"Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good ol' days"

The machine gun registry was not closed until 1986 with the Hughes amendment to FOPA.

1968 was GCA which required all interstate sales go through dealers, among other things.

 

some guys are saying when surplus guns were $10 guys were making $2 an hour. but in the 80's I was making plenty of money and AKs were 150 SKS $75 ammo very cheap I bought hakims in woolworths in barrels for $100 mausers for 150 all over the place enfields cheap etc

 

I don't think it will be Japan controlling world money in the future.
You might be thinking of the 'RMB' (renminbi), the currency of the People's Republic of China.
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The greatest asset to the "good ole days" is the selective memory of those that lived them. 1914... you could still buy heavy machine guns and carry a handgun without restriction in most places. You were also in danger of dying from Spanish flu. A pandemic that killed more people than Mr Wilson's war our country got into 4 years later. For a woman, pregnancy had a very good chance of being a death sentence. Spicy foods were popular because they tended to hide the taste of tainted meat. COPD was a common malady from the constant pall of smoke hanging over cities and towns from home heating with wood and coal.

Good old days? Please... I've heard all I need to.

 

Officer's Wife, I completely agree with what you're saying, in general. VERY few of us would be at all happy to transport back in time and face the life we'd have lived then.

However, a couple of points of clarification:

Yes, if you could afford one you could buy a machine gun without federal paperwork. However, concealed handgun carry was actually fairly often prohibited, though the laws may have been enforced spottily. We appear to enjoy more freedom on that front, across the country, now than at any point in the 20th century.

This one's often repeated (usually about pepper) but it doesn't appear to have much historic fact behind it. The spices (usually not "hot" spices, more savory) that rich people could enjoy in the 17th through 19th centuries really didn't cover spoiled meat flavors well. However, you were very likely to eat heavily salted and then boiled meat, if you could get meat. Preservative technology relied upon making foods largely inedible, temporarily, so they wouldn't spoil. Still not all that appealing.

 

For me it was the mail man blowing the horn so you would come out and get your shotgun. Or Rifle from him since it would not fit in the mailbox.

 

Revisiting this one after lettin' it lay for a spell.

There were good things and bad things about the good old days.

And in those days, people talked about the other good old days.

And, how good they were depended on one's perspective. If we could be transported back to the good old days...we might not think they were all that good.

For instance, I didn't live in an air-conditioned house until I was 13, and I didn't live with central air until I was in my 20s.

In my parents' good old days, the privy was at the end of a path 50 yards from the back door...and water had to be drawn from a well and carried into the house.

Be careful whatcha wish for and all.

 

Not saying there weren't any around but the drug problem was not near what it is today back in the 50's.

Nor were their the people sitting on their behind collecting all the free welfare and food stamp monies.

 

Confirmed. The store nearest me carries handguns. I'm pretty sure the others do as well.

 

*this is in responce to "pockets" previous post, Sorry i forgot to reference it before i posted.


Your absolutly right. I said the yen because its the only asian currency im aware of.
Right now china is one of the only nations that is not in debt. They have become the largest buyer of physically gold in the world, Most of which is bought up from their own mines and hence, not reported. Their surplus cash reserves are to the tune of just under four trillion.... Meanwhile.. Here in the US Obama, Bernanke, and the goon squad continue to print 80 billion a month. Whoopie... Makes my desire for that 50 acre lot in seclusion more and more intense every day.

 

This was the policy when I started school, but by the time I was a Sr. in H.S. it had changed to not anywhere near the school. I remember being dragged out of french class my Sr. yr to take mine home because it was in the back window of my pickup. The security guard, a retired P.O., said the rules had changed and rather than suspend us he just wanted us to take them home and tell our buddies not to bring them even though it was openning day. He understood, why we had them.
Times have changed, and not for the better.

 

I'm feeling old because my stories are about my Dad, not my grand-Dad! My Dad grew up in Coleman, Texas in the 1920s. He said basically every man carried a pistol. It might have been mainly for snakes, but it was very common.

As far as how times have changed...the sheriff in town was named Frank Mills. He sent two brothers, last name Lester, to "the Big House". At their sentencing they told Frank Mills they'd kill him when they got out. A few years later, when they got out of prison, they sent him a telegram saying they were coming to kill him. The two brothers and two of their cousins showed up and the sheriff killed all 4 of them at the city limits. A different code of justice.

 

We are living in our grandchildren's good old days.
I was born in the Depression......And it's been downhill from there.

 

If you're black, the current state of the 2A is way way better now than it was for you back even as recently as the 1980s.

 

Howard J beat me to it.
So many gave it all for the good old days over here.

I'll never forget the look of so many rows of bright white stone crosses, with my wife and son above Omaha Beach about six years ago.
We have about ten more US cemetaries, though each is smaller, in the Netherlands (just from WW2). I rode a bike from Maastricht and only by chance, discovered the one in Margraten (4,000 buried?). I read exactly why, and how, about six of these guys won the Medal Of Honor, or such, posthumously. They charged alone, not wanting their close friends to get killed, then kept attacking until unable.

The words in those battle descriptions in Margraten 'got' to me. Let's not forget WW1 and Korea. So young......

 

As a 65 year old small town boy I want to thank all of you for the flashbacks. No everything was not perfect but I would not have wanted to grow up during any other time. Trapping b4 school I had permission to have revolver stored in my locker. Plinking was shooting rats at the local dump. Service in '66 gave us one of the first opportunities to shoot the made by Mattel M16s.

Making out in the back seat of dad's 57 belair...........
Learning to drive stick in his 40's Chevy "work car"............
Squirrel hunting with JC Higgens 410 pistol (looked like Thompson Contender)
Roller skating and dances available almost every night of the week
Restaurant hang out after EVERY school function

On and on. THANKS AGAIN GUYS!!!!!!

 

Good old days eh? I used to choose between .22 shorts and longs because of price, rarely considered LR. But, we rode around shooting rabbits out the window of the car in midwinter snow storms with gas that cost $.25. My dad bought a Remington 870 Wingmaster at the hardware store for about $70. Had an Iver Johnson 410 but I didn't shoot at many quail flying because we might miss; better to shoot them on the ground since we were hunting for food, not sport. Shooting rabbits out of the car and quail on the ground was illegal then too, but it didn't seem to matter. Both were very plentiful and lots of locals did it. I didn't have adequate snow boots so just wore old shoes with lots of socks or rubber overshoes that weighed a ton. But, I lived in a small town where I could carry any gun I had, anywhere, anytime...yes even to school if I kept it in my locker. Good old days....well lots of them were, some not so much.

 

Wasn't much good about the good old days,,,

Sure, me and my buddies all rode our bikes to the dump,,,
Rifles slung across our backs and sometimes a handgun as well.

But,,,

Does anyone remember polio?

Does anyone remember tuberculosis?

Cancer was an automatic death sentence.

Anyone remember being stopped, hauled in, and strip-searched,,,
Just because "You looked a bit suspicious to me.",,,
Pre-Miranda lawmen were often despots.

Politicians were just as crooked then as now,,,
And got away with it more because there was no public media.

If you were able to get 50,000 miles out of a car engine,,,
You were very fortunate or very lucky.

Nostalgia is great,,,
But it needs to be tempered with some reality.

Oh My Gawsh!,,,
I've become a curmudgeon! :banghead:

Aarond

.

 

Wouldn't it be great if we could bring back the freedom of the 'good old days' like carrying a gun everywhere and not being looked at like a criminal, and always having plenty of ammo available. And at the same time having modern medical advances, racial tolerance, and technology. Yes, I want to have my cake and eat it too! Live someplace rural where the local law enforcement believe in armed civilians, and home school is accepted and you feel more free, of course you can't walk to the corner market to get milk. Heck, my mail box is 5 miles away!

 

And it took how long to earn those $15?

Wouldn't put much trust in those stories.
A gun worth half the price of a brand new car (and once the NFA went into effect, AS much as a brand new car) is not likely to have been sold out of a "barrel by the rakes and shovels".

Those are nice stories for your grampa to tell you to make him feel like he's better than you and all you young whippersnappers suck. But anyone who takes them seriously is really seeing the past through rose-colored glasses.

You're living those days now. Really have any of you guys ever looked at one of those timeline maps of the US regarding CCW laws. Most every place was either no-issue or a may-issue system that pretty much amounted to no-issue. If you despise the current argument that we only have a right to "sporting arms" for "sporting purposes". That was pretty much it back then.

Sure just like Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed. Plenty of food on store shelves for anyone who wanted it. Nobody could afford any of it, but you know, it's there. "Available" as you might call it.

 

1956 I was making $40.00 bucks a week after school, so not that long for a 13 year old.

Don't remember Tommy guns, but do remember Mausers, British Enfields "both long rifle and Jungle Carbines", & '03 Springfields going for $10 to $15 bucks from being stuck in metal garbage cans. Even remember the name of the local store doing this, United Mills.

Not really, I live in middle Northern Indiana, I can cross into Michigan, but not Ohio or Ill.

Yes there was plenty of ammo available, and it was available at very reasonable, affordable prices, no one with a job needed to go without. Pop bottles brought 2 to 5 cents back in those days, 5 pop bottles could get you enough .22 LR to fill the legal limit, if you could hit what you aimed at.

 

You had a much better job than the typical 13 year old. Minimum wage was $1.00/hour. You either had a very well-paying job or were working a lot of hours. Average income for men in 1956 was about $70 per week.

http://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-025.pdf

A brand new Chevy Belair cost $2025 in 1956. A 13 year old able to make enough to buy a new car in a year had one heck of a job.

Your $40 per week in 1956 would be the equivalent of between $400-$500 per week today. I don't know any 13 year olds with that kind of income.

 

Those are kinda like the bargain barrel 15 dollar tommy guns!

 

Surplus rifles must have been really cheap back whenever, based on the dollar's purchasing power.

Look at how many were chopped up, or how many had bores darkened by corrosive primers and neglect.

 

There was a time not so long ago when this cost $10,000 on the surplus auction block:

Now $10,000 won't even buy a new plexiglass canopy for it.