Gun sales are declining, and there’s reason to think the trend could get worse.
This week, an industry analysis showed gun sales were down nine percent year-over-year in February. That made it one of the worst Februarys in a decade.
It follows a 2024 where sales declined to pre-pandemic levels. If the next four years are anything like the previous four when Donald Trump was president, the slide may just be starting.
Smith & Wesson saw a 15.7 percent net sales decline year over year in its last quarter. Ruger’s sales were up about 11 percent in the last quarter but down about 1.5 percent for 2024.
“There’s no demand,” Michael Cargill, a Texas gun dealer, told The Wall Street Journal last month. “People are relaxed because there’s no fear of them losing their Second Amendment rights.”
That’s likely to be the primary driver of any gun sales downturn. Americans don’t like to be told what they can and can’t own. Gun buyers are particularly sensitive to this.
Donald Trump was the pro-gun candidate in the race. So, while the possibility he could back new federal gun restrictions is underrated, most feel there isn’t a good reason to rush out and buy a gun in anticipation of new restrictions. Outside of Trump’s unpredictability in responding to major mass shootings, this is probably a pretty good assumption.
The industry will likely end up with a more forgiving regulatory environment under Trump. Significant legislative changes are unlikely, given the margins in Congress. However, his administration is reviewing executive gun policy with an eye to roll some back–especially those implemented by Joe Biden.
But the tradeoff may be lower sales.
Between 2016 and 2019, gun sales fell by nearly 17 percent. 2020 then sent sales soaring to an all-time high. Even former President Biden’s four-year push for new gun restrictions couldn’t come close to sustaining that level of demand as sales fell nearly 30 percent during his tenure.
The last four years demonstrated the limit of politically motivated gun buying, especially after a huge sales spike that likely pulled demand forward. Now, we’ll likely see where the new floor for firearms demand could land.
Some in the industry don’t think demand will collapse.
“I think the expectation is it will continue to be a relatively soft market,” Larry Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told The Reload. “But, you know, if you look at where things are now compared to where they were 10 years ago, people would be very happy. So, slow and steady wins the race.”
Keane pointed to the pandemic-era sales spike as a reason to think the customer base is broader than it used to be, which should help sustain the industry through any downturn.
“The consumer base has certainly increased significantly, particularly since 2020,” he said. “We have millions of new gun owners, and they have varying ideological views from across the spectrum.”
Our politics certainly haven’t become any less polarized since Trump retook office. Many of his opponents are concerned about the direction he’s taking the country, and some minority communities, such as trans people, are fearful enough to consider buying guns for the first time–at least according to anecdotal reports. There may well be an increase in gun buying among some non-traditional demographics.
However, that doesn’t appear to have offset the level of apathy among many traditional gun buyers, who still tend to make up a majority of consumers.
As 2020 shows, enough societal chaos could bring Americans of all stripes to their local gun store regardless of the president and his position on guns. But that level of chaos is far from a common occurrence and not really something anybody would root for just to sell a few more firearms.
So, barring a disastrous turn, sales are likely to continue to decline in the near term. But some, like Cargill, might be willing to accept that if President Trump delivers substantial wins for the gun-rights movement.
“The gun community is willing to bite the bullet and take the loss of sales to have a little relief to the fact that you’re not going to lose constitutional rights,” Cargill told The Times.
Of course, Cargill’s name may sound familiar since he is the one who successfully sued to have Trump’s bumpstock ban found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. So, the tradeoff may not be as lopsided as some expect. But how deep sales slump and how many pro-gun moves Trump makes will determine that.
