TGO David

Nope. Not wrong. I'm as much my own man as my wife says I can be.

It seems reasonable to the folks that own the service so they're free to give it a shot and see if their customers agree. Things change. Ideas and concepts that used to work sometimes change and are no longer viable. There are a variety of reasons why this could be the case... Costs of operation requiring more income. Maybe some states maybe require them to operate as a "club" with exclusive membership, and the legal definition requires a membership fee. Maybe charging a fee to a buyer allows them to validate that buyer's identity (as mentioned elsewhere) Maybe they just regretted their previous subscription model and saw an opportunity to change it and make more profit. Making a profit isn't evil. It's why any of us who go into business do it in the first place. I don't know if or which of any of those are true or accurate. Just reasons I could reasonably think of without any effort. Of course, the power lies with the customer to decide if they want to pay and use the service, or not. But stealing is stealing, and I'd rather just see people walk away from a service than try to bilk the people behind it of the value they've put on their work. That's just wrong.

Mmmm... vault room.

I am more concerned about what will happen to the 2A and private ownership of firearms if this goes to Biden than I am about civil unrest. Unless you live somewhere that riots and protests are likely to occur, common sense and avoidance will likely keep you away from that sort of action. But other than exercising civil disobedience and becoming a criminal (on paper), you aren't going to easily "avoid" the sort of anti-2A tyranny that Sniffy Joe and Al Qaeda Harris have officially stated that they will attempt to enact..

Worse than that. Somehow I was a dumb-ass and turned it from a forum into a "Category". Changing it back to Forum thankfully fixed it.

Weird. Same here. I'll check.

Jo really lost me along the way, but you are correct that both Republicans and Democrats have shafted us hard-core on gun rights.

YES!!! The game is about to be changed for you!

I hope he has a good exit strategy already in mind, because they'll probably run him out when they learn that he's got a brain.

I operate under the assumption I am the least smart person when it comes that sort of scheming and that the government has an endless supply of twisted tyrants on hand who sit around and dream up an endless supply of new ways to trample my freedoms and liberties.

I know exactly how you guys feel about this one. I've been on the short end of the state both as a seller and a prospective buyer more than once. It always reminds me that I need to be angry about the fact that we can't easily ship firearms to one another inside the same state. And it's not because it is illegal. It's NOT illegal at all. Rather it's because shipping carriers make it so damn difficult. I also have this theory that a lot of folks are either sitting on the guns they have, being selective about what they part with, or slow to sell when they fear that they might not be able to locate and buy whatever new thing has caught their attention. Face it, a lot of us sell guns in order to buy other guns. I hope and expect that this will change soon. It may be after the first of the year, but I think we'll see more variety on the secondary market. Unless Al Qeda Harris and Sniffy Joe win the election, and then it's going to be nuts.

TGO, I have made some changes to the forum this morning to address a few technical issues, fix some things that had caused complaints, and hopefully make the site a little easier to use. Rather than drag it out with a lengthy preamble, let's just get right down to it: LOOK AND FEEL Until I am able to get some problems resolved with the third-party "theme" (skin, format, look, whatever you want to call it) that we have been using, I have switched us to a very lightly customized version of the default forum software theme. I made this one, so if it sucks blame me for it, but this is as close to the default way that the software authors meant things to look as I can get it while still making it characteristically TGO. In my experience, the closer it is to "stock" with our software, the better and more correctly everything functions. Sadly this means that sexy, cool, handy little menu bar that always floated at the bottom of the screen on a mobile device is gone. If I can figure out how to emulate it, I will. If I can get the other theme fixed, I will. But some of you were having problems with the third-party theme looking like a jumbled mess while visiting TGO from certain types of mobile devices or computers with smaller screens and I think that this change will fix that. REARRANGED AND RENAMED I took the opportunity to move the furniture around on y'all a bit too. Yeah, I know that's probably cruel for some of you who are absolute creatures of habit, but the fact is some of the sub-forums on TGO could have been named, described or organized better back in the day. I like to think I'm just a little smarter now than I was back then. Anyway, hopefully the minor shuffling and renaming makes sense and helps promote better use of some really good areas of the community. HOWDY, ARMSLISTERS Finally, I wanted to give a special welcome to our new folks who have either discovered or rediscovered TGO because of recent changes to Armslist. I generally believe in The More, The Merrier and hope that you will enjoy your time here, find the community and knowledge represented in TGO very beneficial to you, and that you will help contribute to that community and knowledge by becoming active members. I do want to mention that we have some pretty simple and fair practices when it comes to buying, selling and trading on TGO. Following them isn't optional and ignorance of them is honestly pretty hard to accomplish given how many places we inform you about them when you join TGO. I mean, you literally have to willfully try to ignore them. We email them to you, we send them to you in a private message, and we post notices and links to them all over the place. Here's a link to them right now, even! Click me! The point is, we want you here and are glad that you've found us, but we do need your cooperation. Our policies for buying, selling and trading have served TGO well since 1997 and they are a fundamental reason why so many people here have come to prefer dealing with their fellow TGO members above all other options. That's all for now. Happy Halloween, folks!

