An increase in gun sales in California has been linked to fears brought on by the pandemic.
According to a new study by UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, worries about social unrest, early prisoner releases, government overreach, and even government collapse led to nearly 110,000 thousand state residents purchasing a firearm -- four in ten were new gun owners.
“We believe this is the first study using a representative sample of state residents to assess the near-term effects of the pandemic on individual perceptions, motivations and behaviors related to violence and firearm ownership,” said Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz, an assistant professor with VPRP who led the study. “We wanted to capture individuals’ lived experiences of violence in the context of the pandemic, along with information on pandemic-induced firearm acquisition and changes in firearm storage practices.”
Researchers caution that more guns by new buyers and relaxed storage practices increase the risk of accidental shootings involving kids, domestic violence and suicides.
The researchers concluded that approximately 55,000 California firearm owners who currently store at least one firearm loaded and not locked up had adopted this unsafe storage practice in response to the pandemic. Of those, approximately half lived in households with children or teens.
The researchers used data from the 2020 California Safety and Wellbeing Survey (CSaWS). CSaWS is an ongoing statewide survey on firearm ownership and exposure to violence and its consequences in California. In July 2020, the researchers collected data from 2,870 adult California residents. The responses were weighted to establish estimates that are statistically representative of the adult population of the state.