One has to wonder what kind of glue the jollies on Wall Street were sniffing on election day, 2008, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 300 points on light volume. Whatever it was, the effect wore off in the following two days:
U.S. stocks slid, sending the market to its biggest two-day slump since 1987, after jobless claims jumped and the shrinking economy crushed earnings at companies from Blackstone Group Inc. to News Corp…
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 5 percent to 904.88, extending its two-day loss to 10 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 443.48 points, or 4.9 percent, to 8,695.79. The Russell 2000 Index of small U.S. companies declined 3.7 percent to 495.84. The MSCI World Index of 23 developed markets lost 5.9 percent to 925.09.
The two-day tumble following Election Day wiped out more than half of the market’s rebound from a five-year low on Oct. 27. Both the S&P 500 and Dow average posted their biggest two-day slides since plunging more than 24 percent as rising borrowing costs helped spur the market crash of October 1987.
Of course, it’s an ill-wind that blows no man to good:
Sales of handguns, rifles and ammunition have surged in the last week, according to gun store owners around the nation who describe a wave of buyers concerned that an Obama administration will curtail their right to bear arms.
Don’t know what all the fuss is about. The president-elect repeatedly made campaign promises that he wouldn’t take anyone’s guns away.
ATF, now – that could be a different matter entirely.
I’ll take mine in a size 45, please.
I’m in the market for a handgun for the first time. I am also looking for something light enough that my teenage daughter could handle. Any suggestions?
before the laws go stupid…I’m buyin’ one of these puppies.
(Shoot Look Shoot Shoot)
You can’t go wrong with the Sig. I carry one on duty and its treated me quite well.
I have had one for 13 years and I love it. I bought one of these back in the spring. Another great gun…
I would suggest that anyone considering the short sword genre give a serious look at the S&W M&P in sizes 9 and 45. S&W have done a credible job and the overall reports (mine included) have been very good.
Ruger is having an internet sale on 20-round magazines fron Election Day to the Inauguration Day for their Mini-14s. Husband got four. He said I must love after all him to tell him about that sale!
I gave Husband permission to get another Glock once it looked inevitable that Obama would be winning (I still had hope he wouldn’t, though). He got a Sig. Maybe I’ll get a Glock for me?
Obama is definitely no friend of the Second Amendment.
PS I really like my Glock 17 in 9mm — It’s big, but steady when I shoot it and I’m a dead shot with it. Can’t say the same with my Glock 26, which is supposed to be mine, but now is Husband’s. He likes it for concealed carry.
I have a Ruger P345 and it shoots great. The magazine size is the only drawback – something tells me that when they come to collect it from me I will need to shooting a whole lot to hold them off. Guess I’ll need more mag’s!!
I too am thinking of a 9mm, maybe one of the Glock’s. I have tryed out the 17 several times and it is a fine handgun.
I want an M14 also, you know for “hunting” purposes. I saw a guy at a gun show last week that had maybe a dozen of them for sale. I’ll have to call him. He had plenty of ammo too!!!
BT: Jimmy T sends.
For starting out youngsters I prefer a .22 pistol. Quieter, less kick, WAY cheaper ammo. Give them a 500 round box and let them have at it. Since I live in MN finding safe locations to just plink at cans, paper and metal targets, decks of cards and any other targets of fun gives them a chance to build some skills with out the draw backs of the larger sizes.
I second our host desires for myself however.
MacGyver’s Sig and I are acquainted but I’ve not really had the chance to meet the Beretta just yet. Not up close and personal.
A handgun is at the top of my Christmas wish list and no Christmas around here is complete without ammo in everyone’s stocking.
I just bought a FNP 40. The price was right, $550 and it came with case, lock and 3 magazines. Shoots pretty good, too. Anyone else have one or know anything about Fabrique Nationale Herstal pistols?
You know Flatlander, it’s a poor comparison, but I believe that starting a youngster out in shooting is not unlike breaking in a bird dog – you want to take it in steps. If you take her out to an empty lot with a quality air pistol you have a cheap and (relatively) safe way to get her started. You can just about everything you need to know about handgun safety, accuracy techniques, breathing etc. and the air pistol is much less intimidating than the real thing. Quiet, and no real kick in the hand.
