The 1980s

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Was the 1980s as cool as everyone makes it to be?

Please /k/. There has to be one /k/ommando who experienced the 1980s as it should have been experience.

No personal experience except I remember my dad buying an AR-15 in the early 80's. Pre-ban Colt with old school aluminum mags. We lived in the suburbs and it was going to defend us from the hordes of irradiated "city-dwellers" coming for us after a nuclear exchange with the soviets.

This is cool tho:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAejENocQB0

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>>34345160
AC-556 and Ingrams available for puchase at somewhat reasonable prices. CZ-75's are forbidden fruit. Revolvers everywhere. Good times..

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>>34345549
>CZ-75s are forbidden fruit
Yes, but Tanfoglio TZ-75 Series 88 are not, and truly they are among the most 80s of handguns
10/10 would Miami Vice with

>>34345336

A lot more surplus stuff.

cheap SKS's everywhere.

Cheap (and hideously ugly) "Blue Sky" Garands and Carbines for ~200 dollars.

Norinco/Polytech M-14 clones for ~300 Early ones were funky, but they could be made into better shooters than the SA offerings at the time.

A common maker WW2 1911A1, unmolested was ~200 to 300 dollars.

Bolt action surplus could be had for as little as $30.00, and some really neat surplus handguns were dirt cheap.
Like $99.00 M1912 Steyrs, and $100.00 Ballester-Molinas.

My first M-1 Carbine was mostly "Rock-Ola", and cost $110.00, after tax. I spent more on ammo, dies and supplies to feed it.

>>34345160
As a teenager, I remember a lot of misinformation and hearsay; "war stories" and urban legends:

"This here .357 Magnum will put a hole clean through an engine block, as long as its a Chevy (or Dodge, or Ford) of course. That's why State Troopers carry them."

"My Uncle said the 30 car bean would just bounce off them special (Chinese) war coats they wore up in the mountains. That's why they called them the 'Frozen Chosen.' Only certain troops got them. Prolly Ninjas, or something."

You had to wait until Dad or Grandpa decided to tell you what was BS or not, if they wanted to talk about it. So we read "Soldier of Fortune" and "Guns and Ammo" magazines.

Now we have the net and YouTube to tell us what's up.

>>34346050
I'm a product of the 80's. But ahh I remember the pre Internet/smart phone days. People would have arguments for years because they were never able to look it up and show the other person.

>>34346050
>"This here .357 Magnum will put a hole clean through an engine block, as long as its a Chevy (or Dodge, or Ford) of course. That's why State Troopers carry them."

There was a special .357mag "metal piercing" load offered by Peters and others for a time, but it was meant to poke through car bodies and inner structure (seats,etc), not engine blocks.

It was pretty snappy, and was pretty good on the old Accord I got to test it on, but it would not pen the block.

It did make a mess of the valve cover and head though.

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>>34345160
>Back when humanities majors didn't even realize the military was a thing they could ruin

the truth hurts /k/omrade... Businessmen took our best equipment, nutritionists took our food and now these failed psychiatrists have come for our souls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRTc9sjq_qs

This hurts, even though I wasn't alive then. I feel as though I missed out on America.

>>34345160
>What was it like to have true freedom?

Nope. Not in the 80's. That freedom came later on starting in the 90's when states finally started enacting "shall issue" laws for CHL's. The 80's saw a huge rise in nigger on nigger murders due to the introduction of crack, and I believe it is this violence that finally motivated citizens to demand "shall issue" laws in their states.

>Back when you could defend yourself with the best hardware.

AR's were nowhere near as common as they are today, and revolvers were still popular, and issued to a lot of law enforcement departments well up into the mid to late 80's.

>Back when police were actually allowed to their jobs

There was a shift in law enforcement that started to take place in the 90's that moved away from the police officer being like a psych ward orderly, being a big dude capable of manhandling people, to being a chick or manlet only capable of tazering or shooting a non-compliant subject. This change was brought about by politicians catering to feminists and lowering the standards of the police, and eliminating height standards. You wonder why cops are shooting so many niggers these days? It's because of the leftist politicians.


>Back when humanities majors didn't even realize the military was a thing they could ruin

The 80's was a good time for the military because the politicians let it go to complete shit after Vietnam and Reagan rebuilt it....only for Clinton to scrap it again 10 years down the road.

>Tell me about gun culture in the 1980s and your experience with it

Mostly revolved around hunting, skeet and trap, and Olympic type target shooting. Action pistol shooting, like USPSA and IDPA, steele challenge, and 3-gun hadn't really become popular yet. Most of the good shit really started in the 90's as a backlash to that faggot Clinton.

>>34346139
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7X8vrtluRY

more 80s goodness

Back when whites were run out of cities by the millions because whites defending themselves are the worst evil in the world?
Back when the US was aiding marxist insurgencies fighting against white civilization all around the world?

The 1980s were a bit of a watershed decade in the gun culture and, as such, the early 1980s were completely different in tone than the late 1980s. In general, the culture was more focused on hunting than tactical shooting. This changed as Jeff Cooper's ideas propagated through the culture and things like the Miami shootout and the crack epidemic put more of a focus on shooting for self-defense.

In the early 1980s, if someone wanted a pistol he almost always ended up with a revolver in .38 special or .357 magnum or a 1911. The other stuff was around, like bigger revolvers in .41 magnum or .44 magnum, Browning HiPowers or the earliest wonder-nines, or some European surplus, but it was not as common. This was before the internet, so you had to either go to a gun show or wait for something to come through your local shop to even see it.

