed-weapon training certification “are off the hook.” His four-hour course in gun safety, required for certification for a concealed-weapons permit in Colorado, has drawn double the interest since Friday.
“What they’re saying is: They want to have a chance. They want to have the ability to protect themselves and their families if they are in a situation like what happened in the movie theater,” Rutan said.
Day-to-day gun sales frequently fluctuate, but the numbers look strong outside of Colorado, too.
Seattle’s home county, King, saw nearly twice as many requests for concealed pistol licenses than the same time frame a year ago. Florida recorded 2,386 background checks on Friday, up 14 percent from the week before. Oregon checks on Friday and Saturday were up 11 percent over the month prior. Four days of checks in California were up 10 percent month-to-month.
Locally, Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said that because it takes several days for CCW applicants to fill out their applications and for those to be processed, it was too early to say if there had been a spike in requests.
During the past decade, June and July have consistently been the slowest months for gun sales, according to FBI data.
At Pasternack’s Pawn Shop on East Colfax Avenue, owner Scott Pasternack said he hasn’t seen much of an increase in gun sales since the theater shootings.
More than 90 percent of the gun sales at Pasetrnack’s involve used guns, Pasternack said, and while new shops might be seeing a spike, the pawn shop isn’t.
“We haven’t here at the shop,” he said July 24.
But, Pasternack said, customers who previously pawned their guns are heading back to the shop to buy their guns back.
“They would rather have them on them,” he said.
None of the customers have said they came back because of the theater shootings, he said. But his guess is that the returning customers and the shootings are connected.
“They never came out and said that, but you can put two and two together,” he said.
And while some might be concerned about protecting themselves in light of what happened at the theater, Pasternack said he doesn’t believe that’s the main reason customers who pawned their guns want them back.
“They are worried more about the regulations that might come in,” he said. “At least if they have one now, they have it before any of the crazy regulations come in.”
The AP contributed to this story.