Defense Articles

If you have guns for sale then you may be wondering how you can maximize your profits. The first thing that you will need to do is determine if your gun should be cleaned and fixed up or if it should be left in its current condition. This really depends on what type of gun you have and how old it is. If it is an antique then you most likely should leave it alone and sell it in its current condition. If you are trying to sell a functional gun then cleaning it up and replacing parts can be an inexpensive way to improve its value and to improve its sales appeal.

Your next step will be to photograph your guns for sale. You can upload these images to an auction site or to your web page so that potential buyers can see what you have to offer. The photographs should include pictures of the entire gun at different angles and close ups of special features of the gun, like monograms or markings.

Next you will want to create your guns for sale advertisement. This advertisement, or auction description, should include what type of gun it is, how old it is, any special features it has and what comes with it. A good way to improve the response to your ad is to include with the gun a manual and a holster. You can usually find gun manuals online at the manufacturer’s web site.

If you are looking to buy a gun then you need to understand how to read guns for sale classified ads and auction descriptions. What you will be looking at the most are the photographs offered with the ad and the description of the gun that is for sale. You will need to use this information to determine how much the gun is worth by comparing the information and photos to value guides like the Blue Book of Gun Values.

Dental implant periodicals provide information on dental implant and related articles. They include several types of publications such as magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals. They are published weekly, biweekly, or monthly by professional dental organizations, experts in the field, an academic or research institution or a scholarly press.

A large number of dental implant periodicals are published throughout the world. They are available in both printed and electronic formats. Most popular dental implant periodicals are dental implant magazines. Dental implant magazines are a type of dental periodicals that contains materials that are of interest both to patients and the dentists. These periodicals contain articles by recognized experts in the field (usually oral dentists and periodontists). They contain lots of pictures and graphics on dental implants.

Magazines and periodicals are the best sources to get up-to-date information on dental implants. Thousands of articles are published each year in various dental periodicals. Many are well-written and are solidly supported with laboratory and clinical researches. They convey ideas, techniques or product evaluations, which can be of worth in the practice of dentistry. In addition to articles by recognized experts, dental implant periodicals contain comments on recent developments in the field (especially recent cases), reviews of recently published books and other information of interest.

Dental implant periodicals also contain advertisements and drug information. They greatly help the students doing research related work. The variety of viewpoints presented through periodicals makes them a helpful source of information. By nature, these periodicals are likely to focus on narrower topics than books. Scholarly articles contribute to the knowledge on specific topics.

A machine gun is a fully-automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rifle cartridges in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute. The first machine guns were manually operated, for example, by turning a hand crank.

Operating Prinsiples:
There have been two main machine gun eras: the era of manual machine guns and the era of automatic machine guns. The technical development itself is marked by a series of developments of specific automatic features, as well as technical developments (such as linked ammunition). The era of manual multi-shot devices extends back hundreds of years (such as manual volley guns), but the development of manual and automatic machine guns takes place almost entirely in the latter half of the 1800s. Manual machine guns are manually-powered, e.g., a crank must be turned to power reloading and firing, as opposed to simply holding down a trigger, as with automatic machine guns. There are many other notable features, but this is one of the most significant to allowing higher rates of fire common to machine guns.

Manual machine guns, as well as manual volley guns, saw their first major use in the American Civil War. The Gatling gun and “coffee gun” both used manually-powered automatic loading, fed via a hopper filled with cartridges. The Gatling gun would be the major type of the late 19th century, though there were many other manual designs with varying degrees of use (e.g. the Nordenfelt machine gun). The first automatic machine gun was the recoil-operated Maxim gun, which used linked (belt) ammunition, as well as a single barrel and automatic loading. This concept of using bullet energy would also drive the development of nearly all other semi and fully automatic firearms of 20th century.

The two major operation systems of modern automatic machine guns are gas operation and recoil operation. As the name implies, the gas operated system uses the gas generated from the burning powder to cycle the action, whereas the recoil operated uses the recoil generated from the ejecting bullet. The first gas-operated machine gun was the Colt-Browning M1895.[2]

Another (minor) type is the externally-powered machine gun. Rather than human manual power or energy generated by the cartridge, an external source such as an electric motor is used. These types are now called by more specific names such as Minigun and Chaingun. They are common on fighting aircraft and ground vehicles, where the externally powered mechanism allows for automatic clearing of many failure conditions that would otherwise disable the firearm.

