I went shooting yesterday with my buddy Brian. The gun club is free for members, so shooting didn’t require a second mortgage; it just felt that way. We had a store of .45 and .22 rounds, but had to pick up two boxes of 9 mm and another of .38s for my SP-101. The 150 rounds ran us 65 bucks. The box of 50 .38 rounds was $23.75. For wadcutters! And this was from a FFL who sells out of his garage with no overhead.

At least we could find ammo to buy, which apparently puts us in a minority. The same extreme ammo shortages are being experienced by customers, dealers and stores nationwide. The only shooting accessory not rising through the economic roof is Hoppe’s 9, since there’s no need to clean a gun you can’t shoot.

“I bought a case of .223 last week,” our supplier told us. “I asked for six but [the dealer] said it was restricted. He’d only sell me one.”

What is going on? Are shooters heading headlong into the world of Mad Max 2 - the Road Warrior, where empty guns are abandoned for crossbows and bullets, yes bullets, are handed down as precious family heirlooms?

No, I think not. Bullet scarcity and price inflation is fueled by the same crowd impulse that sparks runs on banks or makes Dot.com start ups and tulip bulbs seems like must-have investments: panic. Panic of losing out or panic of just plain losing. In this case, hysteria was spawned by the panic of losing an election.

The current “run on the blanks” began when the right-wing political establishment went “all in” last November in their attempt to stop the election of Barack Obama. The level of fear-mongering was impressive even for gun politics, a serious issue too often subject to ill-considered attacks. And just look at the response: The Treasury Department reports that in the fourth quarter of 2008, i.e. the quarter immediately following the election, Firearms and Ammunition Excise Tax collections were $98,158,645 compared to $74,783,993 for the same quarter in 2007—an increase of roughly 30%. As proud Democrats might point out—President Obama was helping to stimulate the economy before he even took office! Unfortunately, the effects of current ammo shortages are not so sanguinary.

But other than ammo shortages, all the attacks achieved was to marginalize the right’s traditional proponents of gun rights. The right-wing sound machine now has about as much influence on the Obama administration as a howling coyote envying your campfire has of getting warm. They threw everything they had at the president and got decimated at the polls. As a result, the president and the Democratic-controlled Congress have a free hand to do what they want without right-wing alliances. So do the Democrat’s actions justify the continued hoarding of ammo for a coming ATF Armageddon? The president’s record to date would indicate not:

The Blair Holt Bill, an ill-considered and blatantly unconstitutional gun ban and registration bill died in Congress for lack of enthusiasm. Congress passed bills allowing freedom to transport firearms on Amtrak and to give primacy to state concealed carry laws in national parks, monuments and wildlife refuges. Both bills passed with large, bipartisan majorities and were signed without hesitation by the president. After early missteps by the Attorney General, who repeated in good faith poorly vetted data from the Mexican government which grossly exaggerated the role of straw buyers and gun shows in the U.S. in arming Mexican drug cartels, bipartisan Congressional coalitions and the administration itself moved quickly to assure Americans their Second Amendment Rights would not be abridged by international agreements or treaties, including CIFTA.

Knee-jerk attacks against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as an “extreme gun grabber” proved equally unfounded when a three-judge panel of Republican-appointed judges in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reached the same conclusion she had regarding the Second Amendment and the “incorporation doctrine.” (The 7th Circuit decision is currently under appeal, and we at AHSA are hopeful the Supreme Court will extend 2nd Amendment guarantees to protect civil rights from intrusive state law as it did for federal law in the D.C. v. Heller decision. So far it is only the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals—typically viewed as the most liberal—which has ruled that the Heller decision extends to state law.) So far it is Democrat Russ Feingold, the liberal's liberal, who has promised to raise the issue of 2nd Amendment protections during confirmation hearings.

Most importantly, the Obama administration has shown a willingness to engage gun rights organizations, including AHSA, to examine data and move forward with fact-based policy decisions that include the views of the 37 million gun owners who voted for Obama last November as well as the concerned gun owners who didn’t. AHSA believes this engagement is a positive attribute of the administration’s emerging style, which shows the advantages of valuing consensus over conflict.

While the legislative agenda of this and future Congresses will always bear watching, current paranoia over any zealous anti-gun agenda remains exactly that--paranoia.

While it is always good advice to keep your powder dry, there remains no rational basis for hoarding a lifetime’s supply.

Today, as president of the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA), I announced our endorsement of Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. Because the gun issue has recently become a factor in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, I want to share the remarks I made today: