Gold & Silver Forum - Anxious time: More people want weapons

Anxious time: More people want weapons
By CAROL ROBIDOUX
Union Leader Correspondent
http://www.unionleader.com/article.a...e+want+weapons

DERRY � AL BACON is explaining to one of his regular customers why the ammo he wants is out of stock. Meanwhile, three more people enter the tiny gun shop, doing an awkward two-step around other customers patiently waiting for a word with Bacon.

It will be nearly an hour before Bacon catches his breath.

"It's been like this all day, every day," he said of the constant traffic to his store, Al's Gun and Reel Shop, on Linwood Avenue. "It's difficult to keep up. In all my years here, it's never been like this."

The concern in Bacon's voice doesn't make sense, at first. What businessman wouldn't want a steady stream of customers at a time when the rest of the economy is stalling?

While his salesman, Tom, walks a customer through the different options for semi-automatic rifles, Bacon moves toward a quieter corner of the store. He explains that it's a venture he launched 39 years ago, something he calls his "dream job." It was a way to supplement his income while feeding his passion for guns. It was also a way to help build a network of fellow gun aficionados and promote responsible gun ownership.

As an afterthought, Bacon figured the store would help fight off the boredom of retirement, once his career with General Electric wound down.

Now 65, Bacon knows his "dream job" is really all he has left. The erosion of his nest egg in the past year has left him without much of a safety net.

"I thought I had done everything right," he said.

His next words are whispered, like a dark secret shared in the strictest confidence.

"People are scared. They're panic buying. They don't know what's next. There's a lot of fear out there," Bacon said, excusing himself to ring up another customer.

He recognizes the fear because it feels so familiar. Bacon said his own fear is that the current surge in gun and ammunition sales may be the beginning of the end for gun shop owners, himself included.

"What I think people are most afraid of is losing their gun rights. People have already lost so much," Bacon said. "It's a sign of the times. People are buying up everything they can, while they can. Washington right now is anti-gun, and nobody knows what Obama is going to do."

Home defense
Uncertainty over President Obama's commitment to the Second Amendment or his stance on gun control has been feeding a frenzy among gun buyers who suspect the President may soon take steps to slow or stop the sale of semi-automatic weapons altogether, Bacon said.

"It's hard keeping up already. I have to tell people I don't know when I will be able to get them what they're looking for. Companies right now are so backlogged with orders they probably will never catch up," Bacon said.

Smaller handguns -- particularly revolvers -- are flying off the shelves, along with tactical shotguns -- Bacon prefers to call them "home defense" shot guns.

"They are short-barreled shotguns, easier for a woman to handle," he says.

The other big sellers are AR-15s, most often referred to as assault weapons.

"That word carries a lot of stigma. It irks me. A bat can be an assault weapon, for that matter. This is really just a semi-automatic rifle," he said, as his salesman hands one of the black, military-style rifles over the counter to a customer, who's ready to buy.

"I've been thinking about it for a while," said the customer, a former officer at the Chester Rod and Gun Club, who doesn't want his name publicized. "I'm not trying to hide anything, but I don't want everyone to know I have guns. It's like an invitation to the bad guys. You understand."

He said what moved him to make the purchase now, after months of research on the Internet, was news reports over the scarcity of the AR-15s. Unable to find even one of the half-dozen or so rifles matching those on his computer printouts, he settles for one off the shelf at Bacon's shop.

"I've been looking. They're nowhere to be found. Everyone has the same idea. With the economy and all the layoffs of police, if someone breaks into my house and starts shooting at my family, I can't count on the fact that the police will get there in time to help. I have to protect me and my family," he said.

Same story at gun shops around the state, including Riley's Sport Shop in Hooksett, where the shelves are more or less empty, according to the sales clerk on duty yesterday.

"It's been like this since two weeks before the election. This isn't just in Derry or Hooksett or New Hampshire -- this is the whole country," he said.

As proof, demand is so high right now for ATF Form 4473, a mandatory firearms purchase form filled out before every sale, the government has run out.

"They told us to photocopy the forms we have," said the clerk at Riley's. "We are down to our last forms, as of today."

Converging fears

State Sen. Bob Letourneau, R-Derry, said the threat to gun shop owners -- and gun owners -- is real, and that the current surge in gun and ammunition sales is a direct response to that threat.

"People are speaking through their actions that they are not happy with the Obama administration. I am reading e-mails on a daily basis, from constituents and shop owners, over the threat of gun control laws," Letourneau said.

Attorney Evan Nappen, director of Pro-Gun New Hampshire Inc., said people's fear over possible anti-gun legislation is only part of the story.

"There is also fear from the economic downturn, and over situations in which the need for one to defend one's self will arise, either from lack of funding for police, to civil unrest -- whatever is running through folk's minds, people want to be able to defend themselves -- and it happens to be at a point in time when all those fears are converging," Nappen said.

Derry Republican state Rep. Frank Sapareto, whose day job is in equity markets and futures, said people shouldn't get too caught up in the negative spin on the country's economic downturn.

"Sure, gun sales are up, but other markets are up, too," Sapareto says. "We just had a report to the (House) Ways and Means Committee that housing starts are up. We don't hear much about that, but that's good news."

"People are speaking through their actions that they are not happy with the Obama administration. I am reading e-mails on a daily basis, from constituents and shop owners, over the threat of gun control laws," Letourneau said.

Underlying the fear factor has been the general public backlash over policies of the Bush administration, part of the national momentum that shifted the political power to the left, Sapareto said.

As the dust of this election settles, people will recognize the need for bipartisan efforts to improve the economic outlook and reduce the kind of fear that feed certain trends, such as the gun market, he said.

"The pendulum has reached its apex, and it's starting to swing in the right direction," Sapareto said. "I'm not a Rush Limbaugh. I don't want the President to fail. There's every reason to believe that it's not all doom and gloom. Things are going to improve."