Gun Sales Soar After Obama Elected

A vote for change seems to have also been a vote to buy a gun. President-elect Barack Obama is apparently the best advertisement the gun industry could have hoped for. NPR, the Denver Post and the Wall Street Journal have all published articles in the two weeks after election day noting the spike in handgun and "assault rifle" purchases.

Sales numbers began their climb at the same time Obama built his lead in the polls, roughly at the beginning of October. But since Election Day, new gun purchases have really taken off.

One quote from the Denver Post drives home the point:

"I was selling guns before I even opened the door," said George Horne, owner of The Gun Room. "It's gone completely mad. Everyone is buying everything I've got on the shelves. Sales have been crazy."

The general consensus among those interviewed for each story is that with a Democratic White House and a Democratic Congress, those two forces will be the death knell of the second amendment.

This fear is reflected in the recent stats released regarding background checks. Those requests were up 8% for rifles and shotguns and 28% for handguns. No government agency monitors firearm sales directly.

Though Obama promised to maintain an individual's right to own a firearm on the campaign trail, shoppers in Wyoming, Colorado and other gun-friendly areas aren't buying the rhetoric. They feel that the new administration will almost certainly reintroduce the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban that Clinton signed into law but expired in 2004.

Another interesting anecdote from the reporting is that most buyers cited their reason for buying heat as self-defense, not hunting. This kind of thinking leads me to speculate that gun sales might also be increasing because of the economic downturn. Generally recessions can cause a rise in petty crime and break-ins so while Obama might be the superficial reason for a handgun purchase, a wider concern for safety could be the real engine behind the latest sales growth.