The Firearm Blog

Once again my email backlog is slowly killing me slowly. I am about one month behind, so do not be offended if I take a while to reply to your emails.

Sig Sauer have in the past shipped two magazines with their pistols. They announced today that they would only be shipping one magazine because of unprecedented demand. From the press release:

This change in configuration is a result of the critical shortage of magazines throughout the industry. SIG SAUER’s decision to ship commercial pistols with one magazine will allow existing and new orders to be processed without interruption.

Without this change in policy, magazine availability would severely hinder SIG SAUER’s ability to meet market demand and ship product in a timely manner. Distributor and dealer single magazine pistol shipments commence immediately.

I do wonder if this is simply a way to make extra profit and spinning it in a positive manner.

I am pretty swamped with emails right now. Please expect a delay before I can reply to your emails. Thanks.

Sigh. On another website I have been accused of being racist. Apparently some people decided that my guy-with-a-ski-mask was a black guy being shot by a white guy.

One guy is the “good” guy, the other is a criminal wearing a ski mask (like all stereotypical criminals wear).

I have to admit that it could look it was a black guy being shot by a white guy, so I apologize to anyone who was offended. It never occurred to me that the ski mask did not look like a ski mask. and I have altered the cartoon.

I had a nice, if short, break and have hit the ground blogging.

SHOT is coming soon and I am excited. There will be some very cool guns and gear that are sure to be unveiled

I am away until the 7th. Blogging with resume then.

Have a very merry Christmas and a fantastic New Year!

A big thanks to all those who have helped me with the blog, my readers especially those who have posted comments on the blog and to all my fellow gun bloggers.

I hope blogging next year will be as fun as it has been this year.

A vaguely seasonal image.

I will probably take a break from blogging until 2 January 2009.

See you all next year.

Their sacrifice for our freedom

(Photo “Tomb of the Unknowns”, Smithstonian Institute)

Heres the thing, if you shoot an animal which protected by the state and is illegal to hunt, such as Australian crocodiles, don’t take photos of your trophy, especially when you are possessing the firearms illegally.

The utter incompetence of some people astounding.

More here.

I came across a fascinating article discussing medieval archery, specifically the English victory over the French at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 which was won by the English longbow archers.

Henry had approximately 5,000 archers at Agincourt, and a stock of about 400,000 arrows. Each archer could shoot about ten arrows a minute, so the army only had enough ammunition for about eight minutes of shooting at maximum fire power. However, this fire power would have been devastating. Fifty thousand arrows a minute – over 800 a second – would have hissed down on the French cavalry, killing hundreds of men a minute and wounding many more. The function of a company of medieval archers seems to have been equivalent to that of a machine-gunner, so in modern terms we can imagine Agincourt as a battle between old-fashioned cavalry, supported by a few snipers (crossbow-men) on the French side, against a much smaller army equipped with machine guns. Perhaps from this point of view the most remarkable fact about the battle is that the French ignored the very great military advantages of the longbow.

Read the article here. Just ignore the math!

Bitter, on this blog entry, had this to say about my attempt to find out who pays too much for firearms:

A) The laws aren’t consistent. If only members of the military and law enforcement can purchase firearms, it’s hardly an open market.
B) Culturally, it’s not a big thing in most other countries and that will also influence the market.
C) There is no such thing as “paying too much,” and important premise in his attempt to study prices

I am going to try to answer her 3rd point. I will try not to make this a full economics lesson. Here is an open market for guns, with no government regulation:

Ignore the diagram on the right. I have only included it for the sake of completeness.

This shows a perfect competitor, a gun dealer named Steve, and the local gun market.

The S curve shows supply. As price increases suppliers/producers are willing to produce more.

The D curve shows demand. As price decreases consumers are willing to purchase more.

The eventual price is the agreed price between suppliers and consumers. In other words where Supply=Demand (S=D). This is called the equilibrium point.

The point P is how much you should be paying for a gun.

Here is the market for a gun dealer after government regulation and compliance costs:

For anyone who has studied economics at a college level, this is showing the long term effect, I do realize that negative economic profit will be made in the short term.

As you can see above, supply decreases from S to S1 therefore driving up the cost

On the unregulated market you would pay P. Now you are paying P1.

I am sure I have made some mistakes on these diagrams. I am not trying to blog a course in microeconomics. I will leave that to the college professors!

To answer Bitter’s other points:

A) I am looking at what consumers, not the military, pay in other countries. I am really trying to find out how much government interference there is in other countries.

B) Yes, demand certainly influences price, you are right about that. Some countries will import more than others which will in turn decrease the costs per item.

I may do another post showing how world price effects gun supply and prices.

I hope that I have made sense.

This is why I am a big supporter of small government and the deregulation of all things, including firearms.

If you found this post interesting I highly recommend reading The Undercover Economist (non affiliate link).

I have been having problems with my blog and posting comments sometimes does not work. If it does not work for you please try it again.

Hi Gun bloggers and gun enthusiasts,

I am trying to compile a “Global Gun Price Index” to see how the price of firearms compare in different parts of the world.

If you are able to help me or have suggestions please feel free to email me. My email address is on the top left sidebar of my blog (The Firearm Blog) or you can post a comment on the blog.

Unfortunately I only speak english. Finding the gun prices of non english speaking countries is not easy. Nor is it easy in foreign english speaking countries as I do not know the best online gun stores to get prices from.

So far I have been researching the Remington .308 700 SPS (blued). I chose the 700 SPS because I thought it would be a common gun found world wide. I would like to expand this to many other types of guns such as the Mossberg 500 shotgun, Ruger 10/22 rifle and Glock 17 pistol.

I have found prices for the Remington 700 SPS rifle in the following countries:

• USA
• Canada
• New Zealand
• Australia
• UK

Here is a graph showing my findings for the Remington 700 SPS .308 (blued):

Below is a picture of the spreadsheet I have been using. I will be uploading the actual spreadsheet soon. I am busy tidying it up and may use Zoho to host it so anyone can edit it. Once I upload it I will update this page.

If you have catalogs, knowledge of overseas gun websites or know people in another country who can look up prices then please let me know.

I am especially interested in the following countries:

• South Africa (an english speaking country but I could not find any prices online!)
• EU Member States
• Russia
• Israel
• Middle Eastern countries

Any information I received and publish on the “Gun Price Index” will be freely available to the entire online gun community under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License so that everyone benefits.

Thanks for any help.

UPDATE: Unfortunately although many people have wished me luck none have been able to give me gun prices. If you are able to supply me gun prices from your country please contact me.