Every month, I have an editorial meeting with my friend and editor Andrew Poplin. During these meetings, Andrew gives me feedback on my prior posts and assigns me my work for the upcoming month.
We also talk about a lot of other subjects like music, sports, and guns. Basically, if it’s a subject that two red-blooded American dudes enjoy discussing, we’ve covered it.
During our most recent rendezvous, Andrew talked to me about the idea of gun buyer’s remorse. We considered the idea for a moment, and decided it would be a good topic for a post.
Gun buyer’s remorse is definitely a complex phenomenon. I’ll try to break it down as succinctly as I can. I also need to mention that this is strictly from my lived experience — other people may have their own opinions!
Gun Buyer’s Remorse: How it Happens
Prologue
Sometime in late 2022 or early 2023, I had purchased one of my dream guns on Gunbroker.com. It was a Romanian-built C.U.R.-2 imported by Intrac in 1997. It was the perfect canvas upon which I could build one of my ultimate dream guns: an AIMS-74 clone.
I should mention that it was about 2:00 in the morning and I was drunk when I bought it. Browsing Gunbroker.com can be dangerous under those conditions.
After I completed my transaction, I felt like a kid the night before Christmas. I barely slept that night, and called in to pay for it first thing the next morning.
Trouble’s Ugly Head
As I started gathering the parts I needed to make my gun clone correct, I noticed something. Some jerk had welded a cover onto my front sight block’s threading! Since it was welded on, I couldn’t remove it to add the clone-correct muzzle device to my gun.
I concluded that I was going to need to replace the front sight block myself. As I turned to my old friend the internet to search for the parts I needed, I found that they were “unobtanium.”
In their infinite wisdom, the Romanians decided to use barrels with 22mm diameters, while the rest of the AK world used 24mm diameter barrels. This means that you can’t use a standard AK-74 front sight block on a Romanian-built gun — you need a Romanian-built FSB.
In more than a year of searching, I’ve only found two of them, both listed for hundreds of dollars. I didn’t have the cash to drop on that frivolous of an expense at the time I ran across them, so I didn’t buy them.
Now, my AIMS-74 sits in my gun room, totally clone-correct — except for its muzzle device. Some say you can still hear my pained moans as I haunt Gunbroker.com late at night, searching in vain for eternity.
And that, my friends, is my story of gun buyer’s remorse.
Never Buy Guns on Credit
Here’s one last thing that I feel like I need to address in this article. I’ve seen people posting online about how they buy guns with a credit card and are paying for them over time.
DO NOT DO THIS. If you make enough money to pay off the gun over time, you can just save up for it and pay for it all at once. Buying a gun on credit just means you’re paying more for it than you need to and you’re living beyond your means.
Practice some delayed gratification and reward yourself for saving up the money for your dream gun. It’s how I paid for my AIMS-74!
Get Over Gun Buyers’ Remorse with SDI
Have you ever bought a gun and been disappointed with it? At SDI, you can learn to improve a gun’s performance and beautify its appearance. To learn more about the classes SDI offers, click here.
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