Tyler the Piker commented, in another thread about testing your EDC, that you could spend 10X in ammo over the price of the gun over a lifetime.
I just had to tell Tyler the Piker that his comment about spending 10X as much on ammo as the gun has got me going. It is a great question that has teased me for days. I thought I would see if I could calculate it.
If it's a $500 gun that makes $5000 in ammo over a lifetime. Let's say it's a 45 and you buy nice stuff at over $.40 a round. Let's call it 12,000 rounds over a lifetime.
Let's say I average about 100 rounds a month in that one gun. That's about 10 years. That is a very reasonable estimate for length of time to shoot 10X value. With this example you would shoot half the value of the gun every year. Over 20 years, most people can easily shoot that much. His estimate seems remarkably accurate. Did he just throw out a number, or SWAG, or did this come from experience?
Variables are everywhere in my estimates, but I made them for a defensive shooter with few guns and mid-priced ammo.
I'm not a defensive shooter so I shoot as many types of guns as I can.
The club I'm in offers me an opportunity to shoot lots of guns. The other members and I trade guns while at the range almost every trip. So getting a hundred a month through one gun consistently is tough. I probably have too many guns to shoot them on a regular monthly basis. So it would take someone like me longer.
What a fascinating question about on-going costs.
If a car costs $30,000 and you drive 12,000 per year at 25 mpg, that
480 gallons per year at $4.00 = $1,920 or approx $2,000. That's 15 years to equal the price of the car. Guns get there in two years. So our guns have an on-going costs far above other hobbies.
Also this means that the gun itself is only 10% of the cost. It seems to me, if we were all looking at true cost of ownership, we would up that initial cost because it is such a small part of the total. It also means that finding a deal on the ammo is 10X more important than the cost of the gun.
Just grist for the mill. Still trying to figure the ripple effects.
So not just what do you think, but how do you calculate the costs of true ownership for your pistola.
Be safe out there,
Prescut
I just had to tell Tyler the Piker that his comment about spending 10X as much on ammo as the gun has got me going. It is a great question that has teased me for days. I thought I would see if I could calculate it.
If it's a $500 gun that makes $5000 in ammo over a lifetime. Let's say it's a 45 and you buy nice stuff at over $.40 a round. Let's call it 12,000 rounds over a lifetime.
Let's say I average about 100 rounds a month in that one gun. That's about 10 years. That is a very reasonable estimate for length of time to shoot 10X value. With this example you would shoot half the value of the gun every year. Over 20 years, most people can easily shoot that much. His estimate seems remarkably accurate. Did he just throw out a number, or SWAG, or did this come from experience?
Variables are everywhere in my estimates, but I made them for a defensive shooter with few guns and mid-priced ammo.
I'm not a defensive shooter so I shoot as many types of guns as I can.
The club I'm in offers me an opportunity to shoot lots of guns. The other members and I trade guns while at the range almost every trip. So getting a hundred a month through one gun consistently is tough. I probably have too many guns to shoot them on a regular monthly basis. So it would take someone like me longer.
What a fascinating question about on-going costs.
If a car costs $30,000 and you drive 12,000 per year at 25 mpg, that
480 gallons per year at $4.00 = $1,920 or approx $2,000. That's 15 years to equal the price of the car. Guns get there in two years. So our guns have an on-going costs far above other hobbies.
Also this means that the gun itself is only 10% of the cost. It seems to me, if we were all looking at true cost of ownership, we would up that initial cost because it is such a small part of the total. It also means that finding a deal on the ammo is 10X more important than the cost of the gun.
Just grist for the mill. Still trying to figure the ripple effects.
So not just what do you think, but how do you calculate the costs of true ownership for your pistola.
Be safe out there,
Prescut