People are stockpiling guns and ammunition in a way that no one has ever seen in this country. And it’s not just conservative rightwing extremists who are bitterly clinging to their guns and religion and racist antipathies as Obama earlier mentioned, either; it’s ordinary people. Even liberal Democrats are buying guns.
A CNN story puts it this way:
AURORA, Colorado (CNN) — Gun shops across the country are reporting a run on ammunition, a phenomenon apparently driven by fear that the Obama administration will increase taxes on bullets or enact new gun-control measures.
“Driven by fear.” That’s probably the best way to put it.
Obama talked about “hope” during his demagogic run for the White House. But a lot of Americans are now finding cause to be very afraid of what Obama hopes for.
I see Obama saying he has no intention of running the auto industry while he fires CEOs, picks boards of directors, converts to common shares of stock so his administration can have an inside presence to change company policies, dictates the advertising budget of an auto company, threatens hedge funds that owned secured debt in auto companies, and changes bankruptcy proceedings to favor politically connected unions. If that’s what NOT wanting to run the auto industry looks like, I’d sure be terrified to see what Obama would do if he really wanted to run them. And he’s doing even more to impose his will on the banking and finance industries.
I see such naked displays of fascism, and I am driven by fear.
The Obama administration uses the Department of Homeland Security to contact every police agency in the nation to inform them that returning combat veterans, pro-lifers, and opponents of illegal immigration are not citizens who can be trusted, but should be categorized as “rightwing extremists.”
I see such clearly ideological-driven partisan political branding, and I am driven by fear.
Barack Obama and key members of his administration have repeatedly demagogued guns and the U.S. gun industry by falsely claiming that “90 percent of the guns going into Mexico come from the United Stats.” If this isn’t demagoguery and propaganda, what is it?
I see such demagogic and dishonest behavior coming out of an administration, and I am driven by fear.
And so we see movements by states to say, “We shouldn’t have to be afraid of our own federal government.” We see unprecedented movements of states to assert their rights under the 10th Amendment. And so Montana passes an in-your-face gun law intended to directly challenge the Obama administration. Utah and Texas began to follow with their own versions of a firearms freedom act. And the floodgates are opening, as Minnesota and South Carolina are also entering the revolt. And numerous states are beginning to sponsor state sovereignty resolutions.
States, too, are clearly being driven by fear.
Obama could largely end this fear by simply clearly stating what his until-now twisted and contradictory stance on guns actually is. The fact that he will not do so only stimulates MORE being driven by fear.
Well, there’s a single good thing coming out of Obama’s politics of fear. To cite Vice President Joe Biden, all of Obama’s fearmongering is creating “a three letter word”: “J-O-B-S.” In the gun and ammunition industry.
The Obama administration has to make up numbers to justify how its stimulus program has failed. They have to ignore the 2.6 million jobs they’ve lost and point to 150,000 jobs they can’t show they’ve created.
I think Obama is looking in the wrong place for his “jobs.” He should point to the jobs in the gun and ammunition industry that he has inspired.
There’s no question that these industries owe their success to Obama and the fear he has created in millions of American hearts and minds. Obama should take credit for it.
More stockpiling ammunition: Fear of potential Obama laws causing mass sales
FLORENCE – Every day, Darren Newsom’s three Bitterroot Valley Ammunition facilities crank out 300,000 rounds of ammunition.
It’s not nearly enough.
“I’m going about 100,000 rounds in the wrong direction every day,” Newsom said. “We probably have about six months of back orders right now.”
Newsom has been in the ammunition manufacturing business for more than 20 years and he’s never seen demand this high.
Fearful of the Obama administration’s potential to tighten gun control laws, people from all over the country are stocking up on guns and ammunition.
“I went through the Clinton years and there was a bit of a scare then,” Newsom said. “This is like the Clinton years on steroids. On the day of the election, our phones started going nuts. It hasn’t stopped since.”
As a master distributor for ATK – the world’s largest ammunition business – Bitterroot Valley Ammunition supplies other ammunition manufacturers around the country with the components needed to make bullets.
“I get a million primers in every other day and most are shipped out the very next day,” he said. “I have 100 million primers on back order right now. We just can’t get enough of them.”
At a recent gun show in Salt Lake City, Newsom sold somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 rounds in the first two hours.
“It’s just unreal,” he said. “Somewhere in lots of basements around the country, there are millions of rounds of ammunition being stored.”
