Posse Incitatus

The bullet bubble has crested

 

Has the bullet-bubble passed its zenith? Based on our highly subjective survey of local stores, the Posse thinks so.

Over the last week, I’ve noticed ammunition returning to local store shelves. It is an uneven process to be sure – some merchants have more than others – but the trend is there.

Those stores with the lightest inventory are also those who have raised their prices the least. Again, this makes perfect sense. Walmart hasn’t hiked its prices, so people will continue to buy up all they have. Other stores that have increased their prices are able to keep more ammunition in stock because the price is simply higher than most people are willing to pay. The fact that the ammo is there to be bought also is eliminating some of the panicked hoarding.

I also noticed that the quota signs are disappearing. A month ago, customers were limited to a box maybe two per day. Now you can buy all you want – if you’re willing to pay through the nose.

This provides yet another lesson in basic economics: demand for a product outstrips supply, two things can happen.

If the price is increased, the quantity demanded will fall, which brings supplies back into balance.

If the price is not increased, the result will be a shortage, which some stores have sought to remedy by using a rationing system. If it wasn’t so inconvenient, I would enjoy this neat little episode in microeconomics.

I’ve read on other sites that the backorders are still quite vast and that it may be a while for prices to reach their pre-election levels. To a certain extent, this is true.

On the other hand, the pessimists stating that current prices are “the way it will be from now on,” are utterly wrong. Barring some new political or macro-economic development (federal ammunition taxes rising, gun control being pushed by Congress or a surge in commodity prices, for example), I expect ammo prices will slowly settle back down to where they were.

It was a bubble, and bubbles burst. They did it with tech stocks, housing and now bullets. To put it another way, a 200 to 300 percent price increase in something as easy to manufacture as ammunition is simply not sustainable over the long haul – especially when the actual inputs in production are getting cheaper. Metals are a lot lower than they were this time last year, and with unemployment rising, labor costs are also flat or falling.

To put it another way, ammunition manufacturers and retailers can make plenty of money at last year’s prices.

Eventually the hoarders will have as much as the think they need while the more casual shooters will hold off on purchases.

Meanwhile, the shelves will slowly refill. As they do, the sense of panic will fade and buyers will become even more sensitive to price – after all, what’s the hurry? Maybe they’ll buy a box or two instead of a case, which means that inventories will continue to build.

As the ammo begins to pile up, store owners will come to the conclusion that it’s better to sell product than have it lying around with large price tags.

I don’t have a time frame on this, but anecdotal evidence suggests the process is already in its first stages.

The end of the eco-apocalypse

Here is a thought experiment.

Imagine that a few months from now, someone somewhere makes a breakthrough discovery in energy technology that solves all of our power needs without using fossil fuels or generating carbon dioxide as a byproduct.

I’m not going to explore possible technologies that make this happen, that would be beside the point. Just assume (like any good Star Trek fan) that the technology exists and it works.

Now ask yourself: how would the environmental movement react?

I think that there would be monumental denial (in the psychological sense). I don’t mean at the instant of the announcement, I mean once the full implications dawned on us.

I mean, if fuel is essentially free of cost, why not build the biggest car you can? If energy is no longer polluting, what purpose does Earth Hour serve?

These people have a lot emotionally invested in the eco-apocalypse they have convinced themselves is just around the corner. Do they become like Shakers and gradually disappear? Do they find some new cause to champion? Do they smash the new engines that took away their favorite nightmare?

At some point, I think that the technology will be found.  And when it does, a lot of the rationale for the green movement - and the control it has tried to exercise over our lives - will vanish.

Greenpeace had better start diversifying its portfolio.

The salvation numbers game

 

One of the more fascinating aspects of religious worship here in the United States is how it often is viewed as a popularity contest.

Given that we are an elective republic where numbers equals clout, there is a certain amount of logic to the proposition that a building a larger community of believers is a good thing. However, there seems to me to be a tension between the drive to recruit converts while remaining true to the precepts of one’s faith.

