Gun sales in the Lewiston, Maine, area spiked as much as 200% after Wednesday's mass shooting that claimed at least 18 lives and injured 13 more, one store owner said.
"We were swamped yesterday," Ryan Gagnon, co-owner of 3 Cousins Firearms in Lewiston and a Navy veteran, told Fox News Digital Saturday morning. "Our sales were up, I would say, over 200% compared to a typical Friday."
They didn't plan to open their store because of the shelter-in-place order that turned the city into a ghost town reminiscent of the COVID shutdowns.
But Gagnon, whose shop about half a mile from one of the crime scenes, said they received so many messages and Facebook messages that they felt like they had to open the shop.
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Maine is very well known for firearm deer hunting, which started this weekend, but Gagnon said customers weren't looking for hunting weapons.
"It was all self-defense stuff," he said.
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Tony Lewis, the owner of T and K Tactical in Augusta, told the Portland Press Herald that he did more business Thursday "than I did all of last month."
"People are scared," Lewis told the local newspaper. "Law enforcement’s pretty focused on finding this person, so if (civilians) call for assistance, they’re probably not going to get it right away. So they want to make sure they can protect themselves."
Fox News Digital spent Thursday and Friday talking to locals, many of whom were on edge after Robert Card opened fire with a semiautomatic assault rifle inside a bowling alley and a bar Wednesday night and then seemed to disappear.
Friday morning, customers and workers inside a gas station shop about three miles from the Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant, which was one of the two crime scenes, talked about their fears that Card "could be anywhere."
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One customer, who wanted to remain anonymous because the shooter was still in the wind at the time, told Fox News Digital that a lot of locals are already armed "and wouldn't think twice about defending themselves."
That's backed by 2022 Pew Research stats, which said about 47% of Maine residents are registered gun owners.
PJ Shulze, a former corrections officers in a maximum security prison in Texas, told Fox News Digital from her front step that she was scared to even walk her dog.
She was friendly and talked about how the shooting turned Route 196, a typically busy thoroughfare lined with businesses, "into a ghost town."
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She said she and other residents are on edge while Card was believed to be anywhere. She pointed across the street to two vacant buildings and an empty home next door with a "4 sale" sign in the window.
"You think I'm not packing right now?"
Two nights after the shooting - around 7:45 p.m. Friday - law enforcement found Card dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside one of about 55 to 60 metal trailers in a recycling center's overflow parking lot.
His body and two guns were found inside one of the unlocked trailers, which are essentially long, rectangular metal boxes packed with waste and other garbage in the recycling center's overflow lot, Sauschuck said on Saturday.
An ATF agent said Card legally purchased all the recovered guns "somewhat recently."
The victims of Maine mass shooting ranged in age from 14 to 76, medical examiner said.
Their pictures and names were on a screen behind speakers during press briefings.
Of the 13 injured, three remain in critical condition, Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck said Saturday morning.
On Friday, the 18 victims who lost their lives were released.
The youngest was 14 and the oldest was 76:
Ronald Morin, 55
Peyton Brewer-Ross, 40
Joshua A. Seal, 36
Bryan M MacFarlane, 41
Joseph Lawrence Walker, 57
Arthur Fred Strout, 42
Maxx A. Hathaway, 35
Stephen M. Vozzella, 45
Thomas Ryan Conrad, 34
Michael R. Deslauriers II, 51
Jason Adam Walker, 51
Tricia C. Asselin, 53
William A. Young, 44
Aaron Young, 14
Robert E. Violette, 76
Lucille M. Violette, 73
William Frank Brackett, 48
Keith D. Macneir, 64
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And he said that includes Card's family. At least three of family members were the first people to ID Card, he said.
"Realistically, right now we should only be really thinking about the victims," he said Saturday morning. "That's also the suspect's family as well.They were very forthcoming to law enforcement."
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Fox News Digital attempted to speak to family multiple times, but they declined all comments.
