Gun Control Talk Fuels Gun Sales As Owners Add To Their Stockpile

Talk about war profiteering, the shares of gun-makers Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger posted large gains yesterday in response to the shootings in Orlando. The reasoning has less to do with the fact that significantly more people will buy a gun as a response to the shooting. Rather it has to do with the fact that any serious talk of gun control sends all those people who are utterly convinced (against all evidence) that the government is always just about to take all their guns away back to the gun stores to stock up on even more guns.

The fact of the matter is that gun sales have been increasing over the last few years even as fewer and fewer Americans are actually buying and owning a gun. Depending on which study you take, gun ownership is down around either 10% from the mid-1990s or 20% from the mid-1970s.  In both studies, less than half of American households currently have a gun.  So, if gun ownership is down, who is buying all these new guns. The answer, of course, is the people who already own a gun.  So, fewer Americans have guns but those that do have quite a lot of them, and they are buying even more. And that should scare all of us.