Firearm sales declining?

[Certaindeaf]

The permits to build a house are $100,000.





No idea but what a cluster for zero reason save to grab money to justify their miserable existences government-wide.

 

[CLT65]

It's not useful to compare what people used to afford in America's halcyon days vs. today, because it is comparing two dissimilar items. This is like saying Norm Van Brocklin would never have made it in today's NFL.

Before Elizabeth Warren became radicalized she co-wrote an excellent book called The Dual Income Trap. Dual incomes are the original cause of inflationary pressure. Today if you are not married or otherwise cohabitating, you are not going to afford anything on low wages. Supply and demand economics.

There is another important factor, which is the cost of technology. This is a cost that is built into everything from automobiles to streaming services. Your grandparents did not have a cell phone bill or have to pay for wifi. None of that existed in the analog universe.

Lastly, you should not be working a minimum wage job in your 40s or even your 30s unless you have a disability. These jobs are supposed to be done by high school kids. Hopefully you can acquire training and better your prospects. If you don't have a head for books, learn a trade or pickup a skill. Be willing to go where opportunity is. If you want to live somewhere trendy, you will not be able to afford it alone.

I've had a lot of employees come and go over the years. Some have parlayed this job into better jobs. I encourage this and I am proud of them. Many have bought homes. But unfortunately many continue to make very bad decisions. Immaturity and poor decision making are part of the affordability equation.

All good points. The dual income thing is huge, expected and almost essential in America now. I think it's a big part of why everyone has all the nice toys.

The mythical six-figure income that used to sound so impressive doesn't mean much anymore. It's not easy to raise a family on a single "six figure" income. Most everyone is broke, just at different levels. A good friend of mine has a household income, between him and his wife, probably triple what mine is, but they live paycheck to paycheck, because they have nice toys and expensive hobbies.

The fancy toys are what have me scratching my head. I used to ride my motorcycle out on the dunes at the coast. Back in the day you'd see a lot of older stuff, as well as newer bikes and quads, and the occasional sand rail and side-by-side. Nowadays all I see headed that direction are really nice trucks and RVs, pulling trailers full of really expensive sand toys. I have to wonder how people afford all this stuff.

 

[CamoDeafie]

You know.. I was told I could start $24-25/hr as a machinist for GM back in 2002 right... okay. Oregon's minimum wage back in 2002 was $6.90/ hr. Non rural min wage right now is $12.50, with "standard" being 13.50 and urban 14.75 and up...

But.. as a machinist, one can expect to start at $23/hr for GM right now.

So.. some trades certainly have not grown their wages compared to the minimum wages...


At some point it doesn't make sense to go to trade schools, or to get medical training as CNA or similar, or Direct Support Professionals to be paid only a few dollars more a hour than the burger flippers.

Edit. People are expected to do more training, more schooling, and sacrifice more to make a few dollars a hour more... and that they need to do a lot more with a lot less money to buy things.. of course people would rather get credit to buy groceries instead of guns

 

[Hueco]

I wouldn't have fared well. I was only making $1,000 per month in 1985. But then my rent for a two-bedroom duplex was only $250.

Are those figures from Virginia? My son lives in two-bedroom apartment in Springfield, OR and his rent today is "only" $1,080, and he makes about $4,800 per month, so his ratio of rent to income is actually a little lower than mine was back in 1985. (He has the same education level as me - Bachelor's Degree.) I don't have the numbers to adjust $920 in 1985 dollars to today, but you must be paying a heckuva lot more than my son for rent.

Data from https://www2.census.gov/programs-su...e-series/census-housing-tables/grossrents.pdf and https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-year

Your son's rent is stellar - hold onto that as long as possible. My wife and I bought in Beaverton just off the 26 and 185th street. The townhouse was a corner unit, sharing one wall. Constructed in the early 2000's and sold for just over 6 figs. We bought it in 2017 for 325k. We sold it in 2022 for 100k more.

Moving out here, we aimed for a similarly sized place and found a townhouse that was darn near identical. Rent is 2600/month. Plus water and electrical and waste and it's up there.

We had 2 cats and a dog (German husky) - which is a restricted breed at most apartments (or too large for their size constraints). So, options do get limited.

Just signed a lease on a 2k square foot duplex in Wisconsin for $2400/month. The rental market is so hot that places are going on market and off within 24-48 hours. Which means to me: expect prices to continue going up.

If we didn't have pets, options would open up. But, life would suck a bit without them, so…

Could a single blue-collar income ever afford a house, two nice cars, and vacations? That's a sincere question, because I don't remember the average person having a lot of nice stuff back then, like people have today. I remember people struggling to make ends meet back then like they do now, but without all the toys. As I recall the average home was a bit more modest then too.

