Fear and greed have sales of guns and ammo shooting up. That is, fear of another “assault weapon” ban has speculators buying up inventories and driving up prices, because they may go even higher if supply gets restricted:
Purchases of guns and ammunition are surging across the country. Nearly four million background checks — a key measure of sales because they are required at the purchase of a gun from a federally licensed seller — were performed in the first three months of 2009. That is a 27% increase over the same period a year earlier, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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Many popular models of guns are back-ordered for a year or more. Some manufacturers are operating plants 24 hours a day. According to the 2009 edition of the Blue Book of Gun Values, the average price of European-made AK-47s — the famous Soviet-era military weapon now made in several countries — doubled from $350 last September to more than $700 by the end of 2008.
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Of course, like all investments, guns do fluctuate in value. Weapons whose prices rose during the previous ban fell once it was lifted. “People I know in 2000 were buying Colts for $2,300 or $2,400,” says Dennis Williams, the owner of Guns & Leather Inc. in Greenbrier, Tenn. “Now you can buy a new Colt for $1,400.”
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Randy Luth, the founder and president of DPMS Firearms LLC, in St. Cloud, Minn., one of the country’s largest manufacturers of AR-15s, says he recently saw rifles similar to his company’s at a gun store in the Phoenix area priced between $1,200 and $1,500, compared with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $800 or $900. “It’s difficult to find any AR-15 at a retail show or gun store selling for the manufacturer’s suggested retail price,” he says.