Are the bigger ones like Buds, MidwayUSA, Brownells, Guns.com really any good? The only time I've ever bought a gun to ship to an FFL it was PSA, and it was a good experience. A new range just opened near me, and they're technically a gun store, and they do transfers for $15. I feel like I should take advantage of this to get the online deals I always hear about, but I'm not sure what are the best places.
https://gun.deals/
They don't sell guns, they tell you who has them cheapest. Is every site on there good?
NTA but more or less. Obviously still compare the top few for cheapest and all that. Never had a problem. Ditto ammoseek, though I avoid the shitty "limit: 1" sites.
Ok, cool. I'm gonna wait for memorial day and just get whatever is cheapest.
Just taking a sample from one SKU on gun.deals, these are the ones I've ordered from successfully but I trust many more besides
Just do a few BS checks before you buy from places not listed in this thread. Check for a physical address listed on the site, and visit it on google street view to confirm it's actually an existing gun shop. And search "[website] legit reddit [or ar15.com]" to see if people have bad stories. A few of them are scamaz but most are good.
IIRC I bought some mags from DACK and they were alright. Ditto Battlehawk. I forget which one sharpied something on the outside of my box lol; I think that might've been Battlehawk. If DACK is the one I think they are they took literally like 2-3 weeks to ship out a couple mags. They weren't kidding with that "we're really swamped pls understand!" banner; I thought they just forgot to take it down after COVID panic buying lol. So yeah definitely look them up and see if people are complaining. I didn't need my mags but it would've been nice to go to the range with more than 2 mags...
Dack is definitely the 'worst' of the dropshippers when it comes to delivery time
Worst thing is they had the absolutely best prices compared to everyone else in the country for the mags I needed. Didn't contact them. Sucked that it took so long but I guess it was worth the savings. Probably won't order from them again unless it's for something I won't need for quite a while.
eh, I'm often ok with that tradeoff. like if being honest frankly at this point I don't NEED much when it comes to firearm stuff "for quite a while", just being an impatient homosexual with my consooooming. in the old days waiting for days/weeks/months was pretty normal for a lot of shit if it wasn't right at a local store. like back pre-internet being huge waiting for gun shows was a thing all by itself. so sometimes definitely willing to save some dosh with places most people who want instant gratification will give up on. few hundred here and there adds up.
Definitely; I'm fine with the tradeoff too. It just sucked to only have a couple mags after putting the final parts on my 10/22 for hunting. Wanted more mags since I only had the two I liked which I had from last season when it was pretty much stock. Wanted to do much more shooting to just break it in and make sure there was nothing weird going on causing jams or misfeeds (like that isn't regular for a 10/22 lol). It was one of the rare "need it NOW" situations, and even then I didn't really need it then as our small game hunting season is like half of the year.
When I need something "eventually" and they're cheap, sure, I'd consider it. But at a certain point it'd almost make more sense to just pay like $2-3 more per mag from another place I'm already getting something from, like ammo, which you go through quick when shooting .22. You also have to factor in shipping from DACK as I only bought like ~3 mags. I might get some more to up my count to 10 if I end up shooting a lot (so I don't have to clean or load as often, which I probably will end up doing later) but at this point I'm waiting for a mag loader for the BX-15 or BX-25 to pop up. Seems like a no brainer product. They take forever to load and your hands get filthy. I don't see one popping up anytime soon though so I might just end up getting more mags from DACK.
yeah fair enough. when it's chickenfeed level money I'm willing to pay a bit for speed too. but sometimes the deals are worth it even if it takes weeks or months.
tho haven't found it easy myself getting back to that, kinda funny how our brains can get rewired. it's a different mindset to have to really think ahead and order enough and the right stuff at once that I once had better but didn't exercise. I hear alaska bros who have that still outta necessity, ain't no 2-day shipping there. like to get decent ammo pricing have to pay freight on a ship ideally organize a ton of buddies to get a huge amount all at once.
>Check for a physical address listed on the site, and visit it on google street view to confirm it's actually an existing gun shop.
This is good advice in general, it's amazing how much scam shit one can weed out with google street view. It's a tool everyone has heard of yet in my experience almost zero people think to ever use for checking out an online merchant.
