Seriously… You can annoy a liberal, and save money at the same time. It’s like some sort of a magical set of circumstances that were created especially for gun enthusiasts on a budget. Gun stores currently have an overstock of merchandise, as sales decline from last year’s record breaking numbers. To consumers this means sales and discounted merchandise, to the industry it means a slightly less profitable year than last year, and to liberals it means an opportunity to weave an anti-gun narrative.
Brace yourself for a slew of stories about gun sales declining this year. A recent headline on Market Watch pretty much summed up the emerging trend among some pundits: Paranoia has its limits as gun sales slump. In other words: All those crazy, militant tea-partiers have finally stopped buying guns, and now businesses are coping with sales returning to normal.
Gun sales are in a decline from last year’s numbers… But, what did you expect? This isn’t a story about the declining interest in firearm ownership, it’s a story about free-market economics (which probably explains why Liberals don’t understand it). Obama, the Democrats in the Senate, and a billionaire-former-mayor of New York City, have all proven to be the best accidental-gun-salesmen in history… And that’s pretty unlikely to change.
As consumer interest in firearms has grown, the industry has done exactly what you would expect to cope with the increased demand. Last year, firearms manufacturers struggled to keep pace with demand for their products. Americans flocked to their local gun stores, gun shows, and FFL dealers to get their hands on AR15s, AK47s, handguns, shotguns, hunting rifles, military replicas, and anything else that had a trigger, hammer and barrel. Most manufacturers rightly decided that production must increase, and today gun stores are seeing a sizeable overstock problem.
Few people expected annual growth to continue for the industry at the rate we saw in 2013… So, naturally sales are leveling off. But the liberals are living in their usual fantasy-land if they expect to see a sizeable and continued decline in the purchasing of guns throughout America. In fact, the industry should be expected to grow (even if that growth is modest) for the foreseeable future.
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During the gun-boom years of Obama’s reelection, the target market for firearms grew substantially. The ocean of gun enthusiasts, hobbyists, and casual owners has been permanently expanded. The industry has seen millions of new opportunities open up in the last few years. Concealed carry has grown in popularity, and a number of states have been forced to reform their laws to be more permissive of the practice. The market for concealed carry firearms, and firearms with a greater emphasis on self-defense, has been expanded greatly, providing massive opportunity for corporate growth within the industry.
Women have also been a large portion of the “new customers” as they grow to realize the importance of adequate self-defense. This largely ignored sector of the gun-owning public is growing; and will provide savvy businesses with endless opportunities to cash in on a niche market.
And, perhaps most importantly, gun ownership seems to be contagious. People who have firearms often tend to be evangelical about the right to keep and bear arms. This means that as new gun control schemes are pushed (and they will be) more booms can be expected. After all, let’s not forget that Obama has promised to “do what he can” without Congress to erode Second Amendment rights. And Michael “Nanny” Bloomberg has promised to spend tens of millions of dollars to help elect anti-gun politicians… In other words: businesses can probably sit tight on their inventory until the next 2013 style boom hits the market.
So, yeah… The industry is seeing its sales level out for the time being. And, yes, gun stores are seeing overstock in products that they could barely keep on the shelves last year. But this does not represent a weakness in the market. Really, it only means one thing: Now is the time to buy a new gun…
You missed out on getting that AR, or AK, because prices spiked too quickly for your Obamanomics-impacted budget to handle? Well… It’s Father’s Day, and the market is flooded. Time to go look for a clearance sale.
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