x
"People get greedy"
In the corona crisis, Americans stock up not only with toilet paper, but also with weapons and ammunition. They fear that the situation will escalate.
Guido Mingels reports from California
03/21/2020, 10:14 a.m.
Gun shop in San Bruno, California: "People get greedy. Who knows what's going to happen."
Gun shop in San Bruno, California: "People get greedy. Who knows what's going to happen."JUSTIN SULLIVAN / AFP
Lexer Tovar and his daughter Shay stand in front of the "Marin County Arms" arms store in Novato, California, a suburb north of San Francisco. It's raining. You have to wait outside because the shopkeeper has made it a rule that only three customers can be in the shop at a time to keep the Corona safety distance, and the demand is high. The 42-year-old wears his face mask carelessly folded over his chin. His daughter, who still looks like a child with her flower-patterned headband, is very pregnant. Both father and daughter have small arms and now want to buy ammunition in stock.
THE MIRROR
What for? Do you want to shoot the virus when it comes? He laughs. "Everyone's going crazy for Corona," says Lexer, "I have to protect my house and my family." Shay says she saw bad scenes when she was shopping in supermarkets, people tearing goods from her hands, and that made her nervous. She rubs her stomach: "Also because of the baby." Her father says, "People get greedy. Who knows what else is going to happen."
Gun buyer Lexer Tovar, daughter Shay: ammunition in stock
Gun buyer Lexer Tovar, daughter Shay: ammunition in stock Guido Mingels
In addition to toilet paper manufacturers and video conferencing providers, there is another industry in the United States that is benefiting from the pandemic: arms dealers. News of increasing sales in American weapon shops has come from various states in the past few days, from Ohio, New York, Alabama, North Carolina, Washington. Pictures of long lines were posted on Twitter in front of the shops, for example from Los Angeles . Many of the customers are obviously first-time buyers, so they never had a gun before, but are now convinced that it must be. An arms dealer from Burlingame, California told the San Francisco Chronicle that sales had quintupled in the past two weeks.
Disaster is part of the cultural self-image
Citizens fear robberies or looting, they fear a possible breakdown of law and order, they want to be armed. In a country where there are more firearms than residents, where on average around a hundred people lose their lives every day due to firearms, and where the right to private possession of weapons is enshrined in the constitution, this impulse is obvious. The idea of retreating to self-defense in the event of a disaster is part of the cultural self-image.
Various American end-time feature films have pre-practiced such worst-case scenarios. In Steven Soderbergh's dark pandemic drama "Contagion", a 2011 film that is suddenly enjoying new popularity and is currently one of the most streamed in the United States, leading actor Matt Damon uses a rifle to protect his daughter and himself. In America, the varnish of civilization is thinner than anywhere else in the world.
Gun shop in Culver City: The mood is unfriendly to grim
Gun shop in Culver City: The mood is unfriendly to grim MARIO TAMA / AFP
A line of people has also formed in front of the "City Arms" arms shop in Pacifica, a place on the Pacific coast south of San Francisco, which is all the longer because people are waiting for their first AK-47 like the recommended distance of six feet adhere. Some have been there for hours. Nobody grumbles, you have patience, this is important. A security employee with a bald head and spring boots unlocks the door for each customer's turn and then locks it again. Very slowly an elderly man comes out of the shop with a frail old dog, a stack of cartridges in his arms.
"As far as I know, we are essential"
The queue leads past the shop windows of neighboring shops, a shop for knitting supplies, a center for yoga and belly dancing, a nail studio. They are all closed because some counties in Northern California were the first in the country to issue the so-called "shelter-in-place" order earlier this week ("protection on the spot"), a form of curfew - which also includes that only companies that are considered essential basic services may remain open: grocery stores, pharmacies, petrol stations. Gun shops weren't listed by the authorities, but "as far as I know we're essential," a California arms seller told a newspaper. In any case, he would serve his customers "until I drop dead".