Borrow somebody’s .22 revolver, or rent one on the range on a quiet day – the revolver is simpler than the autoloaders, although maybe a little louder. After that, the Beretta Neo is a cleverly executed little pistol that will introduce her to the percussive force of autoloading plinker shooting without putting her alongside the folks shooting heavy iron at the range (especially indoors, which is the *worst* way to start – even with dual hearing protection, the percussive shock could send her flying to the door). Won’t break the piggy bank up front or in ammo, either. The Ruger Mark III in .22LR is also a compact classic. although the Neo is, I think, a little quieter, and has a certain “coolness” factor in the hand.
Finally, when she gets comfortable with the glasses and hearing protection, she may find that she wants to shoot something bigger, a 32 or 38 caliber pistol perhaps, and eventually she may want to take a crack at dad’s 9mm or 40S&W.
Good luck, and good shooting!
Lots of fine suggestions above.
However, for many with no shooting experience a good choice is a revolver. The lightweight S&W Model 442 (or whatever they call it now) is a good choice. It is 5 shot .38 special with no complicated slide pulling or safeties. Concealed hammer, so you just pull the trigger and it goes bang. Most women can handle the trigger pull (while many have problems racking the slide on semi autos).
Taurus makes a nice clone of the S&W. The aluminum or titanium guns are nice and light to make them easy to carry. However light weight makes them jump a lot when shooting, so for practice get some light loads, or get a cheap used steel S&W .38 that will make the recoil less. Then you can keep the steel one by the bed and use the lightweight for carry.
Buy soon! Be sure to try your possible choice(s) out at your local shop or range first to see if you like the feel and can work all the parts.
Remember, a gun a month is the law in some states….
Better start clinging bitterly!
Thanks for the inputs. I like the air pistol transition idea. She does fine in Halo, but a big step to real world.
Of course, you could just skip ahead a few steps.
The black-helo syndrome lying just below the surface? In a big complex world it’s funny what makes some folks feel good. Weapons are just another tool for the toolbox, another golf club or a big satisfying bowl of ice cream when things look bad….Not criticizing, mind you.
All o’mine are for dispatching various critters (legally) except for a couple purchased for the novelty. I hope everyone knows when they buy one they go into “the database”. Maybe not, eh?
Father-daughter matching pistols? I thought the economy was bad. LOL.
b2
secret asian man,
I don’t think I like that site. It’s the stuff of nightmares.
I sure hope the Republican leadership is reading it carefully and preparing well for January 20th.
It’s going to be a long four, maybe eight (please, God, no) years. Time to gird loins and suck it up. The only good thing will be when I get to say “You voted for him, not me” to my oh-so-liberal friends who’ve been beating me up about Bush for the last eight years. I can then remind them it wasn’t so bad with Bush after all. Heh.
Maybe a new gun will perk me up? Hmm. A .22 semi-auto rifle for varmint hunting and plinking. That’s the ticket.
We started our kids on rifles first before moving to handguns. Easier to hold and hang on to and watch them shoot safely. Harder for them to miss with. Faster success makes a happier shooter. Our daughter still has her .22 her Dad gave her — never to give it up.
Regarding ‘Skip Ahead’, you might want to add the piston upper option. As Bushmaster itself says, “Excess heat, carbon build up, and gas leaks are eliminated in a system with lower cyclic rate; improved reliability and control; reduced heat and maintenance. Carbon build up and powder residue are prevented from fouling the Upper Receiver – a superior operating system.” I guess MTK got it right the first time, and 60 some-odd years ago at that.
The quote below is from the President-elect’s own website. Tell me again how they aren’t coming for my firearms. Liars.
Then consider what the colonists were riled up about when they stood on the village green at Concord in 1775.
Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn’t have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.
I’ve had my P220 for 5 months or so now. LOVE it. Never had a bad day with it.
I learned to shoot a bolt action .22 rifle, then moved on to grandpa’s Browning Challenger. If I had known how much that gun would be worth today, I probably never would have fired it. Ah well.
Incidentally: I’m part of the problem. Just picked up my shiny new Steyr. If I can find .308 Win for less than an arm and a leg a round, I may be able to sight it in one of these days.
I like that little Taurus .45/.410.
Yeah, got the shudders at changeohboycan’t wait.org.
Did like the new Director of Urban Policy title, nice ring to it. Course they’ll need a deputy or two, the DepDUP or UnderSecDepDup or such.
This is all getting depressing. On a Friday, no less.
If I can just find that can of Carbona under the sink, I can go back to my “happy place”.
Really though, if anyone is looking to purchase protection, do it through a person to person transaction. With cash. Revolvers need the least mechanical maintenance support.
