The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
My first N-Frame was a Model 25 Mountain Gun in .45LC.
My second was a 327 TRR8.
Then I traded the Mountain Gun on a 5″ heavy-barrelled, unfluted M25-7 also in .45LC.
Fourth was a Lew Horton custom 629.
Today I put $100 down on a 5″ Model 24, tapered barrel, fluted cylinder. Pictures when I finally get it out of layaway.
I’m an N-Frame junkie.
Tam posted recently on what she believes is at least partially the cause of the current glut on the firearms market:
(W)hile most firearms companies are privately held and therefore inscrutable on matters fiscal, the goings-on at a few are public knowledge because they are publicly traded.
The news from American Outdoor Brands Corporation (neé Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation) tells a tale that is probably all too common in the industry right now: Shelves groaning under unsold inventory that was churned out in expectation of the mother of all gun panics following a Hillary Clinton victory.
I sent this link to my favorite local Merchant O’Death, and he recently replied:
As I mentioned in an earlier email, and, as others have pointed out elsewhere, it is definitely a buyer’s market in the firearms industry right now. The big name companies continue to offer almost absurd “deals” in the form of free gear, mail in rebates and the like. One company was offering a free pair of Oakley sunglasses with he purchase of one of their AR platform rifles. I do believe that particular deal has ended but several other companies have continued deals that were only supposed to last a month or two. Ruger is currently engaged in a program for gun store employees. Sell a certain number of new Ruger firearms, send in proof to Ruger that you have done so and, upon verification that no skullduggery is afoot, they will send the gun store employee a brand spankin’ new Ruger firearm of the said gun store employee’s choice (from a list of firearms posted by the company of course). . There are some pretty cool choices on the list. Now to the point: the program was supposed to last for a couple of months. It has been extended for a couple more. I suppose that is one way to move product out of the warehouse.
Our distributors call us Monday through Friday with “ganga deals” on firearms we don’t need either because we have them on the shelves (and in back stock) or because we have no room for them. The only firearms we have a hard time acquiring are a handful of things that were announced at SHOT earlier in the year. The CZ P-10C is much sought after though availability is getting better. Colt announced the return of the Cobra revolver at SHOT this year. I have almost a double handful of customers with money down on one. I have yet to see one. The Kimber K6S, even though it has been out for over a year is still a scarce beastie on our shelves despite the fact that we are a “Master Dealer”. With rare exception ammunition is not hard to come by at all (those rare exceptions leaning toward the “semi-obsolete” cartridges like 30-40 Krag and 348 Winchester etc.) We turn down 22 rimfire ammo every day.
We are still turning customers away with firearms for sale. We are still stacked to the gunwales with black rifles, Glocks, XDs, M&Ps, Sigs, 1911s, pocket pistols and small frame revolvers. We also have a glut of heavy barrel target/benchrest rifles of varying caliber. Had to turn a guy away today with a nice Sako single-shot, heavy barrel bolt gun in 222 Rem. He couldn’t understand why we didn’t want to buy it even after we showed him the eight other target guns we had that had been there for longer than we wanted them to be.
The old and collectable are still flying of the shelves. Had a non-military/police Sig P-210 come into our possession from an old customer that is getting out of the firearms game due to poor health. That gun never made it to the shelf. Customer saw it as we were buying it and said that he didn’t care what the price was he wanted it. Same thing with a couple of semi-scarce Colt 1911A1 models. Same story with some older S&W revolvers.
Things are selling, just not things that are collecting dust on manufacturers’/distributors’ shelves.
So, interesting things are happening in the used market, but the market for all that stuff sitting in manufacturer’s and distributor’s warehouses? Not so much.
Paraphrased because I can’t find the actual quote at the moment, but seen elsewhere:
Handguns put holes in bodies.
Rifles put holes through bodies.
Shotguns, at the proper range and with the proper load, remove significant portions of bodies and splatter those portions all over the ground.
I’m advised that quote is from Clint Smith, President and Director of Thunder Ranch. And I think that’s a pretty fair assessment.
Seen at the Book of Face, had to share:
While Form 4473 Background Checks are still at all-time highs, things seem to be shifting for firearms retailers and wholesalers out there. Dennis Badurina of Dragon Leatherworks owns a brick-and-mortar gun shop and reports on Facebook:
I’ve gotten more calls in the past two weeks by folks asking if I buy guns.
When they tell me what they are selling, and I give them a ballpark of what its worth to me, they start bitching about how much they paid, and my offer is an insult, blahblahblah…
Anyone tries to tell me that the gun industry isn’t in freefall, they’ll be told to go away. I don’t give a rats ass about how many NICS checks are run in a given month, or gun show attendance, or other such meaningless bullshit.
Firearms industry is slowing exponentially, both manufacturers and distributors are dumping their inventory through sites like CDNN, Buds, Grab-a-Gun, etc., and folks can buy a brand-new gun for 30% less than they did last year on those same websites, and even last year those prices were low.
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I had a customer come in and ask me to price out Wolf steel case ammo. I actually logged in to my dealer portal, he watched me put the stuff in the cart from my distributor, and saw what the ammo would cost as if I were buying it. I was going to simply have him pay me $10 over invoice, and he would WITNESS the fucking invoice being created.
