First gun show, for me, since March and it was such a welcome experience…………
Five bucks to get in the door, masks optional (yay!), and they were temperature scanning everyone who came in the door.
Lotsa tables, big crowd, zero bargains. People see where the money is at and the usual assortment of plinkers and hunting guns was severely outnumbered by the ‘assualt weapons’. Apparently, Black Rifles Matter. Saw a lot of stuff that I don’t normally see at shows including Uzi, Valmet, DSA Fal, HK, PTR, Arsenal, Sig, and pretty much every other outfit that ever made something that took a 30-round mag. Come to think of it, the only thing I didn’t see were Mini-14’s. Although I did find a Mini trigger assembly that mysteriously seemed to have had its disconnect sear ground off. Funny that.
Ammo was plentiful if you had the money. A lot of money. Same for mags.
And, for the first time in several years, I ran into Johnny Trochman..he of Militia Of Montana fame. I think I spoke to him for about ten seconds before he started in with New World Order plans that were being leaked. Whatever. We both wear tinfoil hats, it’s just a matter of whose got the shiny side in and who has the shiny side out. But, he thinks of me as a like-minded soul so he gave me a double handful of parachute flares to tkae with me after I bought some smoke cannisters and other goodies from him.
Things I almost bought? Blued 4″ GP100 for $500, looked hard at the Valmet in .223 but figured logistics would be easier with a 7.62×39, another Ruger PC Charger came close to coming back with me but I managed to keep my resolve. I discovered MagPul is making polymer replacement lowers for the Hk-series ‘Navy’ (plastic) lowers and came close to getting one but, again, managed to keep a cool head.
Also ran into a few people I knew, which is always fun.
All in all, a really good show….a lot of tables, good turnout.
Welcome to the new normal. GS have been open in the South for around two months now, lots of new faces walking the aisles. Lots of “deer in the headlights expressions”. IMHO: the new faces realize that a bolt action or a revolver isn’t gonna help them when the mob comes knocking. They want firepower. Yep prices have gone up and up. It’s all supply and demand. You buy when it’s plentiful and reasonable, not when the fear of blood in the streets takes over. Collector guns, it’s the classic “monkey looking at a football” to them. If you haven’t prepared to hunker down by now, you will pay and pay and pay.
I should be more compassionate to the Johnny-come-lately types..after all, they want the same thing as you and I: safety and security. But…after years of them ridiculing those wacky survivalists, voting for gun control, voting to raise taxes, and generally crapping on the idea of things like individual responsibility, preparedness, charity-begining-at-home, and that sort of thing….I’m having a real hard time working up any sympathy. Yeah, yeah, yeah..when its all over they’ll be ‘one of us’, but somehow I don’t see that happening. TL;DR: you stopped to listen to the band while everyone else as running to the lifeboats. We don’t save you a seat.
The GP100 you mention –is that the Wiley Clapp version with the gold bead sight? If so, then damn…I would make a trip up to Kalispell tomorrow for it for $500 if I thought it would still be there!
Nope
Sorry to have missed you there. I made the rounds this morning around 9:30-1pm. I know a ton of the vendors and was also given a handful of the flares after I purchased some medical items, smoke canisters and books from them.
It was probably the largest Kalispell show i’ve seen in the last 10 years of going to them.
I got the Magpul HK Navy lower and ambi selector from Brownell’s. The cost for both was about $90 mailed. If you’re LEO or a vet, you get a discount with them. Also true if you’re an FFL.
The parts went right on and feel very good. I put them on a PTR91SC.
Strangely, the plastic selector feels more solid and positive than the metal original. The shape and the throw work better with my short thumbs too.
A Valmet M62 is a grail gun for me. I would settle for a Galil Ace. I have a PTR32.
Prices are at the high point now and it’s hard to time the market. If the bad cheeto man gets re-elected then GP100s could go down to a more reasonable $350-400. If Biden gets in we may be kicking ourselves for not picking one up for $500.
Back in the day Russian SKS’s were $80, now asking $900, at a Pawn Shop! I was ridiculed at a gun show once by some frat boys for asking $120 at my table.
https://www.armslist.com/posts/12381749/fort-collins-colorado-rifles-for-sale–1953r-russian-sks-7-62x39mm-rifle–number-matching
Did you see any of those mythical “pre-1896s” Capt. Rawles is always hunting for?
A few.
the shows around here look more like yard sales than gun shows. yeah, plenty of ar15’s, not much else but junk. palmetto still killing me with their low prices tho. and everybody wants a sig 365 which is unobtanium here. the gun shops have zero ammo. hope the palmetto remington ammo deal goes thru….sadly many of these latecomers think HAVING a gun is safety. they lack not only training but mindset.
