I’ve got a number of friends who work in the firearms business as distributors. They’ve been at it for a while, and they usually give me a heads up whenever they see trends developing. One of those friends just gave me a heads-up about something he’s seeing that might make you reconsider doing your shopping at the last minute . . .
The holiday season is the busiest time of the year for everyone in retail sales. From Prada dresses to Taurus handguns, anyone who sells something expects to be in the black for November and December even if the rest of the year’s been a downer. Even when the economy is in the crapper, those two months account for a ridiculous percentage of the year’s sales.
Usually there’s a little slack in the distribution system for firearms. The factories tend to have a little bit of product on hand, ready to go even after the distributors have had their fill. But around Christmas, distributors tend to up their orders in anticipation of the coming buying bonanza and take out most of that slack. Kind of like what happened to Ruger early last year when they stopped taking new orders.
That’s during a relatively quiet year. Add in the coming presidential election and the current trend in firearms, and you’d better believe that the orders are going to be bigger than ever. At least, that’s the prediction from my guy. And what that means for consumers is that there isn’t going to be much left for your local gun store to re-stock once they’ve chugged through their inventory.
So the advice I’m getting, and passing on to you, is to do your firearms-related holiday shopping now. Get it out of the way, stash it in the closet and laugh maniacally when the ready reserve of guns and equipment runs low and prices start to climb. The fates are conspiring to make this one of the most gunpowder filled holiday seasons ever, and while that’s good for us gun owners (growing the popularity of guns and all) it isn’t so much for our pocket books.