Shoot the Virus

It’s not just toilet paper: People line up to buy guns and ammo to fight the virus in their own way. We’re in the US, where lengthy lines formed outside the Martin Retting Guns store in Culver City, California, on Sunday morning, before the store opened. People said the line Saturday was so long, extending around the block, so they decided to come back and try again.

The trend continued outside Turner’s Outdoorsman store in Torrance, California, before opening.
A woman went to a Dick’s Sporting Goods store where she said one of the workers told her that everywhere else in the area was sold out. “It’s better to be prepared than to not be prepared,” she said. “I already stocked up on food. Ammo was just the next step.”

As frenzied stockpiling stripped gun specialty stores of inventory, more people also went online to order gun supplies in recent weeks. Online ammunition retailer Ammo.com witnessed an exponential increase in sales since late February, which the company attributes to public worry surrounding coronavirus. The website reported a 68% spike in sales between mid-February and early March. Online orders were booming most in North Carolina and Georgia. However, ammunition shopping also surged in Florida, which has over 100 confirmed coronavirus cases, and New York, with over 700 cases of the respiratory illness.

Immediately the scene of a movie came to my mind. The one where Elias Koteas points a gun at John Travolta saying him: “You guys make me laugh. You’re really funny. You stock up your cabinets with bottled water and flashlights, well what do you think is going to happen when the shit really hits the fan? You know like earthquakes and flash floods just a lot of chaos and horror, people dying in the streets and you’re sitting here nice and pretty with your bottled water. Now the guy next store has got one of these. Who’s gonna go thirsty? Him or you?”

The movie is Look Who’s Talking Too. And since I was a child, I’ve always taken that scene so seriously.

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