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Spike in gun sales may not mean what you think
Could the pre-assault-weapon-ban rush at area gun dealers actually be just a symptom of last-minute holiday shopping?
Spike in gun sales may not mean what you think
When I lived in Texas, I spent nearly every evening having beers with my neighbor. Unsurprisingly, he was named Bubba. One day, while he and I were discussing how a local tweaker had come to begin driving a very expensive luxury vehicle he mentioned that he had recently bought a gun he described as a Russian sniper rifle.
I asked why he thought he needed a gun like that. He described his purchase as an investment.
Barack Obama had recently been elected president. Rather than let your stereotypes fill in the rest of this anecdote, I’ll just say that Bubba planned on selling the rifle after a gun ban went into effect. That ban never came.
All of this leads me to say this: Though I acknowledge that they might be accurate, there is good reason to be skeptical of all the stories in which reporters go interview gun shop owners, only to be told that “Business has never been better.”
The problem is that there really isn’t a good way to check the anecdotal reports of the gun dealers. If you want to know why, start reading some of the excellent work of Tom Diaz at the Violence Policy Center.
But there is some data, and it casts doubts on the idea that gun sales go through the roof any time gun owners feel their rights will be threatened.
The fine folks over at Smith & Wesson, in a Dec. 11 report to investors, have done a nice job of compiling some monthly data on background checks for gun purchases.
The report notes that November 2012 was the 30th straight year that background checks increased in November.
A look at their data shows that background checks — which the company argues is strongly indicative of gun demand — spikes every November. It did so in 2008 just after Obama was elected, but it also spiked in November 2009 and November 2010 in years that Obama wasn’t on the ticket. It did so in 2006 when gun-friendly George W. Bush was in office.
All of those spikes came amid a general trend of increasing gun sales, but they are spikes nonetheless.
There’s probably a good reason for high demand in November and December. Smith and Wesson notes that largest single day for background checks, was Black Friday of this year. So, yeah. Christmas is probably a huge factor.
Freelance contributor Dan Kelley can be reached at danpkelley@yahoo.com.
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