Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

John Hempton, who is himself merely a humble (Australian) investment manager, says that one investment opportunity in particular might tell us something about how Barack Obama is doing after seven months in office.  It turns out that the big runup in firearm sales to people who were convinced that Obama planned to confiscate their guns seems to be over.  In fact, according to Smith & Wesson, their order book is collapsing:

The warning about the backlog not being binding is new — and it is clear from the new disclosure that they are having massive problems during this quarter with order cancellation.

The backlog dropped from $268 million to $178 million — a drop of 90 million.  Ten percent of that (say $27 million) was order cancellation — but a net $63 million of sales came from the backlog.  Total sales were 102 million — and less than 100 million in firearms.  The rate at which Americans are placing orders for new Smith and Wesson handguns is collapsing.

The company did not tell us the current forward order book.  At that rate of collapse what they are facing is a disaster. Whether that says anything about the size and intensity of belief of the Rush Limbaugh right — well I will leave that for my readers to discern.  We just want to make money for our clients — so we are short Smith & Wesson.

Easy come, easy go. But perhaps this means the “Obama is a fascist tyrant” bubble is about to burst — since, you know, it turns out that he’s actually a fairly conventional mainstream liberal politician with exactly zero interest in re-igniting any facet of the culture wars whatsoever.  And just how many extra guns do you really need to protect yourself against imaginary enemies anyway?  Just saying.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate