Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 23, 1993 TAG: 9312230199
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Santa has been good to her.
Derheim trooped off with her parents to Bill's Gun Shop & Range this week to get her early present. The Derheims were among legions of Americans buying guns this Christmas, straining the capacity of firearms makers and sending the prices of some weapons to astonishing heights.
Industry insiders attribute the rush, beyond the usual search for the perfect holiday gift, to a fear of crime and a dread of gun control.
"I have heard that sales are through the roof," said Michael Saporito, a senior vice president of RSR Wholesale Guns Inc., one of the nation's largest distributors of firearms. "It's been probably the best year the firearms industry has experienced in at least the last 20 years."
Bob Lesmeister, manager of the National Association of Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers, estimated holiday gun sales will be up more than 100 percent over last year.
Those assessments were corroborated by visits to a sampling of firearms superstores across the country, from Maine to Southern California. At store after store, business was bustling.
More than a thousand customers a day have been flocking into Turner's Outdoorsman in Signal Hill, Calif., a gritty industry town surrounded by the city of Long Beach.
Handguns have been selling briskly at Turner's this December. Among the best sellers are a Browning Buckmark .22-caliber automatic and a Beretta 92FS double-action 9mm.
Not among the listed specials: the Ruger 9mm semiautomatic pistol that Turner's sold last spring to Colin Ferguson, who is accused of killing six people on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train in New York this month.
Just as that tragedy aroused gun-control advocates anew, passage of the Brady bill - and partial passage of an omnibus crime bill - has given an enormous boost to the firearms industry.
"When they passed the crime bill, business went up 10 times," said Ed Nicely, the owner of Ed's Gun Shop in Southern Pines, N.C.
Although separate versions of the crime bill have passed both houses of Congress, a final bill awaits consideration next month. It is expected to include a ban on selected military-style assault weapons.
That has caused a run on those weapons, such as Russian-style AK-47s, as well as on similar weapons that are not included in the bill, such as SKS semiautomatic rifles. Prices have jumped accordingly.
"On the retail level, they're just astronomical," said Saporito, the gun distributor. "I've seen firearms that 90 days ago would have sold for $300 now selling for $1,200."
But gun control isn't the only issue motivating firearms sales. Fear of crime has surged in the past year and recently was the No. 1 concern of Americans in a nationwide CBS News poll.
At Ed's Gun Shop, Capt. Lane Carter of the Moore County Sheriff's Office was buying a .38-caliber pistol as a Christmas present for his wife.
"She wants one," he said. "She thinks she needs it."
Elsewhere, customers voiced similar concerns. "Your ordinary citizen is starting to feel that police aren't able to protect them," said Ed Fong, a customer at the San Francisco Gun Exchange in downtown San Francisco.
"People are just basically scared to death," said Jim Hullinger, a firearms dealer who owns Jim's Military Collectibles in Plano, Texas, an affluent Dallas suburb.
In Robbinsdale, a suburb of Minneapolis, business at Bill's Gun Shop has been up a modest 10 percent this Christmas, about 50 percent for the entire year, according to owner Bill Penney.
Among the buyers this week were the Derheims. Peggy Derheim, who said she already owns an M-16 lookalike, wanted something she could use for target practice and personal protection.
"I like that it's compact and it's a .22-caliber - and that's good because I'm small," said the 28-year-old Derheim, who doesn't quite clear 5 feet.
by CNB