GUN sales in the United States didn't get an immediate boost from last week's Supreme Court ruling protecting an individual's right to own firearms because the slumping economy has curbed spending, dealers said.

The ruling struck down the District of Columbia's handgun ban and resolved the 217-year-old question of whether the Second Amendment covers people unaffiliated with a state-run militia. Washington's law, one of the nation's strictest, barred most residents from owning handguns and required legal firearms be kept unloaded and either disassembled or under trigger lock.

Sales of handguns, which start at about US$300, are more dependent on the cash in people's pockets than on the laws governing their ownership, said Mike LaRocca, 57, owner of LaRocca Gun Works Inc in Worcester, Massachusetts.

"Every time the economy takes a shift, our business is hurt," LaRocca told Bloomberg News. "When disposable income dries up, people are more concerned with putting gas in the car or oil in the tank for the winter."

About 1.4 million handguns were made in 2006, a 30-percent increase over 2005, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Prices go into the thousands of dollars and have risen 10 percent to 15 percent the past four years, said Paul Pluff, a spokesman for Smith & Wesson Holding Corp, the 156-year-old gun maker.

"Just like everything in the economy, the price of firearms has gone up," Pluff said. "The raw material costs have gone up dramatically."

Handguns are made primarily from steel, which has risen 23 percent this year, and plastic, which fluctuates with the price of oil. Crude oil prices are up 46 percent this year.

Springfield, Massachusetts-based Smith & Wesson, which controls 45 percent of the US market for revolvers - handguns that hold ammunition in a cylinder - posted a 30-percent decline in net income to US$9.1 million in the 12 months through April 30.

US handgun sales rose 5.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to the Website of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a Newtown, Connecticut-based trade association for the firearms industry.(Shanghai Daily)