Gun Stuff You No Longer See

[geekWithA.45]

Guns that you could just file on a bit to convert to full auto. Apparently they were abundant and easy to obtain by the crate full in the early 90's, along with purple armor piercing "cop killer!" bullets.

Oh, wait. That never happened in the real world, only Hollywood movies from that era.

 

[BigDaddyNEB]

I remember Garands for $100 at our local Woolworth's back in the early 80's, yes I was on a H.S. shooting team, we shot in the basement of the school until my junior year ( 1986 ), then we moved into the Nat'l Guard Armory. Shotgun News was printed in my hometown, the building is now an Electrical Contractor.

 

[taliv]

if i could have one thing back though, i'd put rifle ranges back in high school basements with JROTC programs.

 

[22-rimfire]

Original Colt stocks for revolvers for $20 at gun shows.
Montgomery Wards.... gone gone gone...
Guns at JC Penneys
Guns at Sears, but that was so "normal".
Racks of milsurps for under $25 each.
US Ammo boxes for $5 each; saw some 50 cal in Sportsman Warehouse for $25 ea.
Lots of used guns at gunshops.
Reliable Remington rimfire ammo.

 

[beatledog7]

if i could have one thing back though, i'd put rifle ranges back in high school basements with JROTC programs.

Agreed, because that would mean we're back on track, and everything else we miss would soon follow.

 

[loganmn]

Heck I'd be happy with ANY .22 ammo. Even thunderbolts.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

[sawdeanz]

I'm not old enough to miss any of this cool stuff but I do miss the surplus store. I guess now if you want cool militaria you gotta go on ebay or cheaperthandirt. I recently found out that the last of the surplus store in my area that actually had cool junk to look through closed down. I can't say I was able to patronize it that much because it was such a drive but I am sad to see it go. There is one hardware store I know of that still sells guns, its out in the sticks but I can just imagine how cool it would be to walk down to the local drug or general store to check out the surplus piles.

 

[Ceemack]

K-38s.

Security Sixes.

$150 M-1 carbines.

Colt New Service revolvers you'd buy as a beater, not as a collector's item.

Wadcutters.

 

[MattShlock]

there any high school shooting leagues still around? (were there ever any?)

Musta been common and woulda missed those if I was old enough...

My big city public high school had a rifle team until King was shot. Kids used to ride the train to school carrying their .22. And a slide rule. It was a special school. It was thirty years I hear before they cracked opren the gun cabinets and got rid of the guns (I did not bid on -- I had no heart for that sadness). Range in the basement supposedly probably a storage room.

Township I live in had two high schools with active gun ranges in basement. Students not shooting there for decades either. Private clubs kept them a secret for their own private use and then anti-gunners found out there were guns and lead ammo ever on the property and went, lol, balistic!

As an expert on related issues known in the region I was consulted but did not get directly involved except to warn the fools they were mismanaging their defense. The a-hole pro-gunners solution was to tell the authorities they agrred with closing one range but demanded to keep the other open. I spoke to the pro-gun "leaders" after the public hearing where the school board, of course, closed them both. "Congratulations -- you got twice as much as you asked for"!

 

[Double_J]

I remember going to my dad's friends store. He had an all-around sporting goods store with fishing, hunting, scuba gear, and occasionally some guns. I remember getting the chance to handle a few of the guns every now and again. I also remember the smell of the cleaning area. It smelled of Hoppes #9 (I am sure it was the old version as it smelled STRONG), gun oil, grease, and a few other smells I can't really place.

They also had a small archery range, and if they were not busy I could go in there and shoot one of the bows. I remember learning VERY quickly what the arm band was for, my forearm still tingles thinking about that slap. I went by there a while back and they still have the range, and I was allowed to do a little shooting. I need a bunch of practice to get good again, it truly is a use or loose skill. I also remember watching a competition shooter go test out a new add-on (I think it was a new overdraw or sight system) back when I was a kid. It seemed so cool to have a bow with all those cool gizmos on it, now I enjoy the bare bow shooting much more.

I remember we had ONE surplus store, and it had some stuff. Old canteens, bdu pants, boots, camping gear, flashlights, knives, shovels, etc. Now the only "surplus" store in the area is a cheap made in asia import store. I went there looking for a set of bdu pants and the quality of what I found was not worth the price. There was no true surplus stuff, everything was new and overpriced junk. The old store is now a warehouse for some ice cream distributorship, what a waste of a good building. I would love to go back in time and buy some of the stuff I saw as a kid, lots of patches/uniforms/keepsakes.

Oh well, we can only deal with the present and try to preserve the future for our kids and grand-kids.

 

[Archaic]

Walnut

Seeing two dozen deer rifles with the actions open leaning against the vice principals office wall during deer season at my high school in WV in the 1980s.

Steel triggers and trigger guards.

