>Baker City Herald | Baker County Oregon's News Leader

(Baker City Herald)

“Gun sales doubled Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week, and we’ve sold out of a lot of the guns we normally have in stock,” said Jim King, sporting goods manager at Thatcher’s Ace Hardware.

“It’s a national phenomenon. People are afraid their second amendment rights to own guns are going to go away,” King said.

Much, but not all, of the buying frenzy is for automatic rifles, which King said reflects concerns that Obama will ban assault rifles, which is listed as a priority on the official Obama-Biden Web site.

The Obama-Biden Web site includes a statement saying they “support making the expired federal assault weapons ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields, not on our streets.”

On Monday, King said the sporting goods department at Thatcher’s Ace Hardware was down to one Colt AR-15 rifle with a retail value of nearly $1,350, and calls to gun wholesalers from Washington to Texas and even Obama’s home state of Illinois showed assault rifles have been flying off the shelves and are in short supply nationwide.

“It’s not just Baker, it’s everywhere,” King said. “We called one warehouse that went through 4,000 assault rifles in four days.

“One warehouse we called had 21 assault rifles when they opened for business on Monday, and within 30 seconds they were gone,” King said.

“We are on waiting lists now to get more of these (Colt AR-15s). People are coming in and paying for them up front,” King said.

The gun-buying craze that started soon after Obama’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention soared to a full-fledged frenzy when he won the presidential election, according to local gun retailers and reports published in newspapers such as the Oregonian, which quoted gun shop owners saying gun sales jumped 40 percent since the election.

Eyewitness News in Indianapolis, Ind., reported Monday that “Gun shops have seen this type of buying spree before. The last time was in 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected president.”

If the current price of $1,350 sounds like a lot to pay for an automatic rifle, King said it may seem like a bargain when the next shipment arrives.

“The wholesalers are taking the wholesale and retail prices right out of the system,” King said. “We don’t know what the prices will be when we get the next shipment in.”

Colt developed the first automatic rifles in the 1960s to be used in Vietnam, but as a Vietnam veteran, King said the early versions were widely despised by American soldiers because of frequent jamming and malfunctions. However, the newer assault rifles made by by American companies like Colt, Smith and Wesson, Springfield Rifle, Bush Master, as well as the AK-47 models manufactured in Russia, Romania and China, are vastly improved and much more reliable.

“These are not cheap guns. The average prices for automatic rifles made in the United States is around $1,300,” King said.  

King said handgun sales have also soared over the past week due to concerns about Obama’s past voting record in favor of gun control legislation, as well as statements on the Obama-Biden Web site indicating they plan to tighten laws governing gun ownership and repeal legislation known as the Tiahrt Amendment that restricts police agencies from releasing the names of citizens with concealed weapons permits.

Currently, police share that information only in cases where an individual is under investigation for specific crimes involving use of a handgun, but the National Rifle Association has raised concerns that Obama and Biden plan to open the door to releasing information on concealed weapons permit holders to the public.

“The National Rifle Association put out an Obama-Biden hit list, which named a number of guns that they are wanting to ban,” King said.

At Ironhand Trading Company, owner Joe Musgrove said the NRA has also warned gun owners that Obama and Biden support imposing super high taxes on certain types of ammunition so people couldn’t afford it.

“If they did that, it would pretty much end our sales,” Musgrove said.

The prospect of high ammunition costs has led to a run on ammunition, especially ammunition for assault rifles and handguns, Musgrove said.

The Ironhand Trading Company specializes in sales of used guns, but Musgrove and his son and partner, Jason Jaeger, also special order all kinds of new rifles, shotguns and handguns.

“For us, gun sales have been pretty crazy ever since Obama was nominated,” Musgrove said. “Surprisingly the biggest increase in sales I’ve seen has been in women buying small handguns.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty about what the future holds, and they want to buy a handgun while they still can,” Musgrove said. “I don’t think anybody in Baker really sweats a lot of crime around here, but with the Democrats in control of Congress and the presidency, a lot of people want to buy a gun now, in case they change the laws.”

He said he sells the small caliber pistols “as fast as they come in.”

While Musgrove doesn’t generally stock automatic rifles because of the high cost, he special orders them, or at least he used to.

“We called to order some for people the other day, and they told us they were 40,000 guns behind,” Musgrove said.

Personally, Musgrove said he doesn’t expect Obama or the Democratic majority in Congress to take away the right to keep and bear arms all in one step.

“What they will do is chip away a little here and a little there, like they’ve done with our other rights, until one day the rights we used to have will be gone,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, gun ownership is my inalienable right as a citizen of the United States.”

Musgrove pointed to a quote by President Abraham Lincoln hanging on the wall behind his gun counter, which expresses what he believes the Second Amendment is all about:

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

 Coming Wednesday:  Gun control politics