Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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What firearm or related item do you regret buying, not buying, selling or not selling?

I'll start with: a S&W 8-3/8" .41 Magnum that was on the S&W Forum classifieds about 6 weeks ago for $750. I've wanted an 8-3/8" Smith for a while (preferably not in .22LR), and this was the most affordable I've seen. Not sure why I didn't jump on it. The Middle Magnum has a cult appeal, and the issue of ammo scarcity doesn't bother me since I like reloading for revolvers. Admittedly, the cost of buying new dies, brass and bullets did cross my mind as a negative. I started feeling stupid about a week later.

I'll post some more whining after ya'all join in.
IMR4227: Zero to 900 in 0.001 seconds

I'm only killing paper and my self-esteem.

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Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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I kinda regret selling my Taurus 9mm snubbing after I started reloading. Figured I could roll
my own .38 specials and .357 mags for cheaper than store bought 9mm so I went ahead and sold it to help buy cooler/older revolvers.

True, a 9mm revolver is unnecessary to me now but it's still one I feel an itch for sometime... like a phantom limb or something.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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A Glock is a tool whereas a 1911 is a firearm. If a man could fall in love with his hammer, then maybe emotions would also spring from his Glock...

But being that I love the infallible reliability of an AKM were the world come to an end, maybe I can say that a Glock also has a place in my heart.

I'm sorry, did I just contradict myself? I find that most interesting people often do that.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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Bisbee wrote: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:48 pm If a man could fall in love with his hammer.
I love my old California framing hammer. It's a Hart. I used to smash wood, nails and the occasional thumb with it the brief time period between college and my "real job" and the transformation from calloused to metrosexual office hands. Glory days... I still don't like Glocks, although I've taken a fancy to my equally ugly M&Ps.

Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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Bisbee wrote: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:48 pm A Glock is a tool whereas a 1911 is a firearm. If a man could fall in love with his hammer, then maybe emotions would also spring from his Glock...

But being that I love the infallible reliability of an AKM were the world come to an end, maybe I can say that a Glock also has a place in my heart.

I'm sorry, did I just contradict myself? I find that most interesting people often do that.
I have a leather-handle 20 oz straight claw Estwing hammer I bought in 1975 and paid for part of my college, grad school, and made my living building houses with it for a number of years. It still fits my hand better than any other hammer, even the newer blue-handled curved-claw 20 oz Estwing. When you have a hammer that's perfectly balanced, swings lighter than other brands of 20 oz, and is proven indestructible, and puts food on your table and pays the rent, no matter how abused, 43 years later, it's a tool a person could EASILY love! No other tool I own comes close, not even the Mikita cordless impact driver I've used for just about everything for the last 10 years.

But back on topic, I wish I had bought better quick access small handgun safes, and a bigger rifle safe. The firearms themselves? No regrets.
Last edited by YankeeTarheel on Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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Many many years ago, when I got my first post-college job, I started looking at guns. I was greener than goose squat and had no idea what I was doing. I bought a Ruger Mark 1 or 2, thinking it was a German Luger. It turned out to be a jam-o-matic. I didn't know that it was just dirty, so I traded it for a double barrel shotgun with the curly hammers. Turns out that it had wire-wound barrels and needed black powder shells, so I got rid of it. Those are ones I regret buying.

The big ones I regret selling are my west German Sig 226 and my Colt AR-15 A2 Sporter.
All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty.-Henry Clay
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.—Aristotle

Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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My regret is selling my Ruger Security Six 6 inch stainless 357. I had a gunsmith do a trigger job and it was sweet. In fact a friend I would shoot with liked it as much as his Python. My son came along and the gun got sold to my boss.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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I should have kept my SR22, not because it was super accurate or anything, but because it was just plain fun to shoot. It won me 3 out of 4 Christmas Tree Ornament shoots (25 yards, 5 shots, 2" ornament) with style. And it was fun (did I mention that?)