 

[Cee Zee]

Let's see here. Game jackets where you carried dead squirrels, rabbits and quail in large pockets and seeing them actually have game in them. There were other pockets for shotgun shells too.
Handguns at Walmart.
Lots of quail hunters all using single shot, break down shotguns and my how they hated any semi-auto shotgun. They refused to hunt with anyone carrying one. You had your one shot and you carried your gun broke down so the guys down the line knew that you weren't going to shoot them.
People hunting deer with no scopes.
Iron sights on every rifle in fact.
Boxes of shorts and longs in the local general store along with the LR's. The shorts were actually cheaper then too. All the kids bought shorts because they were cheaper. And yes kids bought them.
Gun wax that went on like car wax.
Gun shops around behind people's houses in small buildings that were once chicken coops or something else.
A nail tied on to the end of a string with a piece of an old t-shirt or towel tied onto the other end (which we used to clean bores).
Gun racks in the kid's bedroom with shotguns on them and, when the kids got old enough, boxes of shells on the shelf on the bottom of the racks. But early on there were no shells for the kids to handle. Just the guns.
Loaded revolvers in kitchen drawers, down in car seats, or stuck under someone's belt.
Quilted gun cases where you could actually store your firearms without promoting rust. There are still some of those around but I rarely see them.

Things I do still see that others don't apparently are boxes of holsters in gun shops, people hanging out in gun shops shooting the breeze, and gun racks except they're on ATV's now instead. BTW I have a gun cabinet I've been working on restoring for a couple of years now. I worked on it a lot but never got it finished (yet).

 

[22-rimfire]

Being able to walk down the highway in the country with a long gun cradled or over your shoulder and not even getting a second look by anyone.

 

[MattShlock]

...We carried [the rifle] back home on the Bus and no one even gave us a second glance. The bus took us as far as Ft. Belvoir and we walked the last 3 miles or so to home right down Route 1 carrying our rifles and again no problems with the police or anyone else. This was probably 65-66? Somewhere in that period.

I wouldn't dare try that today. How things have changed.

How sad...

Hey, America is a much better place than it was 50 years ago! Now I have to report you to AttackWatch.com. See what you made me do!?

 

[CornCod]

I remember going to indoor ranges and paying 5 bucks for a box of .38 Special wadcutter reloads, 4 dollars if you gave them a box of fifty empties. Those were the days!

 

[3212]

A 1939 8MM german mauser.My brother bought it and I made the mistake of wearing a t-shirt and lying prone to shoot it.It had a steel butt plate.Hoo boy, on top of the shoulder that hurt. This was in 1965,still alot of military rifles available.

 

[19-3Ben]

You know what's scary?
I did my undergrad at Brandeis University from 2002-2006. It's a small school in the Boston MA area (about 10 mins outside Boston in Waltham MA), and is known for being liberal even by Boston MA standards. It's like the Berkley of the East coast.

At the beginning of my senior year, in fall 2005, I started a trap/skeet/target shooting club. We got it voted and officially approved as a club by the student senate, got school funding for ammo, range time, etc... whenever we wanted to do club trips. It was a tough battle, and we only got approved by 1 vote (it was a 15-16 vote if I remember correctly). That was only 7 years ago. Can you imagine anything like that happening today? I'd probably be arrested just for suggesting it!

 

[FIVETWOSEVEN]

Guys just hanging out at the gunshop. When I was growing up, a gunshop just wasn't a place to buy firearms, it was a hangout. There were always a few guys just sitting around swapping lies, more than willing to share their vast knowledge of firearms, hunting, shooting, ammo and ballistics with a wide eyed youngster. There were always piles of goods we could dig through to find some rare treasure, like a bayonet for a Turkish Mauser, some oddball optic, web gear from some far off land that had been embroiled in some forgotten war, or if we were really lucky, a genuine K-Bar.

Now-a-days, a guy has to take a number just to get the cold shoulder when you look without buying. Hey, I wanna get to know the guy behind the counter- You only buy a firearm from a friend, never a stranger

That's actually the gunshop just down the street from me. I've gone there on numerous occasions to just kill time along with the many other people doing the same thing.

 

[Zach S]

The SKS deer rifle. A lot of guys in my hometown had them. They paid $69.95 for them at Rose's. I thought about buying one and passed.

A few years later it was the $189 7.62 Saigas. Not at Rose's though. They had quit selling firearms by the time I escaped Burnsville.

 

[TNboy]

Polychoke, had a 20 gauge Ted Williams semi auto with one. That was a heavy gun.

 

[bigdogpete]

.22 ammo

Gee, I had to laugh at this one...

 

[Cee Zee]

The SKS deer rifle. A lot of guys in my hometown had them. They paid $69.95 for them at Rose's.

That's something else we won't see again. A $70 SKS and it would have been a Norinco on top of that. Not that I don't like Yugos. I just don't like the extra hardware on them.

 

[22-rimfire]

Many here can easily remember $0.50/box of 22LR ammo ($5/brick). That was pretty much a regular price in the 1960's. Then it became a sale price on promotional 22 ammo into the early 1980's and then it gradually became $10/brick. I think for those that remember, seeing these people selling a stupid bulk pack for $50 or $60 and getting it makes it seem so crazy. I remember working an entire 40-hr week for $50 at a factory. I actually still have the pay stubs.

 

[Lj1941]

22 Shorts & 22 Longs

 

[safebustr]

Back in the 60's I bought 303 Mk4 Enfield's for $7.50 from a barrel in K Mart, you could find old Italian and an occasional Japaneese rifle also. My prize find was a No.5 Jungle carbine in mint shape for $25. Mil-surp ammo was everywhere and at a nickle a round was great to practice with.
The Civilian Marksmanship program sold .45's and M1 Carbine's for $15, I never got in on these though, I was a little late.....