Kathy Stewart, wtop.com
WASHINGTON – People across the country are stocking up on guns and in Virginia, business is brisk.
Sales have increased in the wake of the Connecticut shootings that gave rise to talk about new guns restrictions.
Even before Dawson’s, a gun store in Woodbridge, opened Friday morning, there was at least a half dozen people waiting. And within minutes of its opening the parking lot was full.
Customer Pete Soto, from Dale City, just got off from work as a security guard. He’s a gun owner and here to buy ammo. He’s worried about the president wanting to tighten up gun laws.
“I’m just preparing, you know, to protect my family. You don’t know what’s going to happen,” Soto says.
The owner of Blue Ridge Arsenal in Chantilly Earl Curtis says 2012 was already a good year for the sale of guns.
“The sale of guns has increased enormously ever since the shooting in Connecticut,” Curtis says.
When asked how much of an increase, he says that he has no guns left on his walls.
Curtis says he thought he had enough inventory to make it into the new year but he says he was wrong.
“It was over 200 AR-15s. It was over 1,500 magazines that have been sold,” says Curtis.
But he warns that ammunition will become scarce again.
“It happened four-years ago when President Obama came into office,” he says.
Steve Himmelbeger, from Stafford, says people are buying guns because of the threat of more gun restrictions and he says, “Some of them are doing it because they figure they need protection.”
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(Copyright 2012 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)
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