“We had anticipated this category [hunting] to be below last year as did others in the space but we underestimated the decline,” Dick’s Sporting Goods COO Joe Schmidt told investors. “We all knew the significant increase in sales during the past couple of years was temporary and driven by concern for both legislative action that would broadly change our gun laws.” Broadly, maybe. The recent rise in gun sales was more of a perfect storm – post-Newtown panic along with a liberalization of concealed carry laws and a general upsurge from female and younger buyers. A surge which has now stabilized and subsided. As marketwatch.com reports . . .
background checks are down nine percent this year vs. the same time in 2013. The august publication agrees with Dick’s: it’s all about the legislation. Or lack thereof.
President Barack Obama famously said on the campaign trail that people in small towns cling to either guns or religion. Under his administration, the right to cling is untainted, his efforts for fairly mild legislative action are dead in Congress, and there’s little interest from his administration in taking executive action.
The Newtown, Conn., school shooting in 2012 shocked a nation but did not lead to a consensus on what to do about it. And by now even the most concerned of gun enthusiasts has concluded there’s nothing to fear.
Unless they live in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut or California. Oh, and Hawaii. Or any other state and keep track of gun control legislation in the aforementioned jurisdictions.