Local Headline - Fear Drives Hordes To Gun Shops
One of the front page below the fold headlines in my local Sunday paper this past weekend was “Fear drives hordes to gun shops”. In a word, what went through my head was “Whoa.”
I read the article, and basically the owners of local gun shops in my area said that when the economic times are bad, they see a corresponding rise ingun and ammunition sales. One gun shop owner is quoted as looking at 38 years of data from his own shop to confirm this link. This relationship is attributed to an idea or feeling that guns equal safety. When people feel uneasy, it makes them feel safer to take their protection into their own hands - by buying a gun.
Now of course, this isn’t everyone’s reaction. And however uneasy it makes me personally feel to read that my neighbors are arming themselves (because it does) I find it an interesting perspective to consider. If times are bad, we feel unsafe. And we (the collective we, not a specific person) arm ourselves to take back that safe feeling.
If nothing else, I learned from the article that no matter how much the news tries to calm me down about the economy and tell me things aren’t that bad and they’ll get better - the average person doesn’t believe that. The article pointed out that gun sales are at record highs for all the stores in our area. I live in the midwest, so we have quite a few of them. And they are consistently selling out of ammunition and many of their shelves are emptied out as soon as shipmets come in.
I do feel unsafe and uneasy - which is why I am trying to hoard the little we have and save for a rainy day vs pay down my remaining debt as aggressively. So I share the feelings, if not the reported action.
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April 8th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Might want to check the correlation with who’s in the White House.
April 8th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
What’s that supposed to mean? ^
April 8th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
It means that people assume that Barrack will re-institute Clinton’s automatic weapons ban that expired during Bush’s administration. I have two friends who purchased AR-15s ($800 apiece, plus $500-$2000 in accessories) not because they are worried about the economy, but because they assume it will be much harder to get a semi-automatic rifle in the coming years. Even if you don’t particularly want one now, if there’s any chance you’re going to want one in the next 8 years you should pick it up now.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Desperate people do desperate things. It is splashed all over the news. Property crimes increase in tough economic times. People just want to hang on to what belongs to them. Their reaction is not surprising.
Mark, why don’t you do that research and let us know what you find. It might be interesting.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
We’ve had the gun and ammo spike in sales here, too, but I was under the impression it was because people are figuring this new administration will take away our right to own guns, so they’re stocking up while they can. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve grown up with guns, own several and my neighbors are well-armed as well. I even have a license to carry a concealed weapon because I work in a high-crime city. But, I would never, for the life of me, buy a gun just to make me feel ’safe’ from the economy. Feel ’safe’ from criminals, yeah, but not from my dwindling checking account. Seems your advise on this site is better taken for ‘arming’ yourself against Murphy and the other woes of a faltering economy, doesn’t it?
April 8th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Sick.
April 8th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Well, that’s really strange. I can’t imagine how having a gun would make me feel better about my finances. In fact, I think just having one in the house would make my heart thump too loud for me to sleep. But I guess it all depends on where you live - and which paper you read, for that matter. I haven’t read many headlines trying to downplay the state of the economy for quite some time.
April 8th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
The correlation with who’s in the White House has to do with his policies on gun control. I have multiple friends that have invested heavily in guns for sport (hunting and skeet) and that is their main concern.
April 8th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
The NPR story i heard on this subject said that people are buying more ammo and guns, not becus they don’t feel “safe,” but becus they were led to believe obama would tighten gun control laws.
April 8th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Ah, yes, one can never have too many guns.
April 8th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
My husband is a gunsmith with a Federal Firearms License, so we got to see this firsthand. Yep, you bet — the gun sales really took off as soon as Obama was declared president. It’s no secret that he would endorse even more gun control laws.
As it stands right now, everything is back ordered for 6 months or more. He called on a shop that had just received a shipment of 9 mms, and they were sold before they arrived — they had a waiting list, and at that time, had a waiting list for 260 more.
Extra magazines are another hot commodity.
I guess one sector of the US is getting stimulated anyhow.
April 8th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
@Chris: Oh. Thanks for coming back and explaining.
April 8th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Its a fear of stricter ineffective gun control and Obama being elected.
