Do you ever feel like your gun interests are just too varied to be healthy?

NOPE

460Shooter said:

Do you ever feel like your gun buying habits and interests are just kind of getting away from you? ...

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"Getting away" from me? No.

For me that ship sailed long ago ...

Rationalization is a wonderful thing! I justify to myself & explain to my wife: "If you buy quality guns at a fair price, they always go up in value. It's better than money in the bank!"

BTW: This doesn't work too well on the wife.

I just got into buying my own guns a little over a year ago. Been shooting since I was a kid but never actually owned any of my own guns. I currently have two striker fired pistols and an AR, but I actually bought more than those in the last year in the quest to find something that I liked. Although it can be costly that's part of the fun for me, the search.

I have ambitions but I feel they are pretty grounded. Basically from here I'd like to own one example of the major types of pistols and long guns. SA revolver, DA revolver, 1911, DA/SA pistol, bolt action rifle for distance shooting, lever action rifle and a pump shot gun.

I don't feel like 3 guns (keepers) a year is too much, and if I can maintain that pace in a few years I should have my main wants covered. Then I would probably take a break from regular buying.


Now if I were to win the lottery tomorrow that mindset might very well go right out the window.

Buy what you can afford.

If your family is well cared for and your hobby is not depriving them of a good standard of living, then enjoy your good fortune any way you want. But by posting in a gun forum you already knew what the answer would be. Post your question on the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence website and you might get other opinions.

Naa.
Variety is the spice of life.

I like everything from single action six guns to ARs and everything in between.

460 shooter wrote:
Do you ever feel like your gun buying habits and interests are just kind of getting away from you?

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No.

But then, I don't own a dozen handguns, either.

I have a reason and purpose for each gun I own. And with the exception of two ARs I bought in 2016 to give to my sons, I wait until I have the money saved to make the purchase. Waiting until I have cash-in-hand to buy the gun, accessories and components to load a thousand rounds of ammunition really is a good moderator to keep the habit from "getting away from me".

J-Bar said:

Post your question on the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence website and you might get other opinions.

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Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Dang it J-Bar! You made me spray coffee all over my monitor!

hdwhit said:

No.

But then, I don't own a dozen handguns, either.

I have a reason and purpose for each gun I own. And with the exception of two ARs I bought in 2016 to give to my sons, I wait until I have the money saved to make the purchase. Waiting until I have cash-in-hand to buy the gun, accessories and components to load a thousand rounds of ammunition really is a good moderator to keep the habit from "getting away from me".

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Excellent way to moderate your purchases in a practical way.

If you "invest" in firearms but like to shoot them, simply pick firearms likely to increase in value tomorrow but are cheap today. Take care of them and they will probably increase in value--even 1st generation Glocks have now become collectible and those police markings often add some value. If you bought a gently used one when police departments sold their old ones to replace with newer versions, pretty good odds that it is worth more today than what you paid for it. Unless abused, it is probably not worth less than what you paid for it.

Not true of new furniture, most new cars, new electronics, new computers or smart phones, nor much newly made jewelry for the most part (leaving aside recognized antiques in those fields). Firearms tend to hold value better than a lot of other consumables and hold up better if not abused. Furthermore, their value, unlike a lot of other things, often increases during bad times.

460Shooter said:

I don't see the point of having a bunch of guns that I'm not going to shoot, unless it's as an investment. The above guns are just the ones I want to own to shoot.

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I'm kind of the same way. That is, I've seldom purchased a gun that I didn't have an intended use for. Not that every gun I ever bought turned out as useful as I thought it was going to be. In those cases, I almost always sold the gun (at a loss) not too long after I bought it. But that doesn't mean I've felt like my gun buying habits are "getting away" from me. I mean, sure, I've bought guns that I was sorry I bought shortly thereafter. But I'm not just blowing my own horn when I say that my gun buying habits have never put my family in financial jeopardy. Besides that, my wife is just as much into hunting guns, self/home defense guns, and just plane "fun to shoot" guns as I am. So she has almost as many as I do. And her gun buying habits, whether she's buying guns for herself or for me (as I've bought guns for her occasionally) have never put our family's financial well being in jeopardy either.

There have only a couple of time I thought that....
...
..,
before lunchtime every day.