This article in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye for exactly this reason. It is about a small congregation that has split (or wishes to split) from its national affiliate over the issue of same-sex “marriage.” I found the national organization’s stand on this interesting:

Center Congregational voted in 2006 to leave the denomination and join the more conservative National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, a much smaller group based in Wisconsin. The Atlantans were not alone in leaving. About 200 churches bolted over the marriage issue, says a spokesman at UCC headquarters in Cleveland. The denomination claims that it more than made up for such losses by gaining new members who were attracted by its gay-marriage stand. [emphasis added]

I have to admit that the first thing I thought when I saw this was “really?” Simply by supporting homosexual “marriage” the denomination gained 200 churches’ worth of new members? Where did they come from? Were they non-church goers who suddenly decided to start showing up again, disaffected members who came back, or disgruntled adherents of other denominations who suddenly found a home?

This may sound like I’m calling the honesty of the UCC into question, but I’m genuinely interested in this because their experience (if true) is contrary to the experience of almost all other Protestant denominations. That is, the more they have become “hip,” the more their pews have emptied.

To be sure, there are some megachurches that can pack ‘em in the aisles, but these tend to be localized and highly personality-based. I don’t know if any of them have passed the test of moving beyond the first generation.

Digging a little deeper, I am kind of fascinated by how churches can change their doctrine – and that they would cite more members as a reason for doing so. After all, if one believes that religion is a form of revealed truth, numbers should not mean all that much. In fact, I would think just the opposite: the degree of truth in a faith is often revealed by how much privation its followers are willing to endure because of it. The whole history of the early Christian Church is filled with tales of martyrdom, which continues (unfortunately) to the present day.

Still, there is an undeniable temptation to play to the crowd in order to keep the pews full. I'm curious as to the theological arguments in favor of watering down the liturgy in order to bring in more tithes.  Are people who join only after you've diluted the dogma still fully saved - as saved as those that died before it was changed?

Archery redux

It has been a while since I discussed archery on this blog, largely because I haven’t had much time to enjoy the sport.

Over the weekend, I built a cardboard target suitable for the light recurve bows we have. Yesterday I finally got to try it out. It was excellent.

Because the ranch isn’t particularly large, the range to the target isn’t very great, but it’s a sufficient challenge for the younger Posse members (and my own out of practice self) to make it worthwhile.

As noted before, archery is an excellent sport in its own right, but it’s also a great way to introduce youngsters to the shooting sports. Many of the same fundamentals apply: range discipline, good judgment, and hand-eye coordination. I must have spent a half an hour shooting with the Senior Princess and it was highly relaxing. Tonic for the soul.

It has the added advantage of being very affordable: you can use arrows again and again the replacement costs for a set of basic target arrows will run you less than a box of most ammunition – assuming you can find any.

Cold War nostalgia

I am old enough to remember the bad old days of the Cold War, when global thermonuclear war was always just around the corner and the Doomsday Clock was perpetually within 300 seconds of midnight and the end of the world.

Of course, back then they made movies about how awful nuclear war would be, how dangerous atomic weapons were and how important it was to keep these horrific weapons away from just about everyone.

Those were the days when the Europeans still had some backbone: NATO was a functional alliance that stared straight into the cannon’s mouth. The Bundeswehr, the West German Army, was a no-nonsense organization that trained its conscripts for point-blank range combat with the Red Army. War was serious business.

How times have changed.

North Korea has atomic weapons and we’re all fine with it. They tested them before, and it fizzled, and we all shrugged. Now it seemed to have worked, and in short order they’ll figure a way to put it on a rocket and send it somewhere, and that will be that.

The Iranians will probably cut a deal for the design, and we’ll call for more diplomacy, and then Egypt and Saudi Arabia will get their own bombs and everyone will be okay because if you can’t trust isolated psychotic dictators or hate-spewing apocalyptic mullahs with nuclear weapons, who can you trust?

Well, us. Obviously.