Just my two cents on the Sig 365. I thought I really had to have one because of increased mag capacity from my Glock 43, so picked one up about two years ago. The gun shot great, but the gun was very grip heavy for such a small barrel length, resulting in difficulty finding a suitable holster for appendix carry. I finally went back to my Glock just to keep the weight down. As an aside, I usually only carry the smaller type guns such as the Glock 43 when I’m running. Your results may vary.
What kind of holster do you use to run with a G43?
Sounds like the gun shows here in Southern VA. No ammo at all, High end ARs available and a lot of “personal” collection tables with folks selling off their deer rifles and plinkers.
I would like to wander a show around here, but fear it would be crammed with people like described: newbies with deep pockets and no knowledge who keep prices high.
I can’t say I would want to go inside some place without a mask requirement either. I know this is now a virtue signaling issue, but after risking exposure I have decided they’re necessary and won’t be going into a space full fo strangers without one for a while. If that makes me a lefty tool, so be it.
The issue is, its your choice – youre choosing to wear (or not wear) a mask. What youre not doing is forcing others to wear or not wear a mask.
True
The cloth mask doesn’t work. From the CDC’s web site:
“Cloth masks will not protect you from wildfire smoke.
Cloth masks that are used to slow the spread of COVID-19 by blocking respiratory droplets offer little protection against wildfire smoke. They do not catch small, harmful particles in smoke that can harm your health.
Although N95 respirators do provide protection from wildfire smoke, they might be in short supply as frontline healthcare workers use them during the pandemic.”
Those small, harmful particles in smoke are at least four times larger than the COVID virus so if they don’t protect you from smoke they sure don’t protect you from COVID.
Cloth masks are not meant to protect YOU. They are meant to contain your effluvia so that others don’t get sick from you while you are asymptomatic.
N95 is what protects YOU from others and environmental threats. It may also protect others from you, unless it has an exhaust valve that passes your breath out without filtration. Different PPE are required for different threats.
There are still supply issues with N95 masks, so CDC is once again acting for their reasons (which many not be YOUR reasons) with specific recommendations. They’ve admitted downplaying the need for N95 masks so that there would be more masks for medical personnel in the past and it seems that they are continuing their policy of making pronouncements and recommendations that are best for THEM.
I wear my N95 fitted properly when I go into any shared enclosed space or when I will be close to other people. I usually wear gloves too, and change them when needed. I don’t particularly care what anyone else thinks about my use of safety equipment.*
If I can’t wear gloves, or if I make a mistake, I wipe with bleach based wipes.
I don’t want to get CV19. I don’t want to get a regular flu either. I live in an area were CV is common and I do personally know people with confirmed cases. We don’t know about any long term negative effects, so why take a chance on something I can prevent?
nick
*I follow the 3 rules for gun handling too, and wear seatbelts, and hearing protection and eye pro when it’s appropriate, and gloves, impermeable garments, and a respirator when dealing with noxious chemicals. I don’t lick my lead covered fingers at the range or siphon gasoline with my mouth. I spent too much of my working life dealing with the aftereffects of a ‘macho’ (lack of) safety culture to not take what precautions I can. If someone can’t work safely I don’t want them on my jobsite. And while I recognize the ‘liberty’ aspects of not wearing masks, you can’t get on my jobsite without safety shoes, hard hat, eyepro and gloves, your ‘liberty’ or right to be a jackass doesn’t matter. Why should wearing a mask be any different?
added- in fact I want to push this even farther. If businesses can deny service to people without masks, I want to go back to when you could deny service to anyone. No more baking gay cakes if you don’t want to. Go back to restrictive dress codes at bars. Net net will be an increase in freedom…
I think the biggest difference is that your job site is a “my house, my rules” situation. I think theres a difference between a person choosing for themselves to wear a mask, or compelling others under their command (employees, etc) to wear one vs. Demanding someone you would otherwise have no power over to wear one.
Absolutely, but I am not commanding it. The government ‘of and by the people’ is commanding it. Our lawfully elected representatives and their appointed agents are commanding it in “our” name as a society. (They command a lot of things that should have people refusing to obey that are a lot more important than masks. )
There is also the problem that a commercial establishment no longer has the legal right to compel- remember when restaurants could compel people to wear shirts and shoes for (essentially) hygiene and propriety reasons? “No shoes, no shirt, no service”. “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone” doesn’t stand anymore (gay cake anyone?) and it should. We as a society moved that authority to compel up a level to .gov.
I’ve got no issue with a business requiring customers to wear anything they like or don’t like, because the customer has a choice of whether to patronize that business. The business has a responsibility to protect their workers and their other customers from harm as best they know how, but they have lost some of the ability to do that. Heck I’ve been in bars where they don’t/didn’t allow neckties. Take it off or have it cut off… and I think that the ability to deny service is an essential freedom that we lost.
