Gun stocks rallied Monday in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed more than 50 people and sent upwards of 400 victims to the hospital. It was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
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But as families and friends begin to grieve, their lives irreversibly changed, the shareholders of Sturm Ruger & Company (NYSE: RGR) and American Outdoor Brands Corp. ( AOBC), the holding company of Smith & Wesson, are getting richer. RGR was up more than 4 percent and AOBC added more than 3 percent in morning trading.
Sadly, this has become a textbook way for gun stocks to react every time senseless mass shootings occur. There’s a rationale behind that and, increasingly, a moral aspect for investors in the firearm industry that should not go ignored.
Why gun stocks rally after mass shootings. The logic behind gun stocks rallying just after horrific events is this: There will be a backlash on Capitol Hill as many lawmakers demand tighter gun control to prevent such tragedies in the future. That discussion will instill fear in many gun owners that their window to buy their favorite deadly weapons is limited, and they’ll go out and load up in the meantime.
Some who may worry they don’t currently have the firepower to protect themselves in a nightmare scenario may also rush to buy guns.
This rationale is borne out in the numbers. Short-term bumps in firearm sales followed mass shootings in San Bernardino, California, in 2015 and at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016.
The simple moral issue with betting on gun stocks. Making money off a national tragedy that ruins untold numbers of lives and irrevocably alters many more feels wrong in and of itself. Most people would feel little solace if, say, they had some puts on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index that ended up making them money in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, when stocks plunged following the attacks.
With the disgusting regularity that mass shootings in the U.S. occur, gun stocks are more or less guaranteed to have a few of these events each year.
The more complex moral issue. What’s far more important to gun stocks in the long run, however, would seem to be the long-term outlook for gun control. Incidents like the massacre in Las Vegas add another instance to the mountain of examples showing what is plainly clear: The very wares companies like RGR and AOBC sell are used to facilitate the deaths of thousands of Americans each year.
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The incredible number of unnecessary deaths that firearms cause long term is important if you think society is trending toward more gun control generally. Eventually, more gun control would clearly be bad for these companies. They would need quite a dramatic sales pop to compensate for regulations that permanently slow or eliminate the sale of automatic and semi-automatic weapons, for example.
Less gun control in the long term would be great for gun stocks, though. If you could buy an assault rifle at your local 7-Eleven with your Slurpee, that increased access could only be great for industry sales.
But few people think that much access is realistic.
Here’s what is: This country loves its Second Amendment right to bear arms. But with the sickening frequency of these mass-casualty events — often enabled by legally obtainable automatic or semiautomatic weapons — there’s bound to be serious political debate about access.
The sad reality is that the most profitable scenario that’s also realistic for RGR and AOBC shareholders is the current environment: Guns that can kill or injure hundreds of Americans in a matter of minutes remain legal, but every now and then there’s an overhyped yet halfhearted debate about more serious gun control that sparks a short-term surge in sales.
That is an awful scenario to count on as a shareholder of any gun stocks. We live in a capitalistic society where everyone is free to make a buck in any legal way they choose, but betting on fear, divisiveness and ultimately more gun deaths is not much of a way to make money in my book.
[See: 9 Times Politics Directly Impacted the Stock Market.]
War profiteering is unconscionable. Small-scale war profiteering, where the victims are innocent Americans and their families, is certainly no better.
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Cynical Catalysts Drive Gun Stocks After Mass Shootings originally appeared on usnews.com
