Free Republic

February 2013 was the third highest month on record for background checks on Americans' purchasing firearms. According to the FBI NICS database, there were 2,309,393 background checks completed in the month of February. The only two months that saw a higher number of NICS checks were January 2013, with 2,495,440, and December of 2012, with 2,783,765. The total number of background checks completed since November of 1998 (the month the FBI began tracking this information) is 165,279,535. President Barack Obama, dubbed "The greatest gun salesman in history," has presided over 42 percent of these background checks, or a total of...

Among major automakers, Ford Motor Company (+9.33 percent) and General Motors (+7.17 percent) were the leaders, while Toyota Motor Company (+4.34) and Chrysler Group (+4.11 thanks to a +30.33-percent performance by Dodge) managed to stay positive. Nissan North America, however, fared less well, reporting a drop in year-over-year sales of -6.65 percent. Among brands, we see many luxury marques near the top, including Bentley (+42.86 percent), Porsche (+30.53 percent), Audi (+27.77 percent), Mercedes-Benz (+23.05 percent), Cadillac (+20.34 percent) and Land Rover (+19.97 percent). If taken as a sign of a recovering economy, then the wealthier among us appear to be...

Shares of Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) fell 3 percent on Friday after Bloomberg quoted a mid-level executive's email as saying the world's largest retailer had the worst sales start to any month in seven years in February. Wal-Mart executives blamed the poor sales performance on increased payroll taxes as well as delayed tax returns, Bloomberg said. Higher payroll taxes this year are seen as a potential problem for Wal-Mart and other discount retailers that try to attract lower-income customers who have less disposable income. "In case you haven't seen a sales report these days, February (month-to-date) sales are a total...

The U.S. new car market was up strongly in January. GM and Ford surprised analysts with double digit sales rates. Toyota, up 26.6 percent also surprised. GM is up 16 percent on very strong sales of the Equinox and its Silverado and Sierra pickups. Ford prints a 22 percent increase, powered by the Fusion. Lincoln sales are down 18 percent while customers wait for the MKZ to arrive in quantity at their dealers. Chrysler was up 16 percent, but jaded analysts expected more. Detroit OEMs and analysts expect the SAAR to be in the mid 15 million range

Feeling down about your small business these days? Is the broken economy hurting your sales and keeping you up at night? Need some motivation and tough love to help you stop pitying yourself? Well, here you go: 13 reasons you might have in your head about why you're not as successful as you should be. #1 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Laziness I don’t think there’s an easy way to put this. I have to assume that you’re lazy. Every single successful person works their butts off to get where they are. It’s ok to...

In a move that potentially may spark a class action lawsuit, Dick’s Sporting Goods is refusing to fill orders for guns that were paid for weeks ago. Russell Kellner of Flower Mound, Texas said he and his wife bought three Troy Defense Carbine Semi-Automatic Rifles on Black Friday at a cost of $799 each, a $300 dollar discount. “It was a heck of a deal,” said Kellner. They received two of them, but were then notified by Dick’s on Christmas Eve, that no more orders would be fulfilled...

United States firearm sales have sky-rocketed since the Newtown school massacre, as debate over gun control rages and enthusiasts fear certain assault weapons and high-capacity magazines could be banned. President Barack Obama basically has put gun enthusiasts on warning, Larry Hyatt, owner of a gun shop in Charlotte, North Carolina, told AFP, referring to efforts to outlaw certain weapons in the wake of the Newtown shooting. A semi-automatic Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle was used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in which a disturbed local young man shot dead 20 young children, six adults and his mother before taking...

Russia has “overfulfilled” its yearly plan of arms exports by half a billion dollars, having sold $14 billion worth of weapons in 2012, President Vladimir Putin has said. Last year, Russia’s total income from arms and military equipment exports reached $13.2 billion, with $10.7 billion coming from the country’s sole defense exports agency, Rosoboronexport. Putin urges to seek out new arms export markets Russian President Vladimir Putin has called on the Military and Technical Cooperation Committee to “pursue a preemptive tactic” when promoting Russian military equipment in foreign markets. “Russia will definitely keep its traditional military export partners. But it’s...

