16ga.com ~ View topic

Member Joined: 08 Nov 2005 Posts: 3438 Location: Illinois

Talked to the areas largest shot,ammo and gun dealer.He claims shot will be $50 a bag and premium shells $10 a box by the end of summer Evil or Very Mad

Is there no end Mad

Guest

Don't know where you've been but Cabela's and Bass Pro have been selling shot at more than $50.00 a bag for some time and Wally World is selling Federal ounce and an eight field loads for $11.97 a box. On the bright side the commodity price for lead has been showing a decline for the past few weeks but don't have an idea of the lag time for it to affect the price we pay for shot.

Joined: 08 Oct 2005 Posts: 241

I just bought as much lead as my wife would allow from my local dealer at $39.95 a bag. He did not have much left and said a deliver truck was due within the day. I asked if the price would be the same. He commented, " I doubt it. The new stuff is costing me $44 dollars a bag off the truck."

YIKES Shocked

Member Joined: 08 Nov 2005 Posts: 3438 Location: Illinois

Guess I've been on the road for too long Embarassed

Went long haul(cross country)driving a year now.Gave up running the local skeet club and only shoot once a month or so now-using what was already loaded or previously store bought shells--Whata shock to see these prices but then again look at what gas/diesel/eggs/milk/etc is bringing these days.This all has to have a negative influence on the shooting sports--especially for newcomers Evil or Very Mad

That is not happenstance. Imported lead shot from Chile and Peru is not being let in by US customs. Why? There is a new and growing black market for the stuff being run over the border now. Why? We have to learn to ask the right questions folks.

Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 190 Location: Washington State

16GG, your post is ripe with innuendo, would you care to be more direct...?

Member Joined: 01 Feb 2006 Posts: 450 Location: Indiana

16gg is correct. Also the lead minesin Mexcio were on strike but now that has been settled. This was on CNN just once and did not see it on another channels. If you check the National Geographic you will see the Imigrants carrying large amounts of fuel across their souther borders into Mexcio to pay off the pirates, theives, and local law, political officals so they can inter Mexcio and then head for the American border where the Large industries can exploit their labor. This cannot keep on going.

Our present administration has been preoccupied with a foreign war. The unattended entrenched bureaucrats have been running the domestic policies in its abstencia. The easiest way for these fat asses to administer anything is to say no, or lock it up so folks can't use it, or just refuse to allow a hot potato like lead shot importation burn their hands unless someone high up makes them do it. It is the nature of bureaucrats to act in this way. It makes their jobs easy and safe to do by doing nothing and allowing nothing.

Then there are those bureaucrats who have adopted agendas against guns, hunting, lead use etc. for reasons of self-preservation. It keeps them out of harms way from petty tyrants like Chuck Shumer and his ilk. It lowers the heat on their fat asses by the hell raisers in the legislature. The result is the same. It makes the job easier and safer to do by not doing anything.

Consider this. Russia was supposed to be a communist state at one time, but communism, the equal distribution of wealth and services, failed. Why? The government bureaucrats who administered to the policies simply found it easiest to just lock the public wealth away for safe keeping, rather than distribute it. Services? Can't get the funds to provide them unlkess you ask and that is not safe to do. The bureaucrats were safest when they did nothing.

It's this great propensity for bureaucratic inertia that ends up causing these types of problems. That is why more government always fails. Someone has to actually get of their fat ass and see to the matter of administering to the policies set by the leaders. However, doing so can make them a target of the political opposition. So they do nothing, and ships do not get unloaded. Simple.

In the mean time however, regular folks always find a way to get what they want and need in spite of regulations. So black markets are most common where there is more government control. Again, simple. More government, more corruption. The end result is a police state like Communist Russia where bureaucrats pretend to do their jobs, and regular folks pretend to obey them. Even the cops are in on the game and are taking with both hands from anyone they can shake down or pressure.

Prohibition was a perfect example of what I am pointing to right here in our nation. Liquor was verboten, so folks smuggled it in or made it themselves. That led to a huge national black market to distribute it and helped create organized crime on a scale never before seen in our nation. Prohibition damn near wrecked the country. We are still dealing with the aftermath today. It was repealed, because it was a bureaucratic nightmare that encouraged folks to scoff at the law and fostered widespread corruption.

We are headed that way again. We have become a nation led by busybodies and petty dictators like the moral majority on the right, and the liberal do gooders, boo hooers, and the socially correct on the left. We are attended to by appointed bureaucrats who could not find their own fat asses with both hands, because its the safe way. We need to just stop telling each other how to live and get on with living. Too much damned government. And so it goes.

