Democrat Presidents have been a boon for the firearms industry, albeit unintentionally.
Barack Obama was once named the “best gun salesman in America” due to the tendency for gun sales to spike whenever he would float gun control. The industry as a whole grew an estimated 158% during Obama’s tenure. Things naturally slowed down under Donald Trump because there was no threat of forthcoming gun control, though sales did begin to skyrocket in 2020 amid a field of anti-gun Democrat presidential candidates, a pandemic, and rising crime that coincided with the “defund the police” movement.
And those sales have continued under Joe Biden’s resign, to the extent that ammo manufacturers are now suffering shortages.
As Peter Suciu writes at 19FortyFive:
As firearm sales continue to set records, ammunition for all the new guns has remained in short supply, even as some companies are running their respective factories on nearly 24/7 production schedules. Supply simply can’t meet the demand, and for shooters that has been bad news, but for the shareholders of the ammunition companies this has been very good indeed.
In its recent earnings call, Vista Outdoors reported fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021 operating results. On Thursday, the company announced a forty percent jump in quarterly sales to $597 million, including a thirty-seven percent increase in shooting sports sales to $403 million. The company reported that its gross profits more than doubled to $182 million the final quarter of fiscal year 2020 (FY20), compared to $85 in the year-ago quarter.
Rommel Dionisio, gun industry analyst for Aegis Capital, wrote in a report cited by Forbes.com, “The ammunition industry remains capacity constrained, with consumer demand well exceeding available supply.”
This comes as gun sales set records in April, with 1.7 million background checks completed for gun sales, the most of any April ever. Sales have averaged between 1.5 and 2 million guns per month since the pandemic began. The first quarter of 2021 saw the most gun background checks in history.
Matt Palumbo is the author of Dumb and Dumber: How Cuomo and de Blasio Ruined New York, Debunk This: Shattering Liberal Lies, and Spygate
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