When Helen Hunt Jackson moved to Colorado Springs in 1873, the town was 3 years old.

According to Jackson’s travel journal, the two biggest buildings were the Deaf and Dumb Asylum and a stone schoolhouse. Manitou Springs had three large hotels and several boarding houses in poor condition. There were plenty of bakeries and a billiard hall.

Her travel journal, published in 1878 and titled “Bits of Travel at Home,” describes her first impressions of the town of 3,000.

“It was a grey day in November,” she wrote. “There stretched before me to the east, a . . . desolate plain. There rose behind me to the west a dark range of mountains. Between lay the town - small, straight, new, treeless. One might die of such a place. Death by disease would be more natural.”
But Jackson changed her outlook, soon referring to the area as the town west of the sun.

“Colorado Springs is not rich,” she wrote.

“There are no big houses; there is no fast living; its ways are country ways; showy clothes and ostentatious entertainment would be ridiculous.”

The East Coast widow had grown to love the West.

Jackson was born Helen Fiske in Amherst, Mass., on Oct. 15, 1830. In 1852, she married Edward Hunt, captain of the U.S. Corps of Engineers. They had two sons, neither of whom lived through childhood. Edward Hunt died in 1863 in a military accident with a submachine gun he invented.

Heartbroken, Helen turned to writing poetry and short editorials for such periodicals as the New York Evening Post before heading west to Colorado.
“Her coming here was an escape to get away from death,” says Matt Mayberry, Pioneers Museum public programs coordinator.

“She was surrounded by death, and that has lots of impact on her work.”

Like many people of the time, Jackson moved to the Springs under doctor’s instruction; she had bronchitis. Here, she fell in love with Col. William S. Jackson and the two were married in 1875. Together, they made their mark on the region.

William Jackson was an officer of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway and founder of the El Paso County Bank.

But Helen Hunt Jackson made an impression that has endured for decades.

“Lots of places in town have a connection to Helen Hunt Jackson,” Mayberry says. “She was an integral part of the Pikes Peak region.”

Jackson’s home, for example, was at the corner of Kiowa and Weber streets, at 230 E. Kiowa. It was torn down in 1961 to build the city police headquarters; the Municipal Court Building sits there now.

Jackson’s novel, “Ramona,” also is seen all over town. Ramona Avenue is in the Ivywild neighborhood. At the turn of the century, there was a Ramona Hotel on Ute Pass. In 1913, saloons opened north of 24th Street at the outskirts of present-day Old Colorado City. That small area was called Ramona.

“Ramona is everywhere,” Mayberry says. “The town Ramona started as a place to drink because Colorado Springs was dry. People wanted to drink and opened their own town.”

Today, the small town of Ramona has been incorporated into Colorado Springs.

Jackson’s favorite place in the region was Cheyenne Mountain.

“She went on carriage rides almost every day to Cheyenne Mountain when it wasn’t raining,” says Ginny Kiefer, curator of special collections and an archivist at Colorado College’s Tutt Library, home to many of the writer’s journals and manuscripts.

Jackson dedicated one chapter in “Bits of Travel at Home” to Cheyenne Canyon.

“There are nine places of divine worship in Colorado Springs,” she wrote. “Presbyterian, Cumberland Presbyterian, Methodist, Sineth, Episcopalian, Congregationalist, Baptist, Unitarian, and Cheyenne Canyon.”

Kiefer says Jackson never went to church, but on Sundays she would sit on Cheyenne Mountain and wave at worshipers leaving church.

“The people didn’t like that too much,” Kiefer says.

Jackson wrote several poems about Cheyenne Canyon and its scenery, so it’s appropriate that the waterfall there is named for her.

Before Jackson died of cancer in 1885, she asked to be buried in Cheyenne Canyon.

However, so many people flocked to her gravesite that in 1892, to prevent them from destroying the canyon’s natural beauty, her body was moved to Evergreen Cemetery.

“I’ve just had lunch with Dennis the Menace,” I told my wife after staggering home from the first of many uproarious meals with Michael VerMeulen. The year was 1989, and VerMeulen - a native Chicagoan who had been living in London for the previous few years - had invited me out to discuss writing something for a new magazine called GQ, where he had just been appointed deputy editor.

