Raven Concealment Systems posted this to Facebook. It’s spot on, so read and heed.
Winter is coming.
The gun industry has ups and downs that are tied to the seasons, and this year, we should ALL begin preparing for winter now.
As far as market trends go, summer is historically the “slow” time of year for the firearms industry. For most consumers, buying guns and accessories takes a back seat to family vacations, opening up the pool, putting the boat in the water, and buying back-to-school supplies.
Then, come late September and early October, sales start to pick up as those other distractions draw to their natural close. By Thanksgiving, people are buying guns and gear like they’re allergic to money and trying to rid themselves of every dollar.
This year, the perception – perhaps accurate – that changing political leadership might result in the banning of certain types of weapons and magazines, combined with a feeling that civil unrest is making people unsafe in their communities, will drive new buyers to acquire their first firearms, and current gun owners to “stock up.” And this surge of demand has the potential to make the 2008 “Obamageddon” panic buying frenzy look like a slow day at the gun show.
If you’re looking to buy your first AR-15 or Glock, now is the time to do it. If you need to stock up on extra magazines or ammo, don’t wait. If history is any indicator, come November, you’re going to see dramatically higher prices in the gun shops. By Inauguration Day, you’re going to see the shelves of gun shops looking like the shelves of a Venezuelan grocery store.
Right now, you might be thinking to yourself: “Oh look…the gun industry guy is telling us we need to buy stuff now. What a surprise.”
True. I am part of this industry, and maybe that makes me biased. But I make holsters, and I’m here telling you to buy guns, magazines, and ammo. Besides, panic-buys don’t benefit holster sales. In fact, the last time the gun industry had a buying frenzy, the only thing that wasn’t completely sold out in gun shops was holsters. Hell, when gun shops run out of pistols to sell, that actually *hurts* holster sales.
Panic-buys are bad for everyone. They block new people from getting into shooting because prices skyrocket. They block shooting enthusiasts from getting resupplied on ammo and magazines because shelves get stripped bare. Buying now will help you avoid suffering the high prices and scarcity of a panic.
Perhaps the worst impact is on the people who you’d think were actually benefiting: Your local gun shop owners. Although it might seem counter-intuitive, panic-buys are bad for your local gun shop. They force store owners to make the no-win choice between getting accused of “price gouging” because they raise prices to match the surging demand, or keeping their prices at pre-panic levels and getting cleaned out by speculators (only to watch guns they just sold at pre-panic prices get listed hours later by their customers on Gun Broker for 300% mark-up) only to discover they are unable to get more inventory to sell because the manufacturers are backlogged till spring. And that’s the real problem: When a retail business can’t get more of the primary product it sells in a timely fashion, how are they supposed to pay the rent, electric bill, and their employees?
Basically, you can’t go wrong stocking up now. If the panic hits, you’ll be glad you bought before P-Mags skyrocketed to $40 apiece, and while you could still find AR’s behind the counter at the local gun shop. If the panic doesn’t materialize, there’s no harm in having an extra case or two of ammo for training classes, or another dozen Glock magazines.
Don’t wait till the frenzy is in full-swing, and then whine about how your local gun shop is “price gouging.” Help your wallet, your gun safe, and your local retailer by buying now.
Its true. Ive been working sales at a gun store in central Oklahoma for almost 2 years, and anytime a tragedy happens and politicians talk about gun control, sales skyrocket and we get sold out of the popular guns. Anytime a shooting happens and people come in after it to get a gun, 9 times out of 10 its because they want to get it while its still legal. This season is gonna be chaos. If Killary gets elected, we definitely will be sold out of a lot of stuff for a long time.
You know, with this situation I can’t help but feel like a fool either way I play it.
Let’s say I have a two hundred AR mags and hundred Glock mags in storage. And then let’s say I have a large amount of disposable income that I could potentially spend on more mags. Here’s the dilemma: If I don’t buy more now, I have to be content with what I have, potentially for the rest of my life. If I do buy more now, I feel like I’m needlessly hoarding a commodity that is only really useful to sell at panic market prices (“price gouge” to the Bernie fans and the butthurt) to people that didn’t prepare. If nothing happens, then I’m stuck sitting on a mountain of mags that would be a hassle to sell anywhere but local and that I wouldn’t realistically be able to go through during my lifetime.
How do you know if you’re “prepared” for this kinda thing? How much is enough? My man cave would give Burt Gummer a boner but all I feel is torn.
Preach it brother lmao!
I love taking people for all their worth during a panic buy lmao!
Hillary nor Trump are big on 2A. Trump just says pretty things to the NRA crowds because he knows they are votes and Hillary thinks as Obama does of 2A people, they are the wacko’s clinging to guns and their bibles!
