Minimum price on guns

Pointless excercise....

Anyone who says a price floor on pistols would not reduce availability of legally purchased and illegally resold pistols doesn't know what they are talking about.
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Or, conversely, anyone who would advocate such a measure.....:rolleyes:

Mighr raise the price, won't reduce the availability one whit.;)
 
Mighr raise the price, won't reduce the availability one whit.
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I have problem spent close to a year of my life studying price controls both theoretical and historic and In all my reading they do have an effect no matter what the product. The question is are there such easy substitutes that they are just substituted with no actual effect. Would the world be any better if gangs went back to zip guns, or more likely were armed with old surplus? Maybe as some have suggested raising the price from $110 for a hi-point to $250 or $300 would not have a large effect, but it most certainly would have an effect on the availability of handguns purchased from legal dealers in deals that appear legal at their face(straw buys).
 
following that logic leads to one place... pistols that cost less than $100,000 can't be sold. Your concept, if implemented, would be disastrous.
 
Well, I guess no one has any sort of fact or study to refute this.
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Could it be that we are awaiting some fact or study to support your point? Perhaps our Central American cocaine runners can bring in an extra load of firearms and douse the demand curve? Perhaps "gun seeking" crimes could increase. Perhaps that kind of illegal trade practices might put makers out of business since I'd much rather have a Ruger over a HP if the price were the same. It would most certainly put the right to defend oneself and family out of the budget of a fairly large percentage of Americans.

Please, give us some understanding how this will make us safer before you close the debate for lack of "debate".
 
Is this not exactly what the Southern states did after the Civil War? Southern states prohibited inexpensive guns so that the new freedmen could not defend themselves against state-sponsored terrorism.

Even anti-gun liberals admit that banning inexpensive guns is aimed at economically disadvantaged minorities.

Let's not rush to join Southern legislatures.:mad:
 
Well, I guess no one has any sort of fact or study to refute this.
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Didn't the NFA of 1934 effectively raise the price of all affected firearms by $200? Do criminals have a hard time getting full-auto weapons? Or short barreled weapons? I know it makes it more difficult for me, as a law abiding citizen.

I also have a question about your suggestion. Who gets to set the price, Congress? That makes me feel better about a price floor.
 
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It isn't my suggestion. I would like to overturn the '68 and '34 restrictions. It is something on the horizon which I think many Americans would support and I don't see any strong argument against it backed up with any real data. You have the unconstitutional aspect, but that hasn't held water in the past and I doubt it will this time around.

I think criminals do have a harder time getting full auto weapons than they once did. Have you been to the FBI museum and seen all the Tommy guns they collected in the 20s and 30s? The full auto 1911s?

Criminals substituted semi-auto guns for the full autos, much as I believe they would substitute illegally imported Russian military surplus for hi-points.
In most cases full auto offers no real advantage over semi auto out of light barreled rifles.

Obviously they still get a hold of the full autos when they are in situations where it could be advantageous.
 
I don't think you understand criminals and why they buy cheap guns. They don't by them because that's all they can afford. They buy them because they may have to toss them and they see no reason in spending extra for something they may have to toss.

If you raise the price the criminals will just pay what they have to to get guns and chalk it up to the cost of doing business. If they have to spend a little extra they won't care. They wopuld certainly prefer to buy cheap guns but if they aren't available they will buy what is.

Your argument might hold water if the criminals were lacking in funds but last I checked many criminal etnerprises are very lucrative.
 
Setting a minum price on guns would seem to me to discriminate against poor people. I would equate that to a poll tax.
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+1 to that.

As we've seen, the anti gunners are already trying to increase prices on both guns and ammo to regulate guns out of existance simply through price increases. Case in point, ammo serialization would increase the cost of ammo and in some cases put its price point out of reach to a section of the population. No ammo, no guns.

Setting a government directed price point on firearms is simply a bad idea.
 
As far as the prices being different on different brands of beer I would agree that is ludicrous. It may possibly be related to alcohol content.

Being a recent graduate of OSU I have certainly been in more than one situation where the minimum price on beer in Ohio affected the volume of my consumption of beer. I have been involved in more than one situation where the price of the beer regulated how much we bought for an event. If I had been able to get beer for half as much I almost certainly would have bought twice as much on many occasions, and been twice as friendly to anyone I did not know who showed up. We simply had a budget and maximized the alcohol we could get for that budget. I would guess very few of us could claim that raising the price of beer by 100% would not affect our consumption.
 
I'd have to agree with the poll tax comparison. The only people that won't be able to buy guns under your regulations are the poor, law abiding citizens. Rich people and criminals will still be able to afford them, and poor criminals will just still them. I just don't understand the point of your suggested regulation.
 
Not in my experience to any depth. It may be covered in more depth by the finance section of Fisher, but i doubt it. There is all kinds of empirical evidence contradicting the efficient market hypothesis. Think about people who stayed in stocks with solid PE ratios recently. Most of them outperformed the market based on publicly available information. There are a large number of investors/brokers who regularly outperform financial markets. My favorite being James investment Research.

I am not sure how you are tying that into this as I am talking about government regulation concerning supposed externalities and making the market for firearms less efficient by qualitative measures.

I am not saying I want this regulation, just that I could care less and I haven't seen any stats or studies concerning it.
 
I agree about the EM theory being a poor construct. I ask because I'm curious as to how you think the market would price that news into the manufacturers market cap and how that kind of regulation would affect those in say...Austria or wherever. The thing about EM theory is it's blind eye to manipulation. The ivory tower guys in the SIC; ahem SEC, have assumed EM balances the market and regulation is an unnecessary redundancy. That's how the regulators have postured (what do they do all day? play patty cakes). I admit I'm moving on a tangent here, but I think there's some pertinence to the idea of a floor on gun prices will affect the market in a way that the manufacturers can be damaged. I can cite examples all day where this has happened.


There are a large number of investors/brokers who regularly outperform financial markets. My favorite being James investment Research.
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Many of which have been doin' the perp walk lately. Although; you can just look to Berksire Hathaway and see it can be done and in a way that adds value to the economy.
 
I am not sure how you are tying that into this as I am talking about government regulation concerning supposed externalities and making the market for firearms less efficient by qualitative measures.
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Herein lies the rub. Who's to set the market price that is deemed sufficently high enough to keep firearms out of the criminal elements hands? Could S&W be trusted to price their firearms high enough to keep a part of their customer base from affording them? Doubtful. So, that leaves the government right. So the government says, would a starting price of $250 for any gun keep firearms off the streets? Doubtful. How about $1000? Maybe. How about a $10,000? Most certainly.

Setting an artifically high price that is used to eliminate certain targeted demographics would be dangerous. After all, who has the final say on what demographic shouldn't allowed to own guns? Your target demographic might be vastly different that Eric Holders.
 
All I could come up with is a price floor on firearms, specifically handguns. Say a price floor of $250 or $300.
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So what you're saying is that poor people shouldn't be allowed the means to defend themselves. That only the lives of those above a certain level of income have value. So what level of affluence does one have to reach before their lives have enough value to defend? Those that can afford $250? Wait there might still be some riffraff lives at that price point. Why not $2500? Surely those are more elite lives. Or maybe just the lives of the really special people that can afford $5000? Or $10000? The history of gun control has been one attempt after another to keep guns out of the hands of the poor and minorities. Thus the demonetization of $100 self defense handguns as "Saturday night specials". A cheap $150 handgun is much better than nothing when your life is in danger - unless your life has no value to your "betters".
 
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