Rifles

New gun catalog, lack of imagination, and fear.

Good morning,

I picked up a standard magazine I get every year; the Guns & Ammo 2009 Buyers guide. I read it once. Then again. Then I thumbed through the thing long enough for my wife to ask what was going on.

I have noticed several things that worry me, and fit in with much discussion, and worry of others. I just wanted to know how prevailing this is. Here's what I saw...

-Preying on fear. Inside the front cover is a 2-page ad, with a red headline: "Gear up before it heats up!". This ad, and many others throughout the magazine, was selling M16 wannabe parts. There were several instances of "Get-em-now!".

-One gun show. For many pages, you are hard-pressed to find anything NOT copied from the M16. Bolt actions are pretty much normal, since they don't change much anyway. There's one or two new designs in semi-autos. But everybody was pushing Copy-16s. Is this what people really want, and nothing else?

-Prices. Whether connected to the fear idea or not, most of these people have absolutely no idea what the economy is like out here. There have been price increases across the board, it seems. Some to the laughing point. Or crying, if it's something you wanted.

Whether this is considered a rant or not, this worries me.