Gun sales soar amid fears of Barack Obama weapons ban

[onehandle]

Gun culture craziness. Their defining characteristic.

Scary black man is coming for your guns and to impregnate your daughters. Must stock up.
________________________

"Obama's a liberal socialist and I think he's proven quickly how extreme he is," he said. "When they get through healthcare, guns are on the table. They're not talking about it but it's going to happen.

"He speaks with a forked tongue. I don't trust him a bit."

"What they want to do is limit the amount of handguns you can buy, assault rifles, things like that. The constitution doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear ammunition. A car's no good without gasoline so one way you can get to banning or controlling guns is by attacking the ammo."

"Everybody else has guns, especially since Obama came in and people got afraid and started buying. I've been in a lot of situations where I was able to fight my way out because I'm a martial artist. But everybody has a gun I didn't want to be the only one without one."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5804114/Gun-sales-soar-amid-fears-of-Barack-Obama-weapons-ban.html

[slackmaster]

1. It's always interesting to see how the UK press views our country

It's pretty distorted.

[imdjh]

3. Clearly, there is not enough in UK for them to do.

I swear it seems like the Guardian is a US newspaper printed in UK

[imdjh]

2. The gun manufacturers must be hyping this shit.

So why aren't we hearing about all the new jobs as gunsmiths ramp up for the demand?

[gorfle]

4. On gun manufacturers.

If the gun manufacturers had the power to hype sales any time they wanted, why would they wait until President Obama was elected to do it? No, this surge in sales is not a creation of the firearm industry.


So why aren't we hearing about all the new jobs as gunsmiths ramp up for the demand?

I don't know about jobs, but profits and stock prices are up, that's for sure.

http://www.enterprisenews.com/homepage/x73527724/Gun-sales-surge-in-Brockton-region-and-nationally
"Last week, Springfield-based manufacturer Smith & Wesson reported a 26 percent rise in its quarterly profits, with handgun sales up 46 percent. After a steep decline, the company’s stock price has soared 250 percent since October."

Usually when companies grow they hire.

[Mopar151]

21. Not so fast

I work in "gun country" - most of those jobs are temp gigs, through agencies, at pittance wages - like $11/hr for CNC setup. The gun co's (Ruger, SigArms,Thompson/Center)know this is a bubble, and are not adding significant permanent staff.

And I haven't seen a single ad for a "gunsmith" - this <http://nh.craigslist.org/mnu/1259614728.html> is a good deal more typical.

[gorfle]

5. S&W is hiring

Position List- Record 1-4 of 4
Job Title Organization Name City/State Date
Team Leader - Long Gun Assembly 2nd shift New Smith & Wesson Springfield MA Jul-9-2009
Intellectual Property Attorney Smith & Wesson Springfield MA Jun-9-2009
CNC Set-Up (3rd shift) Thompson Center Arms Rochester NH Jun-18-2009
CNC Set-Up (2nd shift) Thompson Center Arms Rochester NH Jun-18-2009

[TheWraith]

10. Gunsmithing requires strong machining skills.

Even with modern computer-numerical-controlled milling equipment, making (most) guns is not a cut and fit sort of proposition. It's not as easy to train new people for it, so it doesn't create as many fast and easy jobs as, say, a ramping up of car production would.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

11. Because unlike cars a weapon does not need to go in for regular professional maintenance

[DissedByBush]

28. If you shoot a gun a lot

You should be taking it into the gunsmith regularly. They can and do break down with regular use.

[Tejas]

19. 07 licenses are at an all time high,

there are also 2 new Class III dealers within 15 miles of me just in the last 2 months.

[imdjh]

20. The funny thing is, 2 or 3 years ago gun shops were closing and blaming it on Democrats. nt

[gorfle]

6. Or...

Scary black man is coming for your guns and to impregnate your daughters. Must stock up.

Or....President and top cabinet members have strong anti-firearm histories and stated policy goals.

For example, this is still up on www.change.gov under Urban Policy. It was also on Whitehouse.gov until a couple of months ago:

"Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent."

Weeks into President Obama's presidency (February 25th), his appointed Attorney General, Eric Holder, announced it was his intention to seek a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban ( http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=6960824&page=1 ):

"As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,"

And of course people remember that the last time the Democrats were in office we had the last assault weapons ban.

While I'm sure there are racists out there stocking up on guns and ammo, mostly this run on firearms and ammunition is being driven by people who remember what happened under the last Democratic president, and fear worse the next time around.

Fortunately, thus far, President Obama has been cool on the subject of firearms.

[eqfan592]

7. No no no Gorfle!!!

We can't give gun owners ANY credit when it comes to rationality! Even IF the President has a stated goal to do the things the gun owners fear when it comes to 2a rights, we CANNOT give the gun owners credit for knowing that! Their fears can NEVER been viewed as rational! It's all because they're racists!! That's why they're buying guns!! And if you don't tout the party line, then you're not a "real" progressive!

:sarcasm:

[Katya Mullethov]

27. Sotomayor said just today , that she is cool with hunting

The fail is strong with this one .

[Tim01]

8. That's really racist. nt

[TheWraith]

9. About as crazy as the people who thought Bush was building concentration camps.

Any yet, some people will continue to use the nuts to mock an entire group as being lunatics.

[jeepnstein]

24. He wasn't?

[SteveM]

12. Still supporting Jim Crow?...

Clearly, you not only don't understand the history of gun-control in the U.S., you have gotten it systematically backward. Read:
www.georgiacarry.org Search locally for the Heller brief (submitted to SCOTUS in the Heller decision) and please read thoroughly. You will find that everything thought of by today's gun-controllers/banners has been thought of (and tried) in the antebellum South, during post-Civil War restoration of white supremacy, during Jim Crow, and well into the 20th Century America. Never has such a de jure history of racism been pressed (knowingly or unknowingly) so vigorously -- by gun prohibitionists.

