Posted: 4/27/2005 3:17:20 PM EDT
| Whats the story with Gun Runners and RAL. Who bought who out? |
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Rod and James sold RAL to Neils of Gunrunners a few years back. Neils has now sold his Dimond and Arctic store along with the Eagle River store to concentrate on other pursuits. Lou, formerly of Alaska Shooters Supply, bought the Dimond store so go check out the changes. Jason |
BUT anyone besides Neils is a good thing!
cant put a name to a face at alaska shooters supply , when jack use to run it out of the garage/shop i liked it alot better now alot of the alaska territorial guard or whatever the junior militia guys are calling it , go in there |
You have these guys also  We have several in Fairbanks who strut out to the gun shows to parade around. There is one guy who must be in his 70's. It's kind of funny to hear them talk, I think I talked the same way when I was 6. With that being said, there are a couple of them who are top notch guys, makes me wonder what the missed out on in life |
| man that was back in the day , also got 86'd outta RAL , no lie , we went to a show and got a table , selling my buddies collection to facilitate the buying of heavier firepower like 25 guns total he moved and all his old military gear .. we use to go to RAL once a week to look around , the guy came up to us and said he didnt want us in his store anymore because we were checking his prices and were competition...funny stuff ....Those militia guys make me laugh , every sat afternoon they are at Garcias in Eagle River , talking about manuvers and General so and so , and Capt fancy pants , and they are all older than dirt with there BDU's and Alaska patches |
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Neils has been a good friend to me for years now and Ive got some great deals from him as well. As for his prices, you probably didnt try and haggle with him did ya? Thats what he LOVED to do was haggle or better yet, trade. If you just looked at the price tag and didnt do anything more then thats your loss because he loved to "make a deal". Nobody can make everyone happy all the time but Ive never had a bad experience with him and I also consider him to be a good friend as well. Jason |
Exactly. Niels has always had high sticker prices. They were there as a starting point. Hell, I made a trade + cash with him one time and we agreed on a price - then HE knocked another $25 or 50 off the price. Another time I just walked in and asked him what deal I couldn't refuse today... He pointed at the cases of Fiocchi .45ACP and said I could have as many as I want for cost. Unfortunately I could only scrape up enough cash for 2 cases. He was avoiding moving it out to the other store so I doubt I'll get that deal again...  If you want to walk in and pay the price on the sticker, go somewhere else. But I love to trade and haggle. Most stores just look at you funny when you make them an offer. Now... Neils has had some real losers for employees before. I stopped even bothering with them after a while so I don't know the current crew. |
My personal bad dealings with him weren't on firearms purchases (I had bought from him before and always laughed at his sticker prices). Long story that doesn't need rehashing, I used to supply alot of his ammo inventory. Business (IMHO) was not his strong suit and I caught the back end of a large deal. He shorted and walked taking no responsibility, leaving me holding the bag. Anyway, on to bigger and better things, that was almost 2 years ago...hmm, do I hold a grudge  And don't get me started on some of the retards that used to work for him, not even a dim bulb in the entire bunch 
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Some of his former employees have really boned him real good in the past.....one stole a gun, Neils found out it was him, asked him to return it and no charges would be pressed....dont think I would have been so generous there. Another boned him out of about 3k and is currently paying it back as slow as hell....he now works at another gun shop in town now. Neils joked to me once that he's been ripped off so often, he's numb to it now. Now that he has just one store to deal with, he can go and do some other things he's been wanting to do for a while which is good because for some time there, he was EXTREMELY burned out. I hope Lou is as successful as Neils was at the Dimond store but I'm going to miss going there to haggle and B.S. with Neils about everything under the sun. It was a great place to spend some time......every other gun store, except AK tactical, sucks to go to and I only spend maybe 5 minutes looking at all the crap guns before I'm bored to tears and running for the door. God, I miss the days of gun stores like Gun Traders back in the 80's that carried all the assault weapons you could load into your truck and every cool accessory you could lay your hands on. Anyone have a time machine I can borrow?!? Jason |
| He did like to haggle, and at least he would acknowledge you when you came into the store, unlike some of the assholes over at Jack's place. Bastards did not even raise their heads out of a card game one time. Can't wait to see what ol' louie gets going, should be good. |
I remember him telling me about one of his first employees, some gray-haired hippy type dude ripped him off for $15,000 and split to Chitna, and told him if he ever came looking for him or the money he'd kill him. |
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My favorite story cames from a tough kid who was working at Gun Runners on Dimond. He said two young men came in the store and swiped a box of 9mm ammo. He was watching them in the parking lot and he said it looked like they were loading magazines. So he did what any upstanding citizen would do (insert sarcasm and eye roll here! ) he drew his own gun and went out into the parking lot to confront them. I guess the hoods drove off at that point.I don't think he got a description, or a license plate number. Oh well at least there wasn't a blood bath in front of the Village Inn. |