I’ve talked to some licensed gun dealers the last couple of days. They have little doubt that the current gun buying frenzy is being fueled by speculation. It is becoming a classic investment bubble. At first this involved gun-savvy dealers buying up the weapons that will probably be targeted for regulation, the so-called assault rifles and the like. Now, though, a lot of ill-informed yuppie types have scented some easy profits and started snapping up every gun they could get their paws on, utterly heedless of how gun control is likely to work. These are basically the same type of greed crazed fools who fell for the dot.com bubble of the 90s and the absurd classic car bubble of the 80s. May they lose their ill-matched silk shirts again, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.
I’ll make a prediction: Six months from now, after the bubble has burst, you’ll see new ARs going for $600 (though possibly with smaller mags), and even better buys on traditional guns that were never threatened with new regulations but were snapped up by speculators anyway. You may see the speculators begging for spare change outside Academy Sporting Goods. Ignore them.