Although I no longer work in a LGS, I do manage to visit 4 or 5 shops every week or so. A couple of weeks ago, I could barely get in the door of these shops because of all the new buyers. I watched for several minutes at a couple of different stores. Here is some non-baseless speculation -- I've seen it before, or at least similar situations. The first was 1968 with the passed of the infamous 1968 gun control act. Yea, I'm such an old geezer I was working in LGS even then. Then there came a couple of times when local crime incidents paniced the local folks. The next big wave of newbie buyers, however, was in 1989 with the Bush ban. Then came the Clinton ban in 1993, created by Upchuck Schumer. But the big one was the 1994 Clinton Assault Weapons Ban, created by Dastardly Feinstein. (It's amazing these jerks are still in Congress!) In all of those cases, there were lots of folks who knew nothing about firearms, willing and eager to buy anything and everything on the shelves. For example, the Friday before the AWB in 1994, I sold 63 handguns that had nothing to do with the AWB! We usually didn't sell that many in week. It took about a month after that for folks to start coming back in to ask if we'd be interested in buying it back and it continued for several years. We'd even have family members come in to the store because they found this box in the closet with our label and grandpa or grandma was now too old to be allowed to have this "thing" or the heirs were trying to sell it. But even then we only got back about 15% - 20% of the things we sold. However, I smile every once in a while when l run across a gun NIB that has the label from that store where I was working and the date code of 1994. Apart from folks wanting us to buy stuff back, of all the folks to whom I sold firearms during these panic buying periods, and this would be hundreds if not thousands, I only saw a few -- maybe 30 -- come back into the store in the weeks and months after the panic. Of that number, there were about 5 who became active in the shooting sports or collecting. So, the moral seems to be that even after a panic such as we face now, not a lot has changed after similar panic periods in the past. But then again.... this one may be different; we've never had one political party openly and proudly committed to the idea of "never allow a crisis go to waste" while being dedicated to destroying the nation!
