Gun shop owners reaping benefit of Obama's election.

From this week's Economist.

I guess the bright side is that at least business is booming for some folks.

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Gun sales

Booming

Nov 20th 2008 | TAMPA, FLORIDA
From The Economist print edition

A surge in the run-up to the election

MANY sorts of Americans are happy that Barack Obama has been elected to be their 44th president: blacks, rich whites, Hispanics, women, the young. But no one seems happier, at the moment, than the owners of gun shops.

AP

Just in case

According to the National Instant Criminal Background Checks System (the FBI body that oversees applications for people who want to buy guns), the number of checks run between January and October this year rose by 9%, compared with the same period in 2007. Even more dramatically, the body reports that 15.4% more checks took place in October 2008 than in October 2007.

Gun enthusiasts reckon there is a simple reason: Barack Obama. “It’s clear from President-elect Obama’s voting record and statements that gun-control policies, including gun bans, will be back on the table. Law-abiding Americans are recognising this and acting accordingly,” says Ted Novin, director of public relations for the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Mr Novin is perplexed by, and therefore wary of, the seemingly contradictory messages on guns that Mr Obama has put out during his time as an Illinois senator and as a presidential candidate. Back in the old days, Mr Obama used to sound supportive of the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns. But when this was overturned by the Supreme Court in June, Mr Obama welcomed the decision. Mr Novin says he does not understand what the president-elect means when he calls for “commonsense safety measures” for guns. To add to his perplexity, he notes that Mr Obama’s website stated that he “believes that the Second Amendment creates an individual right, and he respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms.” What to believe?

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is equally unimpressed. “The President-elect’s campaign rhetoric did not match his voting record,” states Andrew Arulanandam, an NRA spokesman. The NRA thinks that next year the Democratic president and the incoming, more strongly Democratic, Congress will start by going for a ban on semi-automatic assault rifles, such as the Russian-made AK-47, or AR-15’s, which are a favourite with police departments. The association has sponsored a website, www.gunbanobama.com, whose title is self-explanatory.

Meanwhile, gun sales are going like gangbusters. Chuck Wiggins, manager of the Patriot Arms gun shop in a suburb of Tampa, Florida, says that ever since Mr Obama became a contender “the sales of assault rifles here have at least tripled; I can’t keep enough of them stocked. And ammunition is selling out so fast that I’m calling manufacturers to try to find some more to buy.”

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