Gun sales here in Colorado are totally through the roof. Normally it’s possible to purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer by waiting only a few minutes for the background check — a computer search of records in the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) database — to clear, then you pay your money and walk out with the purchase.
Not now, though. From the Denver Post;
The continued rush to purchase firearms in Colorado has overwhelmed the system businesses use to track background check wait times and left thousands of would-be gun buyers on wait-lists that are now many days long.
Just a few weeks ago, back around the middle of December, the waiting time for a background check result to come through was about 15 minutes. It’s now beyond 100 hours, and the CBI system has more or less crashed under a demand of more than 3000 applications per day, and as of November this year 279,149 (over 5% of Colorado’s entire population) firearms applications had been approved (and keep in mind that you can buy any number of guns with one application, and there’s no system for keeping track of that);
The uncharted territory in which the state’s gun sellers now find themselves stems from unprecedented interest in guns and CBI’s online wait-time clock, which tops out at 99 hours and 59 minutes.
Weeks ago, the background-check process took minutes to complete. Now, CBI’s processing time has moved beyond that 99-hour-and-59 minute threshold.
This is one of the bits in this ongoing story that caught my attention, from Huffpo;
“I should put Obama’s picture on the wall up there,” said an anonymous New Jersey gun salesman to CNBC. “I’d name him salesman of the month!”
But Obama may not be the only reason so many are now interested in packing heat. Analysts say a portion of the increase in sales is due to demographic shifts as well.
“The biggest new group of buyers now are senior citizens,” explained Larry Hyatt, the owner of a North Carolina gun shop, to CNBC’s Closing Bell. “Ten thousand baby boomers a day are turning 65. They can’t run, they can’t fight, they got to shoot.”
Man, and that’s the leading edge of the boomers, too. If it’s 10,000 a day now, what the hell will it be in five years? Is that how all this will come to a screeching halt? Hordes of geriatrics scared of their own shadows and packing serious heat?
Oh, and those Bushmasters and their clones, the AR15 things used in the recent shootings, the ones that will spray a shitload of bullets in a hurry? I called earlier to a couple of the big “sporting goods” stores around here, just to see. Sold out, and waiting lists bigger than the next shipments. And the ammo for them, the .223 cartridge, is pretty hard to find too.
This is just fucking nuts.
Well, I’m all for it. After all, if you protect children from losing their hearing through gunfire, they’ll be able to hear the screams of the people who get shot all the better, won’t they? Bound to do some good eventually.
Totally. Fucking. Insane.
Bluth,
Don’t know about state laws, but they’re regulated by (believe it or not) The National Gun Act of 1934. Which requires a Federal license, a serial # on the silencer itself, and registration of same w/the feds. Whenever the silencer is sold or transferred. Which also requires a $200 fee. Doesn’t sound like much but it was a lot of money in 1934, which of course was the last time it was (and ever could be) raised.
Well, that could be in the works. Check out the first Silencers Are Legal “Shoot” in Dallas, this past April 28.
I’ve never understood homophobia. Was always flattered, if rarely interested…
That “man card” shit is patently ridiculous, but The Da Vinci Code sold about 50 billion copies and there are those among us who think Maureen Dowd is the 2nd coming of Hannah Arendt. One ought never underestimate the effectiveness of schlock and drivel.
A desire for weaponry is pretty basic, I guess. “Use your words” only works if you both have them, and even then there’s nothing quite like the power to…uh…wield power.
Okay, I’ll stop now.
So rarely means maybe every now and again?
Hiya, Bim
Hey Amy,
Yeah, you know, back when I was young, drunk and curious a lot of the time, though I did have my standards, which didn’t include age-spotted lawyers 40 years older than me who were supposed to be helping me turn my life around…
I think I’d better go work on that long-ass poem, which is, essentially, about people who contribute $12 to the bill when the menu price of their lunch was $11.95.
The Bare Necessities for Gunny.
Bagheera!
Is my idol.
Amy – Did you know that Kipling wrote the Jungle Book while living in Vermont?
Amy – I was focusing more on Baloo after Gunny’s tree back scratching comments.
Expat -
No, i didn’t know that!
