"I've sold probably four times as much in the last six months as I have in 20 years combined," said Cliff Hunter, owner of Tommy Bronson Sporting Goods in Memphis. "Hand guns and the tactical weapons, they're absolutely off the charts."
Most of his gun sales used to be for hunting, or personal protection in a city riddled with crime. But just before the November election, anxiety that Mr Obama would win and enact a radical programme of curtailing gun rights began drove business right up.
"Obama's a liberal socialist and I think he's proven quickly how extreme he is," he said. "When they get through healthcare, guns are on the table. They're not talking about it but it's going to happen."
The FBI recorded a 49 per cent rise in gun background checks during election week compared to the same week a year earlier.
"Sales have been up 50, 60 per cent sinces Osama got elected," said Jay Hill, owner of the Classic Firearms gun store in Cordova, just outside Memphis, smiling as he deliberately mixed up the name of the US president with the leader of al-Qaeda.
It's that last part that of course should concern people. It's been three years and no "Obama gun ban" has even been "talked about" as Cliff here admits, but people aren't buying guns and ammo to hunt deer and elk.
They're buying it for use on other types of "game". And it's not the recession, they've been doing this since before things got really bad in 2008. The entire thought of a black President has made people not just buy guns then, but continue to buy guns now, and at a record pace. Not a whiff of a gun ban has been seriously introduced. They expect it anyway.
But the "mix-up" there gives it away. They don't think he's President, you see. And they're arming themselves as a result.
What happens if President Obama gets re-elected? Steve M. lays out the groundwork: Republicans see America with a black President, and see their America as over. Society is dead.
To the average American wingnut, there are individuals and families -- and also affinity groups. There are fellow believers in "gun freedom." There are fellow "regular Americans" who aren't repulsive cosmopolitan liberal elitists. There are fellow Christians. There are fellow white people. These groups are worth defending. Society isn't. Any old SOB can become part of society -- Muslims, gays, people on welfare, you name it.
I suppose this harks back to Tom's point about the links connecting Ron Paul's present-day libertarianism and the racist states' rights movement. I agree that it's about race to some extent, but I don't think it's just about race. It's more flexible than that. It's about reserving the unilateral right, or the affinity-group right, to decide who belongs here and who doesn't. It's about deciding, if you choose, that "society" is just you and your guns, and everyone else can just stay the hell off your land (though with the definition of "your land" extended to the creche in the town square and the vacant lot the local Muslims have purchased so they can build a mosque on it).
The people that elected Barack Obama? They are nothing less than the enemy. And the right is arming themselves to "take the country back" from them. There's a reason they want to kick out all the "illegals" and the Muslims and the gays and the "bad minorities" and the "welfare queens". They don't want them here anymore, because they've gained so much power, they've elected a black Kenyan Muslim atheist terrorist sympathizer socialist. Their "America" is changing. They will fight it every step of the way. Resisting that change is now the raison d'être of the Republican Party.
It's war to them. And so, they arm themselves for battle.
Expanding on this point, you can now see the entirely of Republican foreign policy: with the singular exception of Israel, the rest of the world can bugger off our lawn and go blow themselves up. Everyone else on the planet is taking America's resources, and is just another source of aggravation, violence, crime, terrorism, and most importantly, non-Americanism.
GOP domestic and foreign policy? "If you're not one of us, go screw yourselves. And if you press the point, we're the ones with the guns. Remember that."
It really is that simple.
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