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Barack Obama, Gun Salesman

Reason Staff | From the February 2017 issue

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Large image on homepages | Joanna Andreasson
(Joanna Andreasson)

Joanna Andreasson

This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Barack Obama, Gun Salesman."

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  1. Ted S.   8 years ago

    Interesting how there's a lull in the summer and a spike around Christmas.

    1. Vapourwear   8 years ago

      And a big bump up around April.

      1. Sukkoi19   8 years ago

        Seems like that big hump in December 2012 could have used a Sandy Hook shooting data point.

  2. Sevo   8 years ago

    "Barack Obama, Gun Salesman"

    You forgot his kemo sabe, DiFi.

  3. Suthenboy   8 years ago

    He is deceased now, but I had a buddy that owned a gun shop. He had an 11x14 color portrait of Obama prominently displayed in his showroom. All of us that showed up there to drink coffee and shoot the shit would regularly hang a napkin over the front of it as a curtain because we couldn't stand looking at that moron's face. My buddy, when he noticed it, would yank it off of the frame and declare "Best damned gun salesman in history!"

  4. Fist of Etiquette   8 years ago

    And raise the price of ammunition.

    1. AlmightyJB   8 years ago

      Seems like that has been getting a little better although i doubt we'll see 10.99 boxes of .45 again anytime soon. At least we can get it now. I've also complained about the overcrowded ranges but seems like more being built slowly so that should catch up as well. Isn't capitalism great? End of day, the more funds in private hands, the stronger the 2A, whether the government recognizes that right or not.

      1. AlmightyJB   8 years ago

        Not sure how guns turned into funds.

        1. Fist of Etiquette   8 years ago

          Beat your swords into stock shares.

      2. Animal   8 years ago

        Load your own. About 2/3 of the cost of a round of ammo is the brass case, and that's re-usable. I just loaded up 500 rounds of .45 Colt with hard-cast Keith-type semi-wadcutters for about $100.

  5. Password: pode$ta   8 years ago

    Background checks are more a measure of interest than sales. Interest in guns is a valid thing to study by itself, but it's not a perfect substitute for sales. Neither is web searches for gun dealers.

    This graph makes it a bit clearer that there were two huge spikes for gun sales right after his elections. Otherwise, the growth trend stretches back before he was elected. This is also shown in the background searches and web searches for gun dealers.

    So, I like the graph, but it could be interpreted as just seasonality unless there's more taken into account.

    1. Password: pode$ta   8 years ago

      First link.

  6. Brian Reilly   8 years ago

    The time is coming soon when ammo sales, then gun sales will be quickly restricted with an eye on rapid elimination of private possession, followed by confiscation via buy-back, I think. Keep your arms in a safe at the range, or lose them. Get caught with a weapon or ammo outside the range (or managed hunting preserve) and you will lose them, no appeals. No need to imprison a bunch of people, as long as you get the guns.

    This effort will fail miserably,but it will provide some comic relief. Some of it bloody, but humorous nonetheless.

  7. Warty   8 years ago

    There's a little spike after Aurora, and maybe one after Orlando, though it looks like that spike may have predated the event. Other than that, there's not much in these data to argue for a causal relationship between the data and any of the discrete events highlighted in that graph. All I'm seeing is a linear trend with a yearly sales cycle on top of it.

    The shape of the yearly cycle is neat. I should fire up MATLAB and make a wavelet to match the shape and play with analyzing the signal.

    1. Password: pode$ta   8 years ago

      Pretty much what I was thinking. Fitting an ARIMA model with seasonality to the 2005-2008 data may provide a good projection for the rest. Variations from that projection would potentially be anomalous. Better yet, use some kind of nowcasting technique like BSTS. This is a nearly-ideal application of the linked method.

  8. Warty   8 years ago

    Is the daily data available? All I can find is monthly, and all the interesting variations in the signal are lost at that low of a frequency. Remember your fucking Nyquist-Shannon, you fucks.

    1. Warty   8 years ago

      *Appear* to be lost.

  9. Hyperion   8 years ago

    Until the feds pass a bill to make mental check-ups mandatory and then declare all of us 'disabled' by way of wrong-think. Obama already did the rest.

  10. Suthenboy   8 years ago

    They are working on it. Didn't Obama recently have his lackeys declare anyone taking disability benefits 'mentally unfit'?

    One more on the list of spiteful, hateful shit he has done and barely a peep out of the MSM about it.

  11. JeremyR   8 years ago

    I think more likely there will be an insurance requirement, like Obamacare

  12. Suthenboy   8 years ago

    Why yes, he did.

    http://www.//pjmedia.com/trending/201.....ecipients/

  13. Suthenboy   8 years ago

    Well I screwed the link. Here is another:

    http://www.thegatewaypundit.co.....ecipients/

  14. Hyperion   8 years ago

    Leftists realize that they can't just right out ban guns. So their plan now is to work with the GOP to get the deal effectively done. I look for the first move in the upcoming administration to be Moobz working with Sessions to ban gun sales for anyone who has a MJ medical card and anyone who has ever used a credit card to buy legal weed. Onward from there, they'll make secret secret lists that no one even knows exists, let alone how they got on there or how to get off, and put most everyone on them. That will be used to ban anyone on the secret secret lists from buying a gun. Also, probably alcohol. And there is no legal recourse from any of this because it's not laws, but regulatory bullshit and other non-sense that has no legal solution. And if it goes to court, it will ultimately be dubbed a penal-tax in a 5-4 vote.

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