Gun stores around Charleston are finding it difficult to keep ammunition in stock amid fears that the Obama administration will impose a new wave of bans and crackdowns on weapons and bullets.
The concerns have been around since November, but retailers report a recent spike in demand, especially for shells.
Some enthusiasts are driving hours, even from out of state, to load up on their personal supply once they hear stocks are available, retailers said.
“My shelves have never been so scarce of bullets,” Arlyn Pendergast, owner of the ATP Gun Shop in Summerville, said Tuesday. “I’ve had people come up from Florida and buy 15,000 to 20,000 rounds.”
A pile of once fired brass of the approptiate calibers, scrap wheel weights to be melted down and cast into bullets, a large supply of appropriate gunpowder and primers and I make all the ammunition I need. Very inexpensively. Until the market believes the Second Amendment is not in Obama’s ‘cross hairs’ (apt metaphor, eh?), the stockpiling will continue.
This is a good time to read (or re-read) ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand. We are living the fiction she wrote about.
This reminds me: I need to get to the range soon with the kids.
Is this an April Fool’s story?
libraryjim [url=”http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/21489/#350238″]3[/url] asks:
[quote]Is this an April Fool’s story?[/quote]
Not at all. We who do This Kind of Thing know that it’s been going on for several months at least. Prices and (especially) demand for most kinds of ammunition (never mind firearms themselves) are up, sometimes drastically. I use several online retailers for ammunition (perfectly legal, for those unfamiliar with This Kind of Thing), and fresh supplies can be gone in a day. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Further deponent sayeth not.
regards,
GR
LJ, ditto JPB’s comment. It is a fact and no joke. Next time you are in a WalMart stop by the ammo counter and note the empty shelves. Same at the Internet sites where backorders are an, unfortunately, common thing.
Be nice to see a new line of convenience stores open up nationwide sort of like 7-11 but branded as ATF where they sell only alcohol, tobacco and firearms. But that’s just me.
Part of the problem are the inacurate scare storys like this:
“Stick a couple of AK-47 rifles in your trunk, and chances are you’ll whiz right through.” From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090401/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_drug_war_guns
The problem is that AK-47 is a military machine gun which is not available in the US. So these weapons can’t be smuggled into Mexico from the US. Of course the reporter could be confusing semi-auto only weapons. But later on in the story the reporter mentions grenades and other destructive devces which are coming from Central and South America. You could also get fully automatic weapons from there to. So much of the article is either wrong or propaganda.
All of this seems calculated to whip up a liberal drive for liberal style gun control and justifies the stock piling.
Br. Michael (#6.) said
“But later on in the story the reporter mentions grenades and other destructive devces which are coming from Central and South America. You could also get fully automatic weapons from there to. So much of the article is either wrong or propaganda.”
==================================================================
Its both wrong and it IS propaganda.
Simple supply-and-demand, price-and-availability and ease-of-smuggling considerations say that the most logical source of fully-automatic military weapons and explosive military devices is from south of Mexico’s border and NOT from the United States.
There have been 65-plus years of Marxist inspired warfare in Central and South America and as a result millions of fully-automatic weapons and explosive devices have been supplied by various parties to various parties in the nations to the south of Mexico.
No serious-minded narco-trafficking criminal or revolutionary would look to the United States as a place to purchase fully-automatic weapons.
And no serious-minded narco-trafficker or revolutionary would prefer a semi-automatic weapon purchased in the USA to a fully-automatic weapon purchased on the black market in Mexico or from arms dealers just south of Mexico.
However, the anti-gun crowd is fanatically driven to overthrow the Second Amendment and they have proven themselves capable of doing almost anything, honest or extremely dishonest and unConstitutional, in order to achieve their goal.
So what happens if Obama gets up one day, goes on TV and says,
“I have decided to sign a treaty with the UN to set aside the constitution and make the UN Charter our basis for all laws in this country. I’ve fired the Secret Service, disbanded the Marine Guard, and hired teamsters as my body guard. Therefore, all gun ownership illegal from this point on.”
My thought is that the military and Special Forces would take him down and throw him in Gitmo, but then they’d have to throw 3/4 of Congress in after him, since they support him.
There was a book published in 1935 as part of the [i]Operator #5[/i] series: Blood Reign of the Dictator. A senator is elected president and suspends the constitution, setting himself up as President for Life. It’s up to a secret branch of the Secret Service to restore Democracy. (reprint ISBN 0809515911) Have a Library “interlibrary loan” it for you.
Jim Elliott
North Florida
Reply to LibraryJim (#8.).
Library Jim,
We must pray that the law will be obeyed by all citizens, that the creedal spirit of the Declaration of Indenpence will be in the hearts of all citizens, that Constitution as originally intended will guide the actions of our three branches of government, and that our liberties as defined and stipulated by the Bill of Rights will not be abridged.
And the scenarios that you mentioned must remain just that and not become reality.
Since the beginning, our country has striven to maintain a civil process of political debate in order to resolve significant differences between different political factions. If we depart from that process, as we did in the 19th Century, we run the risk of causing serious internal damage to our country and exposing our country to the dangerous actions of nations that would be our enemies.
And today is not the 19th Century. There are countries out there that can and probably will exploit any serious wounds that we inflict upon ourselves.
[blockquote]We must pray that the law will be obeyed by all citizens, that the creedal spirit of the Declaration of Indenpence will be in the hearts of all citizens, that Constitution as originally intended will guide the actions of our three branches of government, and that our liberties as defined and stipulated by the Bill of Rights will not be abridged. [/blockquote]
Good luck with that. The Constitution is a dead letter. Dead as a doornail.
well, actually, my main worry is that there are substantial numbers of American Citizens who would support such a move!
But I agree with you on one thing: we must pray that such a thing never happens. Obama’s speeches to the G20, however, seems to indicate he is moving towards such a policy, as are his words that the Constitution is a ‘fundamentally flawed document’ enumerating only ‘negative rights’.
May God be with us!
Jim Elliott
North Florida
[blockquote] EXCLUSIVE: You’ve heard this shocking “fact” before — on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.
— Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.
— CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.
— California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: “It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors … come from the United States.”
— William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that “there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States.”
[b]There’s just one problem with the 90 percent “statistic” and it’s a big one:
It’s just not true.[/b]
In fact, it’s not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.
What’s true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency’s assistant director, “is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.”
But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.[/blockquote]
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/04/02/myth-percent-guns-mexico-fraction-number-claimed/
Three chamber of commerce type friends of mine, none of whom have ever owned a handgun – all bought one at the last gun show. I was at a recent chamber of commerce type breakfast where the invited speaker was a gun salesman and the talk was what gun to buy for home defense. I always have believed that when the more moderate sorts decided it was time to arm up that trouble was coming.