The Washington Post is reporting that while Americans have cut back on buying cars, furniture and clothes in a tough economy, there's one consumer item that's still enjoying healthy sales: guns.

According to state and federal data, purchases of firearms and ammunition have risen 8 to 10 percent this year. The story reports many dealers, buyers and experts attribute the increase in part to concerns about the economy and fears that if Barack Obama wins the presidency, he will join with fellow Democrats in Congress to enact new gun controls.

By Joseph P. Tartaro

With just [days] left in the longest presidential campaign in American history, the road to the White House appears to run through fewer than 10 states.

These battlegrounds, many of them in either the Rust Belt or the West, could hold the key to whether Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain becomes the nation’s 44th president. And the outcomes there could turn in part on the impact of the campaign’s two female superstars: Sen. Hillary Clinton, who narrowly lost the Democratic nomination to Obama, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain’s surprise Republican running mate.

Palin’s emergence seems to have changed some fundamental dynamics in the race. In some cases, she may have won votes for McCain; in other cases she may have turned people off, not necessarily by what she said or did, but because of what establishment media commentators and the newer bloggers may have said about her.

What is especially curious about the 2008 presidential race is that it some ways it reflects back to the 1948 race, except that the party vectors are reversed. In 1948, with bad poll numbers and a Democratic Party split three ways by Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace, every major media outlet and poll predicted a victory for the Republican candidate, New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey. In fact, some newspapers went so far as to publish papers that claimed Dewy won that election.