Business was brisk at a Minneapolis-area gun show over Thanksgiving weekend as people streamed in and bought up shotguns, hunting knives. and at least a few semiautomatic rifles — the gun most gun-rights advocates think an Obama presidency might ban, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “It’s the Obama effect,” said Joel Rosenberg, who teaches a gun course for people who want permits to carry handguns. He’s teaching one this month and it’s full, for the first time all year, even though the trend for renewals of carry permits has been down in Minnesota. “Obama is the first president or presidential candidate who has been on the board of an antigun group [the Joyce Foundation],” said Rosenberg. “Folks are talking as if this Jan. 20 is the day that changes everything. He has said he favors ‘common sense’ laws, and for a lot of gun people, that’s not very good.”
Gun sales are volatile, often rising this time of the year for hunting season and Christmas, so it’s difficult to pin the buying on one factor, experts warn. The Chicago Sun-Times quoted Peter Hamm of the Brady Campaign against Gun Violence as saying, “Anyone who thinks they need to rush out and buy a firearm clearly has not been paying attention to how quickly we make progress on this issue. We don’t think these are first-time buyers. We think they are people who already have more than enough guns at their homes to protect themselves and are buying more.”