EEUU: Alta demanda por armas genera escasez de municiones.

By Edmond Lococo

April 15 (Bloomberg) -- Gun City USA, the largest gun store in Nashville, Tennessee, has sold arms to country music stars Hank Williams Jr., George Jones and their entourages. What it can’t sell them much of right now is ammunition to reload.

“We have very, very little of any caliber,” said Larry Baity, a 74-year-old counter clerk at Gun City who said he has waited on Williams. “We’re virtually out. We’ve got a lot of bare shelves.”

The scene at Gun City is playing out across the U.S. as record gun sales deplete stocks from ammunition makers Alliant Techsystems Inc. and Olin Corp. Demand for firearms is being driven in part by concern that U.S. President Barack Obama may impose new controls, said Matt Rice, a spokesman for Springfield, Massachusetts-based Smith & Wesson Holding Corp.

“Each administration has their own policies,” Rice said.

“It definitely made people a little apprehensive, and that led to increased gun sales.” Smith & Wesson makes the .357 Magnum, the .38 Special and Walther PPK handguns.

Federal Bureau of Investigation background checks for firearm sales jumped 27 percent to 3.82 million in the first quarter this year, following a 14 percent jump to a record 12.7 million for all 2008. October through November 2008 saw the largest number of quarterly background checks since they were launched in 1998 as part of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act passed earlier, the data show.

Stocking Up

“There’s a concern, rightfully or wrong, that the right to bear arms might be restricted so people are stocking up,” said Howard Rubel, a New York-based analyst with Jefferies & Co. who rates share of Alliant “buy” and doesn’t own any. “How long that’s going to play out is hard to call.”

During the 2008 campaign, Obama’s Web site said he would “protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport and use guns.”

The White House Web site section on Obama’s agenda says he and Vice President Joseph Biden both “support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.” Asked yesterday whether Obama still supports such a ban or how actively he plans to push for it, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, “I think that there are other priorities that the president has.”

The National Rifle Association also is hearing reports of “widespread ammunition shortages” tied to increased gun demand and has no industrywide data to quantify the shortfall, said Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the Fairfax, Virginia-based firearms-rights group. Ted Novin, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group in Newtown, Connecticut, said domestic production of ammunition is about 8 billion to 10 billion rounds per year, including all calibers used for hunting, sporting, law enforcement and the military.