Gee, why would the city want to keep that number from the public? . . . Judge allows Seattle to withhold gun tax numbers – A setback for gun rights advocates in Seattle. A judge is allowing the city to withhold data on how much money it collects from gun and ammunition sales. ‘We were pleased with the court’s decision today,’ says Assistant City Attorney Kent Meyer, ‘She denied the plantiff’s motion for summary judgement, and that’s what we asked her to do.’ David Edwards is the lawyer for Dave Workman with the Second Amendment Foundation. ‘All he want’s to know is how much Seattle has collected from this tax. Seattle won’t release that number… The judge’s ruling is that she does not have enough facts in front of her to be able to make a decision,’ says Edwards.”

The AP manages to get ‘hit men’ and James Bond in the first sentence . . . Gun industry seeks to ease gov’t restrictions on silencers – “They are the stuff of legend, wielded by hit men and by James Bond. For decades, buying a silencer for a firearm has been as difficult as buying a machine gun, requiring a background check that can take close to a year. Now, emboldened by the election of Donald Trump as president, the industry has renewed a push in Congress to ease those restrictions, arguing that it’ll help preserve the hearing of gun users.”

California Gun Rights Advocates March on Capitol – “A short march from the Tower Bridge to the State Capitol packed a powerful message. ‘We’re tired of California lawmakers trampling on our gun rights,’ said march organizer Jacob Shockley. The mile long stretch of sidewalk between the two spots was crowded with Second Amendment supporters Sunday morning. ‘These demonstrations are an important part of the political process this gets the public noticing the cause,’ said demonstrator David Bouilly.” Then they lit cars on fire and smashed store windows, leaving the downtown area in chaos. Oh wait. Never mind.

Campus carry in Arkansas . . . 98 Percent Of Poll Respondents Support Arkansas Campus Carry – “There’s no shortage of support for campus carry in the Natural State. Nearly 98 percent of readers responding to an unscientific online survey by The Madison County Record voted, ‘Yes, all colleges should allow permit holders to carry firearms.’ That left a paltry 2 percent whose responses were split between ‘no,’ ‘unsure/indifferent’ and ‘Yes, but a college should be able to choose whether or not to allow firearms on campus.’”

Fake news . . . NBC News Incorrectly Says Criminals Can Legally Manufacture Their Own Guns – “NBC News ran a segment during their Nightly News program last week that incorrectly said criminals can legally manufacture guns for their own personal use. ‘This is a real gun and anyone can buy it, no background check required,’ Jeff Rossen, NBC News national investigative correspondent, said as the segment opened. ‘It’s perfectly legal.'”

Mostly no . . . Do Americans want to buy ‘smart’ guns? – “Overall, I found that gun owners and people who were more “pro-gun” were less likely to choose a smart gun over a traditional firearm. This is important because estimates suggest that a small number of Americans own most of the guns in the U.S. A 2015 unpublished survey from Harvard and Northeastern University estimated that just 3 percent of Americans owned half of the nation’s guns. Other estimates suggest that gun owners today own more guns per household than they did in years past. So those likely to go out and purchase a firearm – current gun owners – may not be willing to choose a smart gun.”

Because no one should be able to exercise a civil right while exercising a civil right . . . Election official wants to ban guns from Nevada polling places – “Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria told a state Assembly panel on Tuesday that lawmakers should consider banning guns from polling places to guard against voter intimidation. Guns are banned at some Nevada polling places, such as at schools where weapons are illegal, but other polling locations are not included in such a prohibition, Gloria told the Assembly Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections.”

What’s bad for the Gander . . . Gander Mountain preparing to file for bankruptcy this month: sources – “Gander Mountain, which bills itself as America’s firearms superstore, has faced challenges capitalizing on a booming gun market. The Federal Bureau of Investigation carried out a record 27.5 million background checks on people seeking to buy guns in 2016, up 19 percent from the year before.”

 

87 COMMENTS

  1. Well that’s too bad about Gander. Hopefully they will reorganize and stay in business.

    I have never had a bad experience at my local Gander. I have also never seen a bargain there. When they put ammo on sale, it’s only sort of competitive with the regular prices in other stores. Gander is also where you’ll find the highest prices on guns, anywhere.

    Like ’em or hate ’em, competition is a good thing. So I hope they survive and find a way to make a profit.

