It turns out that a school massacre is better than any advertising that money can buy. The Hartford Courant reports:
Some gun retailers this week are reporting a spike in store traffic, in excess of the usual holiday rush, in the aftermath of the Newtown murders. Since Friday’s shooting, customers have crammed parking lots and thinned out inventories.
Doug Odishoo, owner of Delta Arsenal in Meriden, said, “As soon as this shooting happened on Friday, I almost sold out of everything. Saturday I couldn’t keep up with it.” He said people walked into his shop, looking at the AR-style guns and saying, “I better get one before I can’t.”
Resurrected talks of gun control, some shop owners said, are pumping up the market for rifles, especially AR, or assault rifles, like the Bushmaster’s civilian version of the military’s AR-15 that Adam Lanza used on Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
In Worcester, Mass., at Pullman Arms, co-owner Alicia Merritt called the jump in business “dramatic.” She said she did $30,000 in business on Monday — up from a usual Monday of about $2,000. Most of her sales, she said, were assault rifles, though she said she was also selling a number of handguns. “People want ARs because people are afraid there will be a ban on assault weapons,” Merritt said. Like others, Pullman Arms said it was running low on inventory.
