The Firearm Blog

The Blue Book of Gun Values is the definitive source of gun values. It is immensely useful if you are buying or selling used firearms.

If you do not do a lot of buying or selling, and do not want to purchase a US$30 book every year, then the Blue Book of Gun Values online database may be very useful.

A lot of the Blue book content is available for free. The modern/popular manufacturer, such as Marlin and Ruger, information costs $10.

The database is available here.

Two years ago, an M16 automatic rifle could fetch $5,400 or more in the Palestinian West Bank. Now buyers at Hebron’s clandestine gun market are asked to pay more than double.

Four months after Islamist Hamas routed secular Fatah in the Gaza Strip, fears that clashes between the Palestinian rivals could erupt in the West Bank and uncertainty ahead of a U.S.-led peace conference are fuelling a scramble for guns.

Dealers at the gun market in Hebron, the West Bank’s most populous city, say weapons sales have jumped by up to 70 percent since Hamas took control of Gaza, while buoyant demand and supply bottlenecks due to tighter security have inflated prices.

In the northern West Bank city of Jenin, every bullet for an AK-47 rifle costs 35 Israeli shekels, or more than $8. In Hamas-controlled Gaza, an AK-47 bullet goes for 4-6 Israeli shekels, $1-1.50.

I have heard it said that gun prices reflect upcoming conflict….

Also, I wonder where they get M16 or AR-15’s from.

More here.
Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs

Very interesting blog post about the 17th Century Firearms trade in America and impact on the Indians of the northeast.

Of all the trade goods the European introduced to the American Indian, the gun has had the most broad-ranging effect, both positive and negative, on native and settler alike. As a tool for hunting the gun helped the Indian provide more food for his community, which in turn led to a better standard of living and provided for greater population growth. On the other hand, this increased efficiency also made it possible for the Indian hunter to harvest more animals than could be removed from the environment without having a negative impact on the ecology.

Not only did the gun allow for more efficient hunting, it provided a better means of making war. This in one respect could protect a small tribe from a much stronger neighbor, but could eventually allow some nations (as in the case of the Iroquois) to utterly destroy their own weaker neighbors. The gun, as it still is today, was a helpmate when used as a tool for feeding or defending the family, and was a terror when misused as an apparatus of uncontrolled destruction.

More here.