If someone wanted a semi-automatic rifle, odds are he got a Garand or a M1 Carbine. M14s were also popular and the Mini-14 and AR15 were around and gaining popularity, but the latter two were not super common. The European stuff, like the FAL and HK91, was around, but it wasn't super common, either. There was nothing in the way of optics beyond the conventional rifle scope. Most people had a pump action shotgun if they wanted a long gun for self-defense. Bolt action or lever action rifles and pump action shotguns were common.

By the late 1980s, the wonder-nines were everywhere and cheap eastern bloc surplus was pouring in. Those were the days of the $70 AK or SKS with a free 1000 round case of ammunition. The European semi-automatic rifles and the AR15 were gaining popularity, at least until Bush 1 fucked us with the first import ban. Concern over gun bans and crime was starting to take hold and the focus was shifting off hunting and more toward a tactical mindset.

You still didn't have modern optics, compact/subcompact modern pistols, or a particularly wide variety of tactical rifles...that came in the 90s and later.

With the ban of the 1990s and the ten round magazine limit, manufacturers started focusing on compact and subcompact pistols. At the same time, a bunch of states passed shall issue concealed carry laws. That's when we got all of the great little pistols for concealed carry.

Semi-automatic rifles became popular due to anger over the gun ban, and with the end of the cold war governments sold off large quantities of AK-47s, SKS, FAL kits, and surplus from WW2. You could buy world war two era rifles for less than $100. You could still get semi-automatic rifles, but they'd be in neutered form with the thumbhole stock or with the muzzle threads ground of, etc., and the prices had gone way up. Glock 15 round magazines went for $100 each.

In 2004, the ban sunset. We watched the vote to renew the ban fail live on CSPAN. I called the gun store to find out when the first shipment of Glock magazines was coming in, lined up on that day, and bought 15 round Glock magazines for $15 each. People had "debanning" parties where they'd put folding stocks and flash suppressors on their rifles on midnight of the day the ban sunset.

The AR15 exploded in popularity due to the Iraq war and the sunset of the ban. We started to get modern optics, M4 carbines, and more choices in semiautomatic rifles. The internet made finding what you wanted very easy and also killed the gun show. Russian capture surplus was plentiful.

The first Obama panic in 2008 was unprecedented. Ammunition was very hard to find but you could still find .22 LR and shotgun shells. Then the 2012 Obama panic happened and it made the 2008 panic look like amateur hour. The one good thing about those panics is that they created an environment where gun makers made a lot of money and did a lot of R&D to bring new stuff to market. That plus the revolution in infantry tactics and equipment that happened during the Iraq war are why we have all the choices in weapons, optics, and accessories we have today.

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Seriously, there just weren't many choices in the early 1980s. Revolvers, 1911s, M1 Garands, carbines, M14s, pump action shotguns, lever actions, bolt action hunting rifles or bolt action military surplus. Everything else was uncommon. Pic related. There is a reason they made that shit...it was what we had and we had to make it work.

>>34347648

>the 2012 Obama panic happened and it made the 2008 panic look like amateur hour

AWB Panic II: Electric Bugaboo - Sandy Hook Special Edition, never forget

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>>34347648
>revolution in infantry tactics

If you could find them, you could still go through the tax stamp process and buy automatic weapons. You could buy all non-NFA weapons just by filling out the form at the gun store. There was no background check or delay. Military surplus was very cheap. Rifles for $30 sometimes, and a 1911 for $200 or so.

Concealed carry was may issue if it existed at all, but everyone carried pistols in their cars and the police didn't care. Kids could still go into the woods or down to an abandoned gravel pit and shoot without drawing a police response.

Gun knowledge was acquired by urban legend, from movies, from your local Vietnam veteran, or from magazines like Soldier of Fortune or Guns and Ammo. There was a lot of bullshit floating around that couldn't effectively be debunked.

Ah yes....the 80's.

Uzi's and MAC-10's were all the rage, and the Ruger Security-Six .357 was one of the main go-to guns for cops and citizens alike, as you could shoot .38 special through them at the range, and load them up with .357 hollow points for self defense from rabid niggers.

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>>34347810

>>34347686
It was fucking candyland, for me. I was working at a small gunshop, and the SOG and Century catalogs were like crack.

Really, Astra 400's for 50.00, 600's for 70,00, and Stey Hahn's (M1912" for 90.00 with holster, etc.

I saw SKS's come in that our shop paid maybe $30,00 for, with all the bits. Mag pouches, bando, sling, etc, The importer told us to sell them separately.

It was disgusting. I said "fuck it" and was selling packages. SKS, all the geegaws, and a case of ammo on clips for $245... After two days the owner of the shop wanted to flay me, after a week he wanted to buy me a yacht.

>>34347752

Between 2003 to 2008, we went from:

- PASGT and K-Pots to Interceptors and ACH
- Iron sighted A2s to flat topped shorties with red dots
- soft skinned HMMVWs to MRAPs
- ubiquitious UAVs
- optics on everything

That's just basic tech...not even mentioning medical stuff like CLS, tourniquet use, Quikclot or the changes in tactics.

>>34347837

You were one of the lucky ones to have access to all of that. Us mere peasants were at the mercy of the local gunshop.

>>34347852
That's not "tactics", dude, that's equipment, and some of us were using that shit in the early 90's.

The only "tactic" that's changed is the use of JDAM's to blow the shit out of assholes that decide they want to hunker down and defend a building somewhere, which replaced the need to send in men to clear them out.

Never send good men to do what good high explosive can do better.

>>34347882

"Salutations, roving neckbeards! We've got slavshit by the crates! Nevuh jams, nevuh hits nuffin neither!"

>Buy
>Rumors
>Sell
>Challenge

>>34347917

We're not all as high speed as you. I went over in chocolate chip PASGT and with an A2 the first time. The equipment changed quickly. The way we ran patrols changed even faster than that, but I focused on the equipment because the point was about guns of the 80s versus guns of now.