Support Your Local Gun Shops
Dr. John Woods 06.20.19
Many mom and pop gun shops are in trouble. Here locally, more than a few gun stores have had to close up shop. Why? Well small businesses of all kinds are in dire straits these days for many reasons. In particular small-scale hometown gun stores are having a difficult time keeping the lights on.
It is no secret that the irony of Trump being elected partly on a platform of maintaining our 2nd Amendment rights has had a negative effect on gun sales. Manufacturers and wholesalers geared up for a different election result, but now are caught with excessive inventories and a lot of capital invested in warehouse stock. It’s an unusually precarious predicament.
With lots of gun and ammunition inventory on hand, one would think prices would dip and sales would pick up. Thus far, there is little evidence of that. Just a weekend ago at a local gun show, one dealer sold twenty guns. Twenty. Really? Even if they profited $50 per gun, which I doubt, $1000 in gun sales would hardly cover their expenses for the weekend. For some, just moving some inventory was a good thing.
There is actually very little profit in a gun sale. If money is to be made it is in accessories and shooting supplies. Ammunition sales are steady, but prices have actually gone up in some sectors. Though 1000 round cases of typical AR ammo has dropped a bit, self-defense and hunting ammo continues to be expensive, and sometimes in short supply.
Bounce these market conditions forward to “Buddy’s Gun Shop” or that little hometown shop on the corner trying to eke out a living. Sales are deflated and money is tight, but overhead expenses go on. Some shops have had to resort to only ordering guns on demand, unable to afford the cost of maintaining an in-store inventory. Even maintaining a decent stock of ammo, shooting accessories, reloading supplies, gun cleaning, and optics is tough.
Among gun dealers, the joke is always “all we need is a crisis” to stimulate gun sales. Though none of them capitalize on events such as mass shootings, the results are always a rattling of chains for more gun controls, which never work. This year, not even the calls for stricter controls have resulted in a sales rush.
We need to support our local gun shops to keep them open. They are the lifelines to all our shooting sports. So, drop into your nearby gun store and spend some money.