For guns specifically it's also worth noting that FFL info is not private, it's a federal government thing and you can look them up. You can download all FFLs in the US, or by state/territory or whatever:
>https://www.atf.gov/firearms/listing-federal-firearms-licensees
ATF literally runs something called "FFLeZCheck":
>https://fflezcheck.atf.gov/FFLEzCheck/
Nobody legit should ever be shy about giving you their license number. If they rip you off you'll have a person and address. And if THAT info is fake it means they lied to get an FFL to the federal government and you will get way, way, WAY more attention out of it then nearly any other scam online.
Ive ordered ammo from defense depot, no scam.
>Ditto ammoseek, though I avoid the shitty "limit: 1" sites.
The main thing with ammoseek beyond that marketing thing is to filter shipping to >8. CF is fine by me because it's always about just hitting a minimum order, but that's fricking trivial when ordering ammo I can't imaging ever going to the trouble to order some deal and have it shipped and buying like, one fricking box or something, by definition it's not instant gratification if I for some reason desperately needed ammo instantly I'd have to suck it up and go play grossly inflated LGS pricing. But low S&H rating is basically always the mark of a scam, they pretend to have lowest CPR by hiding it in their shipping.
dalogeha armory, locked & loaded, gunzone and bereli almost always have the best prices. but a lot of these stores are dropshippers so shipping times can suck
Yeah. I:be had good experiences with all of those, just don't necessarily expect your order to ship right away.
This is unironically the one part of r*ddit I visit but R/gundeals is pretty solid. Cross reference anything you find there with gundeals.com and you'll be golden
Dahlonega, or however the frick you pro
*pronounce it, will tell you to pound sand if there is any issue whatsoever with whatever you buy. Avoid.
Buds, gunprime, palmetto, and primary arms have been good in my experience.
Had good experiences with bereli and tomahawk tactical. Just make sure they have it in stock and aren't ordering it from a warehouse to save yourself some grief.
occasionally aimsurplus will have some pretty cool sales or get unique used, C&R, or LEO trade-in shit. for standard shit you've gotta compare their prices though.
I ordered two LEO trade in Colt AR15A2s with fixed carry handles like a week ago before they went out of stock in like 30 min
genuinely the only company that I don't aggressively unsubscribe from their mailing list
AIM annoys me because of how quickly their trade-in shit sells out. like i get the newsletter and and 15 minutes later its sold out. still mad when they had mr73s for 800 bucks way back in like 2013 and i missed out
>AIM annoys me because of how quickly their trade-in shit sells out
iktfb, I'm still assmad that I didn't notice they had 1903a3's until they were sold out
I never buy from anywhere other than buds and aim because my local FFL guys have tried to go completely Class 3/SOT and gunsmithing because they're tired of interfacing with gunshop morons and they just process FFL transfers specifically for me because I've known them for like 10 years so I feel bad asking them to send their FFL to a new store
>spent $800ish each on a 651 build and a 90s SEAL M16 clone using H&R parts
>friend got a trade-in LEO colt 723-bushmaster mutt with mismatched grey and black anodizing for $500
I’d have been ass mad if not for the fact H&R has awesome quality and was zeroed out the box
>H&R has awesome quality and was zeroed out the box
Right, coming coming out of the same company that sells ars with undertorqued barrles, right.
I already have a C&R license and know the regular sites for that. I made this thread for new guns. I probably should've said that, sorry.
Botach for ammo. If you shoot a lot and need cheap training ammo you can't beat them.
>Botach
$645 for a case of Winchester 55 grain .223...get fricked.
PSA was charging $600 + tax and shipping for the same thing up until recently. Everyone likes to praise PSA but they are not as consumer-price friendly as the masses would lead you to believe.
PSA has worked well for me. They have a pretty good inventory of non-PSA stuff.
Lanbo's armory. Their website looks like it's from 2001 but they've been good when I've needed to deal with CS and they have good prices.
I've had good experiences with bereli and sportsman outdoor superstore, which I consistently get confused with sportsmans warehouse. I'll be trying grabagun next
The ones that do 0% APR for 6 months or better 12%-39% apr for 12 months
which reminds me- credova is fricking terrible. Just an absolutely israeli company. I've never used them but briefly explored it and laughed them out of the room when I saw a fricking 100% APR attached.
