Nicholas Denington had an AK-47 with a 90-round drum he wanted to sell at a gun show outside Marietta Saturday: asking price, $1,000 — not a steal, but certainly a deal.
Denington, a 27-year-old Army vet from Gainesville, was at the show at Jim Miller Park looking for a tidy profit on the gun he paid $330 for in 2006. That purchase was pre-Obama, in gun-dealing parlance.
President Obama’s talk about the need for some sort of legislative action after 20 children and six adults were shot to death by a man with an assault-style rifle in a Connecticut school last month has driven up gun prices.
“I looked online two days ago and I saw AK prices ranging from $1,000 to $1,300,” said Denington, who served in the Iraq war.
The gun show was packed Saturday, which dealers and veteran attendees attributed to fear that assault-style weapons like the AK-47 and AR-15 will be banned along with 30-round-and-larger magazines.
Rafael Gonzalez of On the Square Guns in McDonough said prices on a number of AR-15 models had increased by a third.
As for attendance at the gun show, he said, “The line is out the door. That is a knee-jerk reaction.”
Anthony Harden, a 25-year-old Army vet who bought a 12-gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun with a collapsible stock for $400, said gun prices are going up because of the presidential rhetoric.
“People are panicking,” Harden said. “They are afraid they are going to be banned, so you have these ridiculous prices.”
Tom Reese, 56, of Acworth came to his first gun show Saturday searching for a reasonably priced AR-15. Supply and demand had crushed that hope. “Every store I’ve been to has been out of AR-15s,” he said.
Retired Cobb County police Officer L.E. Race, who has worked security at the show for years, noted that six months ago prices for some models of AR-15s were about $600; now they go as high as $1,600.
He said ammunition also was selling out. “You can’t go squirrel hunting,” he said. “You can’t find .22-caliber rounds.”
He advised potential AR-15 consumers to wait before buying. “Everything is going to (go) back down,” he said.
Still, Gonzalez said, “Guns are usually a good investment.”
As for the so-called “gunshow loophole” — private sellers like Denington don’t have to do background checks on customers — the majority of sales Saturday were being conducted by licensed firearm dealers who still put customers through the paperwork.
“They keep saying it is a a loophole but it is not,” said retired Cobb police Officer R.S.Tidwell, who has worked security at the show for years. “If you go to a gun store, it is the same as it is here.”
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