TALLAHASSEE, FL – Under the heading of, “This won’t go over well,” Florida State Representative Dan Daley (D-Coral Springs) is pushing legislation that would require a background check for all ammunition purchases in the state.
The Florida Daily reports Daley’s legislation is called “Jaime’s Law,” so named after Jaime Guttenberg, who was shot and killed during the February 14, 2018, Parkland high school shooting.
The bill was filed by Daley in 2019, but was defeated in the state house. He has recently refiled the “Jaime’s Law” bill.
While the Parkland was devastating and tragic, it was accomplished by a young man with a distinctly troubled past. Nikolas Jacob Cruz was orphaned twice, having his adoptive foster parents die three years before the incident.
The young man had changed schools six times in three years to account for dealing with behavioral issues – all the red flags were there, and school administration and the local sheriff’s department failed to step in and place the young man in some sort of protective confinement.
How Cruz’s situation applies to legal gun owners buying ammunition for target practice or hunting is lost on most of the state’s residents, it appears.
Today, I filed Jaime’s Law in honor of 14 year old Jaime Guttenberg, who tragically lost her life in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
Jaime’s Law seeks to close the ammo loophole by requiring background checks on ammunition purchases. pic.twitter.com/4Xlgk4ts9h
— Dan Daley (@DanDaley) October 7, 2019
Representative Daley spoke to the Florida Daily:
“With approximately 400,000,000 weapons already on the streets, we must make it harder for those who intend to kill to do so.
Prohibited purchasers of weapons are also prohibited from buying ammunition, but there is no mechanism in place to keep that ammunition out of their hands.
We must close this ammunition loophole and this bill is a step in the right direction to do it. Jaime’s Law will help save lives immediately.”
Daley didn’t mention that his law may not have prevented the Parkland high school shooting, as the attacker who carried out that heinous crime passed a background check to acquire his gun. There is no reason to believe he could not have passed a background check for ammunition.
The Sun-Sentinel reported the Parkland attacker passed a background check for his rifle, “including (the) mental health question.”
Daley told the Florida Daily that he believes “more than 60 percent of Floridians favor tightening the rules for gun control.” Daley didn’t disclose where he got survey information and statistics for that claim.
According to a report by Brietbart News, more than 186,000 firearm background checks were performed on Black Friday 2020, making it the fourth-highest one-day total for National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) checks on record.
Over 186,000 firearm background checks were performed on Black Friday 2020, making it the fourth-highest one-day total for National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) checks on record. https://t.co/CzZxtCfonH
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) November 30, 2020
The number of background checks conducted on a given Black Friday or during a given month don’t tell the full story on gun sales, as multiple guns may be purchased with each background check.
Background checks, however, do give some indication regarding the demand for firearms. That astronomical number of background checks on a single day, the fourth-highest single day ever for background checks, shows the incredible demand for weapons that our nation is currently seeing.
Florida, like many states, is seeing an explosion of weapons and ammunition sales, amid shortages of both guns and ammo at retailers.
Rita Gonzalez, a gun owner from West Palm Beach, Florida, sees an impact on her time at the firing range. Gonzalez isn’t a beginner, and as an experienced and trained gun owner, she has helped many friends become first-time gun owners.
She commented on her friends and her range time:
“It’s all going on and they feel it’s safer to have them. It’s like my happy place. I go. I shoot. I release stress. I like it.”
The owners of the West Palm Beach Gun and Range Training Center, where Rita Gonzalez does most of her firing, said most of the gun sales during the COVID-19 pandemic were first-time buyers, accounting for 80% of sales.
Ammo shortages have impacted the income of firing ranges and enjoyment and training for shooters. Gonzalez commented further:
“(I’m) reducing firing time on the shooting range to save ammunition. (She’s) But lately, she’s less likely to go to the shooting range. I’m afraid to use ammunition because it was almost impossible to find.”
Alex Schkop, owner of the Gun and Range Training Center, said he had never seen such a year in the gun industry:
“The supply line broke and demand went through the roof.”
Smith and Wesson reported last year that more than 8,000,000 people across the country got their first gun. According to last year’s data, gun sales tend to surge during the election year.
