I'm sorry to hear about the destruction of your jewelry business, Don. That is truly sad. (I like to make jewelry, too, but I don't use silver and gold. But I know how nice it feels to have something beautiful come from the work of your hands.)
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How short trading works:

A person, Mr. First, owns shares of a stock, let's call it Falter Co.

A trader, Mr. Trader, thinks Falter Co. will be going down in price.
Mr. Trader goes to Mr. First and says "Let me borrow 100 of your shares. I will return 100 shares to you in six months along with a small interest payment." At this time, Falter Co. shares are selling for $25 a share.

Soon Mr. Trader sells the shares to a buyer, Mr. Second, and he gets $2500 for them.

Six months pass, and Falter Co. shares have dropped to $15. Mr. Trader buys 100 shares on the market for $1500 and gives them to Mr. First along with the small interest payment. He has a profit of almost $1000.
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Recently I asked my broker if it becomes public knowledge when a person is trading in shorts, and my broker said it is. What happened with Gamestop is that a group of lads on Reddit found out that hedge fund managers were shorting Gamestop, and they decided, apparently out of pure malice and class prejudice, to start buying Gamestop and driving the price up, merely to stick it to people they were jealous of for being rich.

Along the way, they were operating on the greater-fool theory, one lad buying Gamestop at an inflated price and then selling it to another at an even-more inflated price. Ultimately there will be a last buyer who loses his shirt, but they didn't want to talk about that.

This wouldn't have happened if not for the power of the Internet to bring kooks together.