SDS Retrospective - Is the Gun You Bought the Gun You Need?

Is the Gun You Bought the Gun You Need?

It’s May of 2020.... The pandemic panic has been in full swing for a few months already, and events in Minneapolis have just sparked a powder keg that will consume several American cities in the coming months. You have decided it’s time to risk going out to purchase a firearm, as you are fortunate enough to live in a state that allowed their gun shops to remain open.

"You're four months late to be picky about make, model, caliber.. and especially price" - Gun Store Employees during the pandemic...

After waiting for hours in a spread out, socially distanced line to enter the shop, you finally gain entrance. You ask the masked employee at the counter what home defense guns they have available, and you are rewarded with a condescending snort as the salesman cocks his head to a paper sign taped to the wall that read, “ You are 2 months too late to be picky about make, model, caliber or price ”

As you leave the shop an hour later, you find yourself wishing they had taped that sign to the front door and perhaps handed copies out to everyone standing in line. Sparse shelves holding a few pricey items were the norm across town, as your quick smartphone search turned up. You quickly make your way to the car clutching your new gun and the small box of ammunition it came with.

Now, three years later, cities continue to deteriorate beyond the events of 2020 and police departments nationwide are demoralized and understaffed. You (finally) decide that maybe you should take a class to learn how to properly use that gun. You pull it down from the closet or out from under the bed or wherever it went after the novelty wore off, grab the box of shells they sold you and head off to class. Except at the class, the instructor looks at your gun, and then at you, and back to the gun, to try and understand why you brought this particular firearm to a self-defense class.

If this sounds like a familiar story it’s because it happened to literally millions of first-time gun buyers in 2020. Eight million, to be specific. People who went to the store to buy a Glock .40 or a Sig Sauer came home with Hi Points, old FIE Titan revolvers, Italian replicas of the Colt Single Action in .44-40, Taurus Raging Hunter .44 Magnums, .22 Rimfire derringers, or a 8mm Japanese Nambu war trophy because it was the only thing left in the store that there was ammunition for.

Ammunition dried up in a similar fashion; first the 9mm and 12-gauge buckshot dried up, then the .40, .38 SPL, .357 Magnum and .45ACP. At one point the local Walmart only had .357 Sig and 7-30 Waters on the shelf, and that was limited to one box per customer. Boxes of 9mm FMJ (target ammo) were being broken down into ten-round ‘dime bags’ for customers buying a gun, just so they had something to put in the gun, no matter how unsuited it may have been for your purposes. FMJ was trading for $1 per round, and hollow points close to $4 apiece. Even .30-30 Winchester disappeared as every gun in the house was prepared for service.

So today, still very much in need of a home defense or carry gun, your COVID purchase has come up short of expectations. Fortunately, the market is currently flush with firearms and ammunition, but with a contentious election on the horizon that inventory is not guaranteed to last at these levels or prices for long. Industry experts predict that demand will follow the traditional pattern of increased sales heading into the fall hunting and holiday gift seasons, followed by tax refund-driven purchases in the spring. Depending on current crime trends and election rhetoric, the traditional ‘summer slowdown’ will likely fail to materialize as consumers stock up in response to increasing levels of criminal drama and Democrat calls for forced disarmament and sales restrictions.

So where does that leave the ‘COVID Consumer’? In a pretty good place right now, provided they don’t dither. SDS Imports has an excellent selection of ‘The Right Gun’ at excellent prices. Tisas’s renowned 1911 pistols are available in 9mmm .45 and 10mm in a wide variety of sizes and options. The Tisas PX-9 is a polymer frame, high-capacity pistol which is easy to shoot regardless of experience and uses inexpensive 9mm ammunition, lending itself to regular practice sessions. For concealed carry, the Tisas .380 Fatih packs a tremendous 13 rounds of low-recoil ammunition into a pistol sized for all-day carry.

If you lean towards a long gun for home defense, SDS offers excellent value via the Tokarev line, with the TAR and TBP detachable magazine semi-automatics and the pump-action HD series for traditionalists. These are all available in 12-gauge and lower recoiling 20-gauge options.

Those preferring a tube-fed shotgun can peruse the Military Armament Corporation’s product lineup, which includes a copy of the USMC 1014 fighting shotgun and the lighter MAC-2. These reliable, hard-use guns were designed to deliver in austere conditions and high-stress situations.

It’s fall of 2023. The maskers are starting to make noises again and the powers that be are looking for a new ‘state of emergency’ to exploit. Except that now there are no lines at the local gun shop, inventories are full, and prices are low. It’s the perfect time to trade in that .475 Linebaugh or Bauer .25 ACP for something more practical, with enough ammo to get comfortable with. See if you can get them to throw in a roll of toilet paper…