A few posts caught my eye, but please don't expect for them to be related.
How are you reacting to friends/relatives that either want to borrow a gun or seek your help in buying one and training them ? I want to see if I'm being selfish jerk.
Reading your posts in this thread, it seems to be a question about your willingness to loan guns? Maybe? If so, whether you loan guns or ammo or not isn't the determining factor in my mind. It's how you go about declining. As for me, I know a few people to whom I'd be willing to loan guns. Of that group, I've known most (probably all) of them at least 10 years and know that they have no felony record. (They're either police, lawyers, or friends of 30+ years.) That said, I know good and well that there are risks involved. I'm particularly aware of the legal risks and I'm willing to take those, in light of the potential harm to lifelong friends if I don't loan them one. Realistically, I'm probably better prepared than most to deal with a police investigation if things were to go south.
....Now is the time to be a good ambassador, maybe even on a proactive level.
....We can all be ambassadors if we choose to.
....I will accept these new folks into our realm, without castigation and hope they become safe and responsible gun owners. I see no reason to alienate them just because they are new, or that they did so out of fear for themselves and their families. Been there done that.
These all speak to the idea of being a good ambassador, which I first remember (in the gun community) as being Cap'n Charlie's signature line, if memory serves.
If ever there was a time to be a good ambassador, it's now.
There are some things we know, some things we don't know, some things we can't know, and some things we suspect. Looking at the
FBI's NICS Month/Year breakdown , we can see that NICS checks in March 2020 were 3.74M. That's up 900k over February 2020, and 1.1M over March 2019. We know that it's not going to be a 1:1 ratio of NICS Check to Firearm Sales, but it's still pretty telling.
I think it's safe to say that there are a lot of 1st time gun buyers right now. We may not know the percentages on how many of those NICS Checks are for them, but I have no reason to doubt the FFLs we have here who are telling us "it'sabunch." We also don't know (or have any way of knowing) how many of them were antigun 6 weeks ago. We can reasonably assume that some were. We can also reasonably that some of those 1st time buyers were simply neutral on the gun issue. We (the gun community) has been under attack for my entire adult life, and we need to reach as many of those folks as we can.
Don't want to loan someone a gun? Fine, but don't be a jackass about it. (Generally. I'm not calling anyone in this thread out, despite having quoted a few folks above.) Explain why: "I'm sorry, but you're asking me to loan you a deadly weapon, and I just don't know you well enough to do that. But come over for coffee one day. We can talk about guns and I'll help you figure out what you need."
First post here. I'm a newbie. Haven't even bought a gun yet, but I'm interested. That's why I joined this forum. Smarten up before I make a move. My father had pistols and ammo loose in his drawers when I was growing up. Pretty dumb for a smart guy. He used to cc when he took the train to NYC. I've shot pistols, shotguns and rifles in the past and am looking to get a pistol for home protection. Thinking Glock 30. Wanna ask a newbie a question? Here's your chance.
Welcome to THR, maaxflux. Like a poster above, I'd be curious as to what brings you to firearms. I think (and hope) that you'll find that our members are awfully helpful.
Might I recommend that you head down into our
Handguns: Autoloaders forum and look around? I think you'll find a lot of information on the G30, and if you don't find what you want, feel free to start a thread of your own.
