Almost five million Americans have acquired a gun for the first time in 2020, crushing every record for firearm purchases in American history by a hefty margin.

Forty percent of the 12.1 million National Instant Criminal Background Check queries this year analyzed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation involved individuals who had never acquired a gun before, adding up to around 4,800,000 new gun owners.

NSSF senior vice president of general counsel Larry Keane recognized that the surge in firearm sales is being fueled by new gun owners in an unprecedented fashion in a statement provided to Breitbart News.

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“This is a tectonic shift in the firearm and ammunition industry marketplace and complete transformation of today’s gun-owning community. These first-time buyers represent a group of people who, until now, were agnostic regarding firearm ownership.”

New gun sales had already been soaring to astronomical proportions as the coronavirus pandemic began in earnest in the United States, and the nationwide race riots appear to have kicked the already ongoing panic buy into overdrive. New gun sales are occurring disproportionately in traditionally blue states such as California and New Jersey, where many residents hadn’t even so much as thought of the idea of getting a gun before the most unstable year in recent American history.

In almost every month this year, gun sales have outpaced what the NSSF gauged in 2019 by almost 100%, meaning more than double the guns will be sold in 2020 than were sold last year. Firearms and especially ammunition manufacturers have been unable to meet existing demand, resulting in spiking prices and unavailable cartridges of ammunition to consumers.

If there’s one way to remember 2020 in a good light(aside from the prospect of a Donald Trump reelection victory in the November election), it’ll be as the year that gun control finally died.