FOCUS:GUN SALES
Fear of restrictions spurs huge boost in gun sales
WASHINGTON — If the rash of mass shootings nationwide is leaving you thinking that there are too many guns in Buffalo and in America, just wait.
Gun sales are booming nationwide — and in Erie County, applications for pistol permits are rolling in at nearly three times last year’s rate, the county clerk’s office reports.
Meanwhile, in the nation’s capital, gun control has become, in essence, dead on arrival.
Chalk it all up to the election of a Democratic president with a long record of supporting gun restrictions and a Congress that includes a surprising number of pro-gun Democrats from rural areas.
The election of Barack Obama as president is sparking a run on firearms and ammunition in both Buffalo and nationwide, according to gun dealers and experts on the issue.
“Am I getting calls like crazy? You bet,” said Wilson H. Curry, who runs Williston Auctions in Wales Center, which also does business under the name Aurora Shooting Supplies.
It’s all happening because of the fear that Obama wants to ban guns of all kinds — even though he has never said anything of the sort.
“People are under the impression that the government is going to come in and, in one fell swoop, remove all the firearms,” said Curry, who specializes in collectible firearms and does not stock the semiautomatic weapons that some callers are so eager to buy. “It’s absurd.”
Fears of a gun ban have grown, even though the Supreme Court last year upheld the constitutional right to keep and bear arms, and even though strict gun-control measures simply cannot garner the votes to pass in the current Congress.
“I call it the urban myth,” said Willmer Fowler Jr., supervisor of pistol permits at the Erie County clerk’s office. “For some strange reason, people believe President Obama is going to take away their gun rights, even though I haven’t seen any indication of that. . . . But that’s all you hear.”
Fowler hears it plenty. Last year, his office received 890 applications for pistol permits — but it has received 710 through Friday.
Fowler said his colleagues in Niagara, Monroe and other counties report similar increases, which are also happening nationwide. Florida, for example, reported 9,788 “concealed carry” permit applications in February — up from 3,589 five years earlier, the Tampa Tribune reported.
While some people may scoff at the notion that Obama’s election should prompt a run on firearms, shooters’ rights activists such as Harold W. “Budd” Schroeder say the new president’s actions speak louder than his words. Obama, before he became president, favored an Illinois handgun ban in the 1990s and supported D. C.’s handgun ban even while saying the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.
Asked whether he thought Obama supported the banning of firearms, Schroeder said: “Yes. Any bill he has supported on this issue has been toward that end.”
‘A lot of scare tactics’
During his presidential campaign last year, Obama spoke of trying to renew the expired ban on assault weapons — which has only stoked the fears that the new president might be a gun-grabber.
For proof of the depth of that fear, just check out GunBanNObama.com, the National Rifle Association’s Obama-trashing Web site, or More-Bans.org, which proclaims: “YES, THERE IS STILL TIME TO ORDER BEFORE Obama’s new gun bans kick in [in] late 2009!”
Such dire warnings are a bit confounding to people such as Jackie Hilly, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.
“I think there are a lot of scare tactics on the other side,” Hilly said. “I don’t know why people are saying these things when the Supreme Court said just this past year that there’s a right to keep and bear arms and to protect yourself in your home.”
In the wake of that Supreme Court ruling and the political history of gun control, there is almost no chance of any kind of gun ban being implemented by Congress this year.
For one thing, after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently said a ban on assault weapons would help prevent guns from getting into the hands of Mexico’s drug cartels, White House press secretary Robert L. Gibbs said he was unaware of any plans for the administration to push for such a ban this year.
For another, look what happened when Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in late February that a ban on assault weapons should be reinstated.
Within weeks, Rep. Michael A. Ross, D-Ark., had collected the signatures of 65 Democrats on a letter to Holder saying they “will continue to fight any efforts in Washington that restrict our right to own and bear arms.”
Without those 65 votes — and with House Republicans almost uniformly opposed to gun control — the House Democratic majority would be left nearly 30 votes short of what they would need to pass gun legislation.
“If 65 Democrats won’t vote for it, no matter how many Republicans vote for it, it isn’t going to pass,” said Joseph P. Tartaro of Buffalo, president of the Second Amendment Foundation. “Most of [the Democrats] remember that the 1994 assault weapon ban cost them control of Congress.”
In addition, the political math doesn’t work for gun control because many recently elected House Democrats, such as Rep. Heath Schuler of North Carolina and Rep. Eric J. J. Massa of Corning, represent traditionally Republican rural territory.
Massa wasn’t about to change his mind, either, in the wake of the April 3 shootings that claimed 14 lives in Binghamton, 40 miles east of his district.
“I caution Congress not to sprint to new laws that will not impact this,” said Massa, a freshman lawmaker whose sprawling district includes Cattaraugus County. He noted that the Binghamton gunman, Jiverly A. Wong, had legally registered the guns he used.
‘For sensible gun laws’
Some experts wonder whether further gun control would have any impact on the kinds of shooting sprees that have become uncomfortably common, claiming 35 lives nationwide since March.
“Gun control can do a lot of good, but whether it will have any impact on mass shootings is questionable,” said James Alan Fox of Northeastern University in Boston, a criminologist and expert in such killings. “The gun for these guys is a great equalizer, . . . and they will find a way to get guns if they want to. That’s the sad part.”
The spate of shootings might even be contributing to the increased gun sales.
“We’re just inundated on the news with missing children and violent crime,” said Michael Esposito, a Niagara Falls teacher who plans to lead students on a trip to Albany this month to lobby for stricter state gun laws. “People want to protect themselves and their families — and we’re for that. We’re just for sensible gun laws.”
Schroeder, the longtime gun rights advocate, agreed that people are arming to protect themselves.
“People realize self-defense is a doit-yourself job,” he said. “They realize there are so many crazy people on the street, and they start asking: ‘Why should the crazies have the advantage over [us]?’ ”
All of which proves to be frustrating to gun-control advocates such as Arlee Daniels of Buffalo’s Stop the Violence Coalition.
The problem isn’t the people who are applying to get guns legally — it’s the vast number of illegal, unregistered guns floating all over the country, crossing state lines and ending up in the wrong hands, Daniels said.
“I just don’t see the outcry . . . that this needs to be addressed,” Daniels added. “I don’t know what it’s going to take.”
Log into MyBuffalo to post a comment
MyBuffalo is the new social network from Buffalo.com. Your MyBuffalo account lets you comment on and rate stories at buffalonews.com. You can also head over to mybuffalo.com to share your blog posts, stories, photos, and videos with the community. Join now or learn more.
Reader comments