“Even as gun ownership per household has decreased over the last four decades, according to data from the research center NORC, that declining popularity hasn’t translated to a drop in sales,” huffingtonpost.com reports. And then . . . “Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun control advocacy group, attributes that trend to aggressive promotion from gun lobbyists looking to capitalize on tragedies like Newtown and other mass shootings. ‘The reality is that in America, fewer people are owning more guns,’ said Watts. ‘They have to keep marketing to [gun owners] to buy more weapons.'” They don’t have to market to me. I’m pre-marketed. I put my money down on a pearl-handled SIG SAUER 238 for a friend. What’d you get? [h/t SS]
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…well, there’s three and a half minutes I’ll never get back.
Maverick Ammunition . . . will be relocating from Littleton, Colorado to Laramie, Wyoming, bringing about 50 jobs along the way.
So that makes 53 jobs lost because of CO gun control, if you include Evie Hudak, Angela Giron and John Morse.
Look for that total to really explode when Magpul leaves the state. Of course, by then, most of their employees will have died of old age.
“Even as gun ownership per household has decreased over the last four decades” [as revealed to strangers conducting intrusive telephone surveys]…
‘They have to keep marketing to [gun owners] to buy more weapons.’ — That’s particularly funny in light of the recent Daniel Defense vs. NFL dust-up.
Moms Against Gun Owners is once again spreading the damnable lie about a shrinking segment of the population supposedly procuring more & more guns. Marginalizing those whom you seek to destroy is a classic communist/Nazi tactic.
I didn’t shop on Black Friday but I did pick up a very nice Enfield .303 from my FFL holder, so add me to the shrinking numbers of overgunned fanatics.
A dryer-duct cleaning kit, new drum rollers and belt, and a heater core for an electric dryer. Dammit.
In the immortal words of General Pattin, “Only a pimp would carry a pearl handled pistol.”
Only someone with money to burn carries a pearl handled pistol. Those things are expensive, and crack if you sneeze at ’em. If any body knows of a really good looking brand of fake pearl (S&W K-frame Magna-type), Let me know. My favorite range toy is a 1953 five screw Combat Masterpiece with rosewood Magna grips and a Tyler grip adaptor. I’ve always wanted pearl grips for it so I could go for that 1950’s, small town, Louisiana sheriff look.
Ontario Ranger Falcon. 4-ish inch fixed high carbon steel “hunting” knife with .25 inch thick stock. Presently sitting on my HSGI bag and waiting for first aid kit supplies, including quik clot gueze.
Who needs legislation to create a federal gun registry? Just get enough people to post pictures of their guns and compile the list from information given voluntarily.
Uh-huh. DHS is monitoring…
I forget which blog I posted a similar comment to. It was prompting people to put pictures of their guns on line. After my comment I stopped receiving posts from that blog. Wonder why.
A bunch of steel cased .223 and .308 at Cabelas for dirt cheap plus two elusive M&P9 magazines. Then from other sources, 4 PMAG 40s, low profile AR gas block, and a few other miscellaneous parts.
I got four stripped AR lowers and a few pmags.
Got some fun upgrades for my scary black (and FDE) rifle: a Magpul STR stock and one of those JP Enterprises buffers that Nick recently reviewed. Arriving next week courtesy of MidwayUSA!
Some tactical gear for my plate carrier and the last of the internal parts I need for my AR-15 swap-out.
I would also question this notion of “aggressive marketing” from gun companies to gun owners to get them to buy more and more guns. I mean, how? The only places where you really see gun advertisements are gun publications and gun websites, otherwise, you do not see gun advertisements amongst regular television commercials or Youtube commercials or anything. And only a fraction of gun owners read gun magazines and go to gun websites.
Didn’t buy anything. But we were up at 3:00 am, and we did leave with a bag limit of wood ducks within an hour of legal shooting hours, so all in all, I think it was a successful Black Friday.
Bought my first pellet rifle in over 20 years. Benjamin/Crosman with built-in sound reducing thingie. .22 caliber with kind of a mil-dot scope.
Heading to the range today after I get my ‘honey do’ list shortened.