The ATF really has no power to legislate, which is what the people keep letting them do. The people enable this sort of thing by not firing the politicians that can actually affect the way the ATF functions. The whole thing is a sickening political Human Centipede. I wouldn't hold my breath on grandfathered anything from the ATF either. They could have made some money on tax stamps by turning "bump stocks" into an NFA item but didn't. They went straight for the kill on that and could likely do the same here. I've been predicting this for the past few years. Friends probably thought I was crazy or that it was far-fetched, but I've been repeatedly telling people that the way the government could really kill the modern sporting rifle is to declare it a non-transferrable NFA item. Within a few decades, few people would be left alive to legally own one. Within a generation or two, it'll be all over.

We need some more threads about this. I guess that's good, because we're probably going to get them.

I don't understand this line of thinking. What you are advocating for is people stealing a service from a company that sells it. You might as well advocate for running an extension cord out your window and across to the neighbor's house and powering your refrigerator from the electricity they are paying for. It's the same idea. I am not a fan of Armslist because I prefer to do business with people on TGO. Doing business here provides a measure of security in the sense that I either know the person on the other side of the deal, or someone that I know does, or someone that I know and trust has done business with them before and made it through that deal alive and well. When newcomers join us, we generally all extend them the same courtesy of faith and trust at least once, and then they become part of the fold. It's worked very well since 1997. BUT... If for some reason we were to have to switch our model to limiting the ability for prospective buyers to contact a seller to folks who have paid for that ability, I'd really hope people would just play by the rules and not work around them. As was pointed out elsewhere, when you enter into that payment transaction with a site like Armslist, or even TGO, you are giving us a way to validate who you are. Armslist has long had a problem with scammers screwing over buyers. This MIGHT be their step toward fixing some of that by ensuring that they have a way to connect Internet-You to RealWorld-You in the case that you decide to engage in illegal activities. Whatever their reason is, it's their reason and their prerogative and their service. Don't steal it and don't advocate for others to make it easier for people to steal it.

People are scrambling to pick up AR pistols and pistol braces because they think the ATF is going to do to them what they did to bump stocks. Buying that stuff in a panic makes no sense, because *IF* the ATF screws us all over on this, you're either going to register it as an NFA item and might as well put a real stock on it, or you're going to hide it away and risk being charged with a felony if ever caught using it. The ATF needs to be done away with.

