Why is the market ignoring the fact that gun sales are booming?

Just because gun sales aren’t booming at the same rate they were during the biggest year ever for firearms manufacturers, that doesn’t mean they’re not still rising, writes Fox Business News. Yet the way the market responded to the FBI release of April gun buyer background-check data, you’d think we were in the midst of a major downturn. The fact is, gun sales are surging; 2016 was the biggest year for gun sales. The FBI processed more than 27.5 million background checks last year, 19% more than it had the year before and more than double the number it did a decade ago. Gun sales were mostly driven by political considerations, as many gun owners and enthusiasts anticipated a different outcome in the presidential elections last November. When Donald Trump came out on top, the threat of new gun control legislation was largely removed from the table, and the need to buy a gun right away before new laws were enacted waned. But it didn’t eliminate the demand for new guns; it just deferred them. Gun control doesn’t really affect demand, only the timing of the purchase, typically pulling forward sales that would occur anyway. And that’s what we’re seeing with the FBI’s numbers so far in 2017.