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| Above, guns for sale at Cabela's in Albuquerque. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
Last night, I was perusing Cabela's website of centerfire rifles.
While doing so, I noticed that the advertised price of a Winchester 94 lever-action rifle was $1,999.99. The new Winchester 94 rifles are now made in Japan by Miroku. I can't see paying that much for a rifle.
Here's the ad:
From what I have read, the Miroku Winchester 94 rifles are of high quality and compare favorably with the pre-64 Winchester 94s made in the U.S. (which is what I have). I haven't read anything bad about the Mirokus. (This made me wonder: Are Japanese allowed to buy these rifles?)
The price of the Winchester 94 at Cabela's was a stunner. But then, prices for guns in general have skyrocketed. This even includes used guns. I was lucky to have bought my pre-64 Winchester 94 when I did for $499.00.
Some reasons for the high prices include (from The Gun Zone):
Firearms can be expensive due to the cost of materials, manufacturing, and regulatory requirements. In addition, factors such as popularity, brand, and design can also drive up the price of firearms.
Also, sabre-rattling by Democrats feed into buying frenzys.
From Quora:
Simply stated: when you look at the price tag on a firearm, the number you see was determined by pretty much the same sort of market forces that dictate the price of anything else you want to buy.
Including, but not necessarily limited to:
** Manufacturing cost
** Popularity
When Smith & Wesson first introduced it’s Model 29 .44 Magnum, it didn’t exactly set the retail gun market on fire. Sales were sluggish at best; I believe that at some point, Smith & Wesson was giving serious consideration to writing off the Model 29 as a bust and quit making it.
That is, until in 1971 when fortune, seemingly out of nowhere, smiled upon S&W. A savior appeared, and his name was “Clint Eastwood.”
Shortly after the release of the very first “Dirty Harry” movie that year, movie-going gun enthusiasts were flocking to gun stores, looking to buy that big-assed hand cannon Clint Eastwood had that’d “blow a punk’s head CLEEEEAN OFF.” An iconic pop-culture relationship was born. Sales went through the roof, and the sticker price jumped three-fold.
If enough people are willing to pay a certain amount of money for something, that’s what the market will bear.
There is a downside: Though not quite the same thing, many guns take on a symbolic quality, and not always in a good way. In the immediate aftermath of the Columbine mass shooting, the Hi-Point 9mm Camp Carbine Eric Harris carried was prominently featured in various photos, as was the TEC-9 pistol Dylan Klebold had. Sales of the Camp Carbine, which had been a steady seller for Hi-Point, plummeted.
The TEC-9 might have followed suit, though it had been in decline for awhile. The TEC-9 was one of a couple of weapons which in the ’80s and ’90s (see also: Ingram MAC-10) became associated with gang-bangers and general criminal scumbags; you don’t find them around so much now.
** Scarcity/Perceived Scarcity
Next time you start hearing a lot of noise about a particular type, model, caliber, magazine capacity, etc etc of gun is becoming the focus of attention by anti-gun lobbyists and observe how the price skyrockets.
** Quality of manufacture
Like most other things, the more something costs, the more labor-intensive it is to make it, the greater the degree of exacting precision, and the higher the quality of raw materials to make. I can hold a perfectly good run-of-the-mill M1911-style .45 auto costing $600, and then hold a top-notch Kimber .45 or Springfield Armory Gold Cup costing two or three times that, and notice a difference.