The ownership of weapons is as old as mankind. Modern day man may own piles of golf clubs or a massive riding lawn mower. I am glad my DNA is very old. My cave is filled with weapons.

You can rest assured. Gun collecting is more expensive than hiking.

I never met a gun I didn't like. I just bought the ones I liked more...

Do you ever feel like your gun buying habits and interests are just kind of getting away from you? I mean I do control myself. I'm not buying several guns a year and just running up my credit cards, but I'm starting to question WHY I want all these different guns.

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Ahhh, yup. After a few decades in shooting, reloading, collecting (well...sort of), and various kinds of shooting competitions, it does start to wear a bit thin. There's always going to be some cool new whatever. Some new cartridge that does something a measured fraction better than what you already have. A gun that's cooler, or hotter, or lighter, or heavier, or blacker, or whatever. After a while, if it isn't DOING something that I feel a need to get done, i.e. filling a specific niche, I really couldn't much care.

I don't visit gun shops very often, don't read gun magazines, aside from thumbing through the Rifleman because it shows up at the house each month, don't watch YouTube gunny guys. Now, of course I get a LOT of info from THR, and a lot from my local shooting competition scene. I'm still a sold-out gun nut.

But I've got far more guns that I keep stashed away and even look at maybe once a year than I have guns that I shoot very often. And I don't want any more of those. If I could get much for most of them, and they had no sentimental value, I'd probably move them on down the road. But, you never know. Someday there will be some situation that arises where I think a .444 Marlin lever-action rifle is just the right one out of the pile to do that thing. Or a .58 cal. flintlock "Hawken" sort of thing. Or who knows what else. So, I keep them. But I'm sure not in any hurry to buy any more.

Looking at the list you posted, I'd have a hard time coming up with a reason to buy any of those. Not that they aren't great. Many of them probably are wonderful. But what in the world am I going to do with any of them for the other 364 days of the year that I don't think, "Oh, yeah, I probably should go shoot that one so it doesn't get lonely." I just have no need.

Everything goes in cycles, and hobbies and interests are certainly no exception. If you've passed into the phase where you actually don't want more piles of gun junk around. If you would rather enjoy a nice hike in the woods, or walk on the beach, or to spend time with your kids or grand kids than spend three days standing around in the noise and mud of Knob Creek watching other people burn money or trudging through the fake glam and bad breath of SHOT Show. If you have to convince yourself why you'd need a new gun rather than why you don't. Then congratulations.

I am narrowing my interests. One day I realized that I owned more guns than some smalltime FFL's. I saw that made no sense. I started selling off my collection. "Collection" may be too dignified a word. It signifies order and purpose, but what I had was an accumulation.

For many years I bought guns because they were interesting mechanically or conceptually. That is how I got the Browning Double Auto, a marketplace bomb that, if you look at it just right, made sense in its own way. I sold it the other day.

When I really look closely, the guns I have a use for are very few. I like a .38 Special for daily protection and a 12 gauge riot gun for things that go bump in the night. I would love to be a good rifle shot. I am not bad but I have shot alongside people who really know what they are doing. Viewed in that light, my scoped .308 is either a challenge to be overcome and mastered or it is there in the corner as a concession to my vanity, mocking me.

My interests are varied in general. Everything from backpacking to sailing to horses to 4 wheeling to rock climbing.
My interest in Firearms is no exception.

I am looking to get into more cowboy shooting soon, but have been shooting 3 gun and IDPA and such.
I am hoping to pick up a 1892 and a model 97 shotgun for the pure joy of it.

Eventually, I am going to try to participate in local 3 gun matches with the 1892 to see how it stacks up. Starting July, we cannot have over 10 rnd mags of any kind anyway, so the 10+1 lever gun will be closer to competitive.

I haven't got the bug for distance precision or black powder yet, but I know its going to happen someday!

Dr.Rob said:

11 guns isn't diversification, it's a starting point.

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That's what I was thinking... I bought that many guns last year. Of course I have a dozen guns that I wouldn't mind selling, and if one day they just disappeared I would probably never notice they were gone except for the fact there'd be a blank space in the safe. I've told myself this year I'm not going to buy anything I don't "need", except for the new Colt revolver...