I wonder how much of the fall-off has to do with the Republicans winning the House. Not because potential gun buyers think a Republican House will block gun control laws, but because they are now “winning” and cultural signifiers are less important when you’re the party on the rise (or in power). I wonder if there will be a corresponding drop off in militia membership and abortion activism as well.

I think rivki@1 has hit it on the head. The recent election was seen as a GOP victory and the remaining 2 years are just a bit of lag until the Rightful Rulers are put back in place like they should be.

Well, maybe, but at some point you just run out of disposable income to spend on guns. I can imagine even the craziest dude eventually getting told that, no, you may not spend another $400 on another handgun, at least not until we’ve replaced the dishwasher. Or whatever.

I’d say you can compare spending on ammo to fast food more than guns themselves. If you’re out shooting the guns all the time, you have to buy more ammo. You presumably need to eat everyday. You don’t have to buy a new gun every week.

The gun bubble was curious because it was entirely based on naked racism (scary black man!) and a GOP cliche (Democrats want to take your guns). But I don’t recall Obama or any DEM even mentioning gun laws. That’s been a dead issue for at least a decade and weirdly, one the Right Wingers won. Just shows you how rarely they update their entitled grievance playbook.

This explains also why they’re still bitching about taxes, even though tax rates are are at a historical low. It’s just an old comfortable gripe, the GOP equivalent of a safety blanket.

The sad thing is that I actually know people that think they need 20+ guns and go out shooting every or every other weekend, hence needing more ammo for said 20+ guns. They also usually try to fire at least half of those guns each trip as well.

Said friend and other people I know also immediately started spouting off fear rhetoric as soon as it was evident that Obama was going to be elected and immediately assumed the first thing on most Dems minds was to strip guns away, instead of worrying about more important issues like health care reform, etc.

Kind of sad and humorous all in one sitting really when you watch this sort of thing unfold with people that you know.

@3: It’s interesting in that I read an article yesterday from a musical instrument dealer about the market after their bubble burst. Prior to the crash, speculators were picking up “collector’s editions” as an investment. Now, the market is sluggish with people struggling to “trade up” working instruments and people paying cash rather than credit. So yeah, it’s not surprising to me that gun merchants are feeling the pinch of a recession.

I’m still waiting for the gold bubble to pop. The fallout from that will be beautiful/scary to behold.

So, they have enough ammo to invade the Castro, Halsted, and Village, then.

The whole gun-buying frenzy made absolutely no sense to me. The issue of gun rights and the 2nd Amendment were never really brought up during the presidential campaign, and I am unaware of any major gun legislation having been signed or going through the legislative pipeline since Obama took office. Quite simply, it’s just not a major issue in the public mind right now. When more than 1/10th of the country isn’t working, gun rights are pretty far down the list of most people’s priorities.

Truth be told, President Obama is not really much more anti-gun than any other president we’ve had in the past 30 years. Though he’s sometimes paid lip service to the idea of dealing with gun violence, nothing has been done to impose more restrictions on gun ownership since Obama moved into 1600 Pennsylvania. As a matter of fact, Obama has been viewed as so lax on the issue of gun rights that the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave Obama an “F” for his first year in office.

I’m sure there are plenty of politicians out there who would like to impose stricter regulations on gun ownership, but President Obama isn’t one of them.

@ roscoe, as Keith said above, it’s kind of a “comfort gripe”, just like who they’re still wailing about inflation even though the last time we had bad inflation was fucking 1979. But Glenn Beck is still saying inflation is “just around the corner!”

No, gun nuts! Don’t fall for it! Don’t you realize that this sense of victory is just what Obama wants you to think?? Indonesian/Kenyan/Hawaiians play long games like us white people can’t even comprehend!!

They also usually try to fire at least half of those guns each trip as well.

It’s been a while since I’ve been at a shooting range, but it’s my understanding that you should clean your gun after shooting more than a couple of rounds with said firearm.

That’s 10 guns that need to be cleaned afterward.

No wonder they’re known as “gun nuts” :-D

The gun and the tax thing go together in another way: you buy a passel of guns and ammo, and pretty soon you notice you have less disposable income for other stuff. So Obama really did raise your taxes, because he forced you to flush a bunch of money down the toilet.

Unless you are seriously insane, as a gun buyer you’ll reach saturation quickly; I don’t imagine most people who are not seriously insane militia types or (insane in another way) serious collectors want to own more than one or two.

