In 50 years most of these guns will be of very limited value as shooters or anything else. If, as I suspect lead shot is eventually banned or declared a hazardous substance and made prohibitively expensive, these guns will be very hard to shoot unless a reasonable low cost alternative to lead can be found. On top of that, hunting will be mostly a thing of the past. Social and environmental concerns aside, too few are learning to hunt to replace the numbers who are hunting today.
States that use to have several hundred thousand plus duck hunters today have a small fraction of that amount. Upland game hunters are even in more decline in my area. Gone are 90% of the rabbit hunters, at least 2/3 of the quail hunters and most of the dove hunters. Years ago we could get 20-25 hunters for a late season dove hunt. Last year we struggled to get five. You try to hunt a 75+ acre field with five people. We all got our limits but we did not even keep the birds moving. And three of the hunters were myself and my two sons. Their peers do not hunt birds.
Only deer and turkey get much effort from the state game department these days. I tried to interest them in pheasant and they said their stock and release program was on a year to year basis and they were not interested in making it larger. In fact more than one official told me they expected it to die a natural death in five to ten years.
Deer population is exploding and the turkey population was up significantly in spite of lack of real department effort. So they are hanging their hats on the game that is increasing and not the game in steep decline.
Now as to the sin of parting out a gun. Is it any greater than the sin of selling off large farms into small lots for homes? A way of life is gone forever and the countryside becomes on great, vast subdivision. Is it any worse than a car owner selling off parts of a car he no longer wants to drive? Who cries for the right front fender off a old Chevy. Get a life guys, you are talking about five pounds of metal and two of wood. Not your first born.
We can not own all of the guns in the world. Buy what you like and enjoy them. But do not get caught up in this save all the world for the sake of saving the world. You come across like a tree hugger who does not want any tree cut for any reason. It makes us sound like the animal rights people who say they are against any animal testing or experiment even if it means that a cure for desease X can never be found. If you must save the world I have a dozen klunkers that I am goning to part out someday. They can be saved for a thousand dollars each. The fact that they are worth only $50-100.00 each will make your effort that much more apriciated.