Still - I sold it on to buy something else, and that something else is also fun. :)
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo.
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Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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Sold my Dan Wesson 15-2VH .357 mag. Revolver to pay for food/utilities back in the early 80's and regretted it. My FIL found one exactly like it 30 years later and left it to we when he died.

Still regret losing the original.

I regret having to buy various Glocks only to sell them when I discovered they were great carry guns but I'm afraid to carry them.

VooDoo
Tyrants disarm the people they intend to oppress.

I am sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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My biggest regret was not selling a gun, but not being able to buy one years ago (1968-ish) when I was about 13 and therefore permanently broke. A little antique shop of the "interesting-but-not-very-good" variety had a Colt revolver in the window. It was for sale for £10 (this was the UK) because it had no trigger or guard. Store owner said it was "bust" and therefore just a curio.....

Even at that age, I could recognise a Patterson when I saw one, and handling it confirmed my theory. Put the trigger back to bed, run out and find my Mum who was just down the road. Would she lend me £10? Not a frikkin' hope!

So I went back and told the guy what he had, and went home heart-broken. :(

I always wondered what happened to it after that.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo.
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Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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Hey, SailDesign, that was a wonderful story. True, in one sense it's sad that you didn't have the means to purchase a treasure for a song at 13 and it must have felt terribly dis-empowering at a formative time in your life. But you know what surprised me about your story? Even at that young age you knew what the gun was worth and (realizing you couldn't buy it for yourself) you shared your knowledge with the shopkeep! That reveals to me a larger treasure the 13 y/o you had inside yourself that unfortunately many people also didn't recognize or value of to tell you. In a sense, you have also been much like the shopkeep all these years.

The owner of that antique store likely used the extra money he earned selling the Colt Patterson to aid his living expenses or help with his children's schooling or whatever. He likely always needed the extra money much more than you ever did. It was wonderful thing you did for him, SailDesign, and in that respect you were incredibly selfless in helping him and his family. But truly, the riches of your character shown that day has already paid you back several times in this lifetime. Don't believe me? Then go ahead and buy that Patterson now! As expensive as they have become, I know you can actually afford it even if it takes selling your entire collection of other toys to pay for this one revolver which would still put you in a better position than the 13 y/o at the store window. Really, not many people in this world can afford to buy a Patterson Colt but the money you've made is a direct result of the strong character that was always a part of you. So show your 13 year old self that y'all are now rich and can decide for yourself where to invest your time and money for the best return in fun experiences.

You'll see there is simply no more regret in simply re-framing the memory of what happened that day.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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Bisbee wrote: Thu Sep 06, 2018 4:25 pm Hey, SailDesign, that was a wonderful story. True, in one sense it's sad that you didn't have the means to purchase a treasure for a song at 13 and it must have felt terribly dis-empowering at a formative time in your life. But you know what surprised me about your story? Even at that young age you knew what the gun was worth and (realizing you couldn't buy it for yourself) you shared your knowledge with the shopkeep! That reveals to me a larger treasure the 13 y/o you had inside yourself that unfortunately many people also didn't recognize or value of to tell you. In a sense, you have also been much like the shopkeep all these years.

The owner of that antique store likely used the extra money he earned selling the Colt Patterson to aid his living expenses or help with his children's schooling or whatever. He likely always needed the extra money much more than you ever did. It was wonderful thing you did for him, SailDesign, and in that respect you were incredibly selfless in helping him and his family. But truly, the riches of your character shown that day has already paid you back several times in this lifetime. Don't believe me? Then go ahead and buy that Patterson now! As expensive as they have become, I know you can actually afford it even if it takes selling your entire collection of other toys to pay for this one revolver which would still put you in a better position than the 13 y/o at the store window. Really, not many people in this world can afford to buy a Patterson Colt but the money you've made is a direct result of the strong character that was always a part of you. So show your 13 year old self that y'all are now rich and can decide for yourself where to invest your time and money for the best return in fun experiences.

You'll see there is simply no more regret in simply re-framing the memory of what happened that day.
Bisbee - I thank you for that, but in reality I must confess that it was probably closer to "sour grapes." If I can't have it for cheap, then no-one else can.

