{"id":53731,"date":"2020-05-26T10:27:36","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T16:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-firearm-sales-at-record-levels-in-pandemic\/"},"modified":"2020-05-26T16:27:36","modified_gmt":"2020-05-26T16:27:36","slug":"colorado-firearm-sales-at-record-levels-in-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-firearm-sales-at-record-levels-in-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado firearm sales at record levels in pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=5b5c95fd-c21a-4ba2-b2cf-bed38c68fd30&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1018\" height=\"677\" alt=\"Patten Guns and other shops line Main Street in Fort Morgan, Colorado.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Patten Guns and other shops line Main Street in Fort Morgan, Colorado.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Megan Verlee\/CPR News<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Gun sales in Colorado are up more than 80 percent in April, compared to the same time last year, indicating that the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a run on firearms.<\/p>\n<p>The Colorado Bureau of Investigation approved 97,762 firearm background checks in March and April combined, a sales volume seen only one other time in Colorado, after the Newtown school shooting. The FBI reports that March was the busiest single month ever for gun background checks nationwide.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve been very busy,\u201d said Matt Sebesta with the Family Shooting Center at Cherry Creek State Park. \u201cClasses are huge and private lessons are up, so the majority of folks are seeking training.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Background check turnaround times have jumped from eight minutes in February to more than three hours, on average, according to CBI. The longest checks are taking up to five days. Federal law allows dealers to release the firearm if the check hasn\u2019t been completed within three days.<\/p>\n<p>CBI has urged dealers to not do that. The surge in gun interest has led to an even larger increase in background check denials, up 200 percent since February.<\/p>\n<p>There were 1,952 denials in April for a range of convictions and arrests. \u201cAssault\u201d and \u201cdangerous drugs\u201d are the two most common reasons.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are a ton of folks that have no idea how it works or think it might be expunged,\u201d said Sebesta. \u201cThere are so many that think since they have a felony that was nonviolent that they\u2019re OK still.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gun sales in Colorado are up more than 80% in April 2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-53731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53731","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=53731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53731"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=53731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}