Best of Times

Z

Zhillsauditor

New member
The proliferation of the kinds and availability of handguns must make this the best of times for gun owners.
  • Cheap surplus and police trade ins
  • Wide availability due to the WWW
  • Online dealers keeping prices low
  • New handguns released seemingly on a daily basis
  • Wide variety of features, a gun for ever set of criteria
  • Massive numbers of user reviews
  • Lots of cheap imports from foreign producers
 
I miss the days of Herter's Catalogs, the days prior to 5-19-86... and the days prior to the '68 GCA :rolleyes:

Bonus points to anyone who can remember what the "wasp waist - missile tail" is, without looking it up on-line.

A curmudgeonly cheers,
C
 
Walk into a well stocked gun store these days and you will see a hundred different kinds of handguns. Shoot, you may see dozens of different 1911s alone. Never in our past was that true. There is a gun for almost every price point, and an option for every shooter's desire.
 
There is also a wide spectrum of reloading equipment from numerous manufacturers and various types. There is reloading equipment suitable for the shooter wanting a box of 50 for the week or a shooter needing ten thousand rounds per month. It is no longer a black magic art since just about every forum has a reloading section, there are numerous excelent reloading manuals available and many suppliers provide free publications to assist the reloader.

Just look at all the possibilites in powders, primers and bullets. There are setups for the corner of the breafast table or an empty closet to a variety of automation that can fill an entire work room. You can take one press and with interchangable dies load practically every rifle or handgun you own.

If not locally available, it can be delivered to your front door from numerous internet vendors. Life is good. :)
 
Z, I'll add to your observations here.

People that grow up around guns and/or don't have it grilled into them from birth that guns are evil self-aware intruments of the Devil responsible for 99% of our country's problems always think it's a great time to be a gun owner.

But those who have either been on the fence or would otherwise be "anti" are getting a great deal of help in converting.

I'm not really a fan of the recent rash of firearm related reality TV shows that are popping up almost monthly, but they are helping to expose a certain segment of the population to the fact that guns are pretty cool.

You can talk all the trash you want about Sons of Guns and the other absurdly scripted borderline soap-opera's, but there are a lot of "non-gun" people out there who eat that crap up.

Of course TV is only half the story. The unprecedented change in CCW laws, SYG, and Castle Doctrine have removed a lot of the roadblocks or reasons people used to use to justify not owning firearms... "it's just too much trouble".

The internet does make gun-buying and homeworking easier... but the fact that America appears in many aspects to be "coming around" in general to gun ownership is where the real strides are being made, and I think that's why we're seeing such huge headway being made in the overall market.

Less "stigma"= more owners= more money= more competition= lower prices= more innovation= awesome!
 
When I was in college and purchasing my first handgun -

1. There was a 2 week waiting period
2. You could not buy a gun with more then 10 rounds
3. There was no concealed handgun licenses

This is in "gun friendly" Texas.

I think Texas passed the CHL legislation about the same year I graduated college. I remember they were talking about it the same year or maybe earlier when I bought my Ruger P89.

I remember being completely against it and said it would return us to the days of the "Wild West". More or less my exact wording. I was completely wrong.

Ironic though, that I can now walk in, buy a handgun, get a background check done, and walk out in less than 30 minutes. Takes me a little longer due to a common name. Yet California is continuing to come up with more and more laws around firearms ownership while continuing to have problems with gang violence. Texas gun ownership is much easier then the 90's while California couldn't be more difficult. Wonder how those crime statistics stack up?

I can tell you in the late 90's, California was #1 for firearm related deaths. Texas was #2. Gun control did diddly back then. We didn't have any more blood running in the streets then the #1 gun control state in the 90's, and in fact were trailing them. (Disclaimer: Firearm related deaths would include accidents due to firearm handling, hunting accidents, etc. Not just intentional shootings)
 
I didn't grow up around guns but here I am. Not until we moved to the country (all of 35 miles away into a different county and a different century) did I really have much exposure to guns. People went hunting but not there. They'd killed everything off a generation earlier. Most people seemed to have guns of some sort but no one went out shooting anywhere to speak of. They couldn't afford it. And now, neither can I.

I did buy a lot of guns when they were still available in the mail but I was young and irresponsible then.
 
(Disclaimer: Firearm related deaths would include accidents due to firearm handling, hunting accidents, etc. Not just intentional shootings)
Click to expand...
There was a statistic in the recent book on the history of Glock that indicated accidental shootings were way, way down in the past 50 years due to the stress now placed on gun safety. Something like only one third the accidents per capita now than in 1920. I'm not sure where that stat came from, or if it is to be believed, although it was written by an NPR type. If it can be believed, we are a lot safer than our grandad's generation when it comes to gun ownership.
 
The proliferation of the kinds and availability of handguns must make this the best of times for gun owners.

Cheap surplus and police trade ins
Wide availability due to the WWW
Online dealers keeping prices low
New handguns released seemingly on a daily basis
Wide variety of features, a gun for ever set of criteria
Massive numbers of user reviews
Lots of cheap imports from foreign producers
Click to expand...

These would be the best of times if there was no GCA '68.
 
Well, when I grew up in the late 'Forties and 'Fifties:

1. You could not buy a handgun from a dealer in Tennessee. But, living in Memphis, we could easily go to Arkansas or Mississippi.

2. Handguns could be ordered by mail from various sources.

3. Some second hand shops and junk shops carried old top-break revolvers, thought to be non-firing condition. A little work and you could make it work.

4. War surplus guns: Webley .455s for $14.95; Colt or S&W M1917s for $24.95; Lugers for $49.95. M1 Garands for $75.00; M1 Carbines for $21.00.

5. I could go hunting riding the city bus as long as the butt of the my revolver showed above the pocket of my jeans. And bus passengers didn't get alarmed.

6. .22 Short cartridges about thirty cents per box, Long Rifle for fifty-five cents.

7. Guns were made in the USA, of steel and walnut.

8. Popular guns were J.C. Higgins brand, or Revelation from Western Auto.


Bob Wright
 
In my day, we didn't have guns, nor fancy internets. Why we didn't even have paper. If you wanted to write something down, you went up on a mountain and God loaded you down with stone tablets that you had to hump all the way down that mountain.

And we liked it.
 
Zhillsauditor said:
God loaded you down with stone tablets that you had to hump all the way down that mountain.
Click to expand...

At least it was downhill. I had to walk uphill both ways... in the snow... barefoot :D

Cheers,
C
 
Blackhawks have transfer bars.
Smiths have extraneous orifices.
Colt revolvers are finis.

What are you talking about, man?
 
Thank goodness guns and ammunition didn't keep up with inflation!

All said, I grew up in the culture of the late 1980's. We have a much wider variety of choices, and reliability is now considered a given, not a "feature."
 
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