Member Joined: 04 Mar 2006 Posts: 76

Amen 16gg, we as a country our losing the rights our forefathers fought to give us. Poor leadership, our Ny governers are a fine example, and the lack of people willing to stand up for what is right make it all worse.

Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 190 Location: Washington State

16GG, Thanks for taking the time to expand on this, it tells me we have something in common, a general distaste for government.

Not all government is bad government. The best government does what it is supposed to do in an unoffensive and fairhanded manner. It proposes and enforces a set of just laws that reflect the actual nature of the society it governs. It also builds and maintains those parts of the public inferstructure that allows that society to live in a healthy and gainful way. To do both, it finds equitable and fairhanded ways of raising enough revenue to ensure that both sets of duties are done well and properly.

In times of danger, it mobilizes the populace to defend their way of life. It maintains a sufficient but non-oppressive professional military capable of training that populace well enough to effectively defend their way of life. It als sees that the tools and weapons needed to do so will be available when the time comes.

We used to have such a government prior to WWII. However, we lost our way in the cold war and now we don't seem to be able to put the weapons of defense down and go back to living in peace. Every threat is met with force and a military build up and deployment. We seem to be trapped by our military expertise and our fighting technology. we must relearn that there are other ways like, negotiation, collaberation, and coopoeration with like minded folks around the world.

If we can relearn these skills, we stand a good chance of turning ourselves around. If not we will go down the same road to defeat Persia, Alexandrian Greece, Rome, Spain, Napoleanic France, England, and soviet Russia have. Its a dead end cul-de-sac with no way out but back over the bones of our dead. we are at a cross roads. Our next decade will decide our own fate.

WWII started in 1932. we forget that Japan had already mobilized and deployed troops to China and Korea. The Hitler and Mussolini facsist regimes were established as well. Plus, we were in the middle of the worst financial crisis this nation ever faced. The threats to our way of life were all too real and all too dangerous to ignore.

Yet too many folks in government were doing just that. We were still an isolationist nation trying to maintain our place via the antiquated Monroe Doctrine. Drastic measures were needed, because too many folks were not doing anything. The Roosevelt administration mobilized our society in spite of what the upper classes of the establishment wanted him to do. That alone took a tremendous amount of political skill and courage. The original income tax laws were pretty inoccuous. They were designed to help us raise enough revenue to fund the programs started to face our problems and overcome them. The initial tax laws were fairly innocous and neccessary at the time to pay for what we were about to go through. they were never meant to be a permenant policy.

After WWII, the military industrial complex built to help us win WWII was not dismantled. It was used to counter the Soviet threat to Western Europe and subsequently took on a life of its own. The wealth and power generated by the central figures and corporations in our military-industrial complex was used to turn the tax laws to their favor. The various communist and terrorist threats were and still are being manipulated and used to keep these entities in a position of power and priviledge. The stooges these powerful players have in government have been manipulating, exaggerating, and obfuscating the truth about our enemies and how to deal with them ever since the mid 1950's. These same stooges are also constantly manipulating the tax codes and banking laws to keep their patrons in a position of power and priviledge.

Eisenhower warned us to beware the military-industrial complex in his farewell address. We failed to listen, and perhaps the warning came too late. Even he might have underestimated their power and influence. That power and influence has grown exponentially since then. The complex is now a global entity drawing resources, power, and wealth from across the planet. We are in the grip of a powerful group of people who intend to stay in power as long as they can by keeping us on the edge of war forever. We were dragged into our present war with a whole agenda of such lies and exaggerations. Since then, our national debt has skyrocketed to fund this war, and the powerful and priviledged are even more entrenched.

Like I said, we face a severe test of national will right now. If we choose the right leaders in the next 10 years and raise enough social hell to see that they start dismantling the all too powerful military-industrial complex back down to a managable size, we will stand a chance of gaining back our freedoms and rights. If not, we will continue down this road to slavery and servitude for the benifit of the powerful and the priviledged.

Things will never be like they were before WWII. Our world, and our place in it have changed, like it or not. However, ignoring the problems and pretending things are fine will just put us further under the thumbs of those who now unfairly control us, just like doing so in the pre-WWII era opened the door for these folks to become established. It's long past the time to start fighting back, but it may not be too late. It soon will be.

Joined: 06 Mar 2008 Posts: 596 Location: 17603

16gaguy,
You speak eloquently and well of the forces that have changed the world over the last century, I hope you are right that there is still a possibility for change. The next decade, and this upcoming presidential election is, IMHO, a critical stage for this once great country. Dismantling the power and influence of the multinational corporations that now so clearly rule the world for short term profits and the benefit of the few will be difficult. But the survival of the planet, and ourselves, is what's at stake.
Cheers,
R*2

Amen brother,...amen.