First place the friendly gendarmes will check is the sales records of our favorite “hardware” stores.
On the contrary – we must buy from the local hardware stores.
First, we must do it to keep them in business.
Second, we must do it specifically so that if the Obamanation tries to take our guns, we can fight him, above board, in public.
The media hid Obama’s hard-left politics during the campaign, because the urban upper-middle class is full of hard-leftists. Communism is great if you’re a part of the nomenklatura. You get to eat tomatoes in winter and drive big warm Chaikas. The little people? They’ll either freeze in the bread line or starve in the heating oil line – but who cares about them? They didn’t go to Harvard Law, they don’t live in Manhattan, and to our new liberal overlords, the little people just plain don’t matter.
After all, it just wouldn’t do for Obama to fly on an airliner to save the earth, or show his support for public schools by sending his kids there. They’re different, you see comrade. Special!
But the fact is, if this is brought to the attention of Middle America, Middle America will be angry. The media can keep their blackout going – but they will tire, and they will make mistakes, and their wall of protection against one of their own will leak.
And we will be there!
Ok, Sam.
I agree we need to help our shop keepers in business.
Just thinking of the “knock in the night”.
It is *precisely* because of the “knock in the night” that we must buy our weapons from stores – and that we do so openly and publicly. If we begin to trade quietly, discreetly, and underground, we have already lost.
If they threaten to knock in the night? Let them! Shout out our names in defiance let them come for us!
Let me quote Solzhenitsyn:
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the down-stairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of a half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur – what if it had been driven off of or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt.
If …. if… We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
I will not go to GULAG meekly and quietly. This is America, and we will stand and fight!
As far as hand guns are concerned I’m with sid. .. As those among you with good memories probably know because I bragged about it at the time, my husband and I purchased a Taurus The Judge last year as a replacement for our shotgun, when we found that we could no longer cock and accurately aim the shotgun with our 80-plus year old arthritic hands. The shotgun, of course, was our ‘house gun’ for home defense, so we needed a reliable easy-handling handgun so that I, the tyro in this, and my husband, who has handled and used guns all his life, could be effective in emergencies such as home invasion.
The Taurus performed reliably even in my inexperienced hands and, when loaded with .410 shot, can be depended on to stop home invaders without taking the lives of close neighbors. If we had carry permits, which we do not and do not expect to, we could carry the shorter-barreled model as a glove-compartment gun. The advantage, to my mind, of the Taurus with the 6 1/2″ barrel, is that it is much more stable and easy to aim than my old .32 Ruger pistol. I like its grip and handling qualities and also the sights which are easy to see and line up.
If you have older parents or even older friends who are not parents, let me recommend The Judge highly. Don’t think that the ultra-light version would help us much, because the long barrel is part of the charm of The Judge. It’s almost like firing an ultra-short barrel shotgun, and you would lose that steadiness if it were lighter.
I’ll never be Annie Oakley, but I feel safer and better protected with The Judge than I did with the street sweeper shotgun.
Marianne
Thanks for the picker upper SAM! Well said.
Miss Marianne, you remind me very much of my Grandmother, a NH native of the loving, but “don’t mess with me” school. I miss her dearly. There are plenty of likeminded males who are into the whole guns-n-babes mystique (no age restrictions/limits)! Have a great, safe, God-bless-America weekend!
The .45 has too much kick for me and I have a tough time controlling it. I can still hear my Dad yelling, “Center of Mass! Center of Mass!” and every time I squeezed another one off I’d say, “Did I even hit the frickin’ target?” And it was a big target. Human body kind.
.38 is better, but it unnerves me to wait so long for it to shoot, if that makes sense. I couldn’t just pop them off.
I like a rifle. I seem to have better control, but I still seriously suck. I obviously was not a sniper in a prior life. Everyone says I need more practice… right. Trying to figure out where I’d fit that in…
Flatlander,
My oldest daughter started shooting when she was about 15 , starting with an air rifle, then .22 auto pistol.
Then she picked up .50 cal muzzleloading rifle, which she ended up competing with against adult women and men, quite successfully, for a couple of years.
She’s tried a little of this and that since then (most serious shooters being quite accomodating about sharing skills), even a scoped .454 Casull once. Put the shots in and near the black, but figured it was just a bit excessive for fun.
