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BLACK MARKET M16 PRICES

I ran across this little piece over at tinfoil hat constant doom website extraordinaire, zerohedge. Sometimes there is some pretty interesting stuff there and this is one of those times. It’s amusing to look at these prices and the cost for a legally transferable Class 3 M16. I won’t mention the tax payer money spent to buy these originally since its so close to tax season.

In 2017, Statista put together an infographic about the price of an AK-47 on the black market and the weapon had an average cost of anywhere between $1,135 in Belgium and $2,100 in Syria. Calibre Obscura, a fascinating website and Twitter account devoted to research on arms in the hands of non-state groups, has now published data on the average price of an M16 in various countries.

Focusing on the Middle East and North Africa, the price levels are based on local sources, focusing on the M16A2 and A4 variants of the American assault rifle in late 2019. Those weapons end up on sale in a variety of ways from the Taliban capturing them from Afghan army and police units to those same security forces themselves deciding to sell their weapons to various groups. It is also likely that U.S.-manufactured weapons have been captured from Saudi forces in the Yemen conflict where they have subsequently gone on sale.

As the chart shows, perhaps the great arbitrage trade in the world is shipping M16s from Syria to Lybia… just be careful…

Infographic: The Average Cost Of An Illegally Purchased M16 | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

Across the Middle East and North Africa, the gun has the highest average price in Tripoli where it is said to cost in excess of $12,000, though it is thought to be practically unobtainable there.

Elsewhere, it’s far cheaper, however, fetching between $2,500 and $3,000 in parts of Yemen.

In Helmand province in Afghanistan and Idlib in Syria, the weapon can be purchased for less than $1,000.

Silencers and Semi-autos – A Parable

Imagine that you have a friend who is ready to buy his first AR15. Instead of following any reasonable advise, they go to a gun show and buy a random AR from one of these fly by night companies no one has ever heard of before or will hear of again.

Then they have some issues. Not being the sort to just settle, they work them out. Now your friend goes online and is is an “experienced expert” on the AR15. They go into great detail on how you have to take the gas block off and open up the gas port with a drill to get the gun to be reliable. How you need to take a file and open up the back of the mag well so that magazines will seat correctly. How there are so very many things you need to do to make an AR15 a reliable combat worthy firearm.

You try to tell them that none of that would have been necessary had they bought the right AR15 to begin with, but instead they insist that this work needs to be done to ALL AR15s.

Wouldn’t that be pretty damned infuriating? In the good ol’ days you might punch a man in the face for being so obstinately wrong, but we are more polite than that now.

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There are people out there who claim that you have to use an adjustable gas block with a silencer. That all silencers cause excessive back pressure. That you need to switch buffers or change the gas system when running a silencer on an AR15.

This isn’t a matter of someone buying a cheap junky silencer to put on a cheap junky rifle, this is a matter of compatibility. Someone can buy a top of the line silencer and throw it on a semi auto and run into issues because the silencer was designed with bolt actions in mind. It might be the best silencer to put on a bolt action, but no consideration was made as to back pressure with that design. So when they throw it on a semi-auto, suddenly they have an over gassed gun. Now this expert tells everyone that every silencer will cause an over gassed gun. No, your bolt gun silencer will cause an over gassed semi-auto.

I saw a post on a forum today where someone was wanting to suppress a standard M4 configuration AR15. They said that they knew that a mid length 14.5 would be better for being silenced (WTF did that come from? Someone show me the research that says that.) This person was worried if it would even work at all, or if they would have to get an adjustable gas system and tune the buffer weights, etc.

Fortunately several people responded that they had the same setup and didn’t have to change a thing.

Yes, all guns can be tuned and improved, and that isn’t what I am talking about. I’m talking about those loud mouthed know-it-all’s, that once tried to make a soup sandwich and failed, that now claim that all sandwiches are bad.

SHE WAS SURPRISED BY THE FOOM!

We’ve all seen these people. dying of some lung disease or other but still they ain’t going to give up their true love of smoking.

A 61-year-old North Carolina woman was killed when she smoked while hooked up to an oxygen tank, according to a report.

Belinda Coble was smoking a cigarette around 8 a.m. Tuesday as oxygen was being administered at her home in Zebulon, 20 miles northeast of Raleigh, news station WNCN reported.

The cigarette caused her oxygen tank to ignite, which resulted in an explosion, authorities said. Yea. my Dad was on oxygen the last few years before he died. And there was a no smoking and flammable sign stuck all over everything. Who knew flames and oxygen aren’t a good mix?

Her husband was asleep when the incident occurred, but called 911 when the blast and smoke alarm woke him, the outlet reported. He then attempted to put out the fire.

Coble was pronounced dead when authorities arrived, WNCN reported

Hey, at least she died doing what she loved. Killing herself by smoking.