Obama 'stimulus' has sale of guns booming

Obama 'stimulus' has sale of guns booming
By Peter Bronson
The little shop off Main Street in Newtown has friendly banter like a barbershop and a family of regulars like a neighborhood bar. But they don't sell haircuts or the hair of the dog. They sell guns, and business is booming like a 12-gauge.

"Go anywhere else and the economy is in trouble, but walk into a gun shop and you'll think the economy is fine," says the helpful guy behind the counter at One Shot.

He's right. While I was there, a steady parade of shoppers eyeballed firearms.

"I saw it coming last summer," said Madeira doctor Lee Megois, who was shopping for a Glock. "I saw how the election was going."

One Shot owner Chris Roma said sales took off "the day after the election." He has guns and ammo back-ordered and sells whatever he gets.

"You can't find a box of ammo in a Wal-Mart in California," said William Smith of San Diego. Some gun owners are instinctively suspicious of pens and notebooks, so I'm not sure he was really Will Smith. But he's right about a shortage of guns and ammo in some states.

Even Texas is running low. The Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel blamed hysteria. The Wall Street Journal said "fear and greed" have propelled a 27 percent spike in background checks for gun sales so far this year. Even the London Telegraph wondered if buyers are worried that "the deepening economic crisis will fuel a crime wave."

But all those reports also mentioned the same thing the guys at One Shot said: Obama.

Although he campaigned as a supporter of the Second Amendment, they say Obama is the most anti-gun president ever. The NRA gave him an "F" in 2004, and calls him "Anti-gun. Period."

They worry that Obama will restore an assault-weapons ban or tax the brass off bullets. The NRA points out that at an anti-gun rally in 1999, Obama proposed a 500 percent tax on ammunition.

"I support our president," said Megois, "but it's the people around him - (Nancy) Pelosi, (Attorney General Eric) Holder."

It didn't help when Holder talked about reviving the assault weapons ban; or when Obama went to Mexico and quoted a bogus statistic that "90 percent" of the guns in Mexico drug violence come from the U.S. (Only about a third of guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico are sent to the U.S. to be traced, and many are untraceable. Fox News said real the number is 17 percent; FactCheck.org says 34 percent.)

No wonder gun owners don't trust politicians or reporters who don't know a legal semi-automatic from an outlawed fully automatic. So customers at One Shot are stocking up. "I've never seen it like this," Roma said.

Who knew Obama's "stimulus" for gun shops would sell more firearms than Smith & Wesson?
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To comment, contact Enquirer columnist Peter Bronson at 513-768-8301 or pbronson@enquirer.com. Check out his new blog, "Bronson is Always Right": www.cincinnati.com/blogs.