Gun Stocks Rise After Las Vegas Shooting, but Sales Drop Under Trump<br />The price was up 3.2 percent on Monday and 2.4 percent on Tuesday, compared with increases of 6.8 percent after the Orlando shooting<br />and 11.5 percent in the days after the San Bernardino attack.<br />In previous years, stock prices for firearms companies sometimes fell after mass shootings, such as the December 2012 killings in Newtown, Conn.<br />President Trump’s perceived ambivalence toward gun control could be tamping down firearms sales, analysts said.<br />Opinion: Now Is the Time to Talk About Guns<br />Stock prices for firearm companies rose this week after a gunman killed dozens of people<br />in Las Vegas, an apparent continuation of a morbid trend linked to mass shootings.<br />Last year, the day after a gunman killed 49 people<br />and wounded 53 at the packed Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., on June 12, 2016, the gun maker’s stock price swung up 8.5 percent.<br />Analysts from Wedbush said in a report last week that consumers expected to buy more guns this year than they did in 2016, but added<br />that “a Republican-dominated government that poses no threat of enacting new gun regulation has taken much of the urgency out of gun purchases in recent months.”<br />A year ago, gun company stocks were gaining.<br />On Monday, shares in Sturm, Ruger & Company, the Southport, Conn., maker of Ruger handguns<br />and rifles, rose 3.5 percent, then an additional 2.1 percent on Tuesday.