Hillary wants to save us from the big bad gun owners and usher in a new America, one where guns and legal gun owners are looked upon as the true evil scum. She will institute high taxes on ammo, limit magazine sizes, seek to ban all semi-autos and place limits on ammo.
With Hillary we know what we are getting. With Trump…who in the hell knows!
So ya, buying ammo, magazines, and other essemtials. Crazy will be coming to a town near you
Pretty sure Berry has a more nuanced opinion of 2A people.
Trump is unproven on the 2A but Hillary has stated she supports gun confiscation. Simple choice in Nov
Yep. Vote Hilary to end the literal warzone we have in the US.
So electing a person who you think is willing to confiscate guns will lead to fewer “war zones” in your judgment? I can’t imagine anything that would be more explosive than trying to forcibly disarm tens of millions of people.
I don’t fret too much over gun confiscation and more than I fret over Trump rounding up millions of people for deportation (neither are pragmatic). But if you do think that gun confiscation is like to come to pass, surely you can see how a lot of people will see that as open season on violence?
It’d be like someone saying, “Drugs are killing people. Let’s mobilize a million cops at once to clear out the ghettos and trailer parks.” Okay, maybe that’s so something, but I can guarantee that a bunch of people are going to react violently.
Sorry for the typos. I’m typing as my buddy drives and I’m bouncing all over the place.
Hillary hasn’t stated she supports gun confiscation. She’s said she wants better background checks and to reinstate the old and feckless 1994 AWB, but only made one remark at one stop about how the community buy-back programs might should be investigated to see if they work (something like that).
If EVERYONE stayed calm and didn’t panic, we could all have nice things. Hillary can’t get anything passed without the House. It barely passed in 94 (like 52-48), and NONE of the studies (except one that cherry picked one statistic) found any proof that it was effective in any way. And Obama and Hillary know that–during the debates, Obama said, “It’s not AR15s and AK47s that are being used, it’s cheap pistols getting into the hands of criminals.”
I think we should all be TRYING to calm the hoarders and panic-buyers down, not encouraging them to start panicking sooner. But if Clinton gets her way, and by some miracle, a 1994 AWB passed by a GOP House AND Senate (no way they’re losing either), we will have to forego the bayonet lug, and pay 20% more for AR stuff.
Do you work for the DNC? Clinton is vehemently anti-gun and Obama and Clinton both want to rid our nation of “weapons of war.”
It’s more than the bayonet lug and price.
That sort of half-full optimism got a lot of Jews into cattle cars.
Really? You think the next AWB go around will be an inconvenience? That they haven’t learned from the last? Try no sunset clause at a minimum, no grandfathered mags, ammo restrictions, and restrictions on transportation.
No way the Republicans are looking either Chamber of Congress? Those are elections you had better be actively engaged in, no matter who wins the Whitehouse.
Joe, it’s not all on Hillary nor House and Senate but also what the Supreme court looks like 3 or 4 years into a Hillary presidency.
The local or lower courts got filled with liberal left leaning judges via Obama cause that’s what he wanted. Now the left looks to the supreme court. Again simple merhod of small changes and before you know it….boiled frog!
I may never need or use the items I get now and yes friends, family and neighbors may think I, and others with same mindset are the wacky panicked right wingers but if and when the proverbial caca hits the big ass fan I’ll be OK.
Well, no, she has not stated she supports gun confiscation. Making declarative statements can lose you an election…
However, I am curious how you characterize her comment, “The Supreme Court is wrong about the Second Amendment.”
And because context is everything, here are the talky bits on either side or it:
“I was proud when my husband took [the National Rifle Association] on, and we were able to ban assault weapons, but he had to put a sunset on so 10 years later. Of course Bush wouldn’t agree to reinstate them,” said Clinton.
“We’ve got to go after this,” Clinton continued. “And here again, the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment. And I am going to make that case every chance I get.”
“I’m going to speak out, I’m going to do everything I can to rally people against this pernicious, corrupting influence of the NRA and we’re going to do whatever we can.”
Just going to leave this here for all the NRA high-horsemen:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6imFvSua3Kg
Allowing the CDC to just study the issue will provide so much insight to those against 2A of just how responsible law abiding citizens are and that taking guns away solves nothing. Unfortunately the NRA makes more money than God off of panic buys so they don’t have much reason to change their ways.
Yeah, I’m a big believer in smart data used to solve problems, and with good data I’d like to think that democrats and liberals could craft smart, targeted legislation that helps the problems but doesn’t infringe on rights.
Maybe I’m just an optimist.
What are the problems?
Bad dialog and misunderstanding of facts.
