Despite many gun owners stocking up prior to the 2016 Presidential Election, firearms retailers still expect a good holiday sales season.
Source: Reuters
Like most other retailers, gun sellers thrive during the holidays. Last year’s Black Friday featured record activity for a single day, according to Federal background check data. This year, Christmas actually came early for U.S. gun shop owners. Spurred on by fears of a Hillary Clinton victory and the accompanying threat of restrictive gun legislation, U.S gun shop owners had staggering sales in the months prior to the election, but these same retailers may now be hard-pressed to match last year’s record holiday sales (December 2015 was the second busiest month ever, next to December 2012 in the face of an Obama-driven push for more restrictions). Analysts believe that this year’s holiday sales may appear to be floundering due to gun owners having stocked up in anticipation of a possible Clinton presidency. Overall, though, there’s no cause for alarm.
Federal background check data showed that gun retailers had a record October this year, the month preceding the November Presidential Election. As reported last issue, gun store traffic has fallen off substantially since Donald Trump won the presidency. The following day, November 8, shares of Smith & Wesson Holding Corp dropped 15% (but with a rebound this past week), while Sturm Ruger & Company’s stock is 17% lower.
Now, with this year’s Black Friday upon us, gun dealers say traffic is regaining momentum after the post-election drop.
“I’m not expecting it to be any slower than our normal Black Friday,” said Kellie Weeks, owner of Georgia Gun Store in Gainesville: “But if Hillary had won, we would have sold out already…”
History repeats… After Democratic candidate Barack Obama was elected in 2008, November background checks jumped 48% compared to the prior November, according to data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation. By comparison, background checks rose a more modest 5% in November 2004 after Republican George W. Bush was re-elected.
The Federal background checks are the best source for factual data on gun sales, which gun manufacturers do not publicly release. This data is refined and relayed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). The NSSF eliminates applications for conceal-carry permits (typically made by people who already own guns) from the data to give a better reflection of actual firearms purchases.
Through October 2016, background checks are up 15% compared to the same time last year, suggesting another a strong year of overall sales.
Wall Street expects Smith & Wesson’s revenue to increase 28% in 2016 and 11% next year, based on data from Thomson Reuters.
Let’s relax a little and go buy the guns that we really want to have, and let’s get back to enjoying that pursuit. It’s a far better feeling to buy something you’ve always wanted rather than something you might not be able to ever get again… So what’s on your Christmas shopping list?
You know it really amazes me that the government has not confiscated any firearms to spite the dire predictions of the industry. This fairytale just never pans out.
The liberal government would have made your “fairytale” come true if not for the watchful and vigorous intervention of all of the second amendment activists. I would invite you to join us.
Well. They’re getting close in a couple states. Thankfully Obama and Hitlary have been thwarted in their goals to disarm us.
You know it really amazes me that certain individuals stick their head in the sand regarding the possibility of the government confiscating personal arms. Jim must believe the fairytale that the American Revolution was based upon Americas aversion to tea. Wake up.
IRT Jim,
True, actual mass confiscation occurred just once in recent U.S. history: the many thousands of Americans of Japanese Ancestry living in the Territory of Hawaii and the continental U.S. had their privately-owned firearms (as well as shortwave radios and family heirloom swords) confiscated by the local police, sheriffs and F.B.I. agents after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Their crime? They were simply of the race specified in Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066.
I personally knew an elderly AJA gentleman who was born in Hawaii in 1900, making him a full U.S. citizen. After Pearl Harbor his hunting rifle and shotgun were seized by police along with the prized long-barrelled 7.65mm (.30) Luger he purchased in the 1920s. He never got his Luger back after the war; the local police department informed him, “It’s lost and we don’t have it any more – so sorry.” That American citizen died in 1986 without ever getting his Luger back, nor did he receive a red cent as compensation. It can’t be proven after so many years, but I’d be willing to wager a princely sum it was “lost” to a collector who eventually returned to the U.S. mainland.
And so Jim, mass firearms confiscation in the United States and its territories did indeed happen in the living memory of some oldsters who are still with us. True, it happened during a bleak period in our history, but its injustice and its lesson should never be forgotten by any American who today claims the Second Amendment has any relevance in the America we live in today.