We should get rid of ours. We should also disarm cops. After all, if police officers didn’t have guns, criminals wouldn’t need them. It’s that simple.

Anyhow, I’m looking forward to the administration’s arguments for dismantling our nascent missile defense weapons. Should be entertaining.

Memorial Day, 2009 - Remembering Capt. Sean Grimes

Four years ago this March, a good man died in the cause of freedom. 

Capt. Sean Grimes was killed by roadside bomb in Iraq at time when it was not certain that the United States had the will to stay the course.

For those of us who understood what was at stake, it was clear that we had a moral imperative to stick things out.  It was also clear that we had the means to win so long as we kept the will.  In the years since, we have been vindicated.  If the war is lost, it will largely be the fault of the Iraqis themselves.  We have done our best.

It is a beautiful day here in Michigan.  The sun in shining and the air is cool and refreshing.  It is a great day for a picnic, a bike ride, for relaxing and savoring a spring day.

In an alternate reality, Sean is married now, perhaps a father, and enjoying a picnic of his own.

Maybe through facebook I would have caught up with him, and we could have compared stories.  He could tell me about life in the sandbox, and I could regale him with the humdrum follies of garrison life at an Air National Guard base.

Instead, he's gone, and this site is now a keeper of his memory.  Instead of having a beer and brat with him, or sending him an email, or giving him a call, we send instead a prayer that his soul be at rest and that his loved ones find solace.  we also pray that his sacrifice - and the sacrifices of thousands of others - not be forgotten or be in vain.

A gun control learning curve?

We've been somewhat pessimistic about whether the Obama administration is foolish enough to push gun control, but this column by the Wall Street Journal gives us renewed hope:

No fewer than 27 Democrats voted for Mr. Coburn's amendment [to allow loaded firearms in federal parks], and the ayes included Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is up for re-election in Nevada next year.

It's not much, but we'll take it.

Meanwhile, closer to home, Michigan's gun laws got a little more sensible.  Public Acts 194, 195, and 196 of 2007 remove the requirement that pistols purchased in Michigan be physically inspected by local law enforcement.  It is now sufficient to mail the forms in.  This is an improvement, though given our current budget crisis, it seems a good time to simply eliminate the worthless pistol registry outright.

Still, if a heavily Democrat House and Democrat Governor (who, lest anyone forget, originally vowed to overturn Michigan's shall-issue concealed carry law by ballot initiative) will sign on to this, it is indicative that gun control isn't viewed as a winning issue even in a rapidly bluing state like Michigan.

This is not to suggest that we should become complacent.  As the WSJ article indicate, gun control is still a deeply held value for the liberal Democrat leadership in Washington.  No, our goal should ultimately be to achieve such a consensus in favor of gun rights that the issue disappears altogether -after the gun control laws have been repealed, of course.

The bullet bubble

Where have all the bullets gone?

Over the past couple of years, the Posse has been remiss in our attention to firearms-related issues. Our long-time readers may have begun to drift away since gun reviews have been few and far between.

Earlier this year, we promised to devote more space to firearms. We made plans to purchase a new handgun and planned on documenting the first trip to the range.

Alas, no bullets.

Experienced shooters know that 9mm Parabellum is a pretty common caliber and that it has a lot of nice things going for it. Recoil is low, noise isn’t too bad, it does a decent amount of damage to the target and it has the added virtues of being easy to obtain and relatively inexpensive.

Until now.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve checked a variety of stores in the Lansing area and most are cleaned out. No bullets for you. Some of the smaller gun shops have ammo, but it is very expensive (almost twice what it would normally be) and there is a limit of one box per customer per day.

Needless to say, we’re holding off on those trips to the gun range.

A variety of theories have been floated as to why it is so hard to obtain ammunition, ranging from sinister Obama administration plots to war-related needs, but the simple truth of the matter (and what all the gun industry organizations are saying) is that people have basically created a “bullet bubble.”

