CALL TO ARMS
SIMON BARBER: US gun lobby talks up leftist threat for sales
"Another civil war would be good for business, wouldn’t it?"
These are testing times for the American gun industry. Sales of Remington Outdoor products, which include the Bushmaster XM-15 "modern sporting rifle" that Adam Lanza used to massacre 20 kindergartners and six teachers at Sandy Hook in 2014, were down 27% in the first quarter year on year.
Smith & Wesson, which trades as American Outdoor Brands (AOB), has seen its share price sink by a third since hitting a peak last July. AOB stock took a particularly heavy beating in the three days following Donald Trump’s victory on November 8, falling from $28.45 at the end of election day trading, before the votes were tallied and while Hillary Clinton still looked inevitable, to $21.24 at the close that Friday. Trump has not been a boon for CEOs whose stock options rely on fundamentalist readings of the Second Amendment. Wall Street assumes that since neither he nor the Republican majority in Congress will molest the sacred right of Americans to own military-grade firepower, demand in an already glutted market will be flat. Atrocities such as Sandy Hook will not send punters off to Walmart to pick up an assault rifle or three in case politicians are finally shamed into enacting controls. For the time being, Washington is entirely unencumbered by shame. To scare up business, the ...
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