President Trump not driving gun sales like Obama did during his presidency

As fears over gun control abated, firearms sales dropped about 20 percent in January — though they seem to be climbing back

Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 4/28/17. Gary Proy celebrates his 71st birthday shooting guns with his grandson Chenaniah Lewis while at Shooter's Depot on April 28, 2017.
Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 4/28/17. Gary Proy celebrates his 71st birthday shooting guns with his grandson Chenaniah Lewis while at Shooter's Depot on April 28, 2017.

Amiee Smith, co-owner of The Shooters Depot in Chattanooga, used to call President Barack Obama "the [gun] salesman of the year."

"It's true. Every time he opens his mouth, he drives up sales - which is probably the exact opposite of what he wants," Smith told the Times Free Press in 2016.

Fears have abated with the election of President Donald Trump, a favorite of the National Rifle Association, who last week promised "the eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end" at the NRA's convention in Atlanta.

But ironic as it may sound, gun sales are down. Trump has put an end to "panic buying," Smith said.

NICS checks

National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) background checks• January 2017 had 2,043,184 background checks versus 2,545,802 background checks in January 2016. Down 20 percent• February 2017 had 2,234,817 background checks versus 2,613,074 background checks in February 2016. Down 15 percent• March 2017 had 2,433,092 background checks versus 2,523,265 background checks in March 2016: Down 3 percent

"Trump is excellent for the Second Amendment and the firearms industry as a whole," she said. "However, he's not good for gun sales."

The stall in sales is borne out, somewhat, by federal and state background check figures, which are a proxy for gun sales. National figures show gun purchases climbed steadily through November, peaked in December, and then dropped sharply in January, when Trump was inaugurated - though they appear to be bouncing back.

Nationwide, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System shows background checks were down from last year by 20 percent in January, 15 percent in February and about 3 percent in March from last year.

It's a mixed bag in the three states in the Chattanooga region. Georgia and Alabama followed the national trend - but federal background checks are up in Tennessee.

The change in presidents hasn't had much effect at Carter Shooting Supply and Range on Highway 58 in Harrison, said Matt Howington, a salesman there.

"It's been fairly steady. It's down a little. But I wouldn't say it's down that much," Howington said. "[Trump] is good for the Second Amendment, but the general public is not worried as much about the gun laws."

Gun prices have gone down since Trump's election, at least for such guns as the AR-15. It's the semi-automatic civilian version of the M-16, the rifle used by U.S. forces in Vietnam. Gun stores stocked up on AR-15s, since they feared a renewed effort to ban some rifles under Hillary Clinton.

But not Larry Hopper, the owner of Shooter's Supply - formerly Sportsman's Supply and Services - in a wooden A-frame building on Hixson Pike near the Highway 153 interchange. Hopper correctly called the election for Trump.

"I stuck to my guns," he said. "The pendulum had swung too far in one direction."

So, even though gun wholesalers encouraged Hopper to stock up on rifles, he didn't bite.

"Fact is, I've got about 20 'boat anchors' on my wall right now," Hopper said of his current stock of rifles.

Gun production soared during Obama's two terms. The U.S. manufacture of firearms stood at about 4.5 million weapons in 2008, the year Obama was elected, and peaked at about 10.8 million in 2013, according an annual report done last year by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The report didn't have any numbers newer than 2014.

Lawrence Keane, senior vice president for government and public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation - the lobbying arm for gun manufacturers - acknowledged the firearms market is sensitive to the currents of politics.

"That lasts for a period of time and when the rhetoric by the politicians subsides ... they [gun sales] normalize," Keane told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "It's normalizing."

With Trump as president, groups advocating tougher gun laws acknowledge there's little prospect for them to make gains at the national level. But they point to increasing success in recent years at the state level in some states, where they have enacted a number of measures to require universal background checks and tighten access to guns for domestic abusers.

After too often looking for a knock-out punch that wasn't attainable, the gun control groups "finally took something out of the playbook of the other side that was quite successful" for the NRA, said Harry Wilson, a professor at Roanoke College in Salem, Va., who has written extensively on gun politics. With the NRA also notching state-level gains, the result is a patchwork of laws meaning that "when it comes to guns, red states are getting redder and blue states are getting bluer," Winkler said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or on Twitter @meetforbusiness or 423-757-6651.

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