But seat belt and helmet laws established that the state could compel safety measures for the greater good of society (or at least the insurance companies funding the lobbying) citing the societal cost burden of taking care of the preventable injuries. A free market would have come up with some sort of ‘recklessness’ insurance that people could buy to cover those societal costs or pledge to undertake those costs themselves. Our market decided society should pay those costs instead of letting an accident victim pay them, and then decided to minimize those potential costs with threat of force- like all government.
I see the same thing in the mask restrictions. Government is imposing, under threat of force, measures designed to reduce the societal costs of peoples’ choices, by restricting those choices.
So there is both precedent and authority for ordering mask use to reduce the harm to society as a whole vs. any harm to an individual’s ability to make their own choices.
Besides, we all know people make poor choices all the time, at least from my point of view. They skip the seatbelt. They take the guards off saws. They even point loaded pistols at their junk on youtube. There’s no end to the poor choices available, but the majority of the cost is usually borne by the individual making the choice. In the case of potentially infecting someone with a disease, while you remain unaffected, the person exposed who gets sick has to pay for the other person’s choice.
All of that is the long way around to saying, I understand not thinking it’s necessary. I understand thinking that compelling others is a small thing vs the potential effects. I understand that there is a lot of room to argue one point or another. I think there is a lot of room for discussion around the issue.
What I object to is how political the whole thing has gotten. My choice to wear a mask in most interactions with people indoors isn’t a political statement. I’m not ‘sticking it to the man’ or ‘standing up for my right’ to inflict my (possibly diseased) spittle on someone else. I have no right to make someone else sick. My right to swing my fist ends just before it hits someone else’s nose, right?
I truly do not understand the otherwise normal and reasonable people who are essentially saying, this is the hill I’m willing to die on–“you can’t tell me what to do” while at the same time, they let “the man” tell them what to do every minute of their lives in much more intrusive ways. That makes no sense.
Nor does treating my choice as a political stance to be attacked or mocked, because their choices are driven by politics, and (ironically) herd behavior. When you Baaa at someone wearing a mask in a store, wtf are you thinking? YOU’RE the one making sheep noises after all. You’re the one following a herd (different herd, but still a herd). — generic YOU in all of the above, nothing but respect for our host —
I am more than a bit surprised that in the middle of a global pandemic, something that was not at the top of my preps list going into 2020, the biggest issue of contention would be essentially an argument over the state’s ability to compel hygienic measures.
nick
(and thanks to Cmdr0 for his patience with comments, and commentors)
You hit on what I think is the heart of the matter – the duty or obligation, if any, of government to, by force, compel a citizen into action/inaction in the name of a ‘common good’ or ‘because it’s good for them’.
If we accept that there are limits that .gov may impose on us in the name of ‘its for your own good’, then that necessitates asking where the line gets drawn. If .gov says riding a motorcycle is dangerous and therefore you MUST wear a helmet, is not the next logical step for .gov to say that you shouldn’t be riding a motorcycle at all? Their argument would be virtually identical…the greater good to society of you not turning your brainpan into a maracas. An example that I think all of us can relate to would be gun control laws… where does the .gov’s interest in public safety become a disregard for the rights of the individual? Or, more pointedly, where do the rights of the individual become subordinate to the rights of the larger society (assuming that such conglomerations have rights other than individual ones).
A distinction, it could be argued, might be that the individuals action (no mask) has a direct effect on the people around them and therefore could be construed as a violation of their rights. But those people (who are concerned about getting infected) have the choice to not put themselves in harms way and can simply stay home or wherever they think is safest. They might say that they shouldn’t have to change their lifestyle to accommodate other people’s behavior, but, interestingly, the other side could make that exact same argument.
Much like how the Civil War (or War Of Southern Overconfidence) was fought over a bigger issue than slavery, the mask/no mask issue is about more than Wuhan Flu, it’s about figuring out where the limits of individual responsibility and choice, public safety and interest, and government obligation are drawn.
Your lucky. Here in Michigan we haven’t seen a gun show since February and that was over in the Bolshevik corner near their capital city of Detoilet. Our Hitlerian OverGruppen Furher is doing her best to govern Michigan like her forebears governed Bavaria. We have just had the 9th extension of Greasy Gert Whitless’s semi soon to be permanent Executive Order locking down the state. I believe DNA tests are in order to see if she and Red Hilda are related. Temperment is surely identical.
FYI, various .govs and other groups have been studying the use of the multiple types of masks for defense against viruses for 100 YEARS. They have found no benefit to using them, as the virus particles are too small for the n95 grade to stop, let alone the lessor versions. What they have found, though, is that using masks can cause health problems for some of the wearers.