“You drink martinis?” were his first words to me. When I nodded, he said, “Great - maybe I’ll be your friend. Waiter! Two very dry martinis, straight up, heavy on the olives. So, you gonna write for the magazine? You want to know what GQ is all about? It’s a real simple formula. A men’s magazine with an IQ. In other words, great journalism in between neat shit to buy.”
It was love at first sight. Here was a fellow expatriate who didn’t try to Anglicise his vowels, who talked with tommy-gun rapidity (as befits a son of Al Capone’s city), who was larger than life, and who - with his shock of red hair and freckled face - really did look like a big overgrown kid with a penchant for mischief.

VerMeulen was a true original - a first-rate editor who, before “switching to the other side of the desk” (as he called it) had been an astonishingly successful young freelance writer in New York (where he wrote celebrity profiles and cultural essays for periodicals such as Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Rolling Stone, and American GQ).
It was American GQ which brought him to Britain (he was their first London correspondent). And within a very short time, just about everyone in the small internecine village called Media London had a favourite Michael VerMeulen story to tell. “You know what I call a three-martini lunch?” he once told a friend. “Dinner”. And then there was his post-coital remark to one of the many women who shared his bed over the years. When she noted that their lovemaking had been more than satisfactory, he shot back: “Don’t tell me - tell your friends.”

But perhaps one anecdote best sums up the complex underside of his personality that he rarely allowed people to see. After he was appointed editor of GQ, in 1992, he eschewed the offers of a sleek company car and continued to knock around London in the most battered 2CV imaginable. And he delighted in telling how, while driving somewhere with Martin Amis, the Great Writer suddenly said: “What’s the editor of GQ doing in a piece of junk like this?” Then, raising his eyebrows with sly delight, he noted: “Amis never gets the joke, does he?”

The fact is, most people never “got the joke” about Michael VerMeulen - the joke being that, though he enjoyed playing the loud, brash Yank in public, he was anything but loud or brash in private. More tellingly - and this is something that everyone who ever worked or played with him will confirm - he was a man without malice. Never did he engage in the backstabbing and malevolent gamesmanship that so characterises media life. Never did I hear him utter a word of malignant gossip - and the only time he ever spoke disparagingly of anyone was if they had let him down or hurt a friend.

“Oh, her,” he said recently when a journalist’s name came up in conversation. “She calls me up anytime she’s looking to write something for easy money. But since I’m not in the I’m gonna give you easy money game, I tell her: ‘To hell with the commission, let’s have a drink.’ ”

Given his lack of rancour, it is not at all surprising that GQ was one of the happiest media offices in London. Or that his staff were intensely loyal to him. Or that his publishers - Conde Nast - hugely admired his brilliant eye; his ability to mix gloss with substance and turn out a superbly slick, yet brainy magazine month after month. And if sales figures are anything to go by, he certainly was doing something right; GQ was a phenomenal commercial success under his stewardship, its circulation rising by over 40 per cent since his appointment three years ago (and always maintaining its first-place standing in the now ultra- competitive marketplace of men’s magazines).

But while many will probably remember Michael VerMeulen as an ebullient showman - propping up a stool at the Groucho Club, always full of bonhomie - the private man was more difficult to know. There had been a failed early marriage, there had been an engagement that had been called off, there had been a “sort of” girlfriend over the years - but, at heart, VerMeulen was a curious loner. Though he was the most loyal and compassionate of friends - a man who navigated so many of us through assorted personal crises - he found it difficult to turn to his friends when he found himself grappling with his own demons.

Indeed, I often felt that VerMeulen erected a cordon sanitaire around that dark room we all have within ourselves, wherein lie our vulnerabilities, our doubts. But instead of trying to reach a concord with those doubts, he indulged his enormous appetites. His weight skyrocketed, he had a cigarette permanently embedded between his teeth, he could drink just about everyone under the table. And though he knew he was pushing back the frontiers of epicureanism, he kept on indulging.

Early on a Sunday morning, the threat remains far distant. A cloud no bigger than a woman’s fist. I know I’m safe until 11.15am because Mrs Weasel is consumed by the omnibus edition of The Archers, “Can’t talk now,” this gentle creature barked at her mother, who made the mistake of telephoning during the holy hour. “Debbie’s going to be beaten up by Simon Pemberton.” But once the folk of Ambridge have finished their shenanigans, I’m plumb in the danger zone. Last Sunday, the blow fell during the seagull chatter at the start of Desert Island Discs. “Even you can’t put it off any longer,” intoned the chatelaine of Weasel Villas. “We’ve got to go to Homebase.”
Despite my protests that the sitting room had only lacked an operative curtain for a little over a month (well, call it six weeks), we were soon nosing round that innermost circle of hell populated by DIY devotees and their incessantly squawking offspring. Not that I was exactly squawk-free myself, while Madame spent aeons probing among the curtain accessories. “I can’t find a cording set,” she wittered. “I want overlapping arms and they haven’t got those.” My helpful suggestion that she should instead settle for a pair of heavy-duty tile nibblers or a hot-melt glue-gun did not go down too well. “Why don’t you belt up?” she hollered.

