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Once-booming gun industry now recalibrating under Trump
Sales waning after Obama leaves office
W guns
In this photo taken March 15, 2017, Karl Sorken, production manager for Battle Rifle Co., based in Webster, Texas, works on the rails of an AR-15 style rifle. Battle Rifle is one of now more than 10,000 gunmakers in the United States. President Donald Trump promised to revive manufacturing in the U.S., but one sector is poised to shrink under his watch: the gun industry. Fears of limits on guns led to a surge in demand during President Barack Obamas tenure and manufacturers leapt to keep up. - photo by Associated Press
WEBSTER, Texas — President Donald Trump promised to revive manufacturing in the United States, but there's one once-burgeoning sector poised to shrink under his watch: the gun industry.Fears of government limits on guns — some real, some perceived — led to a surge in demand during President Barack Obama's tenure and manufacturers leapt to keep up. Over the decade ending in 2015, the number of U.S. companies licensed to make firearms jumped a whopping 362 percent. But sales are down and the bubble appears to be bursting with a staunch advocate for gun rights in the White House and Republicans ruling Congress."The trends really almost since Election Day or election night have been that gun sales have slacked off," said Robert Spitzer, political science department chairman at State University of New York at Cortland.
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