WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Dick’s Sporting Goods issued a profit warning Tuesday, and the biggest concern from management is over golf equipment. But that’s not the only reason the sporting-goods retailer is struggling.

The firm DKS, -0.20% also warned over its hunting division, and on a conference call, management made it clear what’s going on.

Here’s what COO Joe Schmidt told investors: “We had anticipated this category to be below last year as did others in the space but we underestimated the decline. We all knew the significant increase in sales during the past couple of years was temporary and driven by concern for both legislative action that would broadly change our gun laws.”

Put another way: paranoia has its limits as a driver of gun sales. Background checks — a proxy for sales — jumped 19% in 2012 and rose another 8% in 2013, according to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal, Background Check System.

But there’s a different story in 2014. Background checks plummeted by a third in January — and even as some of that decline was weather related, there hasn’t been a catch-up since then. Background checks were up just 1% from February to April. Taken together, background checks are down 9% this year.

No wonder, then, that Cabela’s US:CAB — another retailer of guns — saw its shares slump by around 5%. Of the publicly traded gun makers, Sturm, Ruger RGR, +0.11% also was lower, though interestingly, Smith & Wesson US:SWHC was up, helped by a brokerage upgrade due to market-share gains.

President Barack Obama famously said on the campaign trail that people in small towns cling to either guns or religion. Under his administration, the right to cling is untainted, his efforts for fairly mild legislative action are dead in Congress, and there’s little interest from his administration in taking executive action.

The Newtown, Conn., school shooting in 2012 shocked a nation but did not lead to a consensus on what to do about it. And by now even the most concerned of gun enthusiasts has concluded there’s nothing to fear.

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