{"id":130788,"date":"2026-05-27T13:08:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T19:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gun-sales-in-colorado-fall-to-lowest-level-since-2014\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T13:08:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T19:08:59","slug":"gun-sales-in-colorado-fall-to-lowest-level-since-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gun-sales-in-colorado-fall-to-lowest-level-since-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Gun sales in Colorado fall to lowest level since 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wayne
Wayne Price, owner of The Gun Room, stands inside the shop in Lakewood on May 22. (McKenzie Lange\/CPR News)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s been more than a decade since gun sellers in Colorado have seen demand this low, as the pandemic-era buying frenzy fully winds down.<\/p>\n

Last year, there were 314,904 approved background checks for firearm purchases, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation<\/a>. It\u2019s the lowest sales volume since 2014, and sales are down 35% since hitting record highs in 2020.<\/p>\n

Background checks are not a perfect measure of gun sales, because one check could include more than one firearm purchased. But approved background checks are commonly used as a proxy for firearm demand.<\/p>\n

The pandemic supercharged gun sales across the country and in Colorado. The combination of protests over the murder of George Floyd, lockdowns, and a presidential election pushed sales to unprecedented levels. In the years since, sales volume has steadily declined.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we hit peaks that were so astronomically high in 2020 and 2021, we knew that those numbers were not going to be sustainable, and we knew that they would come back down to Earth,\u201d said Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry trade group.<\/p>\n

Oliva said Colorado\u2019s post-pandemic decline generally matches national trends, though this year there are some signs in recent national data that sales may be stabilizing.<\/p>\n

\"Pistols
Pistols for sale at The Gun Room, May 22 in Lakewood. (McKenzie Lange\/CPR News)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cLast month we were 1.6% higher year-over-year than we were last year,\u201d Oliva said. \u201cSo we\u2019re continuing to see a good, healthy appetite of firearm sales.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wayne Price bought The Gun Room in Lakewood in 2022, so he missed the boom years. But the stories of those pandemic years have filtered down to him. \u201cEverything I heard was it didn\u2019t matter what you had, you could sell it,\u201d Price said.<\/p>\n

Price said his business focuses on collectors and unique inventory. He buys from estates and consigns guns, and much of his inventory is used. And he has seen a lot of people come in to offload those pandemic purchases.<\/p>\n

\u201cA ton of times in the last four years since I bought (the shop), people bring in guns: \u2018I\u2019ve got to get rid of this. I bought it during COVID. I don\u2019t need it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Wayne
Wayne Price, owner of The Gun Room, inside the shop May 22 in Lakewood. (McKenzie Lange\/CPR News)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Price, owner of The Gun Room, stands inside the shop in Lakewood on May 22. (McKenzie Lange\/CPR News) It\u2019s been more than a decade since gun sellers in Colorado have seen demand this low, as the pandemic-era buying frenzy fully winds down. Last year, there were 314,904 approved background checks for firearm purchases, according […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":130789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6410],"tags":[431,150],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-130788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-2","tag-business-general","tag-firearms"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130788"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=130788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}