From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
When Guy writes, <<If you value the existence of
quality firearms retailing I am afraid you have to
accept that reality and pay the going rate for those
goods,>> he is sending exactly the same message as David
Edwards did when he started this thread. As I tried to
explain in my posting, though, while no shooter who
thinks about the subject imagines that UK dealers could
sell American kit as cheaply as it can be had over there,
we do shop around for dealers who are efficient,
enterprising and not so greedy as to ask ridiculous
prices. The "going rate" is not necessarily the same
figure in pounds as US shooters pay in dollars, a formula
often cited by the trade as normal and acceptable: it's a
rate as close as possible to what we think is the natural
value of the goods in question, i.e. what it can be had
for in its country of origin. Ultimately, retailers who
think naively that consumers will continue to pay inflated
prices in order to keep them in business are doomed,
because the market doesn't work that way. Many of them
seem to favour protectionism rather than free trade, a
policy which history teaches us is unworkable, as well as
undesirable. Smuggling is one response to people's desire
to buy goods they can't otherwise get, or which are too
expensive when bought legitimately; cross-border buying
is its lawful counterpart. In Eastern Germany, drivers
flock into the Czech Republic to buy cheaper petrol,
and on the other side of the country my friends in the
Saarland join thousands of their compatriots who drive
into Luxembourg for the same purpose; Canadians in
Southern Ontario routinely cross into the US not only
for cheaper petrol, but cheaper booze and most other
things too. Greedy governments might not like it, but
there's damn all they can do about it.
I am (in part) self employed, and I have to price my
products & services at a rate the market will bear, so
I know what I'm talking about. Actually it amazes me
that far more gun dealers haven't gone under, given the
extraordinary prices many of them demand - how about
twenty-seven quid for 100 Federal 223 cases, or over
L20 for a box of .22 Ballistic Tips (often available
on special offer in USA for one quarter to one third
of that)...
Stone the crows!
--
I do have great sympathy for dealers because having
personally imported firearms and ammunition I know
what a monstrous PITA it is and how much it costs, but
I'm afraid the reality is that they cannot defeat the
laws of economics, that's why they're called laws,
because many years of empirical observation has shown
them to be accurate.
If you look at the number of RFDs in GB, I think it
is around 2,700 or so, and in 1987 it was around 3,000.
In the same time frame the market has contracted far
more than 10%, the number of SGC holders for example
has gone down by a third or more. The reality is
that there are too many dealers to serve that small a
market.
The other problem is that in many areas the police
have really taken a dislike to part-time dealers,
so that makes it even harder to do business because
if you supplement your income to too great an extent
the police seem to take the view that you are a
collector and not really engaged in the business. I'm
sure most RFDs are essentially hobby businesses.
There's nothing wrong with that but the police seem
to think so in many areas.
Steve.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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