Why am I selling my guns? Easy, I don’t have the money to be a serious collector and want to focus on firearms that I feel I can use to become a better shooter.

Don’t get me wrong, I envy those students of the gun that have the ability and time to track down that ultra rare thing and add it to their ever expanding collection. Sadly that is not in the cards for me as a poor blogger and new father. I guess I have made peace with the fact that I am never going to have a safe full of ultra rare things that others covet, but rather a safe full of well-used firearms that don’t get cleaned often enough and show good honest wear.

For nearly the last decade in America, we have been buying things based on a fear that we would no longer be able to acquire one of them in the future. This led to shooters hoarding record levels of gun parts and ammo without getting out to shoot them. Now that times have changed a bit, I feel that it might be a chance for shooters to shift some of that capital tied up in large collections to ammo, reloading equipment, better guns, training, etc.

I have decided selling my guns, about half of them at least, to redistribute the funds to other purchases that I feel will make me a better shooter if I devote the range time to them. So where I am going to spend that money? Good optics that will last the remainder of my life, a couple precision rifles, a ton of mags since they are consumables, some good range gear like holsters and a gun belt for competition, match entry fees, and maybe some classes from reputable trainers to help fix some of my bad habits.

The shift in the firearms market has changed my perspective on training and competition. For the longest time, I never saw the need for training until I became a better shooter and understood how much improvement I still had to make to consider myself competent in my own eyes. In fact, I used to give guys a hard time for spending money on classes. How wrong I was. Classes and competition here I come.  Maybe it is time to focus on skill and less on acquiring the next new shiny thing that pops up on the market.

So why should you take a more pragmatic approach to shooting? The simple answer is now that you no longer need to focus on what you might never be able to buy again and can concentrate on what makes the shooting hobby more enjoyable for you, selling off some of your less loved firearms and accessories might be the right call.

If collecting is your thing, now is a good time to snatch up some pretty good deals, who knows, you might end up with one of my old firearms. Like I said, if I had the financial means to be a collector and could keep myself from shooting beautiful examples of firearms into oblivion, I would.

I may be entirely wrong, but I feel like this is the time for the shooting community to make a shift from consumerism to skill building and maybe get more involved with local competitive shooting clubs.

What do you think? Is selling my guns a good idea or am I a fool?