Many of you may have heard about a guy named Jody Nelson - he's the goober that embezzled 70 million from the Patterson UTI energy company. Made the news big around here last year (mostly because it was in a town only 2 hrs away) and moderate headlines in the rest of the country.
Well, fast forward a year and several felony convictions later...
His personal assets are being auctioned here in Lubbock next weekend by the Ritchie Brothers auction company. They have a preview set up and, since there are over a hundred guns included and the preview is less than ten minutes from my house, I went. They have the guns set aside in a special room (no surprise there) and guarded by a contingent of Texas Rangers. Nice guys, too. I know and regularly shoot with some of them. The rest seem pleasant enough.
However...
I noticed that many of the guns I was interested in seeing - Colt 1911's, H&K's, Smith revolvers, a Barret .50, etc. - were not on display. When I asked the poor Ranger in the room about it, he just sighed and shook his head. Turns out that the auction service has a policy that any semi-auto rifle or pistol, any DA revolver, and anything that might be considered and "assault weapons" (in other words, black and scary) are put in a special room and are viewable only by FFL's. They are also sold on sealed bid. I went to the booth the auction service had set up and asked about it. The reply was "oh, those are all the "assault weapons and machine guns". I was about to open my big fat mouth when the guy standing next to me opened his. Let's just say that he said what I was going to, then proceeded to unload on the auction people. Seems this poor sap had taken a day off work and driven from eastern southeastern Colorado (about 5 hrs) just to preview the guns. To say he was upset would be a laughable understatement. And I don't blame him. The auction web site clearly lists the guns, and says NOTHING about their sale being restricted to FFL's. There is nothing to indicate that they will be handled any different than the myriad of Winny mod 70's and Remmy mod 700's also in the sale (and available to the general public).
Stupid, plain and simple. And they aren't helping to generate any higher profits on the sale for the simple reason that the people buying these guns will be buying them FOR RESALE. They want to make a profit, so the guns will - by default - sell for around 50-70% of their retail value.
Sigh... okay. I'm done venting now.
Brad