Scary thought: some guys collect guns the way some women collect expensive shoes. I suspect that in both cases, most never get used or worn.

Many progressives should start stocking up.

My brother landed a job selling sporting goods in a big farm supply store in the midwest during the summer of 2008, after years of intermittent employment. Since he is single and in his late 40’s and had gone without health insurance for a long time, this job was pretty much all that was standing between him and the guestroom in my parents’ house. 

The recession hit in earnest just about the time he qualified for health insurance, and it looked like he was going to lose it and the job.  But Obama saved him! The gun nuts stocked up like crazy and saved his job! He could never admit this because he is himself a gun nut.

I wonder if things will fall off now?  Maybe he has enough seniority that he wouldn’t get laid off. Will find out at Christmas I guess.

But… if you’re going to do much hunting, you need at least three guns: a high-power rifle, a rimfire rifle, and a shotgun. And you’ll probably want a handgun, but if you want a handgun you’ll probably end up with two: Either a pistol and a revolver or a rimfire and a centerfire. So now you’re up to five.

And that’s assuming you haven’t bought anything because it’s cool. Or because it was cheap and you thought you could fix it. Or because it was in that one movie. Or because you inherited it. Or brought it home from the war. And assuming you don’t do any shooting competitions. Cowboy action shooting, for example, requires (I think) four different guns.

Heck, the Brits buy their guns in pairs.

Now that I learned my Step-Father-in-Law used to hunt and has resumed the hobby, I got to thinking that I would like to learn to hunt. So I will probably buy a gun or two when I move back to Canada. Since I have a purpose, I don’t see the harm in owning a couple (probably just one… I would be looking at a rifle for hunting and a pistol for target shooting for fun, but it’s harder to get a pistol in Canada).

Many Canadians own guns, most of them either hunters or people who live in the middle of nowhere and really need it. So I can understand gun ownership.

This insanity that I see in the gun nuts (no doubt we have some in Canada too; in fact I’m sure of it) is really baffling. Do they really think they’re going to need to rebel against the government? Most of them are fooling themselves if they think they’re even capable of it. Same with home defense, really. Most people don’t think about how hard it is to pull that trigger when it really means killing another human being. Odds are against the defender, yet oddly skewed towards shooting innocent people.

Ah, well. Maybe all this means I’ll be able to scoop up something cheaper in a few years.

Many progressives should start stocking up.

This.  Unless y’all think the stromtroopers are going to make sure it’s a fair fight when they come to kick in the door.

I really think it is what was said @3 with a little of @1 thrown in. 

Matt, I need a small gun here in MA.  I have chickens and fischer cats, skunks, foxes, etc. I need to scare off on occation.  A pellet gun is sufficient for that though, for the most part.  That, and an electric fence.  When we were in ID, we kept the shot guns handy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UHg9ruB_o0&feature=player_embedded#!

Anyone see this school board meeting?

I saw it on Today. An unarmed woman tried to knock the gun out of the guy’s hand with her purse and the guys she was trying to help were sort of laughing at the little woman for being so spunky and feisty.

  The gun movement’s got a lot of unexamined misogyny in it. Sixty Minutes did an exposee on it that demonstrated how all those gun shows are often dodges to either avoid things like child support—-cash only——or how they’re steeped in blatant hatred of women.  There are often tables full of books on how evil women are and how to make sure you win and the bitch loses.

@Comment #18: Matthew, Patron Saint of Affogato on 12/14 at 11:17 PM

This insanity that I see in the gun nuts (no doubt we have some in Canada too; in fact I’m sure of it) is really baffling. Do they really think they’re going to need to rebel against the government? Most of them are fooling themselves if they think they’re even capable of it. Same with home defense, really. Most people don’t think about how hard it is to pull that trigger when it really means killing another human being. Odds are against the defender, yet oddly skewed towards shooting innocent people.

I cannot believe that folks really think some guns will protect them against the government. I don’t care if you have twenty guns, a rocket launcher, and have mined your yard. If the US government really wants to get you, they will. The only thing the guns will give gun nuts is the ability to terrorize or kill their fellow citizens, should they feel the desire.

@Comment #7: Ben D.  on 12/14 at 07:20 PM

I’m still waiting for the gold bubble to pop. The fallout from that will be beautiful/scary to behold.