The cost of homes has gotten absurd though. If we hadn't bought ours ten years ago, there's no way we could afford it now. I honestly don't understand how people do. We've been talking about moving to a different part of the country for various reasons, one of them being so maybe some day in the future our kids could afford to own homes of their own.

We get by on my single income but it is tight. We drive old cars and don't take vacations. It would be a lot easier if we didn't spend 10k per year on medical bills, and if my wife was able to work at all.

My point was just wondering if the Good Old Days were really that much better?

Yea actually. The relative wealth and size of the middle class in the post war era was amazing. People may have consumed less material goods but the big ticket items - especially housing, were relatively cheaper compared to modern day.

Think about electronics and cars back then - the electronics were sold with schematics and you could get the repair manual for your vehicle. Now? You crack the back of your iPhone and you've voided the warranty.

Go lookup Louis Rossman and Right To Repair if you've got some time to kill to see how far we've gotten away from self repair.

I get very annoyed at, especially, older gens discussing the consumerist and use-and-replace lifestyles of those growing up now…as if it wasn't a Baby Boomer that ushered in the first glued in cell phone battery.

My point is: blaming the debt of those in their 20's and 30's on coffees is so incredibly short sighted and does nothing to recognize the world we're in. The financial realities of those who are turning 18 today…their starting line in this life is so far behind where their parents started and it's all due to decisions made before they were even born.

Folks who do the coffee & eat out at work thing frequently likely don't realize the time wasted either.

Vs not only saving money by bringing coffee & sack lunches, but saving time. Time better spent. Along with saving $ better utilized.

Better coffee & meals too, for much much less...

Yes and no. I can whip up a carbonara in about an hour. And now that my daughter is older, having her help me make the pasta is nice. But before that? That's an hour she's playing by herself while I make dinner. :-/ i'd rather order in and go play blocks.

As for time better spent…younger gens are intimately more familiar with their time - to the point that you have entire industries creating shaming tactics (ie "quiet quitting").

 

[CLT65]

To bring my comments back around to the original topic, I don't remember anyone I knew back in the day, who was able to buy a new gun or case of ammo every few weeks, and that seems to be pretty common now, at least from what I see here.

Maybe the internet is partly to blame, and social media (including forums), since we're constantly bombarded with things that we "need" that we really don't.

 

[CamoDeafie]

To bring my comments back around to the original topic, I don't remember anyone I knew back in the day, who was able to buy a new gun or case of ammo every few weeks, and that seems to be pretty common now, at least from what I see here.

Maybe the internet is partly to blame, and social media (including forums), since we're constantly bombarded with things that we "need" that we really don't.

Partly, but also... Obama & Biden. The end of Obama era and the Trump years saw some amazing prices for firearms and Ammo compared to 2008-2016

 

[Catfishmoon]

I know many people who currently own a sizable collection of firearms, myself included (20 or more). I do not remember any of my relatives, neighbors or friends families who had large firearms collections (rifle, shotgun, handgun) in the 1960s and 1970's. Most of these families hunted rabbit, waterfowl, deer and elk. It was definitely a pro-gun community where long-guns were common carried in the rack in a pickup's back window without fear of theft..
I believe todays average gun enthusiast owns more firearms than gun enthusiasts in decades past, larger collections are more common today.

 

[TTSX]

Everything is becoming unaffordable in general. Seems like it's all going up up up day by day, except for guns. I now see full shelves and sale/clearance tags or just really good deals in general. I would bet that trend continues for a while unless a major and ugly gun bill gets passed. Then it's panic city all over again. M114 are up a HUGE amount of people's gun money. I had an account set aside for just such a situation and I used every penny, acquiring literally 20+ firearms between September (writing on the wall) and April (tax season) but my excess gun money reservoir has run dry. My gun buying went to zero like a light switch and it's now one in = one out. Give me a summer or so to refill the coffers and I may yet buy another. It'll pick right back up in the fall for many folks.

 

[CLT65]

The relative wealth and size of the middle class in the post war era was amazing.

My parents and grandparents must have missed out on all that. My grandfather, a WWII veteran, worked two jobs, as a millworker and carpenter, and my grandmother worked at the mill too when their kids were old enough. They were never wealthy. My grandpa liked boats so he always had an old boat he was fixing up, but never a new one.

I grew up in the 70's and 80's, and most of that time my parents were barely scratching by, trying to make ends meet on the farm. My wife grew up in that same era, and her parents made do with very little. I think we have more "stuff" than either of our parents had at our age. Maybe our families just missed out on that golden age of wealth, I don't know.

I will wholeheartedly agree about the cost of houses and cars. New cars are absurd. I can't understand how an average person can afford to buy one. I can't even afford a used one unless it has a decade and a couple hundred thousand miles on it. The amount of unnecessary crap they put on new cars seems absurd to me too.