    • That’s been my observation. The only place you’ll find higher prices on guns and am mo is on Gun Broker, however Gun Broker is also the place you’ll find some of the best deals on guns. (I swear 80% of the sellers have no interest in selling anything.)

      • Gun Broker is a place to advertise guns at “MSRP” so when you get someone in the store, you can quote them actual going price and they’ll think they got a great deal.

        I looked at GB last week to get pricing on a Taurus. Used that info, went to the gun show, made an offer, and it was accepted. I paid around 30% less than GB price, no shipping or transfer fees either.

        Yeah, yeah. Taurus jokes. But I traded up from a Kel-Tec. I needed a BUG.

        • 70% MSRP is generally what I consider to be a good deal.

          My other observation about GB is that when someone lists something as a penny auction it often gets bid up higher than identical items on the sight.

        • I dunno, I think I’d rather take a Keltec over a Taurus. I had a Sub2k for a very brief while, it was a decent enough gun. Not quite worth the hype in my opinion, but not bad.

        • The difference between armslist and gb is that armslist prices are negotiable. I always put about 50 to 100 bucks wiggle room in my prices because I expect people to haggle. Likewise if I’m buying a gun I’ll always offer less, unless their initial price is already good. I know I’ve asked too much if I don’t get any responses after a few days, and I know I’ve asked too little if there’s no haggling.

      • I just bought a Lionheart on gunbroker. They sell new for $750 and I picked up this gun made in 2014 for $450. Just gotta be patient and weed out the stores from the private sellers

        • You got lucky. People pay way too much for used guns, IMHO. You can usually buy new for an extra $50.

        • I agree that people usually pay too much for used guns. Although, I think $50 off new is a little high. I’d have paid $550 for it (coincidentally the “buy it now” option) but I’d have struggled to pay $600 for a used gun who’s MSRP was $750. The Lionheart is a rare breed because of how rare it is in stores. Lionheart’s website will ship them to an FFL free of charge after you pay the MSRP, but rarely are they to be had in stores on discount.

    • I remember the first Gander that came to my town… an entire huge store dedicated to the pursuit and taking of anything that walks, swims or flies. And while I will admit to buying two guns from there, they were priced just right -unlike most of their stuff.

    • Competition is a good thing, if you are willing to compete. Gander Mountain hasn’t been competitive, even with small time local gun shops.

    • Watch them also be bought out by Bass Pro and then merged into one giant monster of a store with a near-monopoly on outdoorsy stuff (besides Dicks/Field & Stream and Academy, which have both gotten flak over their fuddliness).

  2. If Gander mountain actually sold their guns at competitive prices, they would have made a bit of money. I shook my head any time i watched someone buying a gun there, and paying 20-50% more than what any other gun store was charging.

    • +1. I have no personal knowledge–there isn’t one at my end of the state–but if what y’all have said is true, it’s their own fault. As big as they appear to be, they get the lowest wholesale price structure, and then they go and charge premium prices. This is a sure recipe for FAIL.

      • Same is true for Bass Pro, not just on guns but on everything. They generally run 20%–30% higher than the same items at WalMart or even Academy. Most recently that was true on a Caldwell Lead Sled and a Mr. Heater Big Buddy for me.
        The selection is infinitely better at BP, and they have the only decent archery section within 100 miles of me, but it’s not worth it for me to pay that much more because they have an aquarium and taxidermy.

  3. The people in Olympia are about to vote on safe storage and assault weapon registration bills tomorrow. This week would be a terrible time (for them) for Seattle to admit that their last law was a complete and utter waste of time.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, we’re going to do a gun photo shoot on a boat before anything passes tomorrow.

    • How in the hell is any and all tax revenue information NOT public? This is why bureaucrats are always the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

      • I don’t recall the specific weaselnesses of it all off the top of my head, but I believe the only way they were able to do it in the first place was by claiming that the gun sale and ammo sale taxes weren’t technically taxes because….

        • Must be like the Obamacare mandate. It’s only a tax when it’s convenient, otherwise it’s a penalty. Unless it’s a tax.

          Thanks, Justice Roberts.

      • Because Seattle is run by a bunch of Fscktard progressives. They elected an avowed Socialist to city council. She is a crazy b1tch, and that is a slur on female dogs. I don’t know how Seattle got that way, but I don’t go there unless it is absolutely necessary.