But I'd like to think there was some of what you mention. :)

Again - Thank you!
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo.
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Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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Looks like Sail has a crushing lock on the trophy here, but don't let that stop you from posting your petty discontents.

My second-string regret is selling my 10 mm pistols. I just got the check from the consignment shop on Monday. It took only a few weeks after dropping them off there at the beginning of summer to start second-guessing that.

The base-model Witness wasn't accurate enough to be interesting for range use (not terrible, but not as great as some people say). My thinking was that my 4" GP100 is good enough as a trail gun, since I rarely go hiking anyway. The PNW just reported the second kill of someone by a cougar of the summer. I guess six rounds "for sure" of .357 should be enough, but I still have a few small twinges of regret.

More profoundly troubling, the Witness Hunter was mechanically accurate enough (despite my crap skills and eyes, I regularly shot 2 to 2.5" groups off a mediocre rest at 25 yards, which I consider good for me), but it seemed to aggravate my flinch even more than the Redhawk. I guess I am infatuated with revolvers. I was also peeved that the small (2 mm?) roll pin holding together the two pieces of the guide rod broke during my last range session, allowing the long part of the rod to eject from the front of the slide. Since I couldn't seem to score well with the Hunter in our Bullseye league, my intention is to replace it with a 9 mm, either a Glock 34 or a 1911. The single-stack probably makes more sense. However, the difficulty of actually making a fucking decision about what to get to replace it makes me wish that before selling it I'd first experimented with putting a light spring in the Hunter and drastically down-loading the ammunition, since I was handloading everything I shot anyway. That process would not suffer from paralysis by analysis. Unfortunately, someone had put a lay-away deposit on the gun almost immediately, so I couldn't retrieve it from the shop after a month.

Now I get to look forward to regretting whatever 9 mm I buy! Or maybe stupidly buying a 10 mm 1911 (since I have all those .40 bullets lying around) and *really* regretting that.
IMR4227: Zero to 900 in 0.001 seconds

I'm only killing paper and my self-esteem.

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Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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I regret selling my 1952 Russian SKS, moneys used to buy first gaming PC parts...that got me into IT also.
I sold a POS .38 special Revolver (unknown cheapo brand) my Aunt passed off on me, she said she "found it", it was filthy and falling apart so I got rid of it for $40 at a Gun & Pawn and never looked back.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.

Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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I've got lots of regrets, but I always figure that had I NOT made the screw-ups and fuck-ups I made, and done the things I wince at when I remember them, I would not have the life and family I have today, and would have missed out on so much.

But I do have regret my brothers and I didn't keep closer tabs on our mom--She had a couple of things we made her promise not to sell without telling us first...and she sold them anyway without telling us and got BURNED! The worst: My brother's a car guy and she had a gorgeous 1967 Pontiac LeMans convertible with a '69 GTO 400 cubic inch engine--fire-engine red! It had frame troubles and rather than selling it to him, who could fix it, she sold it for FAR less than it was worth--without talking to him first. I learned to drive on that car and loved driving it whenever I was home from college.

This ain't it...but it's what it looked like!

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"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: Regrets? We've had a few, I'll bet...

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I regret selling a 70s Colt Commander . . . . . It was court-ordered (an expunged concealed weapon misdemeanor that wouldn't even be illegal today)
Anyway, I sold it to a friend for $200 for safekeeping, with the understanding I would buy it back for the same amount when I finished probation in 2 years.

That was in 1988 - I'm still looking for him. A deal is a deal; we shook on it.

Other than that, I regret buying a couple handguns with terrible triggers - a SIG Mosquito, and a S&W 5906. Both were surprises, considering their pedigrees. I'll chalk those up to lack of research, though.

BTW - Yankee Tarheel - I had a burgundy '65 Le Mans that my Dad made me sell when I went off to college. I still miss that car . . .
If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there - George Harrison
Don't go where the road don't go - Ringo Starr

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