Gun Stocks Rise After Las Vegas Shooting, but Sales Drop Under Trump
The price was up 3.2 percent on Monday and 2.4 percent on Tuesday, compared with increases of 6.8 percent after the Orlando shooting
and 11.5 percent in the days after the San Bernardino attack.
In previous years, stock prices for firearms companies sometimes fell after mass shootings, such as the December 2012 killings in Newtown, Conn.
President Trump’s perceived ambivalence toward gun control could be tamping down firearms sales, analysts said.
Opinion: Now Is the Time to Talk About Guns
Stock prices for firearm companies rose this week after a gunman killed dozens of people
in Las Vegas, an apparent continuation of a morbid trend linked to mass shootings.
Last year, the day after a gunman killed 49 people
and wounded 53 at the packed Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., on June 12, 2016, the gun maker’s stock price swung up 8.5 percent.
Analysts from Wedbush said in a report last week that consumers expected to buy more guns this year than they did in 2016, but added
that “a Republican-dominated government that poses no threat of enacting new gun regulation has taken much of the urgency out of gun purchases in recent months.”
A year ago, gun company stocks were gaining.
On Monday, shares in Sturm, Ruger & Company, the Southport, Conn., maker of Ruger handguns
and rifles, rose 3.5 percent, then an additional 2.1 percent on Tuesday.