Gun stores are reportedly seeing a sharp increase in the number of Asian people buying firearms amid a spate of racist attacks related to the coronavirus pandemic.
David Liu, the owner of Arcadia Firearm & Safety in San Gabriel Valley, told Newsweek he’s had about 10 times more customers walk through his door in recent weeks.
"It was crazy," Liu told the news outlet. "One example is on March 3 and 4, I had 50 plus people come in here to take their firearms safety test and everyone one of them bought a gun. That's quite unusual for my small shop.
"They're all coming in because the media is telling them that Asians are being targeted, Chinese are being targeted."
The outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, China.
Earlier this month, an Asian male was sprayed with what appears to be air freshener by a man on a New York subway. The suspect was recorded yelling "because he's standing right f**king next to me. Tell him to move," apparently concerned about infection, Newsweek reported.
In February, an Asian woman was also allegedly attacked at a subway station while wearing a protective mask in a suspected hate crime attack.
The Arcadia Firearm & Safety store is situated in an area with a large population of Asian Americans in California, where other stores are reporting a similar trend, according to Newsweek.
"Normally, we're a pretty busy store, but this made it really, really crazy," Dennis Lin, owner of Gun Effects and Cloud Nine Fishing in Industry, told KABC.
"We forget, we're all people. We're in America, we're not in China,” he said.
But store customer April Zhao of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., told LAist she’s afraid for her family.
"So I have to protect my family and my son," she said.
A similar rise an Asian Americans buying guns has also been reported in hard-hit Washington, Newsweek reported.
"The main thing I'm hearing is that they don't want to get jumped because of their race," Cole Gaughran, the internet sales manager at Wade's Eastside Guns in Bellevue, told The Trace.
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