Shkop believes that the surge in guns is due to a pandemic and the outage is due to production, causing inventory and ammunition shortages:
“Because we can’t find ammo, even if we have ammo or someone else has ammo, they’re trying to make it last longer, limiting the amount you can buy.”
Record sales increase American firearm ownership to an estimated 434 million guns
November 18, 2020
NEWTOWN, CT – The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), founded in 1961, reported Monday there are an estimated 434 million firearms in private possession in the United States of America.
Firearms purchases have strongly surged in the past year, mostly because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also because of political uncertainties, like the possibility of a very liberal incoming administration.
The gun purchasing surge being witnessed during coronavirus shutdown resulted in the sale of nearly two million firearms last month alone. https://t.co/Qc5MQOFGSS
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) May 8, 2020
Firearms production figures show approximately six million firearms were manufactured in the U.S. in 2019, consisting of 3.6 million pistols and revolvers, two million rifles, and 480,000 shotguns.
Imported firearms accounted for another 3.3 million firearms. Those imports included 2.3 million pistols and revolvers, 301,000 rifles and 678,000 shotguns.
The NSSF estimates that there are approximately 19.8 million sporting rifles in our country, ranging from the AR platform rifles to SKS/AK-47 styles.
Back in 2018, Breitbart published a story indicating there were more than nine million AR-platform rifles manufactured or for sale in our country during former president Barack Obama’s administration alone.
On the weapon magazine front, NSSF estimates that Americans own “approximately 71.2 million pistol magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds” and “79.2 million rifle magazines capable of holding 30 or more rounds.”
CBS News points to another report released by the NSSF indicating that without 2020 being completed, calendar-wise, 2020 has already topped the highest weapons sales year on record, which was in 2016.
As stated before, the surge in buying weapons was primarily motivated by the Covid-19 lockdowns occurring nationwide.
Owner and manager of Adventure Outdoors in Smyrna, GA explained:
“Everybody went to the grocery stores first to stock up on food, then they went to the gun stores.”
The 2020 holiday season is expected to cause a secondary boom in gun sales this year. With that said, November and December are already the highest tallied months for weapons sales in cumulative history, based on an NSSF check of the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
“The National Shooting Sports Foundation found that 17.2 million background checks were completed this year, versus 15.7 million in 2016, the previous high-water mark for gun sales.
Firearm purchases have climbed every month since March, and more than 1.7 million background checks were conducted in October alone, a roughly 60% jump over the same period in 2019.”
Further in the CBS report, the NSSF made a key point:
“Politically-charged calls to defund police also continue to spur sales. Also, firearm sales typically climb during presidential election years.”
Adventure Outdoors owner Wallace added:
“We saw a little bit of a slowdown in April and May, but it’s been crazy every month since. It’s mostly the civil unrest and the talk on the news about defunding the police — people have decided they need to take action to protect themselves, their families and their homes.”
In a previous Law Enforcement Today article, we explained how Joe Biden has proclaimed the outright tightening of gun rules, including banning all online sales of ammunitions, gun parts, and accessories.
He also promises to ban “assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines,” that common mantra on the liberal left. Additionally, he proposes to limit individual gun sales per person and how many one person may own.
The NSSF Releases Most Recent Firearm Production Figures https://t.co/lo0p72knNI pic.twitter.com/y7x6Vh4K11
— AmmoLand News (@AmmoLand) November 16, 2020
The gun industry saw a slacking of sales from 2017 to 2019 mainly because President Trump reduced concerns about gun restrictions.
A specific example of increased gun sales is evidenced by sales and profit reports from mainstream gunmaker Ruger – officially Sturm, Ruger & Co. Their sales jumped to nearly $146 million in the third quarter of 2020, up 53% from the same period of last year.
Ruger grossed $400 million in sales in just the first nine months of 2020, a $95 million increase compared to the first nine months of 2019.
Sturm Ruger CEO Christopher Killoy attributed the sales spurt to calls by some for reduced funding of law enforcement, civil unrest and “concerns about personal protection and home defense, stemming from the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.”
Want to make sure you never miss a story from Law Enforcement Today? With so much “stuff” happening in the world on social media, it’s easy for things to get lost.
