Quote:
Originally Posted by Floorist
The guns there were too expensive anyway. Guns are generally cheaper at local gun shops.
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Bingo.
Guns are just a commodity like any other. Any store that specializes will offer a wider variety of products and prices than one that doesn't.
A gun shop will always have good used guns for sale. But a general sporting goods retailer may not have any used guns at all for sale.
The new gun sales are tanking all over the nation, and have been for over 3 years now.
There is an enormous supply of used guns that bought and never fired available now, and they are being sold privately and in gun shows for half of what they cost new.
It's going to take years before the big panic buying stock of guns of 2012 is sold out, and for as long as it exists, all the firearms industry is going to have a hard time trying to compete with its new products.
The new stuff is exactly like the used stuff in most cases. No manufacturer can compete with itself for very long and still stay profitable. Like cars, once a gun leaves the shop, it's used.
The worst case for for the gun industry can also arise; those 2012 guns can take on the aspect of being somehow more desirable than new guns. Higher build quality, better materials, something superior in the old that's not there in the new.
It might be voodoo, but getting the 'vintage' tag hung on a gun often helps sell it quicker than a new gun, and buying a 'vintage' gun can still cost less than a new one. At its worst, a vintage gun can cost far more than a new gun exactly like it and still sell faster.
it can also work to the reverse. The gun panic essentially involved only one gun, the AR-15. It was, until then, one of the most popular models the industry made, but it's very limited as a sporting arm.
Once a fad disappears, the product's desirability goes with it. If most gun buyer don't want an AR-15, the price will hit bottom for the few who do. The industry is stuck with an over-stock of guns they can't sell. Once all profit is lost forever, the business dies.
None of the gun makers have concentrated on making AR-15s since, in hopes their better sporting arms will keep them alive. But folks in general don't hunt in the numbers they once did, and all shooting sports aren't as popular as they once were.
Until the industry can present itself to the general buying public as being a good sports activity, how are they going to sell large numbers of firearms?
Most guns today never kill anything but a paper target, no matter how fiercely combative they look. That look can be just another fad that played out, like a mullet haircut.
Wayne LaPierre cut his throat when he was braying about gun confiscation in 2012 and kicked off the buying panic. The NRA has lost over 3/4 of its funding from the firearms industry, and now, 6 years later, all those profits that were made in 2012 are long gone.
The industry cannot afford to keep the NRA is business any more. They are having a hard enough time keeping themselves in business to support the NRA too.
Remington went under after almost 200 years of gun making. Colt is busted. Smith & Wesson is in deep trouble.
The free market rules. It also rules in the used items we all buy as well.
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