CHRIS KNIGHT, The Patriot-NewsSalesman Avery Lee, holds a Beretta Storm semi automatic carbine, at Trop's Gun Shop in Elizabethtown Thursday.

Soon after Barack Obama won the presidential election, Dennis Dupler bought an assault rifle that he had wanted to protect his home, fearful that a Democratic White House and Congress will impose gun-control laws or taxes on firearms.

It's an Olympia Arms .223-caliber rifle, and if you don't know your weapons, it's a sleek black machine sure to impress an intruder more than Dupler's hunting rifle would.

"I have a feeling there's some bad stuff down the road," said Dupler, of Elizabethtown, holding his rifle purchase Thursday at a gun shop near his home.

He's not the only one worried that an Obama victory spells gun bans, limits or taxes. Gun dealers in the midstate and across the country say they've seen increases in sales since the Nov. 4 election.

Guns and ammunition have sold briskly at Trop Gun Shop, a popular shop in Elizabethtown, since Obama's victory -- at a pace reminiscent of the demand for guns after Sept. 11, 2001, and during the Y2K scare, said Bob Evans, the store manager. Sales this month have topped sales for November 2007, and the month is only half over.

"It's the uncertainty that always brings about this type of rush," Evans said.

Nationally, gun sales and background checks on prospective gun owners by the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System increased by 15 percent in October, a sign that the public believes some type of gun control, such as the ban on assault weapons under President Bill Clinton's administration, is coming, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for firearms, ammunition and shooting sports.

"It's clear from President-elect Obama's voting record, and the promises that he continues to make, that gun control will be coming back to the White House," Lawrence G. Keane, the foundation's senior vice president and general counsel, said in a news release posted on the foundation's Web site.

"Eloquent rhetoric notwithstanding, sportsmen, gun owners and prospective gun owners recognized this and are reacting accordingly," he said.

In speeches and interviews, Obama has insisted he would not attempt to change the Constitution's Second Amendment, which affirms Americans' right to bear arms, according to OnTheIssues.org, a Web site devoted to politicians' views on key issues.

He has supported weapons bans by local governments, such as Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned in June, comparing them to local zoning ordinances that determine how private property can be developed, the Web site says.

At Trop Gun Shop, racks that once held assault rifles -- "home protection rifles," as clerk Avery Lee calls them -- are empty. In a storage area, a stack of rifle ammunition has dwindled since the election in a shopping frenzy by gun owners who fear that Obama and the Democratic Congress will impose taxes on bullets.

Here, amid the rows of hunting rifles and display cases of pistols, Obama's description of smalltown Pennsylvanians as people who "cling to guns and religion" out of frustration over a lack of jobs, still haunts.

"I figured if [Republican presidential candidate John] McCain won, we would probably be safe," said Brian Murray of Harrisburg, a gun owner who bought ammunition at Trop on Thursday.

Worried about crime in the city, Murray, an Air Force veteran, bought his first handgun just before the presidential election for protection.

"I'm a little fearful of what Obama might implement," he admitted.

Some predicted that Obama will be too busy dealing with the economy and the war in Iraq to tackle gun control.

Said Evans, the gun store manager: "I would hope Mr. Obama has more urgent things on his agenda than gun control and gun bans."

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