FX.co ★ Obama’s sanctions trigger excessive demand for AK-47 guns

The U.S. may have hit “peak gun”. What drove up gun sales during this period was mainly panic among firearms enthusiasts that U.S. President Barack Obama would impose some form of gun control–and that they had better load up their personal arsenals before they lost the opportunity. Obama’s ban on the import of Russian Kalashnikov assault rifles — intended as a punishment for Moscow’s incursion into Ukraine — has had an unintended consequence: an AK-47 buying frenzy in U.S. gun stores. Firearms dealers reported an immediate surge in demand as buyers rushed out to get the weapon. “They pretty much cleaned us out,” said Brian Bunting, the president of Atlantic Firearms, a gun business in Maryland. He estimated that the White House announcement on July 16 led to a tripling of demand for Kalashnikovs, with prices for a mid-range rifle rising from US$850 to US$1050. In the U.S., as elsewhere, Russian Kalashnikovs are highly popular for their reliability, simple design, and destruction capacity. So, Americans buy tens of thousands annually. Experts cannot predict how long Obama’s ban will be valid. Amid the excessive demand, Americans are keen to invest in such safe assets buying 8-10 guns per person. So, Kalashnikovs could become valuable rarities in the near future. Interestingly, it is still possible to import AK-47s made in former Soviet bloc countries such as Poland or Romania, or even to buy weapons produced in the U.S. But the Russian-made weapons, designed for the Red Army by Mikhail Kalashnikov, are considered “the classic” by gun aficionados. “The great irony here is that the threat of regulation has the perverse effect of stimulating sales, and not just by a little,” said Philip Cook, a Duke University gun researcher . “The numbers are impressive. You have millions of extra sales.” Some gun dealers display and sell posters declaring Obama the gun salesman of the year — or century.