Yes, i figured it was Baloo and the backscratcing, but i relate a lot more to Bagheera. The grumpy puss in the tree. I have had a lot of black cats and i really wanted to name one Bagheera, but i couldn’t come up with a suitable nickname. I didn’t really want to call them Bag or Baggy.
Well hell, I most enjoyed the singing monkeys. When my dear mother was hospitalized, someone bought her a stuffed monkey; sick as she was, I could still get her to smile with that monkey in my hands, singing, “I wann be like you-hoo-hoo”.
I took a lot of my life-philosophy from Kipling. Many of the accomplishments I now call my own were a direct consequence of the acknowledgement that the female of the species is much more dangerous than the male.
I didn’t really want to call them Bag or Baggy.
When we were trying to come up with a name for my firstborn daughter, my sister suggested, almost insisted on ‘Boudica’.
We didn’t ask her advice when the other munchkins were due to arrive.
Re-reading my comment, I was reminded of when my brother’s daughter was born.
I called to congratulate him, and as per usual, asked who she looked like.
He said, “Have you seen Star Wars”(she now has her Masters in Ed and is well ensconced in the Billings school system – just to date his comment)?
I responded, “Yeah”?
“She looks a lot like Yoda” he said.
I have yet to use that comment to my benefit, although I’ve threatened to do so a couple of times.
Happy New Year to everyone. The good news is – no election in 2013!
I had no idea Kipling wrote the Jungle Book while in Vermont. In fact I had no idea Kipling ever lived in Vermont.
Gunny, it terrifies me that people around my age are rushing out to buy guns. I mean, I can’t hear half the time and I certainly can’t see as well as I used to. Alot of people running around with Bushmasters who are similarly impaired utterly terrifies me.
My friend has the most beautiful black chihuahua that i’m obsessed with, he’s as close to a cat as you could find in a dog. I so love him. I said to her one day, i finally figured out who Otis reminds me of. She said, i know, Yoda, right? Bingo.
Hey guys. As we’re quite a few hours ahead of you, [Blunthner excepted] and it’s already 2013 in Australia — Happy New Year. Hope it brings you all you want and need.
Yeah, thank fuck for that. And a very Happy New Year to you.
Blunthner??? Oops
To all:
this has been a great thread this weekend. I couldn’t add much, yes the world is crazy and many of my fellow Boomers are, as usual, the worst of the lot.
I’m with Elena. Angry frustrated half-deef impulsive old stoners with guns and cataracts . . . . quite a horrible prospect. I trust myself, but I don’t trust them!
A great new year to you all. I will forebear to point out why “no elections” ain’t quite true.
The Great Senatorial Failure this weekend is bad enough. Disgusting.
Expat,
When I was a very small boy, maybe five? I was taken to the house in Vermont where Kipling stayed. By a great aunt who was entirely old enough to have met him when he was staying there, which I think she claimed to have done, but it’s all too deep in the past and anyone I could ask for something even resembling verification is now long dead. I don’t remember much except a stone wall with heavy branches of what might have been a spruce hanging over it. I am pretty sure that at the time the only thing I knew about Kipling was that he had made a book called Puck of Pook’s Hill. I had not read it and was entirely ignorant of it’s contents, save I had taken a good look at the cover and the frontispiece, that had, for some reason, frightened me badly. Maybe it was just the title. Also I may have confounded it with The Light That Failed, which at five was already a terrifying notion. I was pretty sure there was something evil in his book and thus was not pleased to be taken to a scary house where had lived. Maybe I never got past that stone wall. If it even, in fact, exists. Until now I’ve never in my adult life thought about that day even once. Ain’t it amazing what turns up when we ain’t lookin’?
Di,
Not sure I don’t like Blunthner better than Bluthner anyway!
The sun is setting, my offspring are getting ready to start thinking about beginning to commence sprucing themselves up for one party or another. They are all still young enough to consider the turn of the year as a moment of genuine excitement, which I guess has to do with promise of renewal and re-birth. Also fireworks & noisy celebration. And for the older one, drink. And good for them. Me I’m hunkered down just glad to be warm and out of the rain (will it ever cease?) We’ve been going for a record. A few days ago all we needed was 1.8 inches more for 2012 to be the wettest year recorded in England since, well, ever. Not sure if we made it, but given the nature of Englishmen, I’m damn sure it was possible to lay a heavy bet on whether or not we made it, on any high street.