        I had to go to the main Sheriff’s office there to apply for my carry permit. Cost me $16 to park for a couple hours. Ah, the joy of the big city. I grew up in Detroit, so my view of city life is somewhat negative.

      • My understanding from reading the link is that the case will go forward.
        What this judge did was not allow a summary judgement; until the case is finished, the city can continue to withhold the information.
        I do not understand why the city would feel the need to withhold the information, though. I’m sure that information is available online, but I’m not sufficiently motivated to find it.

        • Basically, there’s only two gun stores in Seattle that this tax affects. One sent all their business out of town. So if you get the tax information for the one remaining, then you know it’s that one guy’s information, which would be a privacy issue.

          I mean, we knew that going into this, and it’s amazing how they can cite privacy NOW while voting on a law to violate everybody else’s privacy going forward.

          Basically, they hate guns, but now would be a bad time to have their ineptitude proven. So the judge pushes off the date for any revealing information until after they have a chance to pass more dumb laws like this. Step 2: ????

    • And I’m sitting here thinking, on what possible basis could a governmental entity keep its tax revenues secret? It makes no sense, but I haven’t seen the briefs or what arguments they’ve mustered.

      • They claim that because they’ve ran all but 3 gun stores out of town it’ll reveal the amount of tax those 3 places pay and therefore is a violation of their privacy…however I read that in an article where one of the owners put out a very low number on what they’d paid out.

        • I suppose someone might also point out the net loss to their overall tax base caused by this stupid move.

      • Simply the cost of the bureaucracy created to administer the tax is more than is collected by the tax.

        I would call this “internal welfare” where an agency is set up purely for the benefit of its own staff and no-one else. Almost like the BATF but is even less productive.

        • Less productive than BATF is simply not possible. Here after 70 years they finally get moved away from being a supposedly tax agency, because they have collected so little tax for the huge expenditures involved, not to mention the crime and corruption of agents and bureaucrats both, and the consistent abuse of the taxpayer.

  4. Seattle is really screwing the pooch on that ammo tax bullshit.

    I try and defend this city when possible, but this is just the worst kind of under-handed, sniveling authoritarianism. It might as well have been out of a script written by Ted Nugent. If he could write.

    I applaud all those fighting this crap, but especially Outdoor Emporium. They could have just packed up and moved a few miles south, but they are fighting, and they are (or were the last time I was there) actually discounting their prices more than what they have to charge to cover the tax. Stand up folks. They’re on 4th in SoDo, go buy a gun.

  5. Well I was going to buy a gun 5 years ago at Gander after they assured me I could do a layaway for it. Got there and they refused- it wasn’t 300 bucks. It was 299.95. And I drove 45 miles. Pathetic overpriced crap…but it’s OK because now I spend all my dough locally.

  6. ‘A 2015 unpublished survey from Harvard and Northeastern University estimated that just 3 percent of Americans owned half of the nation’s guns.’ – The key word hear is ‘unpublished’. Considering how much guano actually gets published out of progressive institutions like Harvard and Northeastern, this should immediately trip your BS alarm.

    • Two key words, Gov.: Unpublished and estimated. In other words, they were guessing and knew what would happen if they actually published so they just leaked it to the MSM and let them publish it as fake news.

      “…estimates suggest that a small number of Americans own most of the guns in the U.S. A 2015 unpublished survey from Harvard and Northeastern University estimated that just 3 percent of Americans owned half of the nation’s guns.”

      Assuming they didn’t just pull this “fact” out of their butts, and using very rough estimates of the population and the number of guns in civilian hands: If half of the U.S. population is old enough to own a gun that would be approximately 150 million people. Of those 3% is @ 5.5 million. So if 5.5 million people own half of the roughly 300 million guns that still leaves at least one gun for each of the remaining 144 million Americans. We know that not all Americans who CAN own a gun do own a gun so if you cut that in half again that still gives you 72 million people with two guns apiece.

      Lies, damn lies, and statistics. It’s never really about the facts, it’s how your present (or misrepresent) the facts.

      • ‘Lies, damn lies, and statistics.’ – Usually attributed to Mark Twain who popularized the expression, but it was actually Benjamin Disraeli who coined the phrase.

