Monthly gun sales drop into ‘Trump slump’ — but still much higher than before Obama’s election

Gun sales have slid into "Trump slump" since the election.

The number of gun background checks, which offer a rough indicator for overall firearms sales, has dropped for each month but one, compared with last year, reported The Guardian.

The only exception was May, when a suicide bomber killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Britain.

The marketing director for one firearms manufacturer based in Oklahoma said the market seems to be saturated, and he said gun owners have gotten "complacent" with Donald Trump as president instead of Barack Obama.

“The fact that everyone perceived Obama to be anti-gun and wants to take your gun rights away made everybody buy, buy, buy until everybody had a surplus,” said Jeremiah Blasi, of Mid America Armament. “Nobody’s as concerned that we’re going to lose gun rights in the immediate future."

Blasi told The Guardian his company's sales are down 25 percent, compared to last year, and sales at gun shows were off by 50 percent.

Stock prices for Sturm Ruger and American Outdoor Brands Corporation, formerly Smith & Wesson, dropped steeply after the election and remain down following a rebound in the spring.

Despite the drop since last year, the newspaper reported, gun sales remain relatively high compared to the period between 1998 and 2009, before Obama took office.

The spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association, said 2017 remains on track to be the second- or third-highest year for sales since the background check system began.

Americans owned at least 265 million guns in 2015, according to recent surveys, although some estimates say the number is even higher.

Just 3 percent of Americans own about half of all U.S. guns.