Gun sales finally begin to decline a little

Hope ammo will be lagging shortly behind so prices get back to near normal sooner.

Part of that may be because people don’t want to pay inflated prices. Part of that could be that so many firearms are on back order.

I'm starting to see new Glocks at reasonable prices in LGS. Reasonable is about $50 more than pre-panic.

BigBore44 said:

Part of that may be because people don’t want to pay inflated prices. Part of that could be that so many firearms are on back order.

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Like they've been paying for the past 12 mos? Most clueless. new buyes don't even know the difference.

I bet some of the decline is due to new buyers who aren't gun enthusiasts who feel they are protected with their single purchase during the pandemic.

BigBore44 said:

Part of that may be because people don’t want to pay inflated prices. Part of that could be that so many firearms are on back order.

Click to expand...

Part of that may be people are catching up on credit card bills for firearms purchased during the pandemic. Self == guilty.

All it'll take is another large scale round of economic stimulus monies from Uncle Sam to boost gun sales figures again.

It was going to slow down at some point so it's about time. Ever so slowly we're starting to see ammo back on the shelves so maybe we'll begin to regain some degree of normalcy before the year is out. Probably never go back to exactly 2019 prices, but something approaching those would be nice.

Well, yeah, sales are slowing, I've bought two pistols in stock in the last three months. And ammo is sticking on the shelf longer. Even tho that shelf is behind the customer service counter. And some prices in bulk are actually under 50c a round! Woohoo!

Now we have a push to regulate AR 15 Pistols. I'm thinking It won't get made official - AFAIK it's not even listed in the Register for comment yet - but a lot of folks won't suddenly apply a Form ! to wait a year + to be "legal" while the assembled parts they have become illegal. So, what to do?

Buy stocks and 16" barrels and convert. The ATF gave an estimate of what their new policy would cost, I think it's a bit under.

JCooperfan1911 said:

Like they've been paying for the past 12 mos? Most clueless. new buyes don't even know the difference.

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If they’ve been paying the higher prices for the last 12 months, they aren’t new buyers anymore. I’ve had several new gun owners (family and friends) text me in the last couple of months asking about purchasing new firearms. Primarily pistols such as Glock, and AR’s. Prices of what they were looking at were too high in my opinion. So I told them to hold out until prices return closer to normal.

It’s not uncommon for people getting into firearms to seek out information. The smart ones anyways. Look at how many new members we, and our sister site have made in the last year. It’s not like we only refer to this as a “panic” on our site. Every site has been calling it that. And they all say the prices will come down. And they are starting to in the stores, and on gunbroker as well. 6 months ago people were paying $0.70 per primer. Yesterday I hopped on there just to look and there were several sellers offering primers at $0.20 with zero bids and only a couple minutes left in the auction. People are wising up. Here’s an example of prices coming down. From Atwood’s of all places 2 days ago.


But not everywhere. Same guns from Buds just now….





It could also be that many of the new gun owners have purchased the firearms they plan to and that just leaves us.

I managed to pay sane prices for two new Glocks, within the past week. Normal prices, actually. One was Blue Label, and the other a normal consumer sale. It is good to see some small parts of the market returning to normal. Had they been 9mm, they might have sold-out immediately, but these were for the dinosaur-ish .45 ACP, for this dinosaur, so, I was able to see each of them, then go home and sleep on it, and return the next day, to buy them. (Why two? I tend to buy favored weapons in pairs. I may yet add a spare. I just discovered that the Short Frame, as well as the 4th Generation, of the .45/10mm Glocks, fit my hands very well, better than the too-large earlier large-frames, and filling the center of my palm better than the 9mm-frame Glocks.)

It’s the ammunition prices that are worrisome. At least for me.

If you’ve got millions of new shooters tripping over themselves to pay exponentially more for what ammo costed a year and a half ago, and that don’t seem to be slowing down, my biggest fear is the prices are going to stay at these levels for the rest of our lives.

This will make the sport of shooting too expensive for many people. It will become like golf, a wealthy man’s hobby. I’ll tell you one thing, if this is the case I’ll shoot enough to maintain my skills but will be finding other things to do with my free time. I just can’t bring myself to ride the wave the yuppies with their disposable income and lack of sense are bringing.

Might be a catch-22 situation:

Survey Indicates Ammo Shortage Likely To Continue | American Rifleman | Official Journal Of The NRA

HPJeep said:

I bet some of the decline is due to new buyers who aren't gun enthusiasts who feel they are protected with their single purchase during the pandemic.

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Reminds me of that old saying, "Beware the man with only one gun. He just might know how to use it."

BigBore44 said:

Part of that may be because people don’t want to pay inflated prices. Part of that could be that so many firearms are on back order.

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And many first time buyers probably only wanted to buy 1 gun and bought it.

Yesterday I stopped by my LGS and was pleasantly surprised to see he had a full stock of pistols and long guns. Even more surprising was his prices were as good or better than any I've seen online lately. I left with a 1911 I'd been seeing "sold out" for a long time on line. He had a very small selection of ammunition though. And those prices were plenty high.

After a long drought I have seen more in stock at local dealers. According to one of them they are still moving briskly but inventory is a bit more available. They did say the Turkish manufacturers are flooding the market.

Gun stores here have had large inventories for several months now; ammo however is just now starting to show up with some regularity.

Well, only 2/3 of my gun purchases in May went through NICS...so depending on how many private sales were done, that number of 1.4 million could be much higher.

With the recent influx of add's to my inbox for ammo, it can only go down. Add to it the decline in gun sales and we should also see a decline in prices.

I went to my lgs today. For the FIRST time in recent memory, you could buy as much 5.56mm. as you wanted, but handgun calibers were still limited.

And, darn it, they got another really nice Miroku made 1873 Winchester rifle in stock, this in .44 - 40. I'm still feeling a magnetic attraction to it from miles away ...... darn it my gun safe is OUT OF ROOM!!!!!!!!

I bought a pistol on Tuesday and wasn’t delayed on the background check.

BigBore44 said:

Part of that may be because people don’t want to pay inflated prices. Part of that could be that so many firearms are on back order.

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I have one on back order.

JCooperfan1911 said:

It’s the ammunition prices that are worrisome. At least for me.

If you’ve got millions of new shooters tripping over themselves to pay exponentially more for what ammo costed a year and a half ago, and that don’t seem to be slowing down, my biggest fear is the prices are going to stay at these levels for the rest of our lives.

This will make the sport of shooting too expensive for many people. It will become like golf, a wealthy man’s hobby. I’ll tell you one thing, if this is the case I’ll shoot enough to maintain my skills but will be finding other things to do with my free time. I just can’t bring myself to ride the wave the yuppies with their disposable income and lack of sense are bringing.

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If you were reloading and paying attention you wouldn't be dealing with the high cost of ammo. You would have components to last several years and would be building ammo like nothing happened. There's always going to be people who rush into markets with credit cards who aren't hobbyists and will pay the current price of just about anything. It's a fact.