Now she mostly shoots 9mm pistol, and after using my 1911-A1 last week when we were visiting her and our son-in-law in MN, has decided that she like the .45ACP very much, too. Looking for a 1911 Commander for herself now. And happy to be living outside California now, too.
One step at a time, when they’re ready.
The only way I can shoot a .45 it to let it swing with the recoil and then pull it back down for the next shot — not a fast way to shoot. I’m accurate, but it hurts too much in my (sad to say) aging hands.
The 9mm is much more comfortable for me. My Glock 17 is smooth and easy to keep shooting fast and accurately. The only way I’m accurate with the Glock 26 is if I only release the trigger halfway, but it’s a stop-and-think kind of thing, so not a fast way to shoot in an emergency. I can still hit a pie-plate sized target at 21 ft — attacker distance — with either gun, so the bad guy’s going down.
I want to take a Home Defense Shotgun course for the house shotgun. We’ve played with it at my Dad’s farm and it’s fun to shoot from the hip and be spot-on accurate! Way cool to blow stuff up! (Even better to be more accurate than Husband with something!)
Gotta keep our dog in the fight and gotta keep it fed.
If you aren’t already an NRA member this would be a good time to pony up. Add a family member or three while you’re at it.
Simple as pie online:
https://membership.nrahq.org/forms/signup.asp
Here’s mine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1911_Colt_pistol
Original Colt, smuggled home from Iwo Jima (don’t ask, I won’t tell). Took the Missus to the range for a little refresher the night before the election. She shoots better than me, but forgets how if it has been a while.
Got another AR-15 lower on order. Lotsa other folks are doing the same, apparently.
Get ‘em wile you can.
My advice (as a former cop and retired military) is get a Glock. I was a Glock fan (after being a Sig fan) after I had to carry a Glock (21) for the first time. I’m even more of a Glock-believer after going to the Glock Armorer’s Course.
Glock’s are engineering marvels. I’ve carried 1911’s, Sigs, Beretta’s and Glocks on duty. Sigs are very nce, but they’re too heavy and too expensive. If you like .45’s, get a Glock 21SF, if you like .40’s get a Glock 23 and if you like 9mm’s get a Glock 19.
IMHO, a Glock pistol is THE best combat handgun (out of the box) bar none. They’re not too expensive, most of them have the same parts and they go “bang” 9.5 times out of 10, which is better than other brands. Glock owns almost 70% of the US Law Enforcement market. There’s a reason for that.
I’d trust my life with a Glock or Sig, but if I had my choice it’d be a Glock.
A good name-brand M-4/AR-15 is a good rifle choice.
Colt Cdr or Colt 1911, or Hi-Power for those who kill lots o’ paper. As ever, it’s the shooter, not the weapon, that makes the diff. And for long guns, you can’t do better than Fulton Armory M1-A, unless you can get an (ahem)illegal M-14..(-*
Marianne,
Sarah Paling could learn a thing or two from you- bless ya! Please post a picture of you and the “Judge” in a Judge Roy Bean pose!
Bou,
Can’t shoot straight?..Based on your call sign I’d recommend you install a bayonet on the end of that long gun.
Anybody with 1/2 a brain would run like hell if they saw a red-headed woman warrior running at ‘em with a rifle in the “stick ‘em position”!
P-3W,
Go out and bag some cottontails with your shotgun (get a h-license o’course). Uses 6’s. You’ll learn fast- trust me- and also pick up any skills to use it for self-defense in your home or anywhere…Plus you’ll get a meal out of it. Yes, it does pretty much taste like chicken!
Dam good gouge -603! Pony up is right..venting the hot air is fine but supporting the watchdog organization that keeps the 2nd-A viable is more tangible…Goes for you non-gun owners, too, who can appreciate having the “choice” available. They’ve got the ACLU, we’ve got the NRA.
b2
TB: picking up my 29 next week. Gonna feed it DoubleTaps with the Barnes option for those moments when ya just hafta git ‘er dun.
LWRC does some ret fyn werk, but hazahelluva backlog; pretty popular folks. A 6.8 or the SABR for me…as a diversion from my trusty, longtime companion…Galil 7.62…yes, we’ve been known to sleep together from time to time…in an official capacity, of course.
Concur on the ‘pony up’. I’m always amazed at folks who don’t get why the right to keep and arm bears is in second position.
“Oh, well they just threw them all together in no particular order after much debate”
“Uh, no Bub. It’s in second position by design, and only because there’s just one other that’s more important. That would be freedom of speech.”
“Ohhhhh”