In light of Wednesday night's shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Mo., a point worth noting: There are a lot more guns in the state than there were a year ago. That holds for every state, of course; gun sales have been high for years. But Missouri saw a bigger jump than other places.
After Michael Brown was shot to death by Officer Darren Wilson in the city last August, we found that gun sales near Ferguson spiked. Data on background check requests released by the FBI supports that reporting. That data shows that thousands of new guns were purchased in the state both that month and when a Ferguson grand jury declined to indict Wilson.
(The figures include background checks on handguns, long guns, multiple weapons and other forms of firearms.)
The spike in August is obvious; the growth in the lead-up to the grand jury decision is as well. (December has usually a big month for gun sales recently, due to the holidays.)
Background checks were up 10.6 percent versus last February in Missouri. Nationally, the increase was only 2.3 percent; in neighboring Illinois, it was about flat. Tracking the difference between the number of each month to the checks last February, you can see that Missouri's monthly change was lower than the country on the whole -- until the unrest last August.
Last August, the number of background checks in Missouri was up 41 percent over July. Since last February, there have been 436,780 background checks for non-pawned firearms in the state. That's one background check for every 14 residents.
Philip Bump writes about politics for The Fix. He is based in New York City.
0 comments:
Post a Comment