Good news is, elections or no, there’s still plenty coming up to keep kindling heaped on this conversational campfire we got going here. Sometimes it burns down to embers, but never, so far, out, which is a comfort.
Here’s wishing you all, those with heads over the parapet and those not, and everyone in between, a big cup o’kindness yet. And then another cup o’the same for our Gunnison, for kindly and patiently and discreetly and uncomplainingly and so very generously keeping the hearth swept and the logs stacked.
A Happy New Year to all from somewhere in the wilds of Illinois, my first New Year’s Eve outside of Vermont since I moved there almost 14 years ago. Someone is making the huge concession of not watching certain games played with some kind of ball, apparently for the first time ever. The not watching, I mean. I am honored. I think.
I love games with balls. Lots of big pretty boys with tight butts. They pat each other on them too. It’s totally hot.
Bluthner;
Why thank you. Appreciated.
No, the fire won’t go out, not until my last match is struck anyway.
I have a few fun things to do today first (pot roast being one of them, wrangle (hammer, chip, pry, dig, kick) a long-stored walnut log out of a frozen snowbank being another), then later I’ll cobble together the New Year’s Eve prediction/review piece, with some reference to how we all did in that department this time last year.
And y’all need to put peppermills on your Christmas shopping list for next year, too. I’m working toward unleashing a bunch of them on an unsuspecting world in a few months. Chi-chi ceramic grinding mechanisms from Belgium. Rolls Royce beauties, smooth as silk, no joke. Crunch crunch crunch. Yum!
Off out soon to New Year’s Eve dinner; Sq brought up superstitious, so will not be wishing anyone anything until the twelfth bong of Big Ben’s died away . . .(Dinner at Arab friend’s, so bongs will be accompanied by champagne and all the taps being turned on. (Handy, that, in the absence of coal in London and any fires to put it on anyway.)
In any case, given the way things are going in the states, I rather doubt that 2012 will be legally succeeded by 2013 before at least 2016. Or maybe postponed until 2025. So I wouldn’t want to be premature.
Bye
Amy,
“…pretty boys with tight butts.”
A brilliant argument that simply did not occur to me. Someone read it, pondered, and decided that, purely as an undeserved but generous New Year’s treat, I may possibly be allowed a supervised peek or two…
I owe you big time.
Natty -
I’m surprised that it slipped her mind so quickly, i think that’s how i got her to be sociable at some in-laws for T’giving dinner last year.
This just reminded me. A tall and pretty acquaintance of mine, (who seems to be a lot more politically involved than i am these days), seems to be very savvy with regard to the politics of weed, and Colorado’s new law and the state’s preparedness to implement it. As i gave up being a chronic a few decades ago i’m not up to date on the particulars, but it’s pretty fascinating. He says that Co. is totally on top of it, has the system and distribution all set up, and is ready to rake in the tax revenue big time. Unlike Wa. state, which just passed a similar law. Is looking forward to trying to get RI in similar shape (it’s been decriminalized here at least), but as this state can’t get anything right, i’m not holding my breath there.
In fact, Jabs is a chronic too, and also is pretty savvy. He supports government regulation of weed as well.
Amy — It had slipped my mind. So much out of the ordinary has happened in the intervening time that I had completely forgotten all about your tip last year. But for your reminder, Someone might have spent a forlorn day without the customary Worship at Services. As it is, I will Worship a different aspect of said Services, which I’m sure Someone will not mind at all.
Gunny,
I am now on my third pepper mill in as many years. If you can explain to me why modern steel fails after grinding at most a bushel of peppercorns but somebody managed to give my parents got a pepper mill as a wedding present that lasted forty-some years, we’d probably also know why railroads don’t work anymore and Congressmen can’t remember to bring home the bacon.
You have the email address. When you have one ready, use it.
