Fear of gun control under former President Barack Obama made the 44th president the world’s best gun salesman, with gun sales booming under his tenure.
Gun control efforts under Obama only ever materialized in the form of some executive orders. No sweeping legislation was passed. Still, it’s without question that if Obama could’ve snapped his fingers and removed every gun in America, he would’ve done so. Thus, it’s hardly a surprise that people feared gun control measures despite the Republican Congress acting as a roadblock.
During his first six years in office, domestic gun manufacturers produced an average of 21,000 guns a day, or over 46 million. In early 2016, that figure increased to 52,600 a day.
Surely what goes up must go down, and with a Republican President and gun control fears subsiding, most industry analysts predicted a drop-off in sales (especially after a pre-election surge in sales hedging against a Hillary presidency). They were right, too. Smith & Wesson (now officially “American Outdoor Brands”) reported a 40 percent decline in sales their second quarter of 2017 relative to the year before, for example.
But could they close out the year ahead of the game? Following recent mass public shootings, gun stores saw blowout Black Friday sales.
According to the Daily Caller, “the FBI received the most background check requests for gun purchases in a single day on Black Friday. According to the FBI over 200,000 background check requests for guns were requested this year on Black Friday, which beat the previous single-day high of 185,713 on Black Friday 2016, USA Today reported.”
Annual gun sales are still expected to close the year out $100 million below where they were last year, but that came after eight long years of artificially high buying, and an additional surge near the end of 2016 as fears of a Hillary presidency mounted. The first year of declining sales in roughly a decade is a sign of nothing more than that there are reduced fears of forthcoming gun control – and that many of those who want to be armed already are now.
Did you buy a gun on Black Friday? Tell us if you did below in the comment section!