      • “It’s never really about the facts, it’s how your present (or misrepresent) the facts.”

        Absolutely. Perception is reality.
        The “Affordable Care Act” is a prime example. It raised costs to the average person, despite its name, and the way it was presented.
        Government is exceptionally good at twisting the language to make it say one thing, and mean another.
        The news media is equally adept at this.

    • Are they seriously trying to claim that 3% of our 320~million population- give/take about 9.6million people- possess between 100-300 million firearms, depending on the estimate you want to go with??? 200mguns/9.6mpeople=~20 guns apiece. Am I in the ballpark here? Statistics and I were not good friends in college and we haven’t really spoken in a while…

      • There was an article last year proclaiming this. It basically said that anyone who owned 15 or more guns was a “super owner”. Quite amusing even though it was pointless and didn’t mean anything.

        • It was anti-gunners desperately trying to do ANYTHING to prevent having to admit that gun ownership (as a percentage of the population) was rising, and had been rising for some time. The only way to get this inconvenient fact of continually rising sales under control was to lay the blame for those high sales at the feet of the so-called “super owners”.

          Like the “super owners” were the ones filling up all the “new gun owner” classes at my local range.

          Like the “super owners” were the ones causing the handgun carry permits to continually increase.

          All baloney, but the leftist media ate it up and regurgitated it dutifully, giving the myth life.

        • Super Owner? Is that like VIP check-in? Do you get to waive the 72 hour waiting period for handguns? Do we get frequent shooter points?

        • I aspire to become a “super user”, who can fire 20 guns, accurately, at the same time! *THAT* would be cool! What the importance of a “super owner” might be, I couldn’t tell you.

    • Guys, I have a study here on my desk which says 75% of the guns in America are owned by nobody at all. And another 40% are owned by illegals and gangbangers. And if you’d like a study showing something else, send me a check for $10 and it’ll be in the return mail. Why do we even LISTEN to this crap?

  7. I don’t know whether to nominate the author of the Smart Gun article for a No Shit Sherlock award, or as the acting Captain Obvious.

    Yes Felicia, people with guns know how guns work and want smart guns like they want an acid enema.

  8. Gander Mtn’s problem is four fold IMHO.

    1) Their guns, ammo and accessories are like their bows: over priced in many cases.

    2) Their clothing selection sucks in my experience. Look Mr. Mtn, you’re not a tactical store so having your clothes be mostly 5.11’s and Ghillie’s isn’t going to work out for you. Oh, wow look you sell some over priced Columbia and your shitty store brand too. No North Face, no Arc’Teryx, no Mountain Hardware (oddly enough), no Kelty, no Marmot etc. And you wonder why REI eats your lunch?

    3) Their camping equipment selection sucks too. Not everyone is always in the market for a tent big enough to sleep all the people smuggled across the boarder in an 18 wheeler. Other than sleeping bags everything is meant for setting up a giant base camp. They’ll have 10 different camping stoves for sale not one of which is for backpacking or light camping. They’re limiting their market to people who think sleeping in an RV and spending their entire day sipping drinks inside a huge tent while someone whips up enough food for a platoon is “camping”.

    4) Their staff isn’t really knowledgeable about what they sell and seems to err in favor of up-selling you shit you don’t need. From fish finders to ammo to knives to boots I’ve been lied to at a Gander Mtn, or was obviously talking to someone who knew exactly fuck all about the topic. Not everyone who walks through the door is completely ignorant of the products they’re looking at. Trying to bullshit you way to a sale is a great way to have them walk out the door.

  9. Pertaining to that Gun Free Zone sign, I’ll admit that my .357s are on steroids, thanks to Double Tap.

  10. That march in Sacramento? Funny, I live in the pro-gun North State and it didn’t even make the news here. But then again, there was that damn dam thingy going on, kind of shoved everything off to the side.

    • As a former native Californian I’m glad to see white people marching for their gun rights at the capital. As a black kid I saw how the Mulford Act was enforced differently when its was ok for whites to openly carry guns in groups of white people in Sacramento. I was their when the East Area Rapist was first active in Sacramento county, the middle to late 1970s. White people openly carried guns patrolling the neighborhoods to protecting their families. At the same time black people couldn’t open carry their guns and patrol black neighborhoods because the police would arrest them.

      What I find interesting is in the former slave states, when Jim Crow was alive and well in 1966-67, black men openly carried guns and the police mostly left them alone. The Deacon for Defense and Justice were quite a contrast to what was going on in California.
      The south has changed. But California has not.

      • Selective enforcement (race-based) has been a major component of gun control since the 1860s. And blacks continue to vote for the party which invented it. I can’t explain it, other than the ever false promise of free stuff, always to be delivered later.

        • Larry in texas
          I agree with you blacks continue to vote for free stuff from the democrat party who also wants their guns.

          But white people who have gay sex with each other also vote for democrats that demand the public to tell them its ok to have gay in the privacy of their own home. White homosexuals are willing to support a party that will force other people to give up their guns. In exchange the gays get free medical research into AIDS. They get free condoms and free hypodermic needles to shoot up crystal meth to improve their sexual experience.

          There is a split among black people. Black men voted for Donald Trump. But black women vote for Hillary Clinton. It seems single black women like white homosexuals like getting free stuff from the democrat party.
          There is no such split among white homosexuals. They all vote democrat.

  11. Anyone want to tell the Associated Press that keeping a suppressor on his Beretta 418 almost gets Bond killed in From Russia With Love, as it makes it impossible to draw in a reasonable manner, and MI6 forced him to stop using them in Dr. No as a result?

  12. To be fair, that AP article was pretty fair esp[ecially when it ends with a statement that the argument that criminals will be able to get them “is ludicrous.”

  13. I thought they got too big – too quick. Seems like a new store every month for a couple of years.

    After my last visit to the our closest Gander, i told my wife they must be in trouble.

    They had spotty stock and werent taking care of the floor model stuff on display.

    For guns, their prices are way too high. My LGS had em beat by a mile.

    They do have a good selection of ammo, but priced 30% above SGAmmo. I’ll pay for shipping.

    Hasta la vista Gander.

  14. Hopefully Gander finds a way to pull through. Either they don’t over price that much at my location or all the shops in my area are over charging. Main reason why I shop there is at least they have stuff in stock, the other gun shops hardly carry anything other than Glocks. Only thing I don’t buy at Gander is ammo.

    • That would be the dreaded “Tea Cup” grip that sends so many Internet Operators Operating Operationally” into spasms. I have seen people at the range (men and women) using it.

      • Popularized by Charlie’s Angels.
        I watched that show but never really noticed how they held their guns.

        • Not just Charlie’s Angels doing that grip wrong. Jack Bower from 24 does it wrong and so does the girl from Resident Evil. Even the new James Bond and Matt Damon do it. I think it moves the supporting arm’s elbow further down from your face allowing for better camera angles.

        • Use the grip that works for you, and don’t worry about what others use.
          If it works, don’t fix it.
          The “teacup” grip works for a lot of people.
          That you and I don’t use it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

        • Also popularized by the Angels and repeated in too many movies and TV shows was the “angel ready” carry position when they cleared rooms with the pistols held in the two-hand tea cup hold and pointing vertically at the ceiling rather than the more realistic “low ready” with the muzzle pointed at the floor/ground.

          But it didn’t really matter. People watched for the Angels, not gun-handling tips.

        • After several slides smash hell out of your thumb, you discover that can’t happen with any gun if you are utilizing the ever popular teacup.

      • I’ll look it up as well, but what’s the benefit to the cupping hand? Either it is pushing up or it isn’t. If it is, it seems like it would cause even more muzzle rise; if it isn’t, why bother? It isn’t like the gun is going to fall through the other hand or is it just something to do?

        • She probably just learned to shoot on a revolver. You can’t get as high of a grip because of the grip position as well as the movement and escaping gases of the cylinder.

  15. Gander must be suffering the same malady as Sears/KMart – it’s OK to be the first, but you have to constantly innovate, or otherwise you will be the last. I bought a handgun for list price at Gander at the height of the early 2013 shortage because they were the only ones who had anything left. Since then, nothing. The prices are just too high. Where I live, we have a Gander that is on the property of a mall where many people are no longer comfortable going because of a “changed neighborhood”; we have a new Field and Stream and now an Academy opening up across the street from it in a better area; plus a decent number of LGS’s and pawn shops, all of the non-gun sporting goods stores like REI, and of course on line competition. It is hard to see how all this brick and mortar can survive. There are a limited number of rank newbies (like I was) that will pay list price at a store like Gander. I just bought a Sig handgun with a boatload of accessories from a large LGS for about 70% of list, which even after sales tax is less than buying on the internet and paying for shipping and transfer fee. The gun is not even available at Gander, and if it were, the cost would be nearly twice as much because Gander would not have the accessory package, and charge list for that as well.

  16. Kind of a shame about Gander. I bought my first gun there before I knew better about their pricing, especially non sale pricing. Sale pricing could sometimes be reasonable (I specifically recall 18.5″ Benelli Nova’s being a good price when on sale). The real reason I will miss it is that it was a good “as long as we’re up that way” destination where I could go look at guns while the wife looked at clothes, and I could maybe pick up some cleaning patches or a couple boxes of bird shot if it was on sale . My local one was especially nice because all the long guns were out on a rack. No having to ask a counter person 100 times as you went back and forth handling several different items.

    That Seattle thing is pure underhanded BS.

  17. At one point my West Palm Beach Gander Mountain had all the scopes out, mounted on wood “rifles” and cable locked to the display with a 4 foot cable
    That was a great idea as you could compare the view through a $1,000 Swarovski and a $400 Zeiss without talking to a salesman
    That display is long gone
    As others have said, Ganders pricing is way too high
    Even Bass Pro beats them
    And Bass pro is overpriced!

  18. I watched the Ghost Gun propaganda. It was during Lester Holt. Yeah I was at a family members for dinner. It was the most bias work of fiction I’ve seen in a couple days. It was major over the top fear mongering. They made it seem like ghost guns were being used in crime sprees across the country. I did some quick research I could only find 3 crimes committed with ghost guns over the last few years. Not sure why a criminal is going to use a credit card online order the receiver, jig, upper and parts. Not too mention they would need a drill press and possibly a mill. A criminal isn’t going to go through all that. They would steal one and file the numbers off. You need almost $1,000 worth of tools and parts to build a ghost gun. Nothing like that was mentioned. They made it seem like all you needed was a hand drill and an hr.

  19. ” Election official wants to ban guns from Nevada polling places ”
    Can’t “campaign” within 500′ of a polling place, might as well move off anyone with an ‘agenda’ (meaning gun grabbers, as I would hope ccw only have a reactionary agenda) to minimum safe distance too.

    In fact, it’s a good start to the argument to ban K-Street, and all of their ilk, from setting up/maintaining a shop anywhere inside the D.C. ‘loop’ (and I mean the highway).

    • Uh, I’m pretty sure they *are* just as hard to get, at least insofar as ATF is concerned. Difference is, they are a whole BUNCH cheaper.

  20. I once owned that ghost gun toy in the articles photo . It was awesome,bring em back just so the anti-folks will pucker up tighter than a balloon knot.

    • “My god, just anyone can buy one, right in a toy store, without any kind of background check at all!”

  21. It is great that people in CA got out there standing up for the 2nd amendment!

    That said, please people please, protest/gather when the elected employees are actually in the office!!!
    Protesting to the janitorial and security staff is basically pointless.

    Look I know it is hard to get off work and travel down to wherever during the week, but unless you make it hard for them to ignore you, you are accomplishing little or nothing.

    Do you really think the anti-gun people care if you show up while they are sitting at home?

    Another thing you can do, is Write your elected employee a Physical Letter, and make sure you put something like “Please respond soonest. That way the office should be spending time and money writing you a response. A single stamp costs little, but carry that out to 1000, 5000, 10,000 times and your employees will have to at least know that you all are upset.

    Emails and phone messages can easily be deleted. But people showing up or mailing letters being sent are a little harder to ignore.

  22. If Nevada politicians really wanted to improve the sanctity of polling places, it would have banned the SEIU years ago.

  23. Every Gander Mountain that I walked into in Florida always had more staff than customers. Ridiculous prices for firearms and gear will do that. Outrageous ammo prices didn’t help either.

  24. SCOTUS ruled back in 1971 that it’s unconstitutional to tax the sale of religious or philosophical materials because the exercise of a right cannot be taxed.

    So how do they get away with taxes on sales of arms?

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