And that squares with what we saw from the gun sales increase of 20, which is that those were two of the highest years on record for gun sales. How unusual is that, how far above what, you know, the profits that they'd been recording in prior years?īARTON: For several of these companies, it was the most profitable years in their history, according to SEC filings, or at least in the past, you know, 10 or 15 years.
KELLY: Three billion dollars since the pandemic began in net profits for gun manufacturers. Champe Barton reported the story and joins us now. That is according to The Trace, a journalism nonprofit covering gun violence. Publicly traded gun manufacturers have netted some $3 billion since the pandemic began. But gun violence is an everyday problem in the U.S., and it skyrocketed during the pandemic, as did gun company profits. The mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde have horrified Americans - 19 children and two adults shot to death in Uvalde, 10 people killed in Buffalo and then again, this week, four more people shot and killed at a medical building in Tulsa, Okla.
