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Calguns Account Suspended?

Been seeing quite a few 504 Gateway errors again, and some random glitches.... so it's "sorta back", but rather cranky to work with...
 
Calibreeze said:
Mine as well put a pitch fork into Calguns..Kes should just merge all its members to this form and call it a day. I genuinely feel bad for the guy. It's seems like he is so invested into Calguns that he can't let it go. Sometimes you gotta tap out and that's okay.
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I don't. He had multiple opportunities to accept free help from people who just wanted to ensure that the largest 2A community in CA continues to exist. Instead, he stubbornly and arrogantly refuses to acknowledge that he is way out of his element and that his technical knowledge is lacking (textbook Dunning-Kruger I might add). Either he's hiding something (perhaps the financials) or he thinks himself more capable than he actually is. Regardless, no sympathy from me when the stakes are so high and the wounds self-inflicted.
 
I have nothing but respect for Calguns, no disrespect intended in my previous post. I filled a safe with nice guns by horse trading on Calguns. I bet California DOJ has noticed a drop in DROS transfers since Calguns started having issues!

I spent thousands of hours on Calguns being schooled on firearms. Calguns was my escape from the 9 to 5, spending entire evenings just reading. I sure wish thing were different at Calguns.

This place(CAguns) is now filling that void in my life. Long live CAguns!!
 
5.56Geo said:
I have nothing but respect for Calguns, no disrespect intended in my previous post. I filled a safe with nice guns by horse trading on Calguns. I bet California DOJ has noticed a drop in DROS transfers since Calguns started having issues!

I spent thousands of hours on Calguns being schooled on firearms. Calguns was my escape from the 9 to 5, spending entire evenings just reading. I sure wish thing were different at Calguns.

This place(CAguns) is now filling that void in my life. Long live CAguns!!
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I agree. Calguns was a wonderful site at its peak. As Caguns gains steam it will replace Calguns, inevitably. Caguns format is great. I like the customize search options. There is nothing like finding a nice pistol on calguns at a reasonable price only to click on the posting and being deflated due to the pistol being located 200 miles away.
 
A sizeable portion of the remaining following on Calguns are people who like that Off-Topic gives them a place to be misogynistic, homophobic, and basically carry on like fools. They like that it's an over-the-top MAGA echo chamber. Quite frankly, it's not a good look for gun owners. And, it's not very helpful in a place like California, where are gun owners should unite and support one another. Additionally, Off-Topic tomfoolery is counterproductive to getting new people who might be interested in guns, yet don't fit that bratty frat-boy vibe, to feel like it's a place they could be accepted.

Luckily, this forum doesn't have that issue. It's optimized to focus on guns and gun-related information, while leaving all the nonsense behind.
 
steelholder said:
I don think its done yet, still has a massive following even after all the server issues.
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Yes, they still do have a strong following. I'm glad they have a place to go.

CalgunsMothershipAwayTeam said:
Luckily, this forum doesn't have that issue. It's optimized to focus on guns and gun-related information, while leaving all the nonsense behind.
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Yep! This was the main thing I was hoping to do. Without the OT threads, I think people can see how much we can build and grow organically without it. Things aren't as exciting, but too many people are afraid of "normal" these days.

I will say, i wish I had permission to use CGN logo. I've come out with a new badging system which could replace the existing jedi badge with a CGN coin, but without permission I won't implement here.

There's a lot we can do to gamify the systems here the older we get. 25+ feedback etc. This is live on the armoryhq & texanarmory site. This site is the clean version right now. I don't want to F with a stable system right now. I need to work on the documentation here.