In general terms, I do not expect the current retail climate to change much at all for the remainder of the year. The whole thing is rather complicated and multi-faceted. Ammunition: This is equal parts a supply issue, a demand issue and retailers taking advantage of the situation. Primers are in short supply, so there is already a constraint on availability at the component level. This naturally causes prices to increase at a wholesale level. Completed ammunition is increasingly in shorter supply, but I know for an absolute fact that you can still buy 9mm FMJ from the wholesale channel for around 22-cents per round because I recently brokered the sale of approximately 52,000 rounds of 9mm and 5.56 NATO ammunition for a small group of individuals. I could go on an absolute tear about this but I am going to refrain for now. Retailers who are charging exorbitant sums for 9mm FMJ should be taken note of and remembered when this settles. One caliber that I can attest to being much more expensive today than it was in February, at wholesale and retail pricing, is 300 Blackout. The price on that shiz is nuts. If you have it, I'd be sitting on it and not shooting it unless I had to right now. Black Rifle Parts: Whole, mass-produced AR-15 pattern rifles are still easy to come by thanks to the absolute glut of them that were produced over the last 10 years. Pricing on them hasn't changed a whole lot. Boutique rifles and component parts are a different story, and those go hand in hand anyway. I don't see this changing until after the election and maybe even beyond that. Supply needs to catch up to the demand. Manufacturers like Aero Precision, Bravo Company Machine, Rosco Manufacturing, Ballistic Advantage, Midwest Gun Works, etc. are all still releasing product albeit in small batches that get cleaned out almost immediately. You can thank social media for that. As soon as barrels, uppers, lowers, handguards, etc. hit these manufacturer's web stores or the web stores of the retail channel, it gets posted by the likes of MrGunsNGear on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. or it makes the headlines on Reddit and major national forums. People are cleaning-out supply as soon as it hits. And while I guess that's nice if it means that there are more armed citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights than ever ( aka "a rising tide raises all ships") there is a pessimistic side of me that thinks there are a lot of parts that will never be used sitting in personal caches. I hope I am wrong. Handguns: You can still buy pretty much any handgun you want right now, but in some cases you may have to wait a few weeks to find the exact variation you are searching for. Also, this is legitimately the only time that I can remember wherein Glocks were seriously selling for MSRP. Nine or ten months ago, at the very most, you could buy a new Gen 5 Glock 19 for $525. These days you're probably going to pay closer to $600 and you might have to wait while your local retailer orders it for you from Lipseys, RSR, Sports South, etc. I blame this entirely on the number of people who are buying handguns to protect themselves for the first time ever because of the current political and social climate and social turmoil. I hope that those people (a.) get training, (b.) own them responsibly, and (c.) keep them beyond 2021 and become advocates for the 2A now that they understand why it matters. I am obviously glazing over other areas of the gun industry right now, but these are the things most people are noticing the effects of and maybe wondering what the hell is driving it all. The ammunition and shortage of AR parts are the things that annoy me the most, presently, for the reasons I mentioned.

Yeah the software has a setting to throttle searches because they can be performance hogs. I just lowered the threshold to once every 10 seconds for anyone except guests. Guests browsing without an account are limited to once every 30 seconds.

Lloyd W. Thomsen, Horsehead Creek Knives. https://www.thefencepost.com/news/loyd-thomsen-creates-one-of-a-kind-custom-knives/ Not sure if he is still among the living or not as I couldn't raise his website at the address they listed in this article.

This one? They moved it into this menu drop-down for some reason.

Ain't nobody.

I’m just looking for some real world experience from users of both Primary Arms and Vortex branded 1-6 or 1-8 low power variable optics on a 5.56 AR platform. Which have you used, how did it perform, how well did it old up, and if you could change anything about the purchase what would it have been? Years ago I had a Trijicon Accupoint on an AR but someone else wanted the gun more than I did and bought the whole kit for more than I paid. I’d like to do another magnified optic on a 16” platform set up for duty / defensive / practical situations and am looking at sub $1500 options. Preferably sub $1000.

Yeah. It’s still important to understand what the intended use is and at what distance. Bullseye shooting? Defensive use? Precision marksmanship in an LE or MIL setting? Hunting? There won’t be enough difference to care with some of those applications. For others I’d want to know which round performs best with my particular rifle and then stick with it.

How much precision do you need? The variance is not going to be all that great for most purposes, but POA and POI will always shift any time you change between ammo make, variety, grain weight, etc. It's probably more important to determine what grain projectile performs best for your rifle's barrel twist rate. Then take the practical approach and shoot both .223 and 5.56 with that grain (or as close to it as possible) at varying distances and see how the POA/POI shifts. If the variance tracks fairly linearly, divide the difference in half and set your optic there right in the middle between them.

Heads Up... I will be updating our software once again this evening. A few fixes have been released that I want to be sure are in place for us.