By Anneloes van Iwaarden
Instead of there being a run on the banks in hard economic times, the United States is currently experiencing a run on guns.
According to a report on the BBC Radio4 Today program, many Americans are stocking up on guns in fear of stricter rules on firearms once President-elect Obama comes into office.
“In the first week of November 2008, the National Instant Criminal Background Checks show that 374,510 people bought a handgun or long gun, compared with 251,804 in the same week in 2007,” states Jodi Andes of the website Dispatch Politics.
It is a well-known fact that every time a Democratic President is elected to office it sparks a tremendous surge in demand for firearms.
Americans are buying rifles, handguns and semi-automatics because they are afraid that now a Democratic President is back in the White House, ‘gun control’ will once more be an issue on the agenda.
However, gun control has at best been a side-issue in the 2008 election campaign, so the President-elect’s exact views on firearms remain unclear.
Obama on Firearms
Washington Post columnist Robert D. Novak calls it ‘Obama’s Second Amendment Dance’, pointing towards inconsistency in President-elect Obama’s policy toward firearms.
Meanwhile the National Rifle Association (NRA) is convinced that the President-elect has a few things up his sleeve (certainly not guns) when it comes to gun control, warning gun owners of new restrictive policy.
But it is not all bad news.
“Barack Obama said he would improve the economy. Turns out he already has, at least in one retail niche: gun sales,” says The Guardian.