Screenshot 2025-04-04 at 11.27.50 AM.png

The goal here is to connect people and businesses and build up some good information. We recently have our first lawyer who's open to doing a AMA which I think would be fun.
 
ikeo1 said:
Yep! This was the main thing I was hoping to do. Without the OT threads, I think people can see how much we can build and grow organically without it. Things aren't as exciting, but too many people are afraid of "normal" these days.
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OT is what ruined Calguns, as far as I’m concerned. It took over the as the focus of the site, and allowed all the out-of-state members with no interest in the California firearms community to take both the “Cal” and the “guns” out of Calguns. So far, it doesn’t look like that will be happening here, and that’s a good thing.
 
It only shows account suspended for me if I am logged in. If I am not logged in then I can view the site…… wierd
 
CalgunsMothershipAwayTeam said:
A sizeable portion of the remaining following on Calguns are people who like that Off-Topic gives them a place to be misogynistic, homophobic, and basically carry on like fools. They like that it's an over-the-top MAGA echo chamber. Quite frankly, it's not a good look for gun owners. And, it's not very helpful in a place like California, where are gun owners should unite and support one another. Additionally, Off-Topic tomfoolery is counterproductive to getting new people who might be interested in guns, yet don't fit that bratty frat-boy vibe, to feel like it's a place they could be accepted.

Luckily, this forum doesn't have that issue. It's optimized to focus on guns and gun-related information, while leaving all the nonsense behind.
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While I agree the OT place brings alot of non gun stuff to the mix and doesn't need to exist here, I'm not sure who you think the "gun" people are with your Hillary basket of deplorables comments. You are in the under 1% of gun lovers on "that side," YES, many democrats bought guns recently and many in the LGBT crowd did (great, I love it) BUT actual gun lovers and enthusiasts are who you labeled nonsense. MAGA is not a good look for gun owners, oh ok- Newsom is?? Really?? I mean, they are literally trying to ban guns altogether but yes, gun people being the in MAGA crowd is a bad look for "gun owners" Lord help us
 
steelholder said:
I don think its done yet, still has a massive following even after all the server issues.
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The for sale section def shows that... why i dont understand?? People need to search out and look around and they would find this working site instead but I think people just get lazy maybe? I dunno
 
How much of this information is true? Like it's only expense is $40 / month?
 

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The estimate of revenue is a bit low. If you look at older discussing in the last year or so (both here and on Reddit), the estimates were about $100K to $150K. That came from people who were paying for ads on Calguns, and knew how much they were paying each month, and multiplying by the roughly known number of banner ads. So that works out to roughly $8K to $12K a month in revenue.

The estimate of server costs is also a bit low. If you look at Calguns right now, it has a banner about how many CPUs and GB of RAM it has; if you look around for a server of that class, and you go for a more expensive 2nd tier hosting provider (since the Amazon AWS/Google Cloud/Microsoft Azure class of providers wouldn't host a gun website), you get to about $100 or $200 a month. Add to that the cost of the forum software (which I vaguely remember to be $199, but I forgot whether that's per year or a one-time payment), and the cost of having the forum software provider do the upgrade about half a year or a year ago, the operational costs are still in the low hundreds per month.

I haven't talked to Paul Nordberg in many years (roughly as of 2012 or so, he doesn't like me, and banned me from his forum), but in older conversations it was quite clear that the forum was very profitable for him. For example, it allowed him to write off his pickup truck (which is decorated with Calguns advertising) as a business expense. Back then, he put a lot of time into running and moderating the forum, into monetizing it, and into participating in gun rights activism, such as being a founding board member of the CGF, being on the NRA member's council, and the CRPA board. A 6-digit income seems reasonable in the light of such commitments. But in the last 10 years, I don't know how much he has been doing along those lines; for example, already many years ago he complained that he doesn't even get invited to CGF board meetings, so that's not a work item for him any longer.
 
I just looked at Calguns (it is up right now). It is the evening (about 9pm) of April 12th right now. There are only FIVE posts in any gun- or gun-law-related subform from today. They're all in the handgun section, and none with any particularly insightful technical content. All the rest of the forum is quiet as a grave ... except for off-topic, which is humming as usual.
 
6 days now all i get is a 504 gateway timeout
 
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