Gun sales in Rhode Island spiked during 2008 to their highest level in at least a decade as firearms purchases in the state mimicked a national trend.

The surge continues in 2009 as gun sales in Rhode Island are on track to rise nearly 50 percent, to 13,000 firearms.

Politics and economics are the prime causes, say gun dealers and others.

“I’m hearing two things,” said Pawtucket police Chief George L. Kelley III, president of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association. “The first is [people] are afraid the president may change some of the laws, and the second is the economy.”

Longtime gun owners agreed with Kelley. “A year ago I would have leaned toward [saying] people were reverting back to putting sustenance on the table,” said Dennis Etchells, president of the Federated Rhode Island Sportsmen’s Clubs, an association of about 20 hunting and fishing clubs in the state. “Now a lot of it has to do with the current presidential administration.

“The firearms industry exploded after the election; a lot of people fear their Second Amendment rights will be taken away.”

Those fears began manifesting themselves in mid-2008, gun dealers said, as people across the state and the nation sought to buy guns and take firearms courses, causing shortages of guns and ammunition and driving up prices.

“Since November, sales of firearms — in particular handguns and semiautomatic hunting and target rifles — are fast outpacing inventory,” said Steve Sanetti, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry trade association.

Gun-makers Smith & Wesson, of Springfield, Mass., and Sturm Ruger & Co, of Southport, Conn., both have seen sales rise.

Sales at Sturm Ruger grew from $144 million in 2007 to $174 million in 2008. The company had a $48-million backlog of orders at the end of the year.

At Smith & Wesson, sales of handguns and tactical rifles to consumers rose 62 percent for the three months that ended Jan. 31 — a period that encompassed the November 2008 elections, the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president and a deepening economic crisis nationwide.

NATIONWIDE, the number of requests made to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) rose 13.7 percent in 2008 — a year in which requests outpaced the 2007 figures in every month, according to the FBI. Federal law requires gun dealers to make the checks to learn whether a prospective buyer has a criminal record or is otherwise ineligible to purchase a firearm.

Background checks continue their rise nationally this year, up 29 percent in January and 23.3 percent in February, the last figures available.

Gun dealers reported 9,204 firearm sales in 2008 to the Rhode Island attorney general’s office, up 23.1 percent from the 7,473 reported in 2007. They reported 3,363 sales in just the first three months of 2009. The state does not break down the purchase data by type of firearm.

In 2008, the number of people passing the safety test needed to buy a handgun in Rhode Island skyrocketed 68.3 percent, according to the state Department of Environmental Management, as the state issued nearly 3,400 “blue cards.” .

Meanwhile, the number of people taking the more rigorous firearm education classes needed to buy a state hunting license rose negligibly, from 973 in 2007 to 1,031 in 2008, a 6 percent increase, according to DEM records. (Another 1,233 were issued in the first three months of 2009.)

Michael Sacharko, of North Kingstown, spent about 30 minutes on April 8 at the DEM office in Wakefield to get his blue card — spending about half the time reading a study guide before taking the 50-question test.

“I didn’t realize it was this easy,” said Sacharko, a URI graduate student. “I went into it cold and got a 94.”

Such interest may explain why handguns are showing up more frequently during incidents in Providence, though the firearms are less apparent outside the capital city, according to law enforcement officials.

Rising gun sales are a concern, said Providence police Maj. Thomas F. Oates III.

“They’re subject to theft, and these firearms end up on the street, and that creates a problem,” Oates said. “We’ve doubled the arrests for people possessing illegal firearms this year.” As of April 8, city police had arrested 31 people for illegally possessing firearms, confiscating 32 guns in the process, Oates said. Only 15 people had been arrested on those charges in the first quarter of 2008.

Police chiefs in East Providence and Cumberland both said they had seen no change in the number of incidents involving firearms in their communities.

In Pawtucket, gun ownership is on track to rise 5 percent in 2009, said Kelley, the police chief. The increase may be due to a rise during 2008 in the number of break-ins and burglaries of properties in the city.

“I’m hoping they’re not just buying a gun and bringing it home without knowing how to fire it,” he said.

Asked what is driving the increase in firearms sales in Rhode Island, Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch wrote in an e-mail to The Journal: “I am not concerned in the sense that Rhode Island residents buying guns through the proper and lawful channels are exercising their constitutional rights. I am concerned in the sense that an uptick in sales reflects the unease many people may be feeling because of the recession, anxiety about a reenactment of the Brady bill or restrictions on sales, and other factors beyond their control.