Gun control advocates filed a groundbreaking lawsuit in Chicago Wednesday seeking to make companies that sell firearms over the Internet more accountable. The lawsuit filed by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence specifically names Armslist.com, an Internet gun website that links gun sellers with potential buyers.

Call volume shuts down FBI’s firearm background checks, stops Maine sales on Black Friday By Nok-Noi Ricker, BDN Staff Posted Nov. 23, 2012, at 4:30 p.m. BREWER, Maine — Sometime early on Black Friday, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, went down and stopped all gun sales, Bangor-area gun dealers said. High call volumes caused “intermittent outages” in the system, an FBI spokesman confirmed Friday afternoon. “It means we can’t sell no damn guns,” Rick Lozier, a manager at Van Raymond Outfitters in Brewer, said at about 1:15 p.m. “NICS is down, which means nobody is...

Owners of guns have been stocking up because they are concerned about a potential tightening of regulations on assault weapons in the president's second term. In October the number of background checks on people applying to buy guns, an indicator of future sales, increased by 18.4 per cent. There was a similar jump when President Obama was first elected in 2008. A total of 12.7 million background checks were carried out that year, up from 11.2 million the year before, and the number has been rising since then. Shares in weapons manufacturers like Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger also...

MANKATO, Minn. — Professional pollsters think they’ve got their finger on the pulse of the nation's presidential preference. But with Halloween approaching, there may be another way to predict the election outcome: the popularity of Democrat President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney masks. Sales of both have been brisk at BuyFun.com. And perhaps telling, though it is not known if the masks are being purchased because of candidate preference or scariness. “Our mask sales have reflected an interesting pattern lately,” said spokeswoman Aleksandra Sobic. “Overall, Obama masks have outsold Romney masks. "However, whereas in September Obama masks were selling...

(Excerpt) President Obama has put $5 billion in taxpayer money behind his goal of having 1 million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015. The Republican presidential ticket says it's money wasted on "losers." Whether the technology itself is a loser or consumers are merely slow to adapt to new things, car buyers so far haven't embraced electric vehicles in numbers close to Obama's goal. Electric-vehicle sales since 2011 totaled fewer than 50,000 through September, just 5 percent of the president's target. "The reality is - that business model isn't there yet," said Brett Smith, co-director of manufacturing, engineering and...

New homes sales fell from a revised print of 374,000 to 373,000 for August. This was a big miss by economists who were expecting 380,000 new home sales. Still, it remains NEAR a 2 year high. The median price of new home sales rose 11.16%. But housing’s “summer wind” is seemingly abating, as predicted. So what is behind the increase in median prices of 11.16%? A closer look reveals that houses under #399,999 are dropped in terms of median prices. It was the $500,000-$749,000 segment that increased (and has increased during 2012). So, The Fed’s pushing of Treasury and mortgage...

After years of being a member of Amazon.com, I just CLOSED MY AMAZON.COM ACCOUNT after they agreed to begin collecting sales taxes for this blood sucking state. I'll continue online shopping from OUT OF STATE VENDORS and PAY ZERO state tax and get free shipping. I get what I want and Amazon.com and Calistan LOSE!

Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc. (NYSE-RGR) is on pace to beat its own record of 1,114,700 firearms produced in one year, set in 2011. On August 15, 2012 Ruger produced its one millionth firearm of the year, a Ruger® SR1911™ pistol which will be hand-engraved by Baron Technology, Inc. and auctioned off to support the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action. “Last year, Ruger became the first commercial firearms company to produce one million firearms in one year, and we were incredibly excited and proud to reach that milestone,” said Ruger President and CEO Mike Fifer. “It took us...

However, there is one index that tends to see through all the unreality much more clearly than our analysis above, that is the Used Vehicle Price index. Each time this index has dropped and broken below its two-year average, the auto industry has tended to fade rapidly.

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Sipsey Street Irregulars Blog author Mike Vanderboegh, GunTruths and Citizens of America co-founder David Codrea and FNC legal analyst Lis Wiehl on the potential impact on Second Amendment rights after the shooting in Aurora, Colorado.