"The market is much better off that firearms are still being offered at an elevated price than not offered at all."
There is no functional difference between selling firearms at a price people can't afford vs not selling them at all.
Yes, SOMEONE is buying them at that price (2-4x MSRP), but they aren't going to be your long term customers, unless prices never come back down, which I doubt.
But yeah, I can walk away. I buy ammo on a regular basis and I stocked up on ammo and mags when it became clear Obama would probably win. It was derided as "panic buying" then, but I got the mags and ammo at very near the normal prices.
The people who can't walk away are those whose precious few mags are busted, who've run through their smaller stash of ammo (because they don't have the means to buy in bulk), who just got into the shooting world because of age or need for self defense. "Here's a great gun for X! Did I mention it will cost as much as your rent for 3 months, you only have the one magazine (so baby it), and ammo, if you can find it, is too expensive to practice with. Have a nice day!"
I mean really, people are always coming down on car salesmen gouging consumers, but even they don't charge twice what the MSRP is.
There is no functional difference between selling firearms at a price people can't afford vs not selling them at all.
Yes, SOMEONE is buying them at that price (2-4x MSRP), but they aren't going to be your long term customers, unless prices never come back down, which I doubt.
But yeah, I can walk away. I buy ammo on a regular basis and I stocked up on ammo and mags when it became clear Obama would probably win. It was derided as "panic buying" then, but I got the mags and ammo at very near the normal prices.
The people who can't walk away are those whose precious few mags are busted, who've run through their smaller stash of ammo (because they don't have the means to buy in bulk), who just got into the shooting world because of age or need for self defense. "Here's a great gun for X! Did I mention it will cost as much as your rent for 3 months, you only have the one magazine (so baby it), and ammo, if you can find it, is too expensive to practice with. Have a nice day!"
I mean really, people are always coming down on car salesmen gouging consumers, but even they don't charge twice what the MSRP is.