He logged into SG Ammo, and the EXACT SAME FUCKING AMMO in the EXACT SAME FUCKING QUANTITY was $70 cheaper than what the distributor sells to the little mom-and-pop. He saw it with his own eyes.
The distributors are dumping inventory so as to not be left holding the bag on the long-term purchase agreements they have with the manufacturers. They entered those agreements because everyone was certain that Clinton was going to go skipping down Pennsylvania Ave. with 99% of the vote.
Now the distributors are sweating bullets (pun intended) because they bet on the wrong horse.
I sent that info to my local favorite Merchant O’Death and asked him if he was seeing similar things. His response:
That FFL is spot on.
We are buying more firearms right now (the “down season”) than we have in the previous eight months. Usually the shop is damned near a morgue come summer time. We are turning people down more often than not when they bring stuff in for sale simply because we can’t take another one of what they are trying to sell.
ARs are pretty much dead as are most of the other tacti-cool types of riflesSeveral manufacturers have extended promos that were only supposed to last a couple months at the most by a further couple of months. S&W has a $75 dollar mail in rebate on M&P Shield pistols that has been going on since this spring and has been continued until September.
The FFL is also right about the election outcome. I have heard more than one person selling stuff to us remark that they don’t need said firearms “cuz Hillary didn’t win”. Apparently the family vacation to the Free People’s Democratic Republic of California is more important than hanging on to the firearms they already own.
Part of the problem with people bitching about low offers from dealers (at least in our experience) is that they are spending way too much time on the internet. When we make the offer, the response is often: ” well, on the Internet it is going for [insert random amount of money here]). The other part of that is that they whine and snivel when we tell them we just can’t but what they have because we are over stocked as it is. They whine some more and come up with some hard luck story about why they have to sell. We tell them again that we just can’t do them any good. Then the same question is asked almost verbatim, almost every time: ” can you offer me anything?”.
That being said, we are selling quite a bit more than usual but it is largely used stuff. Anything remotely considered “collectible” disappears from the racks in short order. I am still amazed by the number of people coming in looking for Mosin Nagant 91/30s.
Nope. Nobody expected the election to go the way that it did.
Over at AR15.com the recommendation is “Stock up on ammo while it’s cheap.”
YMMV.
I’ve been collecting pieces for this for several months now. I bought the Encore frame back in 2008 right after The LightBringer™ was first elected to office, and I put a .260 Remington pistol barrel on it and took it to Boomershoot 2009. But I’ve been wanting an Ultra-Violent Rodentblaster for quite some time now, so when I stumbled across a sale on 26″ .204 Ruger barrels for the Encore I snapped one up. A 26″ barrel doesn’t play well with a pistol grip, however, so I needed a rifle stock. And, of course, I needed glass, since this is a 300+ yard rifle.
I ordered a fixed 12x 42mm SWFA Super Sniper scope with the Mil-Quad reticle, a set of 30mm Burris Zee rings, a bubble level and Butler Creek flip-up caps, then I went hunting for a stock maker. I found Tony Gettel, and had him make me this custom thumbhole set to my dimensions out of fiddleback maple. The stock set arrived yesterday.
Not bad, huh?
Now to build some ammo and get out to the range.
The best contribution Gamer culture makes to shooting is the lack of fear of people finding out how much you suck.
Read it all.
This will cause some controversy, I’m sure. I finished reading the novel Sandman Slim last night, but I bookmarked this excerpt:
I hate Glocks. Guys who love Glocks love Corvettes. Not because it was a hot car, but because it was cool forty years ago and they once saw a picture of Steve McQueen in one. Their dad probably had a Vette when he was young, but he was never cool. But if they have a Vette, maybe they can forget the fat man who made them mow the lawn when they should have been out with their friends sneaking into R-rated movies, and who embarrassed them in front of their first girlfriends. Maybe their dad was the guy driving fast and locking lips with Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair. Maybe their dad was cool after all and maybe that made them cool, too. That’s what Glocks are. High-precision killing machines that scream “Daddy Issues.”
Made me laugh. Had to share.
…an offer from Wideners to test ammo for free*.
I feel a little ill.
*They wanted me to review the ammo on the blog. Here’s what I said in my response:
Thanks for the invitation, but I feel I must decline. I’ve cut way back on blogging, don’t get enough range time as it is, and I’m a reloader so I pretty much make everything I shoot with the exception of .22LR and 12 gauge. I appreciate the opportunity, and turning down free ammunition makes me wince, but I don’t think I’d be able to hold up my end of the bargain sufficiently well to make it worth your investment.
Honestyisthebestpolicy.Honestyisthebestpolicy.Honestyisthebestpolicy.Honesty….
I discovered in 2003 that the state of New Jersey had outlawed the original Marlin Model 60 .22 caliber rifle as an “assault weapon” because its tubular magazine held “more than 10 rounds.” Now New York City has done something similar, but it’s magazine capacity limit is five. And they’re serious about it:
The only effective use of a firearm registry is to make it easier to take guns away from the law abiding.
I will not register. After the first felony, the rest are free.