I’ll be really interested in that too. Might hear a lot of, “What do you mean gold isn’t intrinsically valuable? It’s Gold, for chrissakes!”

We’ll see.

Atheist: or their wives.

ginmar: exactly. Or their wives.

Heck, the Brits buy their guns in pairs.

We do? First I’ve heard of it… And I know more shooters than the average Brit.

The whole gun-buying frenzy made absolutely no sense to me.

Marketing hype rarely does if you don’t buy into it.

At least now one can find what they may be looking for when they go gun-shopping.

I want to round out my handgun collection with a .22 lr and .460 mag and I can get them as soon as I can scrape up the money. Whereas thanks to the gun-buying frenzy when I finally saved up for a couple years to get a rifle there where none to be had in late 08 early 09. I wound up paying twice what I wanted to and still had to wait 5 months because rifle barrels were on backorder. Everywhere.

Jeff, ginmar, it was covered on Good Morning America and in contrast, they focused on the coolness under pressure of the people dealing with the gunman and no belittlement of anyone whatsoever.

My wife made me swear not to tell people how much I like this Squidbillies number, but there’s just too much about gold, rebellion, gun nuttery, and Glenn Beck on this thread to resist.

In general, liberals are viewed as favoring gun control and Obama was widely perceived as a liberal. In particular, Obama served for eight years on the board of Chicago’s Joyce Foundation, which had gun control as one of its objectives. To the tune of $84,000, “on Obama’s watch,” Joyce sponsored a symposium at the Chicago-Kent School of Law in 1999 featuring only scholars who felt that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual’s right to bear arms, but rather only a state’s right to arm its militia. The last time a Democrat was in the White House, “assault weapons*” were banned. Gun owners were steeling themselves for what Obama would do.

*Autoloading versions of selective fire rifles used by the world’s military.

Firearms do come in all shapes and sizes, for all sorts of purposes. There is the coolness factor, and the shoe/purse factor. Then there are limited editions, themed editions, editions with elaborate engraving or woodwork, etc.

Matthew PSA—Are you married or shacking up? Before you can own a gun in Canada the authority wants to speak to your wife/virtual wife, to satisfy themselves she’s cool with it.

Gee, Dark Avenger, are you going to tell me what I think and see, too? Thanks….Not.

are you going to tell me what I think and see, too? Thanks….Not.

You’re quite welcome.

Not.

Firearms do come in all shapes and sizes, for all sorts of purposes. There is the coolness factor, and the shoe/purse factor.

Okay… not really all sorts of purposes. Mostly just “to be able to kill things at will” innit? Sure, you can do it really cool, or from a purse, or in a shoe, or in a box with a fox… but still guns are still kinda a one-trick pony.

Bagelsan bagelsan bagelsan—that’s like saying that the purpose of all dancing is to show what a good sex partner you would be. With guns the target hitting function outweighs the “kill something” function. Even among those designed to put holes in human beings, the assault rifles were designed to incapacitate rather than kill, to tie up the enemy as he drags his wounded buddy to safety (and risks getting shot himself).

True that you can’t polish your car with one or whip up a gourmet meal. But one friend of mine uses one of his to shatter tossed ritz crackers. Most are used— if at all—to put holes in paper. There are little teeny ones for use at close range, and great big ones to put holes in things a couple of miles away.

Many progressives should start stocking up.

This.  Unless y’all think the stromtroopers are going to make sure it’s a fair fight when they come to kick in the door.

Ummm… no.

While the erosion of civil liberties in the past decade has gotten frighteningly bad and while the PATRIOT Act has a lot of extremely onerous elements, we’re not there yet, nor is there an imminent danger that we’re on the verge of becoming a full-blown police state with real stormtroopers kicking millions of innocent citizens’ doors in. And no, I’m not saying that this has never happened to anyone in America, I’m saying that it hasn’t happened on a statistically significant level. 99.999% of American citizens have never had there doors kicked in by government storm troopers, and in all probability, 99.999% of Americans never will experience that. Obviously, if and when it has occurred it is inexcusable and deplorable and there’s no valid defense of such a thing, but it’s something that has probably affected fewer than 1 out of 10,000 American citizens.

That said, if we ever do reach a point where government storm troopers kicking in innocent civilians’ doors is a widespread phenomenon, having a few guns or even a full arsenal of weapons isn’t going to make a spit of difference. Best case scenario - and I use the word “best” very loosely - is that you take a few storm troopers down with you, but even so, you’re still dead.