If you woke up ten New Jersey residents and asked them about the state of health care today, five would utter something unprintable, three would scream about the endless HMO cycle of referrals, one would wish for the good old days of the kindly old family doctor, and the tenth would chase you out of the house with a gun for bothering him or her in the first place with such an odious question. One thing that all ten answers would have in common, however, is emotion. Virtually no one can speak about health care either rationally or coherently today. The subject is too close to us; we’ve all had experiences with the health care system and a sick relative, or our own illness, to supply us with an endless supply of (usually unpleasant) experiences. Even those who are trying to fix the health care problems get emotionally entangled in the issue.

Enter the Princeton-based Forums Institute for Public Policy (FIPP).

Simply put, the FIPP is the Mr. Spock-like referee in debates about issues such as health care. It holds several forums a year in which they invite people from every side of an issue - elected officials’ state government leaders, and private industry leaders with a stake in the matter. Then, it brings these folks together in a closed (as in no press or public attendance) policy forum so that each can present their findings and the others can listen and ask questions in a non-emotional environment. There are no ideological axes to grind, no constituencies to play up to, and no need to muddy up the waters with rhetoric or partisan posturing. The FIPP hopes that by holding such gatherings in a neutral atmosphere that it will be able to facilitate solutions to some of these issues, like health care, that seem to constantly get hung up in emotional and political wrangling.

“It’s an opportunity to bring people together in a non-threatening forum,” said Linda Mater, President of FIPP. “We provide a venue for people to discuss public policy issues.”

Informed Contemplative Dialogue

The Forums Institute for Public Policy got its start in 1992. That was a time when health care and health care reform was much in the news and was high on the federal government’s agenda. The League of Women Voters got together a non-partisan group of policy-makers from across New Jersey to discuss the anticipated health care reforms and what they might mean for New Jersey.

The meeting was a smashing success, and made people realize that this forum idea was a good one, especially since health care seemed to be an issue that was going to take much more input before answers were found. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation stepped forward with funding, and the FIPP was born.

In 1997, the FIPP was established as a 501 (c) (3) organization to administer New Jersey Policy Forums on Health and Medical Care. Today, the Forums Institute is a National Program Office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and is partially funded by the Foundation. However, it continues to seek other funding sources as befits its 501 status, such as from grants and from foundations.

The FIPP is neither a Democratic or Republican think-tank, nor is it a liberal or conservative organization. Rather, think of it as neutral territory in a world of red and blue. As such, it does not seek to push any particular side in any debate, nor lobby for or against a particular bill.

“The goal of the FIPP is not to influence legislation,” said Nancy Cavallo, Communications Director. “Rather, it is to bring people together in an atmosphere of informed contemplative dialogue and use that process to help develop solutions.”

An example of how the FIPP function is the nursing shortage crisis a few years ago. At its height, the nursing shortage had generated a number of “quick-fix” proposed laws from the legislature, However, by highlighting all aspects of the problem in a policy forum devoid of hysteria, the FIPP was able to illustrate other solutions to the crisis that did not involve a quick legislative fix.

Typically, the small-staffed FIPP (about 5 staffers total) holds about six forums a year in New Jersey. Most are held at Thomas Edison State College in Trenton because of its proximity to state government. State officials often attend the forums, and for good reason: frequently state workers from two different departments will be unknowingly working on similar matters. Without meeting and hearing the other person at a forum, they might never know about the other person’s work, and could end up working either at cross-purposes or else duplicating efforts.

“This gives stakeholders (in an issue) the opportunity to network,” said Cavallo. “it might be the only time they get to see each other.”

Recent FIPP forums have focused on such issues as long-term health care and charity care. Possible topics for future forums include the recent Massachusetts law which requires everyone to have health care insurance coverage.

Help Me, FIPP

The FIPP also gets involved in local issues. Here it acts as a consultant of sorts, being hired by a local government or agency to develop and suggest solutions to a particular problem.