I have a cheap crossman .177 cal. break barrel. Scary powerful and accurate. Could pot small game with it all day. 99 bucks and no paper trail. Good shooting with yours.
Ammo, because suddenly the shortage has dried up here…
A box of Davidoffs.
You need a good accessory after range time.
Spikes upper for my first AR since my military days, and a $350 Aimpoint PRO from PSA.
Mmmmmm…. Glock 20. 15 rounds of 10 mm ought to please any hostile crowd (to quote Boston T. Party).
What I got: A sure fire flashlight (a screaming deal in fact) that went onto a shotgun, and a box of Gold dot. That one box was all the LGS had. That plus another box I’ve had a while let me swap a lot of my old defense rounds for new; I still need one or two more boxes, to finish out the replacement and for testing.
Beretta Nano for $299. Blackwing Shooting Center, Delaware, Ohio. A great carry gun for a super low price.
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Anyone in NY, feel free to send me your guns. I’ll keep them safe for you, promise.
An Eotech 512. $8 Saturday shipping and L3’s $60 rebate suckered me in.
Worth it, though.
10-8 sights for my new to me Colt Commander in 9MM
A spotting scope, some .30-06, and two Mosin Nagant 91/30s. Oh, and a bunch of Garand gear for the M1 that arrived at my front door.
Has anyone really challenged that statement about gun ownership declining? I for one, was not a gun owner until 2 years ago. Now, let’s just say I fall under the more than one gun per household category. More seriously, I know dozens, if not hundreds of people here in Hawaii that have become new gun owners. My guess is, shockingly, that the statements about declining gun ownership from Huffy Puffy and MDA have about as much scientific validity as determining whether one is a witch by being weighed against a duck.
Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?
I bought a 9mm full sized S&W M&P. My first striker fired pistol. Also some punches (I misplaced mine) and other tools and grubbins for my next AR build. And some Magpul magazine followers to replace the old style followers in my GI mags.
Have a friend who bought his first pistol back in January or so, and has been in the “gun of the month” club ever since. Not only are new households joining the fold, they are making up for lost time.
I refuse to contribute to the madness that is black Friday. I don’t need a deal that badly.
None on “black friday.” Picked up a Ruger Ranch rifle today though with 4 mags and rings.
They are coming for our guns. No doubt about it. They must do it slowly, incrementally, not all at once. The government will chip away at the 2nd Amendment, first with “background checks,” then with registration, and finally confiscation. Just because gun control (read: gun surrender) is not in the news every day, doesn’t mean it’s not being plotted, planned, and enacted. Once the 2nd Amendment is done away with, they will start their holy crusade to abolish the First Amendment and then the others until all our rights have been smashed. This scenario has been played out before (Germany, 1933; Soviet Union, 1922 plus others).
The people must defend their rights or go into hiding once they are all gone.
My father owned 80 acres in upstate NY back in the 80s, when he wanted to subdivide it a govt monkey from the APA showed up and told him he couldnt, there was some kind of indigenous frog on the property that would have its habitat destroyed. He sold out and moved, we never looked back. Nice to see how things have just gotten so much better up there.
“Come on, mate! This is England! They will never take our guns away!”
A local gunshop had stripped lowers for $59, so I snagged one. I’m not sure what I’m going to build yet with it.
Me? Nothing. Haven’t worked since I got that brain tumor.
I wish you all the best, Kirk. While opposites sometimes attract, in the end attraction will be maintained only by shared values (even if the other stuff too delicate to mention is off the charts). Having a leftist GF may contribute to the excitement now, but we’ll see what changes occur after more time has elapsed.
In the meantime, have fun.
This is an interesting post.
My wife’s cousin is a pretty hardcore modern granola Subaru hippie in her early 30s. When she visited us once about 7 years ago, she saw an SKS in our closet when my wife was showing her some clothes. She immediately ran out of the room and refused to be in that area of the house until I came home and locked it away. I even talked to my wife on the phone and assured her that it wasn’t loaded, didn’t matter. She was convinced it could “go off.”
