“I’m selling high-capacity magazines as fast as I can get them, and people are buying ammunition not by the box but three and four cases at a time,” a gun store owner told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1994. The price of an AR-15 tripled as so-called “assault rifles” were about to be banned.

As pundits, politicians, and anti-gun activists hype more gun-control measures, it usually has the opposite effect. American citizens react by stocking up on weapons and ammo.

It’s a common American reaction. When Twinkies threaten to vanish forever, Americans rushed to stock up on the largely insignificant sponge cake. In the light of a perceived government incandescent light-bulb ban, Americans began stockpiling boxes of treasured 60 watt bulbs.