Why the gun industry secretly loves Obama: Sales of firearms have surged since he took office

The bottom line: Since Obama took office, Ruger’s stock has climbed more than 400 percent, outperforming gold.


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I own between two and three dozen firearms. Fully a quarter of them are Rugers. I consider them to be some of the most overengineered, best buys in modern firearms, and they are made in the US, by American workers.
I haven't bought anything new since the President took office, and not much in the way of ammo either, because prices have been so artificially inflated. I do lust after Ruger's new SR-556 (I want one in 6.8 to be my "ranch rifle"), but I have a kid in preschool, and just had to help my old lady buy the VW wagon she had to have, so I'm still making do with the 181-xx Mini-14 that Ruger built when it was Bill Ruger's company, back in 1980, and that I bought as a "pre-ban" rifle when I was 20, in 1998, during the '93 AWB. After the POTUS was elected, I could hardly go into a gun store without getting into an argument with some jackass who was telling everyone to buy every "black rifle" in the place, because "Obama was gonna ban them." I can't tell you how many times I tried to explain that the POTUS doesn't write the laws, and that the COTUS was never in a million years gonna pass anything like an AWB, because it was suicide. Generally, this was recieved with a look of vauge distrust, and confusion that I didn't just automatically nod, and join in the Obama-bashing. WTF was wrong with me? Anyway, there is a saying about the length of the relationship between a fool and his money, isn't there?


Ammo prices have been atrocious too. Part if this is to be attributed to the fact that there are two wars going on, and so there is no "military surplus" ammo. I was told that in 2009 Lake City was turning out 4 million rounds of 5.56mm a day and not keeping up with what was being shot up in Iraq and Afghanistan. As metal prices have risen, the materials used to manufacture ammo have become more expensive, particularly the copper that was for so long that most common jacketing material. Now we're seeing nylon and other materials being substituted, and in many cases, performing better, since their cost is justified because copper is just as costly.

There was also a really great article in the Atlantic last month about the history of the NRA and the private gun-ownership movement in the US, and its origins, which might surprise a lot of folks. Catch that if you can, too.

I know that current is a left-leaning site, and I am definitely a left leaning thinker, but I see no reason to pick daisies while people who obviously have ill will for folk like myself arm themselves to the teeth. I was born in Huntsville, Alabama, and grew up in the rural county between Huntsville, and Tennesse. I owed $1 on a Glock 26 on my twenty-first birthday, and had a CCW two weeks later. When I was in my early twenties, my dentist's office was next door to a women's clinic, and so I had to walk past picketing nutcases every six months at least, just to get my teeth cleaned. By the time he moved to a different office building, my dentist didn't even mention it when he came in and my holstered gun was lying on the floor beside the chair on top of whatever book I had been reading in the waiting room (You don't want to be strapped up while you're in the dentist's chair, and he's using your torso for a tray table).

Anyhow, sorry for the wandering monlouge, talk amongst yourselves.