Notes from the gun shop...

There are many people right now concerned about the availability of AR-15 type rifles.  The modern sporting rifle has been in very extremely high demand since the morning of 14 December.  A simple statement, perhaps ill-considered, by the President has resulted in the sale of tens of thousands of rifles that would have otherwise set on gun store racks and in warehouses.  It is very difficult to get AR-15 parts with delivery times estimated at between 4 weeks to 6 months after the order is placed.  But be assured, the manufacturers are doing all they can to produce to meet the demand.  As I noted earlier, the local manufacturer of lower receiver forgings is at full production, running 3 shifts, 7-days a week.

The boss man took delivery on 500 stripped uppers yesterday.  He's sold 206 already as of 9:30 this morning.  The demand is clearly still strong.

I learned some trivia on the production of lowers today.  First, a lower is not considered a receiver/firearm until it is 80% machined.  If the producer doesn't machine the cut for the safety and the trigger, the lower is not an item that the ATF tracks.  Also, forgings with any nicks, rough blanking marks (I'm sure there is a standard the inspectors follow, I just don't know what it is), and so forth are discarded.  At that point in time the manufacturer has $5.00 in the part for material, saw, heating, forging and blanking.  You may see some of these on the market as paperweights at about $19.95.  Of course, these could be machined and apparently some have been shipped overseas where they have been machined or the 80% machining jobs have been shipped overseas.  This MIGHT (emphasis on this as I'm not a lawyer either) be a violation of U.S. export law(s).  In any case these forgings are now marked so that the ATF can track back to the source.