Erich

one of the many possibilities no doubt. In my original (misunderstood) post I postulated that the earlier tariff threats which were pulled and kicked down the road where exactly that. Feeling out the reaction for a bigger event. It’s been amazing to watch. especially here quick and large the swings were with news / sentiment.

Granted Hassett accidentally slipped a couple days ago leaking the planned 90 day tariff hold. They played out off pretty well, but likely limited the drops over the last couple days Headfake pulled.

I am curious as to any responses you get about their recent turnarounds and general service. I ordered a can last week that had a free trust promo. Was already in their system and things were up to date, got the docusign pretty quick. But they set it us as an individual vs trust. Sent an email, they forwarded it to their 'tech support' as they were the ones that take care of it I guess. Tried calling twice this week. On hold over an hour each time before hanging up. Tried chat, was maybe 25 mins and took about 30 more mins for the guy to say, yeah, I cant do anything about it you need to email tech support (after telling him the story already) and said to followup on that email again. But inferred they are not so good about answer email so who knows. A week on and nada. Got email this morning asking me to pay for tax stamp. Hell no, not till they fix it. I had called them in the past, dont remember that being a problem. My take is they are way busier with ATF being so quick and cans selling like hot cakes. I get that. But pretty sure they have gone the way alot of companies have and no one actually mans the phones. Chat is about useless and that guy is probably doing multiple chats at ones as its like 5 mins plus between responses. So their service level if there is a problem has gone in the crapper. All that is background to support they have delays and you are at their mercy so not sure if its just total volume, they cut back staff, or what. imo you can only really tell / measure a company when issues arise. My first transactions with them went smooth back when it took 9 to 10 months to get cans. Not now. If I dont get this take care of next week then I am asking for a refund and/or doing a credit card chargeback.

Did mine when I got TSA precheck and global entry a few years ago. Our DMV is pretty low traffic, my appt was on-time and was done in a 10 mins. They didn't want anything they don't already have access to. Probably one of the lowest impact .gov things I've ever had to do. Trying to get the 50+ discounted Sam's membership with ID.me on the other hand....totally intrusive and unnecessary. Why Sam's thinks they need to take $10 off is what I would like to know.

Yes and no. More no. If you go back and look, its a position but stated / closed with a question. It was meant to illicit a response as to what one thinks is the end goal of the current tariffs in a general sense. With that being one extreme. But was never about retail stock strategy, anyone’s pensions, etc Opportunity for insiders only if this is a short term play as they will know never the public. But there are multiple possibilities. So meant as a thought exercise really. No one has opinions on any short to long term objectives to this move around tariffs. As to the original hope on soliciting thoughts. The tariffs should have the goal to reduce the US dollar which would have specific effects. many of them positive of it plays out like it needs to mid to long term. We never saw deflation after the pandemic. just ever increasing costs. We may see initial increase in inflation, but the longer term with reduced dollar values and decreased demand should see things improve. But I don’t think the american public will be able to tolerate short term pain for long term gains. Especially with the left media will playing up the pain as distain for current admin.. The seemingly extreme #’s and visuals presented seem more constant with this being a short term tactic to drive negotiation to get more favorable tariffs applied to american goods. If so, than market manipulation could be of more concern. I don’t know. There is a plan. curious what others may think it is.

So I’ll take that as a no

oh not a timing question, just seeing what folks think the larger picture may be in light of prior tariff reversals that preceded this. May have been best as it’s own topic but the political aspects wasn’t sure. Very much a believer news is used to drive stupid money

So Tariffs and markets… An orchestrated monumental head fake to drive buying opportunity for the connected insiders. After they gorge on cheap stocks , admin pulls a “we hear you and will save you” full reversal and they pocket billions? Thinking of the earlier false starts on tariffs that were put off, possibly probing efforts to test market reactions as this was layed out. what say you?

Good Luck all!

Love the concept, wanted to get one as I like Ruger as a company. But they seem to purposely only offer them with Gray frames to get another $40 out of you to buy the black frame separately. Its clever, but that tactic put me off a bit. Heck, make the slide gray. If it can decide which single color it wants to be at the street price, I’m down to get it. Sounds silly In know, just not a mix master kinda guy.

Some opinions from when @10-Ring posed a similar question. I use it at work, it great for coding and editing work. It has a place and can be a huge timesaver. But the cost is total loss of privacy. Outside work, I use it for various searches. It is the ultimate aggregator and tends to return ‘answers’ versus ‘oh, are you interested in buying this?’ (lots of amazon results) as search engines have steadily moved to a major of monetized results. No more going thru pages of links, it crunches 100’s of basic google results weeding out the 95% of ad results to get to info / pertinent links in seconds. For this purpose I have a ‘public use’ laptop with Win 11, the ultimate expression of control and spying handed over to MS. I use it for things I am ok exposing to Alphabet / MS /Amazon / Apple and .gov. I avoid AI on my desktop and try to avoid them on my mobile. I remove installations that use it, such removing Copilot from Win 10 when the prying eyes at MS threw that in recently. I already stopped taking pictures of anything I don’t want Apple to see with my mobile. I’ve never used cloud, but it’s become obvious that Apple re-engineered it’s CSAM spy engine and pushed it out in pieces. They claim it’s on devic but they’ve done clever things with spreading various permissions so that they can use AI to scan and categorize pictures and sending “encrypted metadata” back to the mothership. With AI being infused into all newer mainstream OS’s, I am looking at moving to Linux and staying with older mobile devices for personal use. But as I struggle to stay on top of how clever Apple is getting at hiding things, I am looking at taking a similar approach with a second dumb mobile. So long way to say…. it’s a love and hate relationship. I love the time savings and leveraging it for things it dress well, but hate it’s clear abuses and what goes on behind the scenes.

pop pop, next time you are out running around you should go hold one in a shop to see how well you can wrap around and how it feels. Then consider how your grip will change overtime. The round drives mags to be longer front to back which means grips are extended. Its why so many have the brick feel to em. One of the driving factors for the round was to defeat body armor. FN wanted it to be adopted more widely at inception. Its designated AP rounds are restricted, but some of the non AP could do it. Not to many home invaders use body armor The late great Paul Harrell had a good vid or two on it if you are still looking to confirm / deny. He had a good analogy as I recall. Its like a pair of snap ring plies, only good at one thing, nothing else.

The patent expired about 5 years ago, so other manufacturers are pushing it now they have something “new” to offer. I’d say rent or borrow one first. I had my FN 5.7 for a few years. It wasn’t a great gun imo. The recoil was very light, absolutely. But the ergonomics and size were bad for a pistol. It was more about the novelty of the rifle velocity ballistics. Like a good portion of others that had them before the patent expired, I sold it to a member here a few years ago. Would I get another now that they are 1/3 to half the cost? I don’t see it. Ruger was first out of the gate and I scratched my head that they just knocked off the FN including its bad trigger. While the ammo is cheaper, it’s not cheap. I have hard time justifying it over say an AR pistol in the home defense scenario. much more adaptable. cheaper ammo, more capacity, and will make things just as dead If the ammo drops to sub AR prices and they offer some more interesting platforms that are clear improvements / ergos over things so close to the FN, it would offer more draw imo.

Congrats! Great she’ll have a big bro to keep an eye on her for ya too