Stated simply, everyone who wants a gun has already bought one, thanks to the prohibitionists.

As a practical matter, if taken care of, firearms never wear out. Similarly, the guns typically used for hunting and civilian self-defense haven't changed much in a century or so. So, few firearms get taken out of service for wear or obsolesence.

That is, most guns made in the last 100 years or so are still around. Compare this to (say) the auto industry, where a 20-year-old car is unusual and many mid-60's autos are now expensive "antiques".

Until recently, one big driver for firearms sales has been the threat of prohibition. True, all you really need is one or two. But-- "I better buy this gun now, since I might not be able to later".

Since the Democrats got their butts handed to them repeatedly on this issue, their crazy gun prohibition wing has become completely ineffectual, for the moment, anyway. Among the Republicans, even Rudy Guiliani has felt the necessity to court the NRA. This alone has put a damper on firearms sales.

Combine this with the disposal onto the used market of all those extra guns bought during the temporary ascendency of the antigun true believers and it is not too surprising that new gun sales are down.

Safety in guns is the isue. there are many excellent programs such as the hunter saftey program, other programs taught by local police and military about safe handling of guns storing of guns and ammunition which is away from young childen in locked cabinets, and the buying and cleaning of a good type of weapon for home owners or whatever legal weapon is needed. the new law for a good background check across the usa will help to keep guns from being sold to the wrong persons for the wrong reasons. as it was as of 2004 in a pawn shop in roane county tennessee a person could buy or sale a weapon without much id. this is not good.for anyone in the community. I was rasied with men and women that knew how to shoot at skeet and the safety of the weapons was always taught

my dad was not a hunter however he allowed his friends and relatives to hunt on our farm as long as safety was practiced. this was many hundreds of acres of land so this was a safe distance from the homes on the farm. It was not our dairy farm but we farmed it. There is also a season and type of hunting that are also laws and a lisense is also needed. this raises a lot of money to keep parks opened in the state. as for safety for the hunters seems like more skiers are getting hunt this safe hunters.

universal safety precautions is always the correct way to handle any issue

I remember in 1994 when Clinton drove the price of rifle and pistol primer caps up to like $.10 a piece for a brief period....panic buying.

Prohibitions? I'm not aware of any recent prohibitions, except the loosening of certain restrictions.

It's funny that there's always a Commie/Liberal under every rock for a group that prides itself on standing upright.

"Stated simply, everyone who wants a gun has already bought one, thanks to the prohibitionists."

I'm all for rational gun ownership (legal and mental health background checks) and have been a sport shooter for most of my life. But the opening quote here, the tone of which is oft-repeated, is unmistakably whiny. It's hard to take what follows seriously, when it's peppered with knee-jerk slogans that echo the lefty liberals.

We gun owners have reason for our paranoia. The anti-gun crowd is craazee. Full of pandering polticians, as well as pig-ignorant and irrational true-believers on a mission from God. Or people whose own lack of impulse control gets projected onto everyone else. As in "If I had a firearm, I'd probably misues it. So, I figure everyone else would too".

What about the "Assault weapons ban"? Essentially, this banned certain firearms because they look scary to the ignorant and frankly phobic, not because they were any different functionally. If you can ban something purely on cosmetics, you can ban it for any reason at all.

I would probably agree that the assault weapon ban may be motivated more by the fact that they look "scary" but to claim that there is any widespread, national movement to ban handguns, let alone rifles or shotguns, is just paranoia.

Of course, the NRA as well as conservative politicians, have a vested interest in maintaining the fiction that liberals are coming to take away Americans' hunting rifles!