If I were a politician and heard about the massive, unheard of increase in gun sales, I'd take that as a clear cut sign that touching the gun issue was a great way to get some practice on Monster.com looking for a new job.
However, it's not like anyone ever accused politicians of being bright.
Seems like we're hearing a lot of noise about every possible chance at restricting gun rights in any shape, form, or fashion from renewing the AWB to ammunition encoding. A lot of it is just that, noise, but I think there's definitely an undercurrent of "we're going to find something that sticks" that we have to be very careful about.
See, the upcoming administration and congress are solidly Democrat, which means passing laws aimed at harming rights will not be a problem. The issue for them is passing what they can without pissing off enough people to repeat what happened to them in the 90's. Of course, being politicians and not prone to learning from past mistakes, I doubt they're going to back off any appreciable amount.
So, there's a panic in buying because of the panicked tune the Democrats (and some shit for brains Republicans) are dancing to in an attempt to make it look like they're doing something. Guns are an easy target. The media likes to portray gun owners as inbred hillbillies who just want to shoot themselves some minorities, so it's not like the politicians won't get free cover and support from the papers. The vast majority of Americans get their information about guns from Hollywood and the newspapers which mean they're woefully ignorant about them.
Ignorance is the anti's best weapon since reality and facts completely demolish their arguments. Ignorance and politicians go hand in hand. Thus, our work is cut out for us big time.