A pretty stark change occured when she decided to move up to Alaska and spent several years there. By the time she moved back down, she said she had started carrying a .38 revolver during her hikes. Being around big animals, lots of questionable people, and a culture where pretty much everyone owned guns, completely changed her. Sort of like being thrown into a place where everyone else speaks a different language, she was forced to adjust herself to her surroundings, and ultimately embraced them.
We could never really figure out how she got so scared of guns, since her dad was an AF vet and her brother a retired Marine who went on to be a patrol cop and SWAT member. So it’s not like she grew up in a home where everyone was against guns.
And my dad was about as hippie as they came, being in college in the late 60s to get out of going to Vietnam. Yet he still came from a family of hunters and gun owners, and some of his hippie friends even tried out hunting with him in college. It’s pretty funny ooking at some of my dad’s early hunting photos with a huge beard, long hair, aviator glasses, flannel & jeans and a rifle.
A couple of Ruger LC9 new 9rd mags and a S&W 686 speedloader, both for my wife.
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Steel Lyman bullet mold, miscellaneous cleaners (kg products kg12, etc). Debluing solvent, scope rings.
Almost got a hunting knife and some Ammo cans from bass pro – but the check out line was too long. So I put them back and left the store. It was worth my time to pay more ( not on sale) than to wait in that ridiculously long line.
Not a damned thing. I slept in, had a cup of Joe and went shooting. I shot a few mags through the Del-Ton test AR and then went old-school with my lever guns and air guns.
Did you know that mostly-empty cans of red spray paint behave exactly like ground squirrels when you shoot them with a .223.
We started calling them ‘groundhog simulators.’
I found my copy from way back when awhile back, brought back many memories (good and bad).
Good story! And I wouldn’t worry about the politics either. I know plenty of hard core libs (abortion, socialism, gay marriage, etc) who have not voted Democrat in decades due to their position on guns. One old Jewish lady I know voted McCain/Palin, despite hating everything they stood for, simply on the basis of Obama wanting to reinstate old failed gun control policies.
What, interrupt the most violent sport in the world, with a peaceful ad yearning for the ability to protect the home from (?)???. 99% of TV viewers know that only bad people have guns, which are all indistinguishable from each other. A civilian expressing a wish to have a gun is not politically correct. Unless it’s a TV hero working for law enforcement, the idea of weapons in the hands of the public is anathema to the entertainment czars. Especially not some crazed killer machine gun like that nasty Adam Lanza used. That would send a shudder down the atrophied spines of all right thinking viewers. Not in my neighborhood!
Brava! Brava!
a little at a time but I do not thing they are confiscating anything,its a bluff to scare law abiding
gun owners to turn in their firearms..
I will hold onto mine until I can no longer reload and protect myself.
And some people wonder why I only buy face to face.
I bought my second Mosin Nagant and my first M44 from Classic Firearms on Friday. My first Mosin was an M91/30 hex receiver with laminate stock. Love these guns.
I got O’Smiley’s number a few years back and I haven’t watched him since.
Nobody should have to buy the whole package. Right now I’m working with an aspiring ar15 builder from California. He keeps asking me, “Am I gonna get crap from other gun people?” And my answer is “yes but it doesn’t matter.” The growth of gun owners numbers can only be helped if more anti- disarmament left leaners come into play. Flame on, but it makes people think in the voting booth.
Agreeing to disagree without huge fallout is a sign of a mature relationship. And having a nuanced view on issues causes people to investigate candidates versus voting for the letter after their name though.
The china thing and “esteem” I have to raise an eyebrow at though. The biggest protestors of how things are in China that I know are people I know who are Chinese. You’d have to be really intentionally blind to it to not see the ways things aren’t working over there.
The real pros were the Dillingers, and Bonnie and Clydes. Massad Ayoob loves whatever gun company sponsors him. As far as ‘Jelly Bryce’, or Frank Pape, or any modern day police gunfighter, they were simple ‘Bushwackers’.
As to self defense – practice situational awareness, and be carrying. Carry the largest caliber, with maximum rounds, and be able to get it out without shooting yourself. And the gun has to be the utmost in reliability.
