Some advantages of guns, as others have pointed out, in the world of expensive hobbies:
- storage space isn't too onerous. Sure, it *can* be, if you're lucky
In which case, this isn't your complaint.
- Unfired, they don't rot and lose value too quickly.
- Insurance and other fees (moorage, landing fees, registration, certifications, disposal fees for fluids) can eat into the boat-car-plane budget even faster than the boat-car-plane do
Others:
- guns can be admired, worked on, etc. indoors, and in all weather. Working on a motorcycle looks a lot less fun at low temps.
- A boat-car-plane-car is a big, indivisible investment. The same money spent on a tasteful collection of guns means you have something that can be pieced out if desired. (Graduation gift to a child, or trade for something you like better.) An engine or other parts of a vehicle, this is *possible* but more of a hassle.
- Depending on the gun, you can make it cheaper to feed by shooting a cheaper *brand* of ammunition (Blazer vs. Cor-Bon), a cheaper caliber of ammunition (.38sp vs. .357 Mag), a cheaper variety of ammunition (reloaded, by you or by a factory), or a thinner diet (single-action only, reload slowly and thoughtfully, firing only when you see the whites of their eyes ...)
I'm certainly far from immune, though. In the interest of saving for a house, I'm budgeting less for this as well as other hobbies. That means, among other things, a shuffling of the old wishlist, so a .22 revolver may be the next I spring for; that makes for only a small hit each trip to the range
And I think I'm set in the speakers-and-amps department for a few years -- finally bought the Cambridge Audio model 12 I've been thinking about for the last decade; if I'd done that a year ago, I think I would have saved some money spent in that corner of the budget on other things instead.
timothy
