A record number of more than 20 million guns were sold in the United States in 2020, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and sales have remained at high levels since. Many of those guns have been sold to first-time buyers.

If you purchased your first gun in the past few years, we’d like to hear from you on why you bought it.

We may contact you to hear more. We won’t use your name or any identifying information without contacting you. If you’d prefer an even more secure means of communication, you can send your responses (and any records, images or other information) to nytimes.com/tips.