Even if you gave guns to every man, woman, and child who doesn’t work for the federal government, isn’t in law enforcement, and doesn’t serve in the military, the proles would still be overpowered. Our government has the ability to literally vaporize Manhattan with the push of a button by the President. That heavy looking briefcase, commonly referred to as the “nuclear football”, is always within ten feet of him no matter where he is in the world, and yes, it really does exist.

This isn’t the 1700s, and a ragtag bunch of civilians with firearms isn’t going to be able to overpower the federal government should such a thing ever become necessary. If we ever get to that point, which I don’t believe we will (at least not in my lifetime), I hope to be long since gone to another continent. The only thing that could happen in the next two years that would convince me that there is even a possibility of us becoming a full-blown police state would be the election of Sarah Palin to the White House in 2012. As influential as she has become to her zombiefied teabagger douchenozzle drones, I still give her slightly less than a 0.1% chance of beating President Obama in an election, regardless of how lousy the economy is two years from now. As loud and as obnxious as the baggers have become, they aren’t nearly as numerous as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh would have you believe they are. A big part of why they won so handily last month is because voter turnout was pathetic, mostly because a lot of legitimately frustrated Obama voters didn’t bother voting this time. The baggers weren’t the biggest voting bloc, but they certainly were the loudest and most energized heading to the polls last month.

Anyway, my main point is that if America ever does hit a point where storm troopers kicking peoples’ doors in is a regular occurance, owning a gun or even a dozen guns will do very little to protect you from an oppressive police state. If we ever get there and I’m still stiuck here with no way of getting out, I’ll probably just take a carbon monoxide permanent nap in a garage before I let them take me. I’d sooner kill myself than go willingly into a civilian detention camp. That said, I don’t really believe that’s a choice I’ll ever have to make.

Thank you Roscoe.

Let’s ignore the “It Can’t Happen Here” argument and focus on this:

This isn’t the 1700s, and a ragtag bunch of civilians with firearms isn’t going to be able to overpower the federal government should such a thing ever become necessary.

We have learned time and again in the past half-century that an armed, determined, resistance can hold even the most powerful nation in the world at bay. Look at Israel vs. the British Empire, the Viet Cong vs. first France, and then the US. Look at al-Qaeda and the groups in Iraq vs. the US. Look at Hamas and Hezbollah: suicide bombers vs. tanks and aircraft. Combine that with the lack of willingness of Americans to kill their fellow Americans unless they can be othered in some way.

I don’t particularly care to test that theory.

There is one organization that civilian levels of firearms are useful against: the Klan.  Remember that one of the techniques the right wing likes to use is official sanction of private violence.  But private actors are far less well organized and equipped than the US military or police, so they can be fought using ordinary weapons.

But I really don’t want to live in that country.  I think I’ll move instead.

We have learned time and again in the past half-century that an armed, determined, resistance can hold even the most powerful nation in the world at bay.

True, though I would note that in the examples you provided of “holding the most powerful nation in the world at bay” involved the rebellious opposition being willing to sacrifice a ton of their own bodies in the process. Our occupation in Iraq has taken the lives of roughly 4,500 U.S. servicemembers. As bad as that is, it has taken more than 20 times as many Iraqi civilians.

Point being, if the United States ever did become a full-blown police state pitting the federal government against the citizenry, we may be able to mount some sort of opposition and act as a thorn in their side, but ultimately, a lot more of us will be killed than them. They have nukes. Ten million casualties in the blink of an eye with just the press of a button. No amount of personal firearms can overpower that.

But this is all academic, because I really just don’t foresee an imminent civil war between the American populace and its government, or the actual invocation of full-blown martial law anytime soon. I could be wrong, but it’s just not something I spend time worrying about, because on the one in a zillion chance that such a thing happens, there’s very little anyone could do to stop it. As someone noted above, if the government is absolutely hell bent on getting you, they’re probably going to get you. I worry about it in the same way that I worry about a one trillion ton asteroid hitting the planet and wiping out most of humanity. If it happens, it happens, and I’m probably dead, so why worry about it? We all gotta die sometime. I would prefer my government not to kill me, but if they do, they do, and I’ll be dead and probably won’t care about it anymore. Because I’m dead, and I’m pretty sure that dead people don’t worry about anything.

