STAR, Idaho — The Garrett family took over Midstar Firearms in Star back in January, this came after a firearm frenzy driven by the pandemic that included an unprecedented run on ammunition and the FBI conducting more background checks than they've ever done before.
Midstar Firearms will host an event this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. that will include food trucks, suppression demos every hour on the hour and they will raffle three guns.
"We have vendors, we have reps from Springfield, Mossberg and Vortex," said Neil Garrett. "We will raffle off an AR-15, a Springfield Hellcat and a tactical AR-style shotgun."
Earlier this week President Biden announced laid out a plan to combat gun violence and one of his targets in his speech included the controversial AR-15.
"Background checks for purchasing a firearm are important, a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines nobody needs to have a weapon that can fire 30, 40, 50 even up to 100 rounds," said President Biden. "Unless you think the deer are wearing Kevlar vests or something."
We asked Midstar Firearms about the AR-15 and they told us until the regulations or laws change they will continue to sell them citing it would be a bad business decision not to.
"We can’t really assume anything until it actually happens so unless something actually gets banned we are going to keep on doing business," said Garrett.
As for the background checks date from the FBI shows that more people tried to obtain a gun than ever before, in 2020 the FBI conducted nearly 40 million background checks compared to 2019 when they did 28 million which at the time was the most ever.
The FBI also rejected more than 300,000 potential gun owners because of background checks according to the Associated Press, and nearly half of those were rejected because the person trying to obtain a firearm had a felony on their record.
Other reasons the FBI would decline a background check include a domestic violence charge, having a restraining order filed against you, addiction, being diagnosed as mentally ill, being dishonorably discharged from the military and not being a U.S. citizen.
Midstar Firearms follows the law when it comes to background checks, but they tell us they've seen more first-time buyers, and even though they have a decent amount of ammo in stock right now they say the manufacturers are still working to catch up.
"They are producing common caliber ammo right now so 9 mm, 5.56, 65 Creedmore, 30 ought 6, .308 that kind of stuff just the more common calibers that the majority of people have," said Garrett. "Come July they are going to retool all their equipment and start making hunting cartridges and then at the end of the year switch to shotgun ammo and hopefully be caught up by the end of the year."
This is the story we did in the spring of 2020 when the pandemic began and the former owner of Midstar Firearms was assessing the future of firearms and ammo in the midst of COVID-19.