So which is it? Do you realize your promotion of racism or are you ignorant of it?

[spin]

13. Gun control has always been about keeping "the scary black man"...

and other minorities and the lower classes down.

A good read is The Racist Roots of Gun Control

http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.racism.html

One excerpt:

Gun control advocates today are not so foolish as to openly promote racist laws, and so the question might be asked what relevance the racist past of gun control laws has. One concern is that the motivations for disarming blacks in the past are really not so different from the motivations for disarming law-abiding citizens today. In the last century, the official rhetoric in support of such laws was that "they" were too violent, too untrustworthy, to be allowed weapons. Today, the same elitist rhetoric regards law-abiding Americans in the same way, as child-like creatures in need of guidance from the government. In the last century, while never openly admitted, one of the goals of disarming blacks was to make them more willing to accept various forms of economic oppression, including the sharecropping system, in which free blacks were reduced to an economic state not dramatically superior to the conditions of slavery.

In the seventeenth century, the aristocratic power structure of colonial Virginia found itself confronting a similar challenge from lower class whites. These poor whites resented how the men who controlled the government used that power to concentrate wealth into a small number of hands. These wealthy feeders at the government trough would have disarmed poor whites if they could, but the threat of both Indian and pirate attack made this impractical; for all white men "were armed and had to be armed..." Instead, blacks, who had occupied a poorly defined status between indentured servant and slave, were reduced to hereditary chattel slavery, so that poor whites could be economically advantaged, without the upper class having to give up its privileges. <37>

Today, the forces that push for gun control seem to be heavily (though not exclusively) allied with political factions that are committed to dramatic increases in taxation on the middle class. While it would be hyperbole to compare higher taxes on the middle class to the suffering and deprivation of sharecropping or slavery, the analogy of disarming those whom you wish to economically disadvantage, has a certain worrisome validity to it.

****snip***

In much the same way, gun control has historically been a tool of racism, and associated with racist attitudes about black violence. Similarly, many gun control laws impinge on that most fundamental of rights: self-defense. Racism is so intimately tied to the history of gun control in America that we should regard gun control aimed at law-abiding people as a "suspect idea," and require that the courts use the same demanding standards when reviewing the constitutionality of a gun control law, that they would use with respect to a law that discriminated based on race.
http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.racism.html

[DissedByBush]

29. The war on drugs and gun banning go hand in hand

Both have racist roots, both are eroding our rights and both require numerous lies to the public to keep them going.

[Deadric Damodred]

14. It's pretty simple...

...when you say you want to ban something, people will stockpile that which you want to ban. In this case Obama has said he wants another "assualt weapon" ban, so naturally sales of "assault weapons" are skyhigh. If a few politicians started talking about banning cigarettes and cigars, it wouldn't be long before people had basement closets filled to the ceiling with cartons of cigarettes and boxes of cigars. Stockpiling something that politicians want to ban isn't being racist, it's using your logic to prepare to have a lot of something that will no longer be availible after a certain point.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

15. I knew the stimulus was working.

[DonP]

16. Isn't this about the 14th time we've seen this story?

It seems that the media keeps recycling the same story with the same lines and the same attitude.

Then someone, that is afraid of guns and loathes gun owners, posts it as if it is proof positive that anyone that doesn't demand more federal gun control can't be a "real democrat" and therefore must be a GOP shill.

This article proves tome that the media is generally too lazy to do any of their own research or to even come up with an original idea.

... and all those gun sales have resulted in ... no significant or measurable rise in crime.

Well the gun grabbers can always hope for more violence I guess.

[Katya Mullethov]

17. And the ammo bubble has since burst

I bought a used AR for 350 bucks over a month ago .

[benEzra]

22. $350? That is a steal, since the current market value is the same as before the sales surge...

e.g. $750-$800 for a new/used barebones model, or $1000-$1200 for a nicely configured flattop model from a major manufacturer. Whoever sold you that had no idea what it is worth in the current market. Even basic Romanian AK's are still running $399-$450 in most places.

[TheWraith]

23. Dammit. Where the hell are you buying?

I want to go there. And I'm not even a big AR fan. Want to trade that for a bolt-action .308? :D

[Katya Mullethov]

25. An honest car salesman

That owns his own place . Somebody owed him 350 and gave him the gun . I told him he would be better off slinging it across his shoulder , and cruising a gunshow . He could get a 1000 bucks easy .

"I just want my damn money ! "

So I tipped him an extra 50 for his trouble .
Does that make it a 400 dollar rifle ?

[Tejas]

18. "impregnate your daughters" - can you imagine if

antis just blurted out things like this in real life? You're open-carrying along the sidewalk, and some anti passes by and just up and pukes all over themself. Next thing you know, he/she is pointing at their breakfast expecting you listen to whatever they have to say about your sidearm.

Usual outcome would probably be them slipping in their own puke and landing on their face and you continuing on your journey, rantings about your penis fading in the distance as you round the corner.



:rofl:

[Katya Mullethov]

26. Vomiting on yourself has been touted as a valid defensive tactic

Some animals do it as a defensive mechanism .

Perhaps he/she is merely intimidated by your mastadonic penis .

[Wallew]

30. Some TRUTH about firearms purchases during the past 18 months

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae74oMMQ4ak

Gives some VERY straight info...