As businesses close and are forced to make layoffs, one business is booming, selling guns. The R & K Gun and Knife show brought out hundreds of four state consumers in Joplin looking to purchase the perfect weapon. A local gun salesman says business is skyrocketing and doesn't think it will slow down anytime soon. David Surgi of Airport Drive, Missouri says his shooting ranges are becoming more popular now than ever.

"I've had more in the past two months than I've had in the previous 8 months," says Surgi.

The manager of the R & K Gun and Knife show attributes good business to anxiety over the new president and the democratic-controlled Congress.

"Everybody had realized that Obama was going to get elected and they fear new gun laws from the new administration," says Dennis Pearson, manager of the gun show. 

Gun sales began to rise in mid-October of last year. Surgi says gun manufacturers at a recent conference revealed they can't produce specific firearms fast enough.

"News from the industry itself is they are so backed up it's a year behind in production," says Surgi.

A vendor at the gun show says his business is up because consumers are slightly more interested in one type of gun than others.

"At least 50 - 80 percent increase especially on our semi-automatic pistols, anything to do with what they call an assault weapon, anything with ten rounds or better," says Duane Hungerford, a vendor at the gun show. 

"You see people that wouldn't buy those type of rifles older gentleman, buying them," says Pearson.

The reason? Buyers are afraid these firearms will be the first to be regulated. In 1994 Congress passed a law prohibiting all sales of assault weapons but it expired in 2004.

The White House website says "Obama and Biden also favor common sense measures that respect the second amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They also support making the expired federal assault weapons ban permanent."

www.whitehouse.gov