The gun industry’s biggest threat is Obama leaving office

[marmar]

(MarketWatch) The stock market has been flat this year, but one sector has had a notably different experience in 2015.

If you’re into gun stocks, then Merry Christmas to you: Smith & Wesson SWHC, -1.07% has more than doubled in market value, while Sturm, Ruger & Co. RGR, +0.46% has jumped two-thirds. Both saw sharp gains last week in the wake of President Obama’s speech on terrorism, a good chunk of which was devoted to guns.

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By now, the pattern is familiar: A terrible shooting. A movie theater. A schoolroom full of children. A church. The president comes into the briefing room, and we scribble down his words of sorrow, of indignation — and pleas for Congress to do something. He goes back to the Oval Office. Gun sales surge. A few weeks, or even days later, the cycle repeats.

Each time, the president reaffirms his support for the Second Amendment. One typical comment, from 2011: “The Second Amendment in this country is part of our Constitution, and the president of the United States is bound by our Constitution,” he said. “So I believe in the Second Amendment. It does provide for Americans the right to bear arms for their protection, for their safety, for hunting, for a wide range of uses.”

But the firearms industry doesn’t buy it. Manufacturers and the industry’s powerful lobbying arm, the National Rifle Association, are convinced that Obama’s secret strategy — even with just a year to go in his second and final term — will still emerge: to somehow take away the very guns he says we have a right to own. NRA chief Wayne LaPierre has warned for years that “lip service” to gun owners “is just part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term.” And: “With no more elections to worry about, get busy dismantling and destroying our firearms’ freedom, erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights, and excise it from the U.S. Constitution.”

Dismantle and destroy? With both the House and Senate dominated by Republicans, Obama would be lucky to get a resolution honoring the Girl Scouts through Congress. After the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012, he couldn’t even get the Democratic-controlled Senate to support expanded background checks. ................(more)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-gun-industrys-biggest-threat-is-obama-leaving-office-2015-12-18

[Johnyawl]

1. The good news for the gun industry, and those who own stock in it...

...Hillary will be the next president which gives them an even bigger boogyman to scare the gun culture with.

[spin]

2. A moderate Republican president might be the biggest threat to the gun industry. ...

Many gun owners felt that Romney would have pushed another assault weapons ban and would have been able to get enough Republican votes to do it. That's something a Democratic president will find very difficult if not impossible to accomplish.

Many gun owners viewed Romney as a RINO and decided not to show up at the polls to vote for him.