A push by Democratic lawmakers to tighten regulations on firearms sales, which gained momentum when a House committee backed a bill requiring background checks for all buyers, wasn’t enough to buoy stock in the two biggest U.S. gunmakers.
The prospect of tighter gun control often drives up stock in Smith & Wesson owner American Outdoor Brands and Sturm Ruger, with traders betting that customers alarmed by the prospect will buy more firearms in advance of any changes in the law. Revenue for both companies rose during the eight years that former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, occupied the White House, and their shares surged.
On Thursday, however, both Springfield, Mass.-based American Outdoor Brands and Southport, Conn.-based Sturm Ruger, fluctuated between gains and losses of less than 1 percent, reflecting the dim odds that any bill passed by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives would make it through a Republican Senate or be signed by President Trump.
The bill approved by the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, almost a year after a massacre at a south Florida high school that left 17 students and teachers dead, would require all gun sellers to run a criminal background check on customers. Existing law only requires licensed dealers to perform such checks, exempting some sales at flea markets and gun shows.
[Also read: Democrats push to regulate ‘ghost guns’]
A companion measure would close what’s known as the Charleston loophole, a provision that lets licensed gun dealers complete a sale if background checks haven’t been finished within three days. Dylan Roof, who pleaded guilty to killing nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, was able to buy the handgun used in the attack because of that provision.
“Both of the bills passed out of the committee today tackle real problems within our current system,” said Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., who criticized what he said were efforts by some Republican committee members to obstruct the measures.
U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., the top GOP member on the panel, cited a 2018 report from the Justice Department to argue that requiring background checks without a gun registry, which he doesn’t want, would be ineffective. “Our Democratic friends are perpetrating a fraud on the activists who support them,” he said.