Alternative magazines aren’t necessarily the fly-by-night operations that some magazine observers seem to think. Consider the 60,000-circulation Ray Gun. The one-year-old Santa Monica, California-based title has caught the attention of some pretty major publishing talent, including Esquire editor in chief Terry McDonell. The monthly, with its quirky design and offbeat editorial approach, has been spotted not only on some East Coast magazine racks, but also at some hip New York restaurants. Word One spoke to its founding publisher and editor, Marvin Scott Jarrett, about the secret of its appeal.

Word One: Why did you launch Ray Gun?

Jarrett: I’ve been a musician since I was 16. But I didn’t want to be a starving musician. I always liked the blend of marketing and music. I wanted to do a magazine dealing with alternative music and pop culture that had an underground feel to it. I wanted to take advantage of this niche.

Word One: Who reads your magazine?

Jarrett: We have a couple of distinct audiences. The music lovers in college, people in their early twenties, and we have a strong design following because of |design consultant~ David Carson. They like the contributors and the art and the magazine’s freeform feeling.

Word One: What makes Ray Gun different from other publications?

Jarrett: It takes a radical approach. There is no grid format. It’s not your typical GQ or Entertainment Weekly. We change the logo in every issue. Our readers are trendsetters and they love that attitude of the magazine.

Word One: Which magazines inspire you?

Jarrett: I’m into foreign magazines like Face and Max out of Italy, Pop Gear and Pump out of Japan. I even like Japanese hobby catalogs. They’re so cool.

Susan Sontag died in New York City on December 28, 2004 from cancer, a disease she had been battling for years. Born in New York City on January 16, 1933, Sontag spent her childhood in Arizona and her adolescent years in Los Angeles. At age 15, she entered the University of California at Berkeley, transferring to the University of Chicago a year later. She studied literature, philosophy and theology at the universities of Chicago, Harvard, Paris and Oxford (England). By the late 1960s she had acquired a strong reputation as an essayist and a novelist. In the following years she would extend it to being a playwright and a film and theater director as well as a social, cultural and political critic. She served as the president of the international writers’ organization PEN from 1987 to 1989. She was also a long-time human rights activist. Her voice in American cultural and intellectual life asserted itself through her contributions to various periodicals such as The Partisan Review, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, Harpers’. The New Yorker, The New York Times and The New York Review of Books. It was for this last publication that she started what was intended to be a two-part essay on photography and ultimately expanded into a collection of six essays that were published in 1977 as the book On Photography.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A multi-talented writer and brilliant essayist, Sontag expressed herself on a variety of topics: literature, the visual arts, politics, human rights, ethics, AIDS, popular culture, war, pain, memory, disease–the human condition at large. Upon accepting the Jerusalem Prize in 2001, she stated:

The writer’s first job is not to have opinions but to tell the
truth … and refuse to be an accomplice of lies or misinformation.
Literature is the expression of nuance and contrariness against the
voices of simplification. The job of the writer is to make it harder to
believe the mental despoilers. The job of the writer is to help make us
see the world as it is, which is to say, full of many different claims
and parts and experiences. […] I believe that the doctrine of
collective responsibility, as a rationale for collective punishment, is
never justified, militarily or ethically.

Faithful to the philosophy of famous essayists such as George Orwell, Edward Said, Albert Camus, as well as Walter Benjamin and Jean-Paul Sartre (on both of whom she wrote), Sontag believed that there should not be a gap between intellectual activity, society and life at large. She applied her intellect to everything she encountered and for which she cared. All issues had to be analyzed and assessed in the light of ethics and politics. She denounced any disconnection between the two.

On Photography brought Sontag instant recognition in the visual art world as an astute, witty, insightful, critical, abrasive and even confrontational essayist. People in the field either loved the essays and book, or hated them. She left almost no stone unturned and carefully scrutinized and criticized every one that she picked up. Oscillating between revelations and caricatures, Sontag’s text drew a multitude of comments and rapidly became a bestseller in the visual arts. Sontag noted, analyzed and commented on the vast impact of photography on our culture–from the years following its invention until very recently–and the way we view and interpret the world. “In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing.” Her loud assertions either drew applause for the sensation they were creating or outrage for the caricature they seemed to establish. Being an outsider made observations and caricatures easier for Sontag; it also denied the analyst some access to an area of knowledge that would have made some of her criticisms broader, more discriminate and relevant. “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself in a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge–and, therefore, like power.” To write such a statement is to deny photography, and the arts in general, what can be considered as their first goal–investigation–a path to knowing oneself and one’s relationship to knowledge and the world at large, a path whose destination is never clear and never permanently reached. Sontag not only freely associated photography with “a tool of power,” “voyeurism,” “interference,” “defense against anxiety,” “possession of space,” but also with “social rite” and “imaginary possession of the past.” She opened her readers’ eyes to the fact that “travels become a strategy for accumulating photographs,” not only limiting the experience of the traveler but replacing it with an appearance of participation. According to her, the camera had become “a ray-gun,” “a predatory weapon,” pushing the phallic symbolism sometimes attached to it, a sexual simulacrum: “To photograph people,” she said, “is to violate them.”

