Buy one now, before downsizing makes them extinct!
I like to look at car brochures online and it is interesting to read about the cars from my teenage years. These were the beasts that ruled the road when Mark and I were in high school. Oddly enough, even after the gas crises of 1973, people still bought huge, gas-hungry cars. And since the primitive emissions controls of the era lowered compression ratios (and ran rich and burned the extra gas in the exhaust manifold - I kid you not!) they got even worse gas mileage than their predecessors. We're talking 7-8 miles per gallon, here, folks!
So why did people buy these monstrosities? They were hard to park, hard to drive, not very comfortable, and not very roomy (ironically). When GM "downsized" their Chevrolet Caprice in 1977, it actually had more interior room than before. The "big cars" of the 1970s were big, but had a lot of useless space. Open the hood, and the radiator was nearly four feet behind the grill! Doors were a foot thick, so all that width didn't provide any interior space. They were wasteful designs based more on form than function.
So why did people buy these whale-like cars well into the late 1970's? And why did they stop? The second question is easier to answer. By 1979, there were even more severe gas shortages, with even and odd gas days (you could only buy gas on an odd day if the last digit on your license plate was odd, etc.) and limits to 5 gallons per purchase. In many instances, gas stations would simply close as they were out of gas. Or they would claim to be "out" and save their remaining fuel for their best customers (who no doubt paid a kick-back).
By then, the 8-mpg car was just not workable. I recall in the early 1980s, my brother bought a Chrysler New Yorker (coupe no less!) for $500. Back then, you could buy these whales for a few hundred dollars, as you would "pay at the pump" for the car in terms of shitty gas mileage.
As to the first question, well, since they couldn't compete with the Japanese, the American car makers sold scarcity. They literally had ads on television and in the media touting that these were the "last of the real American cars!" and would someday become collectors items. Better buy now, before they are all gone!
And that sold a lot of whale cars. But few became collector's items. Even today, 40+ years later, we see examples of "low mileage" survivor cars for sale, in pristine condition, selling in the low five-figures. Someone retired to Florida and kept the car in a garage and rarely drove it, thinking it would be worth a fortune. They would have made more money on savings bonds. While 1970's cars are starting to spark interest in collectors, they are hard to restore as there is a dearth of replacement parts available - particularly interior and exterior trim pieces and engine emissions parts (if you want to do a 10/10 restoration, that is). The plastic trim pieces are not as easy to restore and repair as the old "pot metal" and stainless steel trim of earlier eras.
Plus, well, no one wants to drive a whale car. A hopped-up "muscle car" from the 1960s? Sure, there is a market for that. A luxo-barge from 1976? Few takers, other than perhaps the gays.
So what's the point? Well, it struck me that the gun industry uses the same scarcity technique, or more precisely, the threat of scarcity, to sell a lot of guns. And quite frankly, all throughout the pandemic, various companies used this idea to sell product at top prices. They would start a rumor that such-and-such (toilet paper, paper towels, baby formula, frozen french fries, whatever) would soon be in short supply. Better stock up now, while you still can! And people did, in a frenzy, making the prognostication of the shortage come true.
With guns, the same is true. When I was a kid, more people owned guns (as a percentage of the population) than today. Today, fewer people own firearms, but the few that do, own an awful lot of them. I wrote before about Gun Nutz, and it isn't hard to figure out whether you are a firearm owner or a gun nut.
Firearm owners are responsible with their weapons. They keep them safely stored, out of the reach of children. They only buy as many firearms as they need. If they hunt, they may have a few hunting rifles - not military-looking assault-style weapons. They may have one or two weapons for home defense, but not an arsenal. And no, they don't own thousands of rounds of ammunition. If they are a collector, they have a carefully curated collection of interesting weapons - not just a willy-nilly collection of arms of recent manufacture that caught their eye at the gun shop or show.
The Gun Nutz, on the other hand, don't hunt at all. They collect guns because of... reasons. They claim to live in fear of home invasion or burglary, or being robbed on the street. They stockpile arms and make noises about the coming insurrection or the "gub-ment" being out to get them. They aren't just nuts, they are preserving America! But the main reason they often give, if you poke them, is that they are buying now before Obama/Hillary/Pelosi/Biden/Whoever outlaws guns forever!
And that is a line that the gun industry has touted - maybe not in ads in Field and Stream, but they let this message percolate - it sells weapons. I noted before my massage therapist had a friend who had tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition, as he was afraid that Obama would somehow outlaw ammunition (an end-run on the Second Amendment, no doubt!) and he needed to stockpile for "the inevitable." This is mental illness. And it will not end well - it hasn't ended well.
Despite these paranoid theories that the "gub-ment is coming for your guns!" the dreaded gun shortage has yet to materialize. And unless both houses of Congress can pass an amendment to the Constitution and get 2/3rds of the States to ratify it, the Second Amendment isn't going away anytime soon. While in the past, it was possible to regulate the sale of firearms (and still is, to some extent) to prevent felons from buying them, or forcing people to register them, it has never been possible to outright ban all firearms. And of course, in recent times, the few restrictions on weapons that have existed have been wiped away by a conservative Supreme Court.
In short, it is a golden era for firearms ownership, despite that the conspiracy theorists say. Not only have most gun regulations been struck down (such as DC's ban on handguns) but regulations on carrying firearms are largely a thing of the past. New York's century-old permit-to-carry law was stuck down by the Supreme Court. For some reason, America was cool with concealed-weapons permits for over 100 years, but today they are seen as tyranny.
So, if the "impending scarcity" argument doesn't hold water, what does that leave? Well, again, many Gun Nutz are quite open about this - they are pining for a Civil War, where they can just go out and shoot whoever they don't like. The neighbor who borrowed the lawn mower and returned it broken? BAM! Dead! Those Democrats down the street? BAM! Dead! Those two Lesbians who run the organic vegan cafe? BAM! BAM! Dead!
It seems that humanity has a self-destruct cycle, that operates every few decades. Perhaps this is because we are top predators on our planet and nothing keeps our population in check, other than wars, Civil and otherwise. With the advent of nuclear weapons, World Wars are no longer an option, so we've had to settle for these localized proxy conflicts that kill off people in third world countries. Sort of like how in Interview with a Vampire, the Vampire tries to give up attacking humans by sucking the blood out of small animals. It just isn't as satisfying as the real thing.
Of course, a lot of this nonsense is being driven by outside forces. There are only three real powers in the world today - China, Russia, and the West. And we've seen how desperate Russia really is. They have, however, been masters of the chess game of manipulation of public opinion, and much of this incitement to violence has been festered by them, using online trolls. We are already seeing the "misfires" when wind-up soldiers go off on a preschool or shopping mall. They are the outliers, or test runs. There are millions more like them, armed to the teeth, waiting for some secret instruction or direction to "fight like hell!" for some ambiguous cause.
And therein lies the difference between collecting old whale cars and stockpiling guns. While cars can kill people, they weren't designed to do so. Nor are they a talisman of radical political thinking. Impending scarcity was used to get these folks to arm themselves.
What's the next step?
And more importantly, what can anyone do about it?