Hands down familyfirearms. They beat everyone
Galleryofguns.com
Before they went the Sweaty Ben path, J&G were pretty good. AIM is solid for LEO trade ins. KYGunCo is mid. Kingfirearms has a jank website, but last I checked they had a P229 in .357 Sig for $340. DKArms sometimes scores some decent HK police trade ins, IDK what they got now. Family has the best deal on budget new production guns, like the CZ P10F for around $330 RN. If you got any "qualified professional" documents and don't mind sharing them with Buds you get really good deals on duty ammunition - 124gr +P 9mm Critical duty for 50 cents a shot. Outside of that, not really much else I can immediately recall.
-atlantic is borderline scumbag
-buds is a okay
-midway is always out of stock on everything
-brownells is staffed by choirboy glowBlack folk who hold up every order if you use a funny email
-gunbroker experience can go from tame to what the actual frick depending on the listing
-palmetto is a rapidly growing company that is branching out, so they have "growing pains"
-primary arms also sells a lot of things other than their own products like psa, but they seem to have everything down pat and ship quickly
-opticsplanet/dvor will let you down at some point
-botach is a no joke stereotypical israeli scumbag family, don't even bother looking them up, just don't buy from them
>sweaty ben will sometimes have some rare part or something you want
-hkparts is a very unnecessary evil and is the reason we can't have p7s
-milehigh is a distributor ran by a lunatic c**t
there's so many more, i've ordered from pretty much everyone
story on the atlantic scumbag(s)?
they let poors do layaway
It's either their website has extremely poor security/encryption or there's someone employed over there who steals credit card info and it's been happening for more than a year now.
I'm glad I never got anything from them now
>It's either their website has extremely poor security/encryption or there's someone employed over there who steals credit card info and it's been happening for more than a year now.
This is just a general pro-tip for everyone about online purchases in general: it depends on bank, but a number of credit card companies offer some sort of "virtual credit card number" service. You go to the site or app or something, and then you can enter an amount and expiration date and it'll generate a credit card number+cc that acts identical to a normal one, you can use it like normal at a site. But you can set the balance amount to be just above what your purchase will be and then even if someone gets the number and data they can't use it for anything else.
I don't use them for everything but find they're pretty good when I'm really trying to go for deals from some place that has more question marks particularly if it's the first time I'm doing business with them. Can use a VCC and have way more assurance they can't do shit.
Also forbes thing on it if you want a long reader:
>https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/virtual-credit-card-numbers-guide/
but the concept is obvious and simple. If anything it's kinda shitty this wasn't standardized by law ages ago. Like, my browser should just be able to automate it, so I'm using a different CC# for every single site or even every single purchase, by default. I authorize that and only that and then we're done. Technically it's fricking trivial, it's ridiculous that credit card theft is even a thing that exists.
I've bought from guns.com. They're like Amazon in that they sell their own guns but also have third party sellers but there's no indication on the site to differentiate between them. Sometimes you can score some deals from their used gun section. For example, I bought a used 43x at msrp but it came with 1k worth of aftermarket parts on it.
What I want to know is if there are any sites like Liberty Tree that aren't complete bullshit like Collectors Firearms or Simpsons.
how is simpsons bullshit?
Ever called them to ask about a specific gun? buttholes both times I've called.
Oh thats it? Its a busy store run by boomers.
I hate rude behavior in a man. Won't tolerate it.
So far my best success has been from classic firearms(which I then found out was local to me), guns.com, my semi local ffl(hyatt), and GunBroker.
I ordered my last gun from gunzonedeals which I am confused as to why they picked a name that sounds the most like a scam site
Outdoorlimited is great for bulk ammo, I'd buy more from PSA if they had any kind of free shipping though
KYGUNCO
Kentucky Gun Company
I just recently ordered a new gun from United Patriot Supply and they were great. I was concerned they were a dropshipper so I looked them up on Facebook and they looked pretty legit with a decent sized warehouse and a full looking staff.
I've only done online three times so far, first was from mega arms, which is a pretty small operation but it was no trouble
Range USA offers some pretty good sales prices but their non sale prices are pretty bad