One of the great achievements of the 1990s was the development of electronic inventory controls. These allowed retailers to track each item sold in real time, making reorders that much easier. They could then pass this information on to wholesalers, distributers and manufacturers. The end result was a much more efficient production chain that lowered costs – and this savings was passed on to consumers.

The great unforeseen side effect of this “just-in-time” delivery system is that even the slightest uptick in sales can cause shortages because stores and distributers no longer have large warehouses filled with excess merchandise. They stock what they sell. It’s pretty amazing when you look into it. Even something as mundane as cans of beans are meticulously tracked and it is possible for every grocery store to know what their average bean sales are for the given week – ensuring that they order just the right amount to keep the shelves comfortably full.

Ammunition is no different. When Barack Obama was elected, there was understandable fear that he might try gun control (a topic I’ve addressed more than once).

This in turn caused gun owners to buy a little extra ammunition – just to be on the safe side. A funny thing happened when sales began to pick up: the shelves became bare. This in turn led to fears of a shortage, causing people to buy even more.

As the quantity demanded rose and the quantity supplied fell, prices began to rise (see, I remember some of my Econ 101). This is why stores are not only able to raise the price of bullets, but to charge through the nose for them and limit the amount you can buy.

According to both the suppliers and the retailers I’ve spoken with, the “bullet bubble” is getting ready to burst. This is because, like all bubbles, this one carries with it the seeds of its own demise.

The high prices have convinced a lot of casual shooters (like me) to hold off buying. The hard core folks are reaching their own saturation point. They could be out of money, out of space, or simply feel that they have enough on hand for any emergency.

So at some point, the shelves will start to fill back up. When that happens, I would expect the price to crater just as it did in housing and tech stocks because there will be a glut on the market. Once ammo starts reappearing on the shelves, the people who’ve been stockpiling it will start using what they have. Of course, since they bought enough to last years, they aren’t likely to be needing any more any time soon.

For our gun-fearing readers, it is worth pointing out that you can have this same dynamic with almost any product. For example, consider what would happen if rumors began to spread that Coke would shortly cease production (for whatever reason). Immediately, sales would surge. The shelves would start to thin out and retailers would be unable to keep them restocked.

Soon consumers would be calling store after store, looking for supplies that might have been overlooked. Prices would rise, and some stores would probably place limits on the amount that could be purchased. Eventually, the panic would subside and, once that happened, the sales of Coke would probably drop to almost nothing since the most dedicated drinkers of the product would likely have cases of the stuff piled around their houses.

So here’s to hoping the bubble bursts soon. I’d like to go shooting sometime this year.

Movie Review: Star Trek

The Posse took in the new Star Trek movie last night and it was quite enjoyable.

The hard-core fans should be satisfied with its nods to “canon” Star Trek lore, while the action and pacing keep it interesting for everyone else.

I fall into the latter category. I used to think Star Trek was pretty cool, but burned out by the fourth movie, which I think was the last one I saw in the theater. I happen to own a copy of Gene Roddenberry’s book on the series first published in 1968. It’s interesting not only for the background material it provides about the Trek universe, but also the window it opens into late 1960s network television production.

A couple of thing stand out, one of which is the positively Byzantine politics behind getting a show on the air.

More relevant to this discussion, however, is the fact that Star Trek was nothing more than Roddenberry’s latest attempt to sell a show. He’d come up with several, but this was his most ambitious project and clearly his most successful – though that wasn’t clear at the time.

Hugely expensive to produce, the subject of massive rewrites (the “captain’s yeoman” was an integral part that got thrown over the side rather quickly) and recasting (Majel Barrett got “demoted” from executive officer to nurse), it never lived up to what it was supposed to be: a ratings powerhouse. (This, by the way, puts it in considerable contrast to the original Battlestar Galactica, which dominated its Sunday night time slot and its pilot episode boasted one of the largest audiences ever).

The point is that there is no real Star Trek mystique, when you get down to it. As William Shatner put in it in the classic Saturday Night Live skit 20 years ago, it was a show they did for a lark in the 1960s, nothing more.

