Monday, January 07, 2013

Random gun-buy-panic musings

For some time now, some of my co-workers and other peers who know of my fondness for firearms have made fun of it. But now, with the very real possibility of gun bans and the unavailability of almost everything worth shooting, many of those same people are now coming to me asking me to sell them something or help them find something.

As if.

While I have no problem helping out some of my serious gunnie friends who might be short something or other, I'll be damned if I will loan, give or sell the firearms, ammo, spare parts and other accessories that I've spent years accumulating to the ones around me who could have bought the same stuff all along but chose not to until now.

Worse is that some of them are proud Dems who voted for Obama, and now they want something that he's trying to take away from the rest of us. Sorry guys, but screw you, ok? And that goes double for the one casual acquaintance that I'm thinking of who has always supported bans of "assault weapons" and who has said repeatedly that only the police should be able to own semi-automatic weapons. Of course he is himself a police officer and when I reminded him of his preference for gun control last week as he asked me to sell him an AR-15, he still clung to his belief that he and people like him are somehow better suited to owning such weapons than the general populace is and that his job somehow entitles him to have such things in his house for off-duty, personal use. He's more trustworthy, don't you know?

I told him that he might want to go to a gun show as I can not confirm or deny the presence of AR-15s or similar firearms at my house or any knowledge as to the whereabouts of such things. Sorry. I got nothing for people like that, even on a good day.

On the other hand, I note that it appears that there are now scads of AR-15 receivers (and whole firearms) for sale on Gunbroker at double or triple what they should be selling for. It's obvious that many of the guns and gun items that flew off the shelves in the past couple of weeks went not to people who really wanted them but to greedy flippers who just wanted to try to cash in on the demand. Now some of them will call this "capitalism" but I'm not in agreement. To me, capitalism is a two-way street where one party provides a good or service or otherwise adds value to the deal in exchange for money. Here there's no value added, just a bunch of speculators who realized that people want certain items and who then raced to beat the people to those items just to grab them and ransom them for large amounts of money without doing a thing to add value or otherwise sweeten the deal. These people are the antithesis of everything that's good and right about the American consumer system and it's my fondest hope that each of them gets hit be a car driven by an uninsured illegal alien followed by a visit in the hospital bed from an IRS agent asking them about their profits and business licenses or lack thereof.

Personally though, I didn't get caught short on much a few weeks ago when all of this silliness started, so I'll be riding it out just fine. Maybe in a few months when the panic-buying is finished and quantities of guns and gun stuff are back on shelves everywhere, I might be willing to pay a few hundred bucks for one or two of those ARs that fools have been recently been spending two grand or more on.

I still won't sell one to that fat elitist cop that I know, though.

6 comments:

  1. yeah, doggone it, all my guns fell out of the boat on my last duck hunting trip!

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  2. Yeah, maybe it's a good thing I'm skint right now. And lost my credit card last week. Forced wait. But one thing that really rings true in what you wrote: "somehow better". See, that's why I run out of patience. Because they DO think they are somehow better - smarter, more educated, wiser. I beg to differ.

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  3. Stopped by a local pawn shop today where I have found some deals (Model 1898 Kraig-Jorgensen, decent condition, $275). They had two handguns in their display case. The only "military" rifle was a lone Mosin for $300 - good luck with that!

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  4. Friend of mine put a 'spare' AR on Gunbroker last week, figuring he'd get maybe $1500, it ended up going for $3000!!! And I'm with you... Friends yes, everybody else HELL NO!

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  5. I have some old Israli Orlite AR mags...

    Maybe I can sell them for $40 each!

    Yes the whole panic is stupid.

    Read this by Paul Howe (a REAL soldier/trainer.)

    http://blog.wilsoncombat.com/paul-howe/2nd-amendment-and-the-kool-aid-drinkers-by-paul-howe/

    His take makes me feel alot better.

    And no, I ain't selling some of my guns to pacify idiots who never lifted a finger to ether get their own OR JOIN THE NRA.

    Yes most folk just take the 2nd Amendment and the NRA for granted.

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  6. I have experienced your generosity first hand. Thanks to you I got the Enfield back in fighting trim. I am indebted to you Murph!

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