Noah On » firearms

Cost of the Ruger 10/22 Rifle Over Time

Noah — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:06:20 +0000

Preface: The Ruger 10/22 rifle is one of the most popular non-military rifles made by a single manufacturer. It’s a quiet, inexpensive, low power .22 rimfire rifle used for shooting things like cans, bottles, squirrels and etc. Being a semi-automatic discharges one bullet with each pull of the trigger. The 10/22 is very often someone’s first rifle, especially in the US and Canada, many a 16th birthday has been “made” by a 10/22.

I was watching a video about the Ruger 10/22 rifle and the price was mentioned, and how it was priced now, as well as what people have paid for it. That got my wheel turning, and I thought I would do some calculations.

Using the current 10/22-RB model, which I understand is the closest to the original (although no expert) and working backwards from today with the official US inflation data (not the Cost of Living Index) we get some interesting numbers.

Working backwards
2009 $269
2004 $234.68
1994 $184.12
1984 $129.08
1974 $61.25
1964 $38.51

Working forward (using the original MSRP)
1964 $54.50
1974 $86.67
1984 $182.99
1994 $260.55
2004 $332.10
2009 $373.59

That’s a 39% more than you’d pay now! Or you could look at it as paying 28% less than you might expect.

That’s very interesting, however official inflation data is seldom realistic (in my opinion). That’s probably because it comes from governments with a vested interest in making it seem lower than it really is. So on to something more realistic.

In 1964 50% of American households had an income of $6,957 or greater (median*), a 10/22 was 0.78% of that.
In 2008 the median household income was $52,163, and currently a a 10/22-RB is $269 or 0.51%

Thus (by my calculations,) it’s now 35% more affordable than when it was new.

If you wanted to do a better comparison of what the actual economic experience would be like, comparing CLI adjusted percentage of disposable income in the target demographic would probably be better, but I just don’t have the data.

* I’m going to make another simple post explaining why I use median incomes when I do this sort of thing rather than mean incomes.

New Beretta USA Website

Noah — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:28:45 +0000

Recently Beretta USA launched their new online shopping extravaganza (for Americans but I use it to look up specs). I have to say it’s a HUGE improvement over the old site, MUCH faster, however it’s still a typical ASP pile of shyte site. When you click links on the navigation to go to the sections you want in new tabs you instead end up with javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$SideMenu$TreeView1','s2100000084\\3100001364\\3100001367') Which of course simply constructs a URL and sends you there. Someone needs to introduce gun manufacturers to proper website design

You can see the new site at https://www.shopberetta.com/

CNN Knows a #2 Story When It Sees It

Noah — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:55:34 +0000

This is insane, CNN’s #2 story right now is that they found a gun in the Hudson killings.

Maybe I’m wrong but it shouldn’t be news at all, let alone #2; and if they don’t find the alleged killer for a month it won’t even make the front page of CNN because the mob will have moved on.

Spare Locks

Noah — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:08:30 +0000

It seems every time you get a new firearm or case or whatever you end up with another lock. I was counting and I have 3 guns and 2 lockers we use at the gym and yet somehow we own at-least 15 locks.

So if you want a free lock let me know.

Please note I secure my firearms very securely and am not discarding locks I should be using.