“Everybody needs money,” Danny DeVito sneers at Gene Hackman in David Mamet’s classic movie Heist, “That’s why they call it ‘money.'” If Smith & Wesson is making ‘money’ hand over fist these days, why won’t the Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch blog show them some love? Their headline? “Smith & Wesson’s Future Depends On Continued Paranoia.” This puzzles me, because last I checked the WSJ hadn’t waded into the blue state/red state debate. As capitalists, the only color they’re supposed to care about is green . . .
The header gives you the numbers. S&W had a banner 2013. Despite declines in government and rifle sales, their profits jumped by 42% in the third quarter of 2013 and their stock price got a nice 18% bounce this week. Those are astronomical numbers for a ‘legacy’ U.S.-based industrial manufacturing company.
Even gunnies acknowledge that numbers this good are too good to last. Level-headed analysts like Wedbush and Northland Capital have urged investors to be cautious before jumping on the S&W bandwagon, noting that 30% year-on-year increases in handgun sales simply can’t be sustained forever.
These analysts understand growth like this can only be sustained in the short term, that it’s almost always driven by external forces that disrupt the ordinary curves of supply and demand. In the case of firearms, those external forces are named Obama and Bloomberg.
WSJ blog’s headline doesn’t say that, though. It implies that S&W’s sales surge was driven by paranoid ‘Murricans buying (literally) insane quantities of handguns, because of fear and distrust of their gum’mint. If this were an oil bubble or a real estate bubble, the WSJ blog would call it just that: a bubble. But when it’s guns, it becomes ‘paranoia.’ Media bias much?
I am looking forward to your reports Nick
Before calling it “paranoia,” maybe the schmuck at the WSJ should have spoken to the people of Connecticut.
By the way it sure sucks to be unarmed, doesn’t it?
And remember, the old adage applies in Germany as well, “When seconds count, der Polizei are only minutes away.”
Keep in mind, the fearless leader of moms demand action is a former public relations professional. I can just imagine the furious cut and paste going on as she grabs pictures like this trying to scare Mr. and Mrs. America about the paramilitary domestic terrorists bragging on the Internet about how they break state and federal firearms law.
Our right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution. Unfortunately, we live in a completely political environment, and image can be everything when it comes to manipulating public opinion and bringing political pressure to bear on weak decision-makers
Agreed. If I were located in a blue state such as CA I would choose a much more innocuous disguise, like a nun outfit or Barney. Wait- that may be a tad creepy. The skullface ski masks are beginning to get on my nerves a little bit though regardless. Enough of the tacticool operator crap already. We don’t need that kind of thing on our side.
He should have worn an Obama mask.
Heist reference for the win. love it.
We decided this 239 years ago next month when the government agents came out to collect our weapons. Shots were fired, and as they say… the rest is history. Not to worry, though. We have several states in the NEW England area who would be happy to follow UK law. Starting in NEW YORK City.
This would be a good case for some civil disobedience. If a significant number of the kids were to, say, during morning announcements raise their “finger guns” in silent protest.
Fortunately where I’m at in Southern Illinois, they’ve more sense than this, because there’s too much of a chance of something like that happening – even for 10 year olds. Of course, our B-of-E also just unanimously approved a shooting club for our high-school. Rather different mentality.
they got a company run by an elitist liberal to change its policy slightly and we got California to go shall issue i think we are ahead.
Such sore losers.
If you do the research and/or read it long enough, you realize that while the editorial page is conservative, the rest of the paper is very liberal. So, no surprises with his article.
I am a staunch Second Amendment supporter, but not a supporter of trophy hunting, by which I mean killing animals, not for food, or even to protect your valuable lifestock from predators, but so you can post a picture of yourself with your kill. It hardly seems sporting to kill a large cat, or any other large, predatory game, from a distance, with a modern firearm, or even with a cross-bow or bow and arrow. You want some real sport, take on the same beast with a short spear, or, better yet, a knife. Now you’ve leveled the playing field, and, if you survive, will have something of which you can legitimately be proud, provided you ignore questions of why the animal needed to be killed in the first place.
Simple … Whichever holds the most ammo!
…In liberally-retarDed states that might not be much of a difference though.
And we are back to “instead of you company name” which was fixed for a while.