Local businesses have felt the ammunition shortage.
At Bob Ward’s in Hamilton, Mike Matteson said there has been quite a run on ammunition and reloading supplies like bullets and powder since the election.
“We are especially low right now with pistol ammunition,” Matteson said. “There are four or five calibers that we don’t even have on our shelves.”
Matteson said he didn’t believe manufacturers were prepared for the panic buying that’s occurred since the election.
“They tell us that they’re months behind on some calibers – .22 ammo is really tough to come by,” he said. “Our gun sales are up somewhere between 30 (percent) to 35 percent or better. A good percentage of those sales are pistols.”
Firearm and ammo sales aren’t the only place where concerns about gun control are cropping up.
Ravalli County Sheriff Chris Hoffman has seen a marked increase in the number of people applying for concealed weapons permits since November.
Montana is a “will-issue” state for concealed weapons permits. Any law-abiding citizen who fills out the application and can show they’ve completed some form of firearm safety course can obtain a permit.
The county is averaging about 38 requests for renewals or new permits a month. Last year, the requests averaged about 25.
“It’s definitely a noticeable increase,” Hoffman said.
The sheriff said he’s hearing from people who are concerned about what might happen over the next four years with the gun control issue.
“We are being asked what would be the stance of local law enforcement if the federal government calls for the confiscation of firearms,” Hoffman said. “That’s a very real concern for people.”
Gary Marbut, the longtime president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association in Missoula, said the seeds of the current ammunition shortage can be traced back almost a decade to the Y2K scare.
“Many people became concerned about their ability to get ammunition back then and they stocked up quite a bit,” Marbut said.
In the intervening years, China blossomed and bought up world copper supplies. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan used up warehouses full of U.S. ammunition that needed to be replenished. That forced higher prices for civilian ammunition and people started using some of the bullets they had squirreled away after Y2K, Marbut said.
And now, with the current economic and political uncertainty, people are looking to restock their supplies at a time when most ammunition manufacturers aren’t willing to expand their operations.
“The whole demand side of this is so flexible and the supply side is not,” he said.
The ammunition shortage is creating a bit of an economic boon for Ravalli County.
Newsom plans to open a fourth manufacturing facility in Stevensville sometime in September. He employs about 50 people right now and could add up to another 100.
“There are a lot of people out of work right now,” he said. “Two years ago, I probably couldn’t find 10 people to go to work for us. Now I have 10 people a day coming in here looking for a job.”
Newsom believes the need for ammunition won’t go away. This scare is creating a whole new group of ammunition customers for the future, he said.
Need proof?
Take the .380 caliber pistol. A year ago, Newsom said there was hardly a demand for the ammunition. Since then, the .380 auto pistol has become very popular with women.
“One year ago, it wasn’t in demand and now it’s some of the most sought ammunition in the U.S.,” he said. “There are more people getting into shooting and that’s one thing about ammunition – you can only shoot it once.”
People need to understand that the Obamamania fear that is creating such an incredibly high demand for guns and ammunition is not merely fear of Obama gun laws; it is fear of the future that Obama’s out-of-control spending will have on our economy.
We may very well have a short-term recovery (which is what happened during the Great Depression following the stock market crash of Black Friday in October 1929); but that recovery will be devoured by the sheer massive weight of trillions and trillions of dollars in debt. Obama will spend $9.3 trillion and nearly DOUBLE the national debt. The administration has spent, loaned, or committed more than $12.8 trillion . This year Obama is spending more than four times as much as George Bush did in 2008. Obama is creating more debt than every single president from George Washington to George W. Bush – COMBINED. And the Congressional Budget Office says that by 2019 a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will be going to pay down the national debt.
That mind-boggling spending and that mind-boggling debt is a disaster weighting to happen. It is only a matter of time before a ten trillion ton anvil falls on the American economy.
Trends Research Institute CEO Gerald Celente is on record predicting food riots by 2012 as massive spending creates massive inflation and devaluing of the currency. If Celente is a nutjob, he is a nutjob that CNN, The Economist, USA Today, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The New York Times, CBS News, The Detroit News, the Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and the New York Post have all gone on public record to praise for his incredible predictive accuracy.
People are scared, and judging by the continuing massive purchases of people stockpiling guns and ammo, they’re not clearly not getting any less scared.
So you get your gun. And lock and load. Because the beast is coming.
Start Thinking Right 