Steve Walsh, owner of Ruby's Guns in Ellisville, Missouri, described sales as double what they usually are. "I've had shipments come in every single day this week, and that’s not normal," he said.
"I'm about to fill up the back of my Suburban with a whole bunch of handguns and shotguns," Walsh added. "Because of the rioting, everyone's nervous up here now."
In the days since a police officer in nearby Ferguson fatally shot an unarmed teenager on Saturday afternoon, that town has been racked with unrest. Though many of the protesters has been peaceful, others have hurled rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails at police. Stores and gas stations have been looted and set on fire.
The police have fired smoke bombs, tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters and non-protesters. They've patrolled streets in armored vehicles and reportedly aimed tripod-mounted, "high-caliber automatic weapons" at protesters.
The trouble in Ferguson appears to be sending area residents to the gun shops. "These are people who are in fear of their lives," said Steven King, who owns Metro Shooting Supplies, a gun store and shooting range in Bridgeton, Missouri, about nine miles from Ferguson.
Metro Shooting Supplies has another location 35 miles away in Belleville, Illinois. Normally, King said, the shops do about the same amount in sales, but not this week.
According to King, the Bridgeton store on Wednesday did "eight times what our other store did. The day before that it was 10 times. To put it in perspective, the sales we're seeing now are like what we see around Christmas time."
King said his shop has sold shotguns, semi-automatic rifles and handguns for home defense and concealed carry. He said his customers have included families, single mothers, the elderly and other business owners. "They're getting prepared, and it's not that they're vigilantes or something. They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't feel it was a life-or-death situation," King said, adding that the store's gun training classes are almost totally booked for the next six weeks.
St. Louis gun stores Bull's Eye LLC and Mid America Arms told the St. Louis Dispatch that their sales have also gone up this week. Both stores refused to talk to HuffPost.
