The chief executive of gun company Sturm, Ruger & Co expects a big jump in already heightened demand for firearms if a Democrat wins the presidential election in November.
Michael Fifer told investors on Thursday the company made $172m profit in 2015 and could expect more in 2016 if Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders becomes positioned to appoint future supreme court justices.
Fifer said fear that a Democrat will get to replace the conservative justice Antonin Scalia, who died earlier this month, would send consumers rushing out to buy more guns because of concerns that gun control laws might be tightened.
“I think we’ll see a step up in demand if a Democrat wins the election, particularly so if they win the Senate,” Fifer said on a conference call with investors.
“Despite whether President Obama is successful in appointing a supreme court justice, it’s more than likely, based on age and health, that the next president will get several opportunities, and that could drive concerns about gun rights.”
Gun companies have been benefiting from record profits and sales under Barack Obama, with spikes in sales following every mass shooting incident.
Shares in Sturm Ruger, which sells handguns and automatic rifle such as the SR-556 Takedown, have risen by 960% since Obama took office in 2009. The shares rose by 7.8% to $69.21 on Thursday – their highest since February 2014 – five days after six people were killed in a shooting spree in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Smith & Wesson, the gun company that made the assault rifle used in the San Bernardino massacre in December, which left 14 people dead and 22 seriously injured, has seen its shares rise by 970% while Obama has been in the White House. Over the same period, the S&P 500 index of leading US companies’ shares rose by 130%.
FBI background checks, which act as a proxy for gun sales, hit a record 23.1m in 2015 – more than two and half times as many as those processed a decade ago. In December alone – the month of the San Bernardino shooting, more than 3.3m requests were processed through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (Nics).
The gun rush has led Wall Street analyst Brian Ruttenbur to call Obama, who recently announced a string of executive actions designed to tighten gun sales laws, “the best salesman for firearms”.
Jurgen Brauer, an economics professor who specialises in the gun industry, said: “Whenever there is even talk about firearms regulations there is almost immediately an unmistakable increase in sales.
“Even talk about such legislation translates into sales jumps. People are buying guns as part of the American dream of freedom and liberty.”
In 2013 Fifer, who collects a pay package worth nearly $2m a year, told investors: “If you look back at historical patterns back in late ’08, early ’09, you saw a huge spike in accessory sales, which then tapered off.
“And then we saw it again with the really tragic events at Sandy Hook that started again as soon as the politicians started talking about restricting legal gun use.”