Housing is the crazy one. I think in general, people want and expect bigger, nicer houses now compared to decades ago, but even with that, prices are crazy. That's just a function of population and demand. I worry about my kids being able to afford their own homes in the future.

 

[Hueco]

My parents and grandparents must have missed out on all that. My grandfather, a WWII veteran, worked two jobs, as a millworker and carpenter, and my grandmother worked at the mill too when their kids were old enough. They were never wealthy. My grandpa liked boats so he always had an old boat he was fixing up, but never a new one.

I grew up in the 70's and 80's, and most of that time my parents were barely scratching by, trying to make ends meet on the farm. My wife grew up in that same era, and her parents made do with very little. I think we have more "stuff" than either of our parents had at our age. Maybe our families just missed out on that golden age of wealth, I don't know.

I will wholeheartedly agree about the cost of houses and cars. New cars are absurd. I can't understand how an average person can afford to buy one. I can't even afford a used one unless it has a decade and a couple hundred thousand miles on it. The amount of unnecessary crap they put on new cars seems absurd to me too.

Housing is the crazy one. I think in general, people want and expect bigger, nicer houses now compared to decades ago, but even with that, prices are crazy. That's just a function of population and demand. I worry about my kids being able to afford their own homes in the future.

Maybe your parents did? It's all before my time so I'm just looking back at the stats. Seeing a chart showing a massive, but not 100%, growth in the middle class means not all ships got lifted with the tide.

Re: cars - it was a double edged sword for my family. We needed a bigger car to move with…due to the Coof and the shortage of new cars, used prices skyrocketed. We got over KBB Private Party value from a dealership! Though, we also had zero negotiating power on the next car…so…kind of a wash.

As interest rates rise, you'll see this start to even out.

For Houses: man, this all comes down to zoning. There is so much NIMBYism going on from people who bought 20 or 30 years ago that's keeping supply small.

The single biggest event that changed this was the shift to work from home during covid. People with those types of jobs could actually afford to live in an area far outside a city and still work. Now, what do you see? Another generational conflict over returning to work - whereby people who did just fine working from home for the last 3 years are forced back into an office - forcing either higher rents or longer commutes.

At the heart of those orders are plummeting investment real estate values. So…once again, those in charge just haven't milked enough from their kids - gotta protect that real estate in downtown financial districts AT ANY COST!

 

[arakboss]

Regarding OP's topic, certain firearm prices are getting crazy good right now. The 4th of July deals should be fantastic. Oregonians are fortunate to have Measure 114 still held at bay. HB2005 sucks but shouldn't impact most sales (unless retailers ignorantly cut us off). If you have discretionary income, deals should be easy picking for you.

 

[arakboss]

Looks like student loan debt payments are going to resume in September. I wonder if this will cause further declines in gun sales?

Student loan payments set to resume soon regardless of SCOTUS ruling

Federal student loan payments and interest accrual are set to resume soon after a three-year pause regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on President Biden's loan forgiveness plan.

www.foxbusiness.com

 

[Hueco]

Looks like student loan debt payments are going to resume in September. I wonder if this will cause further declines in gun sales?

Student loan payments set to resume soon regardless of SCOTUS ruling

Federal student loan payments and interest accrual are set to resume soon after a three-year pause regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on President Biden's loan forgiveness plan.

www.foxbusiness.com

It's going to cause a further decline in everything, except for people succumbing to financially motivated suicide.

 

[arakboss]

It's a buyer's market out there right now, for firearms. OSP's queue is under one hundred people deep now. If you are looking to buy a firearm, you are in the driver's seat. Prices will only be going south from here, so be judicious with your offers, bids and dollars spent.

 

[nwslopoke]

I know many people who currently own a sizable collection of firearms, myself included (20 or more). I do not remember any of my relatives, neighbors or friends families who had large firearms collections (rifle, shotgun, handgun) in the 1960s and 1970's. Most of these families hunted rabbit, waterfowl, deer and elk. It was definitely a pro-gun community where long-guns were common carried in the rack in a pickup's back window without fear of theft..
I believe todays average gun enthusiast owns more firearms than gun enthusiasts in decades past, larger collections are more common today.

I don't know if shooting as a sport is more accessible and plentiful than it was in the 80s- early 2000s. When did 3 gun start? Also with ARs, they got down into the $400 range for a while. I got a few without breaking the bank. Politics was also a big driver compared to previous decades.

 

[Longwalkhome]

I should tell yall some of my stories but after reading yours it looks like yall have your own stories

 

[nick1980]

I feel like used prices aren't reflecting the reality of the market. People still asking high prices but seeing the same stuff over and over sitting there.