Common Sense 101 - Engineering - December 16, 2012 Edition

Common Sense 101: Engineering
The market for English shotguns is as hot as the casing of a spent cartridge, with gun prices
reaching new highs. Auctioneers say the boom was triggered by the September 2008 collapse of
investment bank Lehman Brothers, during the Great Recession. Spooked by the unpredictability of the
stock market, a growing number of investors, mainly those already into game-bird hunting, wanted to
diversify their portfolios and saw top-end shotguns not only as a safe investment with reliable returns, but
one with actual utility. “There is a lot of similarity between our market and the classic, vintage car
market,” Gardiner says. “Guns are an investment you can use and enjoy.” Adds Elworthy: “If it is
reasonably [unaltered], is serviced and looked after, an English gun should do nothing else but increase
steadily in value.”
There is, in fact, no reason why everything, if “reasonably … serviced and looked after”, shouldn’t do
likewise. It’s not as if guns are not used roughly, whether internally or externally. Bullets have to withstand
upwards of 150,000 g’s when fired: nothing in a fridge or washing machine or air conditioner—or even
private jet—comes close. And hunting in Africa means going out into the bush for chrissake. There’s dust,
rocks, thorns and wild beasts. Your gun is not going to be mollycoddled. But it can take the heat—both
literal and figurative—and actually come out looking all the better for it. If that’s the case, why can’t your car,
your appliances and your house do likewise?
So. Think about what I said, and draw your own long-lived product here:
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