I don’t know if I am misunderstanding this article, but the of the nearly 1000 people that have had their weapon confiscated under the changes in the new law, why were they confiscated if the law gives them until April to comply and register? Something here is not making sense, either the law is effective now, or they have until April to comply. What else were they doing outside the law to become a target of confiscation? If they were just waiting until the law says you must comply, then they would be also required by law to give them that time.
«…as a college professor…»
Totally didn’t see that one coming.
Beck’s radio show can be pretty funny at times. I never cared for his TV show because it was just too serious and he went too deep into the rhubarb with stuff. O’Reily knows absolutely nothing about firearms, but that doesn’t keep him from spouting his opinions.
How about the clips you can buy to clip 2 mags side by side?
Both are Change Agents they keep the people from finding any truths.. as the song goes looking in all the wrong places ……….that’s them…….
Well for my money it’s not the hardware, weapons, or uniforms that is the issue with police militarization. It’s the siege mentality that is being pushed along with it. We’ve all heard the reports out of the DHS that proclaim that the next ‘big threat’ is so called radicalized civilians. Combine this with how out of excessive federal law enforcement has become you have a recipe for extreme loss of freedom. For example: a few years back the FDA showed up with a SWAT team to shut down a few dairies for no other reason than they were selling unpasteurized milk to people that specifically wanted unprocessed milk.
“Lets go back to the budget issues. Armored cars are expensive. If you could save your taxpayers money by getting one for free from uncle Sam, why would you not?”
‘Cause free still costs like 75 G’s to get to where they need them. Though I’ll grant that is probably much MUCH cheaper than getting any other car. |
Well written. I am swayed in many respects, thanks.
All the rest of the stuff aside, how can the author of this article suggest that 12 guage slugs are ineffective against body armor. I’m no expert but I thought rifled slugs were extremelly effective against body armor and that they were part of the solution to the North Hollyiwood Bank Robbery, am I wrong?
I’m pleased about your bp, but please be careful. Shift work is terrible for your health, my Father was in law enforcement and the impact on his health has been pretty rough.
Militarization isn’t about gear, it’s about mentality.
Police now have a pervasive “us vs them” mentality typical of deployed soldiers in a war zone. They are suspicious of the public and afraid of the public to the level of paranoia, and this translates into how they deal with the public. How they deal with the public makes the public suspicious and paranoid of THEM and thus they generate a self-fulfilling prophecy. They wall themselves up and their co-workers are their brothers and their family, they place priority on them over the public, even if it means looking the other way or doing something illegal. They view themselves as military in a war zone, they act that way, and they attract those kinds of people to their ranks.
They take orders from their highly political governors and mayors without question and there simply aren’t nearly the checks and balances built into this command structure as there are in the military. Their mentality now is 100% population control and suppression of anyone who acts out and they are the arm of whatever political party happens to hold local office.
Want to peaceably assemble to protest the mayor? Expect an “up armored” and “up weaponed” police force out there to suppress you. Of course they aren’t telling you that you don’t have the right to protest, but they’ll weaponize some other mundane laws like “preventing the flow of traffic” or “park curfew” or “making too much noise” to achieve the same effect. They will be deployed to clean up the messiness that is democracy and freedom.
It is kind of funny to see people place so much blame on socialism. I grew up in so-called socialism and I think there was one aspect to the Eastern-block socialism that’s worth noting in this context.
Nearly everybody had to have a job. Which is kind of stupid, but that’s besides the point. The point is that nearly every able-bodied man and woman *had* to have a job. Sure, senior citizens, mom at home with kids, disabled etc. were exempted. But nearly everybody alse had both a right to a job and a legal obligation to actually work for a living. You don’t want to work? Enjoy your stay in the prison.
The situation where too many people simply milk the state is something entirely different. It is democracy at its worst, with polititians and idiots bribing the lazy and stupid and whatnot. Sad thing is I see no good solution to this mess.
All I have to add to this discussion is to note how jealous I am over the phrase “Now that I live in Texas”. Dang, that must be nice and feel great to say.
They traded the “American disease” for the nazi/communist disease. A much deadlier strain.