“What triggers concern in me, and all involved in law enforcement and criminal justice, is if an increase in gun sales results in increased numbers of guns on our streets, and increased crime and violence.”

The National Shooting Sports Foundation faults President Obama.

“The increase in firearms sales was predictable,” said Lawrence G. Keane, the association’s chief lawyer. “It’s clear from [President] Obama’s voting record and the promises that he continues to make, that gun control will be coming back to the White House.”

In June 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court embraced the long-disputed view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for personal use, ruling 5 to 4 that there is a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense.

At the time, Mr. Obama was an Illinois senator vying for the Democratic nomination and already on record supporting the individual-rights view.

Mr. Obama said then that the ruling would “provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.” He praised the decision both for its endorsement of the individual-rights view and for its description of the right as “not absolute and subject to reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe.”

According to policy statements now on the White House Web site, Mr. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden “favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun-show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.”

RHODE ISLAND gun dealers say they haven’t seen this sort of demand since another Democrat — Bill Clinton — occupied the White House. The ban on the sale of certain assault weapons, signed into law by Clinton in 1994, drove up demand, the dealers said. The ban lapsed in September 2004.

The dealers overlooked something that state statistics point out — gun sales jumped in the weeks after the September 2001 terrorist attacks. The state recorded 7,577 gun purchases for all of 2001, up 13.5 percent from the previous year.

The more recent increases continue a trend that began in 2006 as the housing market collapsed and continue today as businesses struggle and the national unemployment level heads toward 10 percent.

“I believe some people are scared because they don’t know what’s going to happen with the economy,” said Bob Durand, a 52-year-old contractor from Warren.

Durand, who belongs to the Pine Tree Gun Club, in Foster, is a gun collector of sorts. His buying isn’t focused in the way a car collector might purchase only Corvettes or Mustangs.

“I buy because I can afford it,” Durand said.

He’s bought four guns in the last few months; including an AR-15 — a semi-automatic rifle for which he paid $1,800, Durand said.

Sacharko, the URI grad student, fell into the group of people for whom neither the economy nor the Second Amendment are driving issues.

“The Second Amendment doesn’t provoke me,” he said.

He’s taken up shooting with his buddies at the state’s firing range near the URI campus as a pastime.

Many other people approached by a Journal reporter at gun shops and clubs across the state declined to say why they took the safety test or bought a gun recently.

But they are buying guns, state records show.

That demand is driving up prices of guns and ammunition as supplies remain tight, the dealers said.

“Prices have generally been going up — they’re not going down,” said Steven Rossi, co-owner of Dave’s Wholesale Guns, in Warwick

There’s been no “sticker shock” from customers, even as prices on many handguns top $1,000, said another gun dealer.

“They’re basically making it happen whether they have the cash or not,” said Kyle McCarthy, owner of Midstate Gun Co., in Coventry. “They’ll ask: ‘What can you give me for $800?’ ”

Gun owners also are buying ammunition by the case these days, rather than by the box as they once did.

“It’s gotten to the point where I’m having trouble getting guns, getting ammo,” said John Francis, owner of Competition Shooting Supplies in Pawtucket. “It’s a full-time job just to find merchandise for the store.

“There are certain guns that I don’t expect to be able to get this year,” he said, the Bushmaster AR-15, among them. The ArmaLite AR-15 was the original name for what became the M16, the assault rifle first used by the U.S. troops in the Vietnam War. Today, the term AR-15 refers to any commercially sold semiautomatic version of the M16.

The rising interest in firearms is pushing up membership at the state’s gun clubs, according to Dennis Etchells, president of the Federated Rhode Island Sportsmen’s Clubs.

“A lot of the clubs have waiting lists,” he said.

Keith Silvia, president of the Newport Rifle Club, agreed.

“We have had an increase in membership since President Obama was elected,” Silvia said. “[Members] believe he is someone who is for gun control.”

The club has about 400 members. It’s had to cap the number of people taking its pistol-shooting class at 16 people a month because, with only eight firing ports, the club doesn’t have room for more participants.

The demand for practice time seems unlikely to change soon.

“Since the elections I’ve had an incredible number of first-time buyers,” said John Francis, of Competition Shooting. “I’ve not seen any indication it’s going to slow down.”

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pgrimald@projo.com