At gun show, what Trump's election means for sales

HARRISBURG - Here at the "world's largest outdoor show," there was a gun for everyone — seven-shot pistols smaller than most men's hands and children's hunting rifles dressed in pink camouflage.  An AK-47 with American hardwood stocks hung on a wall near a model signing autographs. Wide-eyed men and women squinted down the long barrel of a 30-pound rifle that held cartridges more than five inches long.

The  muted, metallic sound of cocking hammers and racking slides accompanied the admiration  and aiming Monday afternoon in the Shooting Sports Hall of the National Rifle Association's Great American Outdoors Show.

Eight years of President Barack Obama and the fear of a Hillary Clinton presidency had meant boom times for gun sellers. Yet the show, for a Monday, was still packed, the parking lot an endless field of well-waxed pickup trucks.   Traditionally, conservative victories have slowed firearms sales, but gun manufacturers, sellers, and part dealers said they're prepared for the record highs to peak and crest in Trump's gun-friendly regime.

"We know there's a dip right now, and it's part of the process," Adam Ruonala, marketing officer for South Carolina-based Palmetto State Armory,  said Monday at the show. "People figured it was better to have it and not need it than to need it and not be able to get it. We don't necessarily encourage 'fear buying,' but it comes up."

Gun control wasn't a major topic of the 2016 primaries and presidential debates, but as polls showed Clinton leading for most of the year, the NRA was targeting her candidacy in advertisements.

One commercial showed a woman awoken by burglar, fumbling with her phone without a gun to protect her.

"Don't let Hillary leave you defenseless," the ad read.

It worked, experts say, and will work again.

"Fear drives gun sales," noted Adam Winkler, a University of California, Los Angeles, law professor and author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System is coming off its busiest year since the system began in 1998, with more than 27.5 million checks conducted.  The FBI cautions that such checks do not represent the number of firearms sold in the United States, but they are required for purchases, so give a general picture of sales.

November and December are typically the busiest months for gun sales, and after Trump's victory background checks continued to rise, albeit at smaller rates than after Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012.

Lenn Kristal, president of Precision Small Arms, said Trump's victory is merely a "convenient explanation" for a drop that was bound to happen.

"This market is due for a pause," Kristal said. "We're ready."

Obama was dubbed "the Greatest Gun Salesman in America" by both mainstream media outlets and gun enthusiast sites and publications. December 2015 was the busiest month ever for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System with 3.3 million checks, and one gun seller said terrorist attacks at home and abroad drove sales.

"We had some terrible things happen in California and Paris and it had lots of people worried about safety," said Mike Friedland of French Creek Outfitters in Phoenixville. "Trust me, I'd rather there weren't any turmoil in the world."

A month later, in January 2016, Obama gave a tearful speech about the Sandy Hook massacre and gun control measures at the White House. Record-high  background checks followed that month and February.

Stocks for gun manufacturers, including Sturm, Ruger, and American Outdoor Brands, the parent company of Smith & Wesson, dropped after the election, but November and Black Friday both set records for checks.

"I'd say we're down, but not down in the dumps," Friedland said.

The NRA referred questions about gun sales to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, where spokesman Michael Bazinet said journalists are focusing too much on politics. The foundation has been unable to validate whether terrorist attacks cause spikes in sales, Bazinet said, but he believes local reporting does.

"If there are carjackings and home invasions in the news, people think they ought to go through a background check," Bazinet said.

Trump's first January was the lowest month for background checks since May but it's too early to tell how the year will play out, Bazinet said.

"You can't continue to have year-over-year growth," he said.

Congress is set to challenge Obama-era regulations aimed at preventing the mentally impaired from obtaining guns. The Washington Post recently reported that the second-ranking official of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has proposed relaxing limits on silencers and "initiating a study on lifting the ban on imported assault weapons."

Dave Wurst, a buyer and seller with Firearms Investors Service in Bucks County, said talk of loosening restrictions is a welcome change for those in the business.

"Overall we think [Trump's victory is] going to be a good thing for the industry," Wurst said. "The perceived threat to our Second Amendment rights was just really weighing on everyone's mind."

President Trump has been criticized as running a campaign fueled by fear of terror and it's possible that his rhetoric could help keep gun sales up.

"One thing we should expect hasn't happened," Winkler said.  "Gun sales have gone up while crime has gone down. It's hard to measure fear."

Some people in the firearms industry said Trump's victory is merely another skirmish, and the sales dip is a minor setback in a long, unending war over guns.

"You just tighten your belt," said Tony Caravello, owner of handgungrips.com, as he hustled around his booth in Harrisburg on Monday. "It happened with Clinton. It happened with Bush and Obama and it will happen with Trump and whoever comes after him."