Gun enthusiasts Kyle Smith of Bleckley County, Dennis Cupp of Warner Robins, JR Greene of Bonaire and gun shop employee Scott Branco talk about proposed changes to assault weapons regulations Wednesday at Chuck’s Gun and Pawn Shop in Warner Robins.
GRANT BLANKENSHIP- gblankenship@macon.com

Middle Georgia gun shop owners and customers weighed in Wednesday on President Barack Obama’s proposal to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and step up background checks of gun buyers.

Many were critical of the proposal, but others said they don’t have a problem with the president’s ideas on curbing gun violence.

Clayton Williams, manager of Chuck’s Gun & Pawn Shop in Warner Robins, ignored his ringing phone as he talked about gun-control proposals in his office Wednesday.

“My phone just rings off the hook,” he said. “Everybody is calling around and checking on this stuff that’s already hard to get but could go away if the gun ban goes into effect.”

His inventory of assault rifles is just about depleted, with only a few still hanging on a wall that’s normally covered with them. Guns have been flying off the shelves since Obama first announced his intentions to implement gun control measures in December, following the fatal shootings of 20 students and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Williams, however, isn’t happy about the proposals even though it has been good for business in recent weeks.

“The business is nice, but it is not how you want to have it,” he said. “It would be good short term, but you don’t know what’s going to happen long term. ...The elementary school shooting was terrible, I mean god-awful,” Williams said. “I just hate it that the president seems to be using that to push forward what he’s trying to get through in Congress.”

Chris Kalejta and Reed Crumley come to his shop about once a week to check out the inventory. Both own assault rifles. Crumley bought an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle about two weeks before the Newtown shooting for $1,500. Today the same gun costs about $3,000, he said.

Neither think the president’s proposals would prevent violence.

“I think they should enforce the laws on the books rather than come up with new laws,” Kalejta said.

Gun sales -- and opinions -- also were going strong at Centerville Gun & Pawn Shop after the proposals were announced.

“We’ve been having record sales,” said store manager Jared Morrison. “From the weekend after the Sandy Hook shooting until now, we’ve been pretty crazy. I can’t keep AR-15s in stock. I can’t keep AK-47s in stock.”

With Obama’s proposal calling for a 10-round limit on magazine capacity, many of the common handguns Morrison sells also would be illegal, he said.

“Most of our customers are pretty upset about it,” he said. “That’s why they are coming in so they can buy something now and be grandfathered in if there is any kind of ban.”

According to figures from the Houston County Probate Judge’s office, applications for concealed carry permits exploded after the Sandy Hook shooting. In November, 241 people applied for a license. That more than doubled in December to 563. So far in January, 413 applications have been filed. That’s already higher than any month last year except December. In 2011, 2,211 permit applications were filed in the county. In 2012, the total was 3,038.

Bibb County Probate Court records show gun license applications spiked dramatically last month. In December 2012, the office in the basement of the Bibb County Courthouse took 227 applications, up from just 85 applications a month earlier. In December 2011, there were 104 applications in Bibb County.

Hamp Dowling, owner of Macon’s Eagle Gun Range, said he and a small group of people who watched Obama’s address on a television inside the store didn’t know what to think.

“Who knows what it’s going to be?” Dowling said. “It’s just like the health care bill. You have to wait to see what’s in it.”

Worries about such prohibitions led to rapid sales, leaving his stock of assault rifles almost depleted.

“We’ve experienced a flood of customers for anything that might be prohibited. High-capacity magazines went three weeks ago,” Dowling said.

Jeff Brown, who hangs out at Eagle Gun Range several days a week, didn’t think the bans could pass Congress but if they did wouldn’t have any practical effect. He doubts the 1994 assault weapons ban had any effect on crime, and he expects new bans wouldn’t work either.

“I don’t see the point at all,” said Brown, who has been shooting guns for most of his 68 years. “If I have a 30-round magazine or three 10-rounders, it doesn’t matter” because the magazines can be quickly changed.

But Dowling and Brown said they had no problem with other parts of Obama’s proposals, such as improving background checks. Dowling just remained cautious, saying he supports Obama’s moves “as long as he doesn’t stretch it too far, as he’s been known to do.”

Howard Reed, owner of Howard’s Pawn in Macon, gestured toward a broad sparse area in his firearms section and said, “You’d think I’m having a going out-of-business sale.”

He’s working with 20 wholesalers and can’t get many new guns, even small five-shot .380-caliber handguns women could carry in their purse.

Reed said Adam Lanza, the gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary, could just have easily driven a 4x4 through a school playground and parking lot to kill the children had he been kept from guns. Reed said the 2nd Amendment guarantees firearms to the American people, who used guns from their closets to defeat the world’s largest land army and win independence from England.

Employees and customers at Ingleside Gunworks in Macon were generally skeptical of Obama’s pronouncement.

“A lot of the stuff he’s addressing has been addressed before,” said co-owner Tim Coker. “We saw this in ’94, with the (President Bill) Clinton assault-weapons ban.”

Bans on assault weapons and magazines holding more than 10 rounds were bad ideas, he and others said.

Coker said the loophole allowing individual gun sales without background checks at gun shows probably will be closed, but he sees such restrictions as a “slippery slope.”

“I feel the folks that play by the rules are punished by the few,” he said. “I know that’s kind of our society.”

Better school security and firearm education weren’t controversial at Ingleside, but customer Brandon Melton of Macon doubted the effectiveness of many items on the list of executive orders, signed by the president, related to gun control.

“How are they going to enforce a background check on a private sale between me and you?” he said. “Really, in my opinion a lot of this stuff is, I hate to say a joke, but …”

Sales clerk Will Hamrick said he was surprised that federal agencies don’t already share much of the information that Obama’s orders call for. Scoffing at Obama in general, Hamrick repeated a talking point from a National Rifle Association video released Tuesday that calls Obama hypocritical for having Secret Service protect his daughters while opposing the NRA’s call for armed volunteers in every school. Obama’s executive orders call for giving grant incentives to hire 1,000 more school police and counselors, and improve school safety planning.

Orders that didn’t deal directly with gun laws drew less criticism.

“Some of this stuff on here is a good reminder,” said customer John Cunard of Macon. “We do need to work on mental health access in this country. A lot of that has been cut back.”

But there’s worry that Obama won’t follow the democratic process in creating new rules, Coker said.

“As soon as Obama said ‘executive order,’ that sent shock waves through our industry,” he said.

The actual shooting in Sandy Hook didn’t bring a surge in gun sales at his shop, but the subsequent “knee-jerk reaction for gun control” did, Coker said. Still, he attributes most of that to regular customers doing all their year’s purchases at once. He expects a corresponding slump in coming months.

Macon Police Chief Mike Burns said Obama’s proposals are aimed at law-abiding citizens. In Macon, “the crooks are still going to have guns,” he said.

A minority of the shootings in Macon involve guns that were legally owned or were purchased in a store that conducts background checks. Most of the guns used in Macon crimes are stolen, Burns said.

“You should never leave a gun in your car,” Burns said. “If you have them at home, you should have a small safe or something you can put them in.”

Writers Wayne Crenshaw, Jim Gaines, Mike Stucka and Amy Leigh Womack contributed to this report.