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WASHINGTON — President Obama has presided over a heyday for the gun industry despite predictions by the National Rifle Association four years ago that he would be the “most anti-gun president in American history.” Gun buyers fear that Obama wants to restrict their purchases, especially if he is re-elected.
An analysis by The Associated Press of data tracking the health of the gun industry shows that sales are on the rise, so much that some gun manufacturers can’t make enough guns fast enough. Major gun company stock prices are up. The number of federally licensed, retail gun dealers is increasing for the first time in nearly 20 years. The NRA is bursting with cash and political clout. And Washington has expressed little interest in passing new gun laws, despite renewed calls to do so after recent deadly shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin.
Obama has proposed no new gun control legislation and doesn’t have the support in Congress even if he decided to. During this week’s presidential debate, Obama suggested renewing a U.S. ban on assault weapons and coming up with an overall strategy to reduce violence, but both Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said the government needs to enforce gun laws already on the books.
“The driver is President Obama. He’s the best thing that ever happened to the firearm industry,” said Jim Barrett, an industry analyst at C.L. King & Associates Inc. in New York.
Tennessee lawyer Brian Manookian said he never considered himself a gun enthusiast. He owns only one handgun. But the firearms industry has proved so lucrative for him that he’s enthusiastic now. Manookian and his business partner, Gary Semanchik, opened a $5 million firearms retail and training complex in September in Nashville.
Inventory is selling three to four times faster than they expected since the facility opened.
“It is a very strong investment,” Manookian said.
More gun dealers
Others agree. For the first time since 1993, the number of federally licensed retail gun dealers in the U.S. increased slightly in 2010 and 2011, as the country added 1,167 more licensed retail gun dealers, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives records. After the assault weapons ban in 1994, the number of gun dealerships dropped annually until 2010. As of October 2012, there were 50,812 retail gun dealers – that’s 3,303 more than in 2009.
“Business has been very good,” said Frederick Prehn, who a year ago opened a small gun store above his dentistry practice in Wausau, Wis. In the past year, Prehn has relocated twice to larger spaces and gone from one employee to eight.
Nonstop production
For the first time in the company’s history, Sturm Ruger & Co. Inc. stopped taking orders for a couple months this year. Ruger, one of the nation’s largest gun manufacturers, has since resumed taking orders, though gun-sellers say demand is still outpacing production.
Obama is not yet through his first term, but the federal government already has conducted about as many background checks for gun owners and prospective buyers on his watch as it did during the first six years of George W. Bush’s presidency. In the first 31/2 years of the Bush administration, the FBI conducted about 28 million background checks. During the same period of the Obama administration, the FBI conducted more than 50 million. The gun industry uses the number of background checks on gun owners as a reliable indicator of demand.
Ruger and Smith & Wesson represent nearly 30 percent of the U.S. gun manufacturing industry and lead the market in production of pistols and revolvers, according to government statistics. The two companies have been running production lines around the clock, hiring workers and operating at maximum capacity, said Barrett, an industry analyst who also owns Ruger stock.
Ruger’s sales have increased 86 percent since Obama took office, and Smith & Wesson’s sales have gone up nearly 44 percent, compared with 18 percent for overall national retail sales.
And the companies have big expectations for the industry’s future, as they’re spending more money on research and development than ever before.
“Wouldn’t you want to be in a business where customers are just begging to hand you money?” said Bill Bernstein, owner of East Side Gun Shop in Nashville, Tenn.
Flush with cash
The NRA also has done well. The lobbying organization has had more cash on hand during the Obama years than it did since 2004, finishing 2010 with more than $24 million, according to the most recent figures available.
“Which makes it incredibly ironic that the gun lobby is opposing Obama,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Gross said Obama, who initially campaigned to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired under Bush, has done what he said was “disappointingly little” on gun control.
‘Dangerous election’
But the gun lobby says the success of the industry does not indicate that Obama is good for Second Amendment rights.
“This is the most dangerous election in our lifetimes,” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said in February, a point he’s made regularly during the NRA’s campaign to defeat Obama.
The NRA stands by its 2008 predictions that Obama would be anti-gun.
“Gun owners and hunters fear that a second Obama administration with no future political campaigns to worry about will try to destroy this great American freedom,” NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.
Firearms sales typically increase during poor economic times, said Steve Sanetti, CEO and president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the industry.
And voters have made clear that gun control isn’t a priority. A recent AP-National Constitution Center poll found that 49 percent of adults felt laws limiting gun ownership infringe on the public’s right to bear arms, while 43 percent said such laws do not infringe on those rights. After the recent mass shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin, 52 members of Congress sponsored a bill to track bulk sales of ammunition, but the legislation went nowhere.