Then there are also some people (minority of buyers) who are buying for self protection now due to people becoming desperate and there being more crime, such as burglary and robbery.
You can still find hunting guns, like bolt action and other guns that hold less than 10 rounds.
Its things like handguns and rifles with more than 10 rounds that are scarce and the ammo that goes along with them.
April 8th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
It may be the correlation with who is President too - but what made me think about it at all was the 38 years of data the shop owner claimed to have looked at for his shop and the correlation with the economy.
There’s always more than one reason for anything.
April 9th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Perhaps you would feel safer about your neighbors arming themselves if you took a class on how to properly handle a gun. Guns don’t kill people–people kill people. I agree with the comments that the Obama administration is the real reason for gun and ammo increases in sales. Any informed gun owner who enjoys shooting sports (such as myself) knows that it is a real possiblity that this administration and the current Congress will try to make gun ownership next to impossible. More gun laws will not help–what we do not hear in the media is that the people going on killing sprees are people who had broken the law to get the guns they had. Law-abiding citizens who arm themselves are not the problem.
April 9th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Out here in very rural Oregon, the rise in sales is attributable to Obama’s statements. If even ammo is going to be tracked to buyers, and limits placed on ammo and gun sales and possession, then the thought was to buy before the limits and tracking went into place. Out here I have not heard ANY correlation to the economy as it relates to gun buying - unless the statements I hear about poaching are from people who don’t already own guns! Out here, most everyone owns several already.
April 9th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Has anyone looked at the correlation between people being poor and needing food, so they are hunting wild game more? Maybe some of it has to do with feeding families, though I doubt all of it is! But that has to play some sort of a role in this.
April 9th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Hunting is NOT cheap anymore. Tags, licenses, and fees for our family costs us several hundred dollars every year, and we live in hunting country, so we have no major travel expenses.
Quite honestly, I can almost raise meat cheaper than I can hunt it. But then we wouldn’t have those great elk steaks
April 10th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Actually, most of this gun and ammo frenzy is caused by the fact that most people are worried that Obama will start banning them soon since he is very anti-gun.
April 10th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I bought my gun the day after Obama won
April 10th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Yeah… It’s a sign of the times and kind of funny when you think about it. I mean… What would people possibly be trying to protect? Everyone and their brother has already been foreclosed on or filed for bankruptcy by now.
Maybe they are trying to keep their food stamps safe?! Let this be a warning to you all - if you go after somebody’s block of government cheese or bag of rice you may get the business end of a semi-automatic weapon!
April 10th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
That’s certainly true here in Arizona. It’s become difficult to buy ammunition, and in many stores even racks of long guns are empty.
If you own a few guns now, they’re worth a lot more than you paid for them.
IMHO, more than just the fear that the Obamites will institute gun control laws is driving this. Crime rates have spiked in my area. Feeling a bit nervous about repeated BlockWatch warnings of burglaries, near-rapes, and prowlers trying to break in while residents were inside the house, I wanted to retrieve my father’s pistol from my ex-husband’s safe, where I left it when I fled the marriage 15 years ago. But he’s managed to “lose” it (read, no doubt, “sell”). Criminals lose their jobs, too…they just don’t feel any compunction about stealing from others to put food and dope on their tables.
April 14th, 2009 at 9:24 am
What I hear from my husband (hunter and target shooter) is that he is afraid of tighter gun control laws. The guns that are getting more expensive and harder to find aren’t cheap handguns. They are expensive hunting rifles and semi-automatic weapons that are in Obama’s sights, so to speak.
Hunting can be an expensive hobby, but once you have the equipment, in can be somewhat economical. $60 for deer license, one buck and two doe. One luck shot can yield dozens of pounds of meat. Steaks, roasts, and ground deer. Even the tough meat is tender after simmering in a crock pot.
Small game has a cheap license, or none at all, if you are on your own property. Squirrel and rabbit are plentiful even in mildly rural areas, like ours. One bunny doesn’t take long to clean, and is a couple pounds of meat.
April 21st, 2009 at 12:20 am
Now I’m afraid of all the scared people out there with guns. I bet they’re jumpy and the slightest thing will just set them off.