The left is fed false ideas of just how bad guns are and why we don’t need them (ignoring that cities with bans have serverly increased violent crime rates as a result). And the right is fed extreme ideas that every Dem is out to take their guns (info delivered by the NRA constantly, mostly as a profit/control tactic).
Both sides are just taking bad angles at it and there are plenty of level headed individuals that see through the BS but that’s not what either side’s media wants to focus on. There is a very real scientific approach to this and the CDC would be able to prove that firearms aren’t a threat to society as a whole, but they aren’t allowed to take that route because the NRA deems any government involvement in firearms as unconstitutional and its just “Dems trying to find a backdoor way to take your guns.” Hell the CDC would probably even find ways to prevent firearms from getting into the hands of criminals and lower violent crimes rates without infringing on any rights!
The whole dialog and rational just needs to be rebooted. First step is people on both sides have to calm down cause they’re both making it so much worse.
You have an utterly naive amount of faith that a government agency with a long history of lying to the public and manipulating data for political ends will suddenly change their ways and publish the truth, if only we allow them to study the data. AND before you reply and say “well what have we got to lose?” – the answer is everything.
The NRA just supported a DEM for Governor: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/nra-endorses-chris-koster-227771
I have to echo Dan on the topic of you being naive about the CDC. In the past, the CDC has been fairly openly biased against firearms, and the CDC continues to release studies pertaining to firearms.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/15/why-congress-cut-the-cdcs-gun-research-budget/
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/12/why-we-cant-trust-the-cdc-with-gun-research-000340
Many false ideas of how bad guns are were, at least in part, created by the CDC. If you believe the CDC would actually prove firearms aren’t a threat to society as a whole, I suggest that you actually read some of the research they’ve done. Leftist views, such as those seen at the Washington Post, make false sweeping claims such as: “The CDC had not touched firearm research since 1996.” The CDC has done researching which touched firearms, but it wasn’t the specific kind wanted by anti-gunners.
The Obama’s DOJ, which I don’t believe anyone can reasonably argue is pro-gun, has constantly argued we need more gun laws on the books to stop criminals and the insane. Yet the Obama DOJ testified that they prosecuted just 44 straw buyer cases out of 48,321 — they prosecuted .091% of them. If they don’t prosecute even .1% of the cases, are they serious about using the laws on the books to stop gun crime and need more to be effective? I don’t think so. It’s not like the Obama administration was against the federal laws regarding straw buyers, they fought – and won – a case before SCOTUS to maintain the “strict” ban on such practices.
http://www.npr.org/2014/06/16/322650543/supreme-court-rules-against-straw-gun-purchases
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/11/justice-department-rarely-prosecutes-straw-buyers-/
There is a reason that anti-gun politicians point to wanting Australian style gun control, i.e. confiscation, when calling for more “common sense” gun control.
What information could you possibly provide anti-gun individuals which caused them to no longer be anti-gun? First, you’d have to get them to actually read and understand the information. Second, you’d have to believe that they think gun ownership, even without the killings involving guns, is something people should be able to have. Now, make note that that most of the anti-gun people aren’t truly concerned with the number of deaths – suicide, accident and homicide – that are gun related. If they were concerned with the number of deaths, wouldn’t they also be calling for a ban on alcohol which is linked to 88,000 deaths a year in the United States. http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-alcohol-related-deaths-years-lost-sxsw-20140313-story.html
The number of firearms owned in this country skyrocketed as the amount of violence, to include gun violence, plummeted. Yet after recent problems with police agencies and groups like BLM, we’ve seen a surge in violence in certain cities. Can you blame this on gun ownership? I don’t think so, otherwise gun crime would have risen with the number of firearms owned.
Some antis have been somewhat open about their desire to ultimately ban guns via confiscation. What do pro-gun types get in return for surrendering their rights and being required to jump through greater hoops to own a firearm, often at an ever increasing expense? Nothing. They get to wait til the next set of hoops are pushed on them, until they eventually are met with demands to turn over their firearms.
First off thank you for actually citing sources and putting together a well thought out, argument. I respect that.
You and Dan make solid points, and we’re on the same side. CDC might be the wrong way to educate but nevertheless, there needs to be some form of education delivered to anti 2A and it needs to not come from the NRA. The NRA’s reputation amongst the anti 2A crowd will probably never change and they will never rely on them as a source of infomation and education. And the NRA’s scare tactics to increase sales only builds the wall higher between the two sides and just makes it become more polarized.
If the dialogue stays the same, nothing will improve and both sides will just become more unwavering in ideas. Middle ground needs to be established and that middle ground doesn’t have to mean any sacrifice of rights. Just means more education about how law abiding gun owners aren’t the ones mostly contributing to violent crimes and the consequences that come with banning firearms.
