Post originally by David Sinclair at 2003-08-22 19:19:21
Converted from Phorums BB System

Sure, there's a thriving community of replica gunners out there, but they are a very small minority in general. And a lot of guns are not available for replication. And when a gun is no longer made, the pool of available weapons will shrink through attrition. Parts wear out and become expensive to replace once you have to start having parts machined by a gunsmith. 10 to 12 years after a gun goes out of production, the resale price for them in any condition begins to climb.

My favorite RPG gun book series, Big Bang, also provides the years in which manufacturing started and stopped. I'd rather spend $7.50 every couple months for a new volume of Big Bang, rather than have to shell out $570 up front for the latest copy of Jane's Infantry Weapons. In the end, I may end up spending more than $570 by the time Big Bang concludes, but it will be nibbled away, instead of taking a huge chunk out of my ass with the bite of my wallet that buying Jane's Infantry Weapons would take.

As for cops, prior to the 60's, they would have a .38. The 60's brought about both the .38 special and .357 magnum revolutions. Through the 60's and 70's, cops would have upgraded to these weapons, and in the 80's, the 9mm semiautomatic pistols began becoming standard issue. Of course, this is simply the guns issued by the law enforcement agencies. And as long as firearms have existed, it has been sort of a tradition for an officer to own a firearm, and they don't have to own weapons compatible with the issued equipment, either.