Every time President Obama makes the slightest moves toward gun safety, the right does two things. They claim that President Obama /liberals in general /the government is about to take away your guns (not linking to any terrible people, but if inexplicably you need some evidence that they’re out there), and also they buy a lot of guns. At this point the gun buying at the first tiny hint of any minor restrictions is such a cliche, that Wall Street now bets on gun manufacturers (h/t).
But if you think about it for a minute, if you actually thought your guns were about to go away, you wouldn’t spend hundreds of dollars or more on getting guns. It would be like spending money on Budweiser futures in that interim period between when the 18th amendment was passed and when it was implemented.
So either we all know President Obama isn’t taking your guns, or markets don’t work. Despite having lived through the .com bust and the housing bubble, I still don’t think that investors would be putting their money into a business that’s about to go away. That leaves people don’t think Obama is taking their guns.
Given what the president — and what governors including Inslee — have proposed, perhaps people are buying more guns now because they don’t think they’ll meet the criteria to buy them in a bit. That seems more economically rational. If you think he’s going to tighten the background checks in the future, better get your gun while you can. If you’ve got a history of domestic violence or have already set up a trust, you’re maybe hoping to slip in before that.