Don, no problem. I do appreciate hearing opinions outside of my own.
I agree that the NRA’s reputation will probably never change, but I’m not sure that’s anything more than a symptom of the problem. The problem, as it appears to me at least, is that there are two conflicting positions which have no way of appeasing each other without destroying themselves; the advocates for gun bans won’t be appeased until there is a gun ban, and advocates for gun rights won’t be happy until there are no gun ban advocates.
Education, as you said, is what I’d view as the best avenue in theory, but how are we going to get people to become (A) educated and (B) actually care about anything remotely positive about firearms? In my own anecdotal experience, the people whom I know are anti-gun, will cite easily debunked claims to support their stance and hold the same conclusion even after conceding their claims were false.
One of my anti-gun friends, a Georgetown Law educated lawyer, sent me an article titled “Toddlers in the U.S. average one shooting per week this year.” From there, my friend used the article to make the follow claim, quoted verbatim: ” If guns were any other thing that caused this many deaths, it would be illegal.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/toddlers-shooting-guns-in-america-report-170725572.html?ref=gs
The article would state there were 13 deaths among toddlers and below for the year 2015, as of mid-Oct. Buckets are linked to the death of between 10-40 children a year. The point that my friend’s claim was obviously false. Did my friend’s stance change despite yet another claim being debunked? No, the statistic being misleading was conceded, but my friend’s conclusion remained the same.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/though-rare-common-household-buckets-responsible-for-child-drowning-deaths/1183710
I just don’t see how the conversation can improve, and I do not agree that taking a middle ground doesn’t require the sacrifice of rights. A middle ground position, as I perceive it at least, is supporting universal background checks and a few other odds and ends. That is a further erosion of my rights. I’ve bought and sold a few firearms privately. If you don’t have unwavering positions, than anything is up for grabs. I imagine you didn’t mean this in the way of being open to surrendering your 2nd amendment rights, but I believe that’s how this debate goes — they, the antis, ask you to take two steps away from your rights, then haggle you down to one step away; they’re going to keep that strategy going until they ultimately get their way. In my opinion, we’re a bit beyond the middle ground depending upon where you live in the US.
I could be wrong, but I do not see the conversation getting any better any time soon in this country despite offering education on firearms to those who are against them.
A gun industry company issuing a PSA asking you to buy now before an election. The part of my brain that deals with irony just exploded.
He addresses that despite the part of your brain that skipped over that paragraph.
Or, don’t get pit in front of it.
Oddly enough, RCS doesn’t sell guns, magazines, or ammo. In fact, companies that sell holsters and load carrying systems generally see a decline in sales while people buy guns, ammo and magazines.
Tony obviously didn’t read the entire piece.
I watched a Glock 19 go from $457 (incl taxes) over the 4th of July to $670 (not incl taxes) yesterday.
I would say the panic is setting in.
My question… is this panic going to set in any time a D gets elected to WH?
It happened twice with Obama… did it happen in Clinton era, too?
It didn’t happen to this extent then because we weren’t well organized, we didn’t have access to instantaneous social communications and we didn’t collectively comprehend what the loss would mean until it happened. Now we know better.
Agreed. Shop owners I’ve talked to have noticed a marked increase in rifle purchases in the last month. Even though draconian gun legislation my take lots of time or (hopefully) never come to pass, the mere speculation of the possibility will drive sales to the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 2008. The panic buy of 2016 has begun, and will soon get much worse.
How ironic, just having a distinct possibility of a new AWB has led to sale of far more of the firearms and accessories the AWB tries to prevent than would have occurred without that possibility.
$670 is very close to normal, pre-panic price in CA… for a Gen III no less!
The whole ordeal of buying an SBR IN THIS political climate is so damn maddening it almost makes one question, “Is all this BS really worth it?” And that’s exactly why they (the Feds) do it, so as to place so much crap and hoop jumping that the average person throws up their hands and say, “Nah, never mind.”
So I can only imagine what it will be like 3 years into either presidency. I guarantee it sure as hell will never get any easier under Hillary…Trump, who knows about that orange pumpkin headed freak?!
It’s as if the whole social/economic atmosphere is boiling to a puss filled head, ready to burst. Some areas of Chicago seem worse then war zones, police and homicide detectives are fed up and leaving their jobs. Business are closing up and the schools are just a complete joke. It’s a powder keg waiting to go BOOM!
I wonder where the mayor of Chicago sends his kids to school?
He’s right I went through this in the first weapons ban. A crappy Beretta 92 mag was going foe 150$ and neoprene bought them. Get ready either way pay a little now or mortgage your house latter.