Life’s too short to waste time worrying about the possibility of secret NSA black helicopters firebombing my house in the middle of the night. It’s also too short to get paranoid everytime you see someone with a slightly darker complexion in an airport. 99.99999% of all commercial air travelers haven’t been killed by suicidal religious fanatics on their flights.

I’m surprised no one has brought up the real reason to buy a gun: the zombie apocalypse.

True that you can’t polish your car with one or whip up a gourmet meal.

Omg, Hector, until you mansplained all this I just naturally assumed guns were useful for these functions! What a pity my girl brain cannot appreciate the beauty of things other than cleaning/polishing and cooking! If only I knew what guns did—put holes in things? Is that fer serious because that is NEW information to me, and now that I know it I’m sure I will never disagree with you again! Because my assessment of guns can only derive from ignorance—they are used for target practice why I never even knew—! and not from, yanno, actual fundamental differences of opinion.

With guns the target hitting function outweighs the “kill something” function.

Oh of course. It’s all about showing how on-target and accurate you are, and not about killing things at all. Which is why guns exclusively fire rubber darts and paintballs and other nonlethal ammo, and not armor-piercing or hollow-tipped bullets, the latter lovingly described to me once as being able to go through living room couches or gouge huge gaping wounds respectively.

Do they people ever look back at their irrational and paranoid behavior and go, hmmm, this is stupid, maybe I should tone it down a bit because this is undignified and degrading to always fall for such crap?

No, that would require self-awareness on the point.  As a rule, those who do this repeatedly (most of them), don’t seem to have the ability to do that.

HectorB: The last time Democrats passed any comprehensive gun laws, it cost them their majority in Congress for the first time in thirty years, the law was overturned, and they’ve been silent on the issue since.  Gun buyers didn’t go nuts because of something Obama would do; they went nuts over something they had no reason to believe Obama could do.  It was pure paranoia.  They had no rational reason to believe any new gun laws were coming, but plenty of irrational ones like the one you cite. 

Oooooh, gun control was one of several issues that an urban community development group is concerned about and Obama worked for the group years ago which means that Obama has been plotting all along to take all of our guns!  That seems reasonable to you?  If so, you’re a loon.  If not, you and I agree that the run on guns was irrational.

Assume that Obama wants to ban guns as you claim.  Have you been paying attention at all?  Noticed anything about his actual ability to get Congress to pass even widely popular legislation?  Noticed anyone in the Dem party leadership saying one frakking word about new gun laws in the last, oh, 15 years?  Ever notice that big city politics aren’t the same as national politics, different issues, different actors representing different constituencies, different game altogether?

I’m not complaining about the run on guns, I wasn’t in the market to buy.  But when I needed cash in early ‘09, I was able to sell off my pistol for a couple hundred dollars more than I had paid for it new 6 years earlier.  Thanks, paranoiacs!

roscoe:  Yes, the likelihood of some citizens vs. government civil insurrection or whatever is pretty small.  I’m more worried about a campaign of terror and guerilla actions of non-government groups against citizens and each other.  Or really, against me and mine. 

As Punditus points out, the Klan or any number of other right-wing radicals are a bigger threat than the gubmint, and one that can be defended against with weapons, should the gubmint fail to keep them in check.  That is, it isn’t the stormtroopers I’m worried about right now so much as the friecorps.  Ask me again after the next election.

The only folks out there likely to actually shoot at cops?  That would be the right-wing wackos, the ones who have in fact been shooting at cops.

bagelsan, I thought I was just addressing your well-taken objection in a hoped-to-be humourous manner. I mean no disrespect to you whatever. If it’s any consolation I could show you my combination Cuisinart and floor buffer.

RobW—I was explaining why in 2008 Obama had been viewed—rightly or wrongly—by gun rights supporters as a gun-grabbing bogeyman. When a Democrat in the White House had meant that the most popular pistol in America—the Glock 17—was suddenly a forbidden “assault weapon,” it is rational to plan for the worst case scenario. Obama was on a roll—who knew what a motivated Democratic Congress would try to do?

Since Inauguration Day, progressives of all sorts have been disappointed so many times it’s hard to remember our expectations from putting Obama in the White House.

I thought I was just addressing your well-taken objection in a hoped-to-be humourous manner. I mean no disrespect to you whatever.

Ah, I see. Clearly it came across as condescending, to me, but I can understand that wasn’t intended, and of course you’re welcome to <strike>gift</strike> show your Cuisinart to me to make up for it.