Smith & Wesson Reports Blowout Sales

Gun sales are booming as buyers arm themselves, partly because they fear President Obama will win re-election this fall. Liberals don’t want you to know that in states where there is a right to carry, crimes with firearms have always gone down. The states and cities with the strictest gun control laws have the highest rates of crimes with firearms.

Faced with this fact, as reported by the FBI, liberals primary anti-freedom agenda is gun control. Why? The goal is ban and seize all guns so the statists can prevail when only government agents are armed.

Smith & Wesson said preliminary net sales from continuing operations rose 28 percent to $129 million during the latest quarter. The gun maker also reported a $439 million backlog of orders — a $252 million increase from a year earlier.

Weapons manufacturers across the industry are logging similar numbers.

Remington’s parent company recently reported a 34 percent quarterly sales gain, while Connecticut-based Sturm, Ruger & Co. saw transactions soar nearly 50 percent. Sturm, Ruger even stopped taking orders for two months to catch up on back orders.

Background checks for new gun purchases — the best gauge of overall U.S. weapons sales — rose 14.4 percent in 2011 to 10.8 million, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

“There’s no one reason that explains all of the increase, but what’s been called ‘The Obama Factor’ undoubtedly is an important part of it,” said Lawrence Keane, a senior vice president at the foundation.

He attributes some of the increase to a range of non-political factors, from more women purchasers to two recent U.S. Supreme Court cases favoring gun-buyer rights.

“Whenever people perceive the possibility of laws or regulations that will restrict their (weapons-purchasing) rights, they tend to buy guns,” Keane said.

Analyst Reed Anderson of Northland Securities believes some of today’s sales come from people who first bought guns because of Obama’s election, then discovered they liked sport shooting.

“When Obama won in 2008, that really primed the pump for a lot of demand from first-time buyers,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is repeat customers.”

The National Rifle Association thinks buyers are just acting logically.

“President Obama has demonstrated a lifetime of support for anti-gun legislation, so there’s a lot to fear about what will happen if he gets a second term,” NRA spokeswoman Stephanie Samford said.

Even gun-control activist John Rosenthal of Hub-based Stop Handgun Violence concedes it’s “probably true” that fearful gun buyers are pushing sales higher. But he thinks gun-rights groups are playing on such concerns for political reasons.

“Nothing ‘sells’ better than fear of gun confiscation,” Rosenthal said.

The greater danger in America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to the electorate.

The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails the US.  The republic can survive any one president including Barack Hussein Obama. But it is less likely to survive the multitude of fools who elected him president.