Thanks, Obama!!

If the Ruger family is not praying for Obama every night, they are ingrates.

From their 1Q09 report:

The first quarter of 2009 was a significant improvement over the first quarter of last year and continues the progress made in 2008:
• The level of demand for our products during the first quarter of 2009 has been unusually high, with more than 500,000 units ordered.
• Our firearms sales grew 55.5% from the first quarter of 2008 and 8.7% from the fourth quarter of 2008.
• Our firearms unit production grew 69.3% from the first quarter of 2008 and 25.6% from the fourth quarter of 2008.
• Our backlog grew to 458,900 units and $136.3 million at the end of the first quarter of 2009, from 175,900 units and $47.8 million at the end of 2008.

A 500K-unit backlog is very large, indeed. Yes, Ruger has a very large SKU-count of goods including handguns, rifles, and shotguns; it's arguably the broadest product line offering of any US gun manufacturer.

But still: that backlog is really, really, big.

HT: ClayCramer