Knowing that, and reading the bios of the actors in the 1960s – people who wanted nothing more than to make it big and bring home a paycheck – puts the new movie into a different perspective.

It was an amazing cast, and they clearly each brought something to their characters – which were also drawn with a keen eye for drama. Most of them were seasoned bit-part players, and this was their big break. They did the most they could with it. It helped that Roddenberry and his writers were happy to do “feature episodes” that focused on some of the minor characters.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the characters were thinly drawn, which allowed the actors to flesh them out. Mark Steyn notes that James Doohan was able to determine the nationality and first name of his character because the writers hadn’t really fleshed him out that much. So a large part of what make the original cast work so well was that the actors had an unusually large stake in fleshing out their own roles.

I should say at this point that the remake (which is actually a reboot) avoids the pitfalls of having its actors imitate other actors. This is nice, and a good way to go. They are doing what stage actors have done for generations: take an existing character and put their own imprint on it. It’s kind of funny to think of Star Trek as the Shakespeare of our time, but there you are.

So the acting is fine. Still, watching them basically use time-travel to utterly rewrite the entire thing, I couldn’t help but wonder if enough is enough already. Clearly the franchise was all played out, but I’m not sure this was the way to reinvigorate it. You’ve basically got a show about the future that has apparently run out of future. Their solution is to re-do the past. Not a good sign for a genre that feeds off of creativity.

Anyhow it is a fun movie to watch and maybe its wholesale rejection of the Star Trek canon will help strip away the decades of geekdom that have dominated it and turn it into just another genre.

Recruiting follies

Things have been super busy around the ranch, hence the delay in addressing this article from the Freep.

There are two reasons why U-M’s recruiting has gotten so much attention.

The first is that it fills the news hold during the off season.  In a media-intensive world, people want to read about their favorite teams right now.  Waiting until the late summer is a drag, so let’s see what the high school kids are doing!

This isn’t unique to U-M, of course, so I give them a pass on it (which isn’t to say I approve, far from it – I merely point out that this problem is not unique to the Skunk Bears).

The second reason is unique to U-M and that is that recruiting takes some of the heat off of coach Rich Rodriguez’s terrible performance.  He (and his media cheerleaders) have aggressively embraced the myth that Lloyd Carr “left the cupboard bare” when he retired.  As the above article shows, it simply isn’t true.  Carr left behind top-rated recruits and RichRod simply failed to properly utilize them.

This latter point totally undermines the secondary argument of RichRod’s defenders: that he had to lose games because the shift to his (allegedly superior) system was so radical.

Compare and contrast:

When John L. Smith took over, MSU’s program in far worse shape – and he also brought the spread.  His first season was 8-5.  That proved to be a fluke, unfortunately, but Smith’s successor, Mark Dantonio took a talent-deprived spread team to a 7-6 first season and 9-4 second season.  Indeed, MSU in Dantonio’s first year was a basket case, suffering from years of neglect and mismanagement, but somehow it compiled a winning record.

That’s what we call coaching.

Lest anyone accuse me of just throwing bricks at Michigan, I will point out that John Beilein, U-M’s basketball coach has

RichRod has to emphasize his recruiting because it is the only way he can justify keeping his grossly overpaid job.  You see it on the discussion boards:  “Wait until these new guys come on board!  We’ll be great then!” which is another way of saying “This next season is going to be terrible.”

So it is very much in his interest to hype his latest four-star freshman phenom and to point to otherwise meaningless recruiting rankings as a reason to draw his enormous paycheck.

This line of argument basically makes it possible for RichRod to delay his judgement day for two or three more years – basically until his first “full” recruiting class have been in the system for two years.  By then of course he’s pocketed a couple of million dollars AND gotten U-M to fully pay off his liabilities from WVU (remember, he has to pay $500,000 per year for three years, so he needs this gig for a least one more season).

At that point, he can start looking for a better gig in a less demanding environment and basically write off his failure at Michigan as a “culture conflict” or “not meshing well with the Big Ten,” which we all know is the conference the national press loves to hate.