Johnson County Sees Spike in Gun Registrations After Sandy Hook Shooting, in Line with National Trends

In the months leading up to December, Johnson County reported 124 gun registrations in August, 62 in September, 110 in October, and 124 again in November. The previous months of June and July did not exceed 70.

In December that numbered jumped up to 164.

This may be accounted for by a major event in December, the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn (CNN). on Dec. 14 and the debate over gun control that it caused.

Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek, when interviewed by Patch not long after the shootings, said he had noticed a definite spike in gun registrations in the county that week.

"Yes, there has been a huge spike," Pulkrabek said in an e-mail on Dec 21. "The last few months we had been averaging around 111 permits per month and since the shooting we did around 60 in one week."

This would follow with a national trend, as the FBI reported that December set a record for the number of background checks (Huffington Post) that are required to buy guns. The increase in gun sales may be attributed not just to the shooting itself, but also to the continuing debate about gun control after it (Washington Post).

From the Washington Post article:

Even allowing for spikes in gun sales that follow every mass killing in the United States and attendant political debates about gun control, industry executives said the surge seems unprecedented.

And it has emptied shelves of the kind of semiautomatic rifle that was used to kill 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last month, the deaths that sparked President Obama’s proposal for tougher gun laws.

In some areas, a buyer walking into a gun store now will have to wait up to a year to buy a military-style assault weapon. The prices of available semiautomatics have doubled as buyers bid up the dwindling supply, and stocks of Glock handguns are also low.

Iowa City Patch has been keeping track of gun permit numbers and uploading with the PDFs with who has received the gun permits since June of last year. You can look at each of those gun permit articles at the link.