Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

The gun show was fun, as always. And, also as always, a bit interesting. Gun shows during an election year are always fascinating because you see alot of purchasing habits that normally aren’t present during a non-election year. Now, couple this with the general feelings of unease that many people have regarding the economy and the current state of world affairs and you have a recipe for some good people-watching.

It was nice to see the return of the Saiga-12 shotguns…for a while they were pretty tough to find. There was even a 20-rd drum available for it. That was…tempting.

Ammo was expensive, as usual. Wolf ammo was represented and non-Wolf .223 was largely absent except for small amounts of Fed and Win.

AR mags were in decent supply as were AK and HK mags. ARs and AKs were present in slightly less-than-normal quantities.

MRE’s were completely absent.

I saw all the usual faces (and some of the usual guns) and had a nice time.

After that, it was a trip to the local gold/silver shop. Wanna buy silver? Wanna buy gold? No one seems to have actual physical possession of any salable quantity. THat means if you walked into the shop and said ‘gimme 100 1 oz. coins’ the dealer would most likely say ‘three weeks’. Demand is quite high…so high that apparently theres a premium for immediate delivery. So…demand is high, supply is apparently limited and the price….remains low? Thats not the economic theory I grew up with. Quite obviously something I dont understand going on there.

Then I open todays paper and theres a full page article from some travelling metals merchant saying he’ll be buying scrap silver, gold, coins, etc. at a couple local venues. Hmmmm.

And then there is this gem: A 90 year old woman shot herself when her home went into foreclosure. She survived. Fannie Mae, now owned by .gov, which had her mortgage has forgiven it. This is respopnsible government management of a mortgage agency? Emotional blackmail gets you a free pass on your mortgage? They just paid off this womans mortgage with taxpayer money out of some sense of …guilt? No wonder theyre going broke.

Buckle your seatbelts, its gonna be a bumpy ride.