PS. Peppercorn steak runs a close second to cowboy ribeye, and would not be seen as welshing.
PPS. I’m sure that Gryff already knows that “welshing on a bet” is a reference to common English behavior, but I’d hate for him to think that we don’t know that in Pottsylvania as well…
Couldn’t do without mine. I even add black pepper when I roast potatoes…Par boiled, fluffy potatoes, hot fat, chunky sea salt, a vigorous grind of black pepper and a sprinkling of dried thyme. Not the traditional English way but by God they taste good.
Over here though you can buy the black pepper in its own mill, and it’s refillable. Actually lasts longer than a purpose bought mill…Never tried a ceramic one though.
Gunny:
I’ll take one of those pepper grinders too. I go through a lot of the stuff. Send a message on the quiet sideband, when ready.
Our Christmas roast was a fine non-steroid sirloin, marinaded in garlic chunks and large grain black pepper for a couple of days, then roasted slow, wrapped in foil. It was superb.
And Porny: Colorado’s superior organization regarding the really important things does not surprise me. I think that gang in Colorado Springs should give up, and move the Vatican of the Neanderthals to some other state – but not to Nevada!
Kev -
The bugaboo is that the feds can still spoil all of that.
I told my acquaintance the night before the election that i was voting for the legal weed guy because i cared about his future. (Oh yeah, and because i’m anti-war and pro-civil liberties as well).
Everyone –
Happy New Year!
And, yeah, I’ll take a grinder too when they arrive, though I gotta say, just reusing the plastic Trader Joe’s pepper grinders has proven to be remarkably problem free. If only everything in life were so reliable…
Dont want to worry anyone but I checked my calendar and it seems to run out today….
May your 2013 be successful, healthy, happy and generous.
all of you -
Ain’t it Bluthner?
Happy New Year all
Pornilicious One:
Yeah, we all takes our choices, don’t we? I’m not arguing with yours.
Me, living in a Great Basin “swing state”, faced a different dynamic.
There be many Mormons hereabouts.
As for the weed, I think the Fed’s are losing that argument. Hemp will be legal and will be the amazing natural-fiber product of the next decade. I once read a Libertarian screed that asserted a major role for DuPont in the banning of the devil weed in the 1930′s. They had these nifty new products like polyester and such to peddle, you see, and knew that hemp has wonderful properties and uses, aside from the pleasant recreational and medical potential of the buds. So they donated a lot of money for propaganda to help the boys at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, that later morphed into the DEA. A new empire was born. Such is the theory, it may even be true.
Films like this one resulted. I have the DVD, it is worth a view from time to time.
Prior to that, the Fed’s actually subsidized the growing of hemp during the First World War.
So Gunnison, there is my first New Year’s prediction for you, too. Further legalizing of hemp, for all purposes, and at the national level. Elections have consequences and that is one.
Kevin -
Amen to that.
They showed us Reefer Madness in middle school. What i can’t remember is if they were showing it seriously or not.
Maybe.
I can tell you this, there has been a determined effort to legalize industrial hemp here in Colorado for many years, but they have been unable to get it done. You’re right, it’s a wonderful crop with a bazillion uses. An astonishing source of fiber, and completely incapable of getting anyone high. You could smoke a wheelbarrow full and all you’d get is a headache.
The role of Dupont and the synthetic fiber industry in contributing to the repeal of hemp production is pretty well documented. It was grown under government license during WW2 of course, since the Japanese controlled the source we’d come to rely on for making rope for the Navy, among other things.
I can also tell you that a number of municipalities here in Western Colorado have moved lickety-split toward prohibiting the sale or distribution of marijuana, and have already shut down a number of dispensaries.
Even the ski town of Mount Crested Butte outlawed it, with the argument that it would be ‘inappropriate’ for a holiday and recreational destination to be associated with ‘something like that’. If you can make any sense out of that, go for it.
Legalizing hemp would be an astonishingly sensible thing to do. Thus I’m less optimistic than you. I don’t think we’re moving into sensibility for a while yet, not politically anyway.
Gunny:
So, the real dispensary in Mt. Crested Butte will be open at warp speed, but at a suitably higher price.
See you on the new thread.