Shop till you drop may not be the best description for the act of acquiring surplus firearms, but it’s close to the truth. When various surplus models come on the market that look attractive, don’t tarry, buy them today while importer and dealer inventories are full and prices are low.

Bargains are where you find them so be opportunistic. I have found good bargains at gun shows, dealers, garage sales, auction houses, swap meets, antique stores, pawn shops, on a variety of Web sites, in local newspaper ads and in any number of firearm periodicals.
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Besides our own GUNS Magazine, Shotgun News and to a lesser extent, Gun List and Small Arms Review are excellent resources when shopping for the latest surplus offerings. Shotgun News covers the surplus waterfront with classified ads on recent imports, want ads, and editorial features. With ads organized by firearm make or classification, Gun List is useful if you know what you’re searching for and want to analyze a range of prices. Small Arms Review is heavily inclined toward fully automatic firearms and black guns, but it carries articles and ads for military esoterica that appear no where else.

The Web is a surplus gold mine for availability, sources of supply and collector comments. There’s a discussion forum for every make and model of surplus arm you can imagine. It’s fun to cruise the forums from time to time just to see if you’ve missed any hot, new import or to read the comments and experiences of other collectors who have acquired a particular or unusual piece. The forums are also an excellent resource for locating a difficult to find part or accessory, and they’re friendly. No flaming permitted!
Shop till you drop may not be the best description for the act of acquiring surplus firearms, but it’s close to the truth. When various surplus models come on the market that look attractive, don’t tarry, buy them today while importer and dealer inventories are full and prices are low.

Bargains are where you find them so be opportunistic. I have found good bargains at gun shows, dealers, garage sales, auction houses, swap meets, antique stores, pawn shops, on a variety of Web sites, in local newspaper ads and in any number of firearm periodicals.

Besides our own GUNS Magazine, Shotgun News and to a lesser extent, Gun List and Small Arms Review are excellent resources when shopping for the latest surplus offerings. Shotgun News covers the surplus waterfront with classified ads on recent imports, want ads, and editorial features. With ads organized by firearm make or classification, Gun List is useful if you know what you’re searching for and want to analyze a range of prices. Small Arms Review is heavily inclined toward fully automatic firearms and black guns, but it carries articles and ads for military esoterica that appear no where else.

The Web is a surplus gold mine for availability, sources of supply and collector comments. There’s a discussion forum for every make and model of surplus arm you can imagine. It’s fun to cruise the forums from time to time just to see if you’ve missed any hot, new import or to read the comments and experiences of other collectors who have acquired a particular or unusual piece. The forums are also an excellent resource for locating a difficult to find part or accessory, and they’re friendly. No flaming permitted!
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The best place for a variety of surplus forums is www.gunboards.com/forums/. You don’t have to sign up at the forum to scroll through and read the discussions, but you do if want to participate.

The Web is also a great shopping place for military firearms. General auction sites like www.gunbroker.com and www.auctionarms.com are a virtual feast and a test of your bargaining power. I have found many models through the Web that simply could not be located otherwise. If you do buy over the Web, look at the buyer ratings of the seller based on buyer experience with past transactions. Did the seller describe the firearm accurately? Did he communicate well? Did he pack and ship the firearm promptly? Most importantly, does he extend to his buyers a 3day inspection period? Don’t buy anything without a 3-day inspection period. That’s personal experience talking! Frankly, I would much rather buy a milsurp from a local dealer or gun show so that I could evaluate the firearm right up front.

I have one caveat about the Web. Be very critical of the information plastered on the e-waves. There are a lot of poorly informed amateur collectors on the Web as well as some very well-informed experts. You’ll quickly learn to sort the wheat from chaff. The one area I urge you to look at with a particularly jaundiced eye is all handloading recommendations and data for military cartridges. Some of the data I’ve seen on the Web makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Always consult a professionally prepared reloading manual before using any data picked up off the e-waves. You’ll live longer and happier.

