Sales soar as gun regulations loom

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Brad Williamson's family has owned a Sporting Goods Store in Saraland for nearly five decades. He said there were about a dozen people lined up when the store opened this morning. He said normally that would be unusual for a Tuesday, but not today.

"When politicians start blaming guns and ammunition for people's actions, then people who own guns want to get more guns and more ammunition," Williamson said.

Following the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, last month, President Obama vowed to tackle gun violence. The president said he's willing to act alone on some of the recommendations he received from a special task force.

Williamson said that is disturbing.

"What they're reporting today is there are potentially 19 executive orders that he could institute on the gun industry: guns and firearms and gun ownership.  We've never had a president that's threatened that. So when that happens, people want to get what they believe they have the constitutional right to own," he said.

Regardless of how all this turns out one thing is certain, the gun control issue is good for gun sales.

"We are, we're out of the AR-15, and AK-47's and a lot of the semi automatic pistols.  A lot of people are buying ammunition now and trying to ammunition for everything that they own," Williamson said.

The organization Mayors Against Illegal Guns launched an ad campaign this week calling for gun control.

Mobile Mayor Sam Jones is a member of that group. He said it's not about taking away people's constitutional rights.

"I was really interested in it because what I think we have to do is, people who really legally possess guns and use guns for hunting purposes and other purposes, fine.  We should all be able to do that.  But people who buy illegal guns on the street that are assault weapons, people under age, and we run into a lot of teenagers with large caliber guns.  We want to find some way to prevent that," Mayor Jones said.

Jones said there are some things he hopes the president's gun control measures will include.

"I would hope that we would come up with a program that gives people the right to bear arms, but we have some stipulations in there where it relates to underage individuals having access to guns, where it relates to assault weapons being sold on the streets of cities," he explained.

"I don't know specifically how you do that and still preserve the rights of everyone who want to bear arms, but I think that there is some common ground that should be able to be reached," Jones said.

While there are some measures the president can address through executive order, the issues that seem to be fueling gun sales right now cannot be implemented without congressional approval.

Those include a ban on assault weapons, limiting the capacity of ammunition magazines and instituting universal background checks.