“Assault rifles were selling like crazy. People were stockpiling.”
Overwhelmed, manager Ryan Horsley had to do what no employee would think of doing just days before Christmas: He disconnected the phone lines for three days.
“We had to shut everything off,” says Horsley, whose family has owned Red’s Trading Post, the state’s oldest gun shop, since 1936. “We were swamped in the store and online.”…
Franklin Armory, a firearms maker in Morgan Hill, Calif., is telling dealers it will take six months to fill their orders. The company plans to hire more workers and buy more machines to catch up, says Franklin Armory’s President Jay Jacobson…
“Assault rifles were selling like crazy,” says Kotis, who is president and CEO of Kotis Holdings, a real estate development company based in Greensboro. “People are stockpiling.”
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rogerb on December 30, 2012 at 8:09 AM
Just to educate this out-of-towner: was an AR-15 actually used at Sandy Hook, and is it an assault rifle?
OldEnglish on December 30, 2012 at 8:23 AM
CorporatePiggy on December 30, 2012 at 8:24 AM
An AR-15 was used at Sandy Hook. And no, its not an assault rifle, but it looks identical to what IS an assault rifle. The military version is an assault rifle. The civilian version just looks identical to the military version, which is where the confusion comes from.
thphilli on December 30, 2012 at 8:26 AM
Thank you! looks like things could get a tad messy, later on.
OldEnglish on December 30, 2012 at 8:31 AM
Best thing Obama has done this year for the economy. And right at Christmas too.
MikeA on December 30, 2012 at 9:10 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_gun
davidk on December 30, 2012 at 9:42 AM
I bought an AR-15 right before Christmas. It was the last one in the store, and the price wasn’t jacked up, so I was lucky.
But I waited too long to buy more mags and I only have a small amount of ammo. The online sellers seem to be completely out. Are stores like BassPro still getting in .223 shipments, anyone know?
juliesa on December 30, 2012 at 10:07 AM
It takes a special kind of patriot whose initial action after a massacre is to stockpile weapons and ammo.
Pablo Honey on December 30, 2012 at 10:12 AM
Yes. Not a lot of the bulk stuff around though, and what there is online is ludicrously priced. Cheaper than Dirt had some decidedly crappy looking 193 going for over a buck around…
CorporatePiggy on December 30, 2012 at 10:12 AM
It takes a very special kind of idiot to not realize how badly liberals overplayed their hand after a massacre. They went “all in” and the buying public “called”.
Yoop on December 30, 2012 at 10:26 AM
CorporatePiggy on December 30, 2012 at 10:12 AM
Thanks. I’ll try to do some shopping this week.
juliesa on December 30, 2012 at 10:28 AM
It was Obama’s comment about doing something about gun violence regardless of the politics that created this. Obama is creating a huge demand for these weapons with his reckless comments.
Ted Torgerson on December 30, 2012 at 10:30 AM
An AR-15 is not an “assault rifle” by Connecticut state law. There is no uniform federal law for what constitutes an “assault rifle;” it’s a loaded emotionally charged term that politicians use to advance an agenda. The only federal restriction on “assault weapons” actually has no such language; it makes the purchase of “fully automatic ballistic weaponry” prohibitively expensive and troublesome.
Nancy Lanza purchased all the guns in her possession legally, including the AR-15, but the assault weapons ban in CT didn’t prevent Adam from using them with ill intent.
gryphon202 on December 30, 2012 at 10:48 AM
More than that. People are concerned that Zero will become even more of a dictator than he is. Reports are circulating that he plans to use HHS to confiscate weapons and inter people. These reports may or may not be factual, but Zero and his marxist clowns have people frightened.
dogsoldier on December 30, 2012 at 11:00 AM
David’s link to “assault rifle” in Wiki is very useful. The type was originated with the German Sturmgewehr Stg44. Essentially, changing battlefield conditions rendered the older bolt action battle rifles less useful. The idea was to design a rifle that was cheaply and easily made using stamped parts wherever possible, a smaller and less powerful cartridge still effective at the closer ranges of modern battle, both cheaper to manufacture and lighter and smaller so that more rounds could be carried. It also used the quickly detachable high-capacity magazine and was select fire, permitting semi-automatic fire (one shot per trigger pull) and fully-automatic fire (keeps firing until the trigger is released or the magazine is emptied.)it is essentially a form of machine gun. These rifles proved to be vast improvements as weapons over the old bolt action rifles, and even to the semi-auto battle rifles like the M1 Garand.
The “assault weapon” (a term created by the anti-gun lobby and popular with the media) you can buy like any other rifle is basically an assault rifle, but without the single most important feature, the capacity to select fire in fully-automatic mode.
The anti- Second Amendment crowd has intentionally, and to some degree successfully conflated the full-auto capable assault rifles with their semi-auto counterparts, convincing many that you can go down to the local gun shop and buy a machine gun. While it is possible for a private citizen to own a machine gun, they are heavily regulated. Purchase requires either a special category of Federal Firearms License or a full FBI background check, and a $200 transfer tax. No new full auto firearms can be manufactured or imported for the civilian market, so the pool is limited and the prices are astronomical.
novaculus on December 30, 2012 at 1:30 PM