Category: The Gun Thing

Not just the guns, but all the stuff that goes with them

Revolver Time

Gratuitous Gun Pics

It has been quite a while since I took my revolvers out for some air — I speak here not of the .22 revolvers, but the meatier ones — and as I was packing the range bag, I thought I’d drop in a quick pic of some of the old S&W warriors:

For those unfamiliar with the K-frame (and one J-frame) models, they are (clockwise from top):

  • Mod 10 M&P .38 Spec 4″
  • Mod 14 Target Master .38 Spec 6″
  • Mod 637 .38 Spec 2″
  • Mod 65 .357 Mag/.38 Spec 4″

Just so we’re perfectly clear on the topic, I love all of them equally.  Each has a specific use (e.g. the Mod 65 is my bedside gun, the little 637 a backup option, etc.), each has its own story, and a day at the range spent in their company is a day well spent.

“So why the smaller K-frame models, and not the L or N ones, Kim?”

The K-frame revolvers just fall into my hands, no muss no fuss, like they were made for them.  The larger frames, not so much.

Also, I want to draw particular attention to the first-mentioned Model 10:

 

…because I came to own it under fairly interesting circumstances, which I’ll explain tomorrow as part of a novel idea.

Large Caliber, Tiny Guns

Gratuitous Gun Pics

It’s been a while — too long, really — since I posted a Gratuitous Gun Pic, for which I apologize.  Here’s one that has me puzzled, though, and it comes from Collectors:

And here’s my question:  why on earth would anyone want a lightweight snubnosed revolver in .44 Mag?  And that especially when the entries are literally one after the other, and the prices are more or less the same?

I know, the pics are woefully small, so here’s the addendum (links in pics):

Lemme tell you, I even find the latter’s 5″ barrel a little short for comfort — but it’s still way better than that 329’s weeny pipe.

Of the Scandium lightweight frame we will not speak.

Discuss.

More Like It

Drive Time, Gratuitous Gun Pics

Yesterday, in the great state of Texas, I filled my tank at Kroger’s in-house gas station, and paid $1.86 per gallon.

Granted, some of this was via a discount through Kroger’s points program, but I’ll take it any way I can.

I think I’ll pop over to New Wife’s workplace and get her car filled as well.  Maybe take a few jerrycans along for the ride.

And then I’ll swing by the range, because Murka.

Stupid Money

Drive Time, Marketing / Advertising, The Gun Thing

Via Insty (again), I see that Overfinch has crafted a line of bespoke Range Rovers in Holland & Holland livery:

The 2025 Range Rover Holland & Holland Overfinch’s interior is much more overtly extravagant, though Range Rover’s minimalist form language still dominates. Most surfaces are wrapped in Bridge of Weir leather, and those that are not are instead covered with open-pore French walnut veneer or real metal. The stainless-steel inserts in the doors feature the same engraved scroll work as on the “Royal” shotguns, the engraved diamonds embedded in the veneers in the doors echo those on the guns’ stocks, and the Holland & Holland crest is inlaid on the front and rear center consoles, the latter housing a Champagne cooler and a pair of Champagne flutes.

The leather seats feature a unique quilting pattern that also echoes the Holland & Holland diamond motif and features illustrations of game birds stitched into the backrests. In the duo-tone colorway the front seats are trimmed mainly in Harris Green and the rears mainly in London Tan.

Sounds like something an Arab oil sheikh would want to putter around his Scottish estate in, playing a Laird.  Still, I like that interior.

Of course, from the outside the thing is 2025 Rolls-Royce-level Fugly:

…but not as ugly as its price of $650,000.

To put it into perspective, that’s just over the price of three new H&H Royal and a couple-three of their secondhand Royal shotguns.

Lovely as all get-out, but not even with a lottery winning would I be tempted.  And that’s by any of them:  the H&H Range Rover or the H&H shotguns, which taken as the package above would set you back about a million bucks.

Maybe the parvenu status-seekers of today’s ultra-wealthy set would be tempted by such blatant brand-harvesting… hence the title of this post.

As for myself (given a lottery winning as above), my choices are below the fold. Read more

Let’s Get Real

Education, The Gun Thing

Apparently this group of schoolkids was on a school-sponsored walk, when a rather unwelcome companion joined them:

A grizzly bear attacked a group of elementary school students and teachers in Canada, leaving 11 people injured.  Two were critically injured and two seriously