Thursday, November 23, 2017

Doing My Part To Stimulate The (Gun) Economy - 2017 Edition


I have been doing these Black Friday posts annually since 2010. The state of the firearms industry is a bit different this year. After many years of double-digit growth, it appears the bubble has burst. In earlier years you would have been lucky to find an AR-15 upper for $400 or so. Now you can get the whole AR for that price.

Let's just say it has not been a great year for the firearms industry in general. The thought that we would have a President Hillary and you better grab while grabbing is good was crushed late on the night of November 8th when Donald J. Trump was elected president. Dennis Badurina of Dragon Leatherworks who also owns a small gun store in Tennessee has been pointing out the state of the retail firearms industry with his posts on his Facebook page for a number of months. As Dennis notes, the industry is in freefall and is in a state of contraction.

I am going to make the assumption that the industry will be using Black Friday and Cyber Monday as a major tool to rid itself of excess inventory. If you are in the market for anything, I think you should find some good deals with careful shopping.

As with last year, I have decided not to reinvent the wheel and will point out some of the better aggregations of Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales. I will be adding links to individual companies as I go through the weekend when I find something that might not be covered elsewhere.

Starting off, there is the Black Friday page of Slickguns.com. It has links to the sales at all the major big box sporting and outdoor stores.

Crowd-sourcing is a great way to put many eyes together to find the deals. The /gundeals subreddit page of Reddit is one such place. They have a Black Friday megathread going that has a little bit of everything. The other major crowd-sourced effort is on Arfcom. Their "official GD Black Friday" thread is at 6 pages and counting. The first thing that caught my eye there was $8 PMags. You can never have enough magazines! Now if I can find some less expensive CZ P-09 mags, I'll be in hog heaven.

If you trend more towards the tactical, SoldierSystems.net has a dedicated post that is continually updated with Black Friday sales.

As for me, I'm good on most things. However, I'm in the market for a good quality handgun safe/strongbox with a mechanical keypad. My granddaughter Olivia Grace is almost three and has a little sister due in April. Little fingers can get in places they shouldn't be and I want to protect against that.

Finally, I'd like to remind everyone that No Lawyers - Only Guns and Money is an Amazon affiliate. All commissions that I earn from your purchases go to non-profit gun rights organizations like the Second Amendment Foundation and the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund.

If you are in the market for an inexpensive tablet device, the Kindle Fire 7 is only $29.99. It was $33.33 last year. The Complementary Spouse uses her Fire daily to keep up with email, crafts, and family.

UPDATE:

There is a thread at 24hourcampfire.com with some more hunting related Black Friday specials.

My friend Andy Langlois of Ching and Rhodesian sling fame is having a sale on all his products. Save 20 percent off all his products from Nov. 22 – 28 and 10 percent off all products from Nov. 29 – Dec. 24, 2017. I have both his belts, both style of slings, and even a couple of holsters by Andy and the quality is top-notch. Go to https://www.andysleather.com/collections/black-friday-sale. Use the code "BlackFriday".

UPDATE II:

Steve Johnson at The Firearm Blog has posted what he considers his Top 5 deals in firearms for Black Friday. You can find it here.

Tom Gresham of Gun Talk Radio has compiled his own list of holiday deals in firearms, ammo, and accessories. He has a special page for it.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks! And Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

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  2. The Los Vegas Sherriff just announced that the hotel shooter fired "1,100" rounds. With an AR-15 with a bump stock. Fired from 400 yards. For 59 dead and 500 wounded. Making him the best combat shooter in history, and the bumpfired AR the most accurate AR ever made. Man if the feds are going to lie. They could at least come up with realistic lies.--Ray

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  3. Ummm, according to the FBI NICS statistics page, 2017 is shaping up to be one of the highest sales years on record: The numbers for November and December aren't recorded yet, and already this year is in the Top 5 for NICS checks. We just had record numbers of sales on Black Friday, and over 200,000 for a single day, and May and August of 2017 set records for those months. We may be "plateauing", depending on what November and December's numbers turn out to be, but I wouldn't characterize it as a "bubble bursting".

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