The third most enjoyable part about collecting surplus arms (owning one is first–shooting it is second) is researching them. We are blessed today with a library of meticulously researched reference books on every conceivable surplus arm and variation thereof, and new reference books seem to appear weekly. The more you know about a particular surplus model, its variations, rarity, and historical significance, the better you will be able to determine its market value and appreciate its place in human history. When I need an in-or-out-of-print reference book, I turn to the bigger, general arms book dealers such as Ray Riling Arms Book Co. and A&J Arms Booksellers as well as scanning book dealer tables at gun shows. For a particularly difficult out-of-print search, I recommend www.abebooks.com that searches the whole world.

Value? What keeps prices reasonable is the sheer number of milsurps on the market.

Unless you’re dealing with a particularly rare model or variation, condition establishes value more than any other factor–the nicer the condition–the higher the price. I consider the overall finish of the metal and wood, whether the piece has been refinished, whether or not the piece has matching serial numbers and, since I’m a shooter, bore condition.

Be cautious about refinished arms, particularly the current crop of Mosin-Nagants. Most of the Nagants have been arsenal refinished and look almost un-issued on the outside. Check their bores carefully–many are rusted or shot out. And speaking of bores, I carry a little bore mirror and bore light with me to shows and have a cleaning rod and patches in the car to call upon if a bore is full of grease or dirt. Don’t be too picky about bore condition though or you’ll loose some valuable historical pieces. If the rifling looks sharp, the piece will still shoot accurately but will take a bit longer to clean.

The best place for a variety of surplus forums is www.gunboards.com/forums/. You don’t have to sign up at the forum to scroll through and read the discussions, but you do if want to participate.

The Web is also a great shopping place for military firearms. General auction sites like www.gunbroker.com and www.auctionarms.com are a virtual feast and a test of your bargaining power. I have found many models through the Web that simply could not be located otherwise. If you do buy over the Web, look at the buyer ratings of the seller based on buyer experience with past transactions. Did the seller describe the firearm accurately? Did he communicate well? Did he pack and ship the firearm promptly? Most importantly, does he extend to his buyers a 3day inspection period? Don’t buy anything without a 3-day inspection period. That’s personal experience talking! Frankly, I would much rather buy a milsurp from a local dealer or gun show so that I could evaluate the firearm right up front.

I have one caveat about the Web. Be very critical of the information plastered on the e-waves. There are a lot of poorly informed amateur collectors on the Web as well as some very well-informed experts. You’ll quickly learn to sort the wheat from chaff. The one area I urge you to look at with a particularly jaundiced eye is all handloading recommendations and data for military cartridges. Some of the data I’ve seen on the Web makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Always consult a professionally prepared reloading manual before using any data picked up off the e-waves. You’ll live longer and happier.

The third most enjoyable part about collecting surplus arms (owning one is first–shooting it is second) is researching them. We are blessed today with a library of meticulously researched reference books on every conceivable surplus arm and variation thereof, and new reference books seem to appear weekly. The more you know about a particular surplus model, its variations, rarity, and historical significance, the better you will be able to determine its market value and appreciate its place in human history. When I need an in-or-out-of-print reference book, I turn to the bigger, general arms book dealers such as Ray Riling Arms Book Co. and A&J Arms Booksellers as well as scanning book dealer tables at gun shows. For a particularly difficult out-of-print search, I recommend www.abebooks.com that searches the whole world.

Value? What keeps prices reasonable is the sheer number of milsurps on the market.

Unless you’re dealing with a particularly rare model or variation, condition establishes value more than any other factor–the nicer the condition–the higher the price. I consider the overall finish of the metal and wood, whether the piece has been refinished, whether or not the piece has matching serial numbers and, since I’m a shooter, bore condition.

Be cautious about refinished arms, particularly the current crop of Mosin-Nagants. Most of the Nagants have been arsenal refinished and look almost un-issued on the outside. Check their bores carefully–many are rusted or shot out. And speaking of bores, I carry a little bore mirror and bore light with me to shows and have a cleaning rod and patches in the car to call upon if a bore is full of grease or dirt. Don’t be too picky about bore condition though or you’ll loose some valuable historical pieces. If the rifling looks sharp, the piece will still shoot accurately but will take a bit longer to clean.