Gun Dealers Love Terrorism And Obama

According to federal data released yesterday, December gun sales followed a long pattern of spiking sharply whenever President Obama proposes new gun measures after mass shootings. From the New York Times:

The heaviest sales last month, driven primarily by handgun sales, followed a call from President Obama to make it harder to buy assault weapons after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

Fear of gun-buying restrictions has been the main driver of spikes in gun sales, far surpassing the effects of mass shootings and terrorist attacks alone, according to an analysis of federal background check data by The New York Times.

During the previous record month, December 2012, President Obama called for new buying restrictions after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

“President Obama has actually been the best salesman for firearms,” Brian W. Ruttenbur, an analyst with BB&T Capital Markets, a financial services firm, said last month.

These estimates, based on data first reported in 1998, undercount total sales, because some sales are not recorded in states that do not require background checks for private sales.

In the last decade annual gun sales have more than doubled.

NOTE: The chart at top of this post is seasonally adjusted. Here is the unadjusted chart.