Gun snobs are awesome.......
Reminds me of a time a good friend of mine and I went for an afternoon of sporting clays.
Yeah. I'd probably shoot clays a lot more often except for the fact that I can't stand the snobishness that seems to go along with the trap shooting / sporting clays / skeet shooting scene. It seems that unless you dress like the shooting equivalent of a golf nerd, drive a lexus, and own a shotgun that costs more than my house, you just don't belong on their ranges.
Personally, I step to the line with my trusty Mossberg 500, and endure the scowls of those who feel I don't belong.
had to laugh at this thread, especially the ones who rave about pulling out there 18" pump they bought for $70 back in 1980, used, abused, shooting it with only the choke it came with, and beating guys with Perazzis and Krieghoffs at skeet or sporting clays. Gimme a freakin break. Go to a tournament and see how well you do.....As a previous poster asked, "where are these guys?" Another poster replied, perhaps the guys shooting cheap guns can't afford the tournament fees or take off from work. What a lame excuse!! If they are too "poor" to afford to enter a tournament, how are they affording to shoot clays/skeet in the first place?
Winning tournaments/competitions give you some street credibility if you are going to brag about how you used your $70 pump to beat guys with $10,000 shotguns at a game of skeet or sporting clays.
That reply pretty much embodied everything that we were all complaining about in this thread.
You want a fair assessment of the situation? Well, here you go: I've been beat by people who had $500 trap guns, and I've been beat by people who had $60,000 trap guns. But, I've also beat people who have had expensive guns, and I've beat people who had cheap guns.
I've never been a shotgun competitor, but I've been involved in some combat pistol competitions. In training for these events I've shot a limited-class 1911 against a grand master with a sub-par production class pistol, and I've been smoked. I've also shot my duty weapon against inexperienced open-class shooters, and beat them squarely.
At the end of the day, in all of these cases, the person behind the gun is FAR more important than the gun in front of them. You can justify the value of a $10,000 trap gun if you'd like, and I won't hate you for wanting and/or owning one. Personally, that's far too rich for my blood, and I'll just stick to more mainstream shotguns. But, determining which one of us is a better trap shooter would never come down to a debate over the equipment itself. A professional trap shooter with a familiar $200 gun would easily beat a novice shooter with a familiar $10,000 gun.
But, maybe that's just me. I'm a middle class guy who earns what I believe is a very acceptable salary, and I still drive a $600 car to work, just because it does what I need it to do. Many of my similarly-compensated coworkers drive luxury cars, even though we all probably fall into a "Honda Accord" category. To each their own!
EDITED TO ADD:
On the other side of the coin, not all of the folks who own expensive guns are snobs either. I know of a guy who works at my local Sportsman's Warehouse. He's a big trap shooting type, and once told me that he owns an $80,000 trap gun. The guy if fairly down-to-earth, and seems helpful with customers when I'm in the store.
I'll never spend $80,000 on a single gun, and I'll probably never spend that much for my entire collection. But, this man has every right to put his money where he'd like to, and he isn't a snob for doing so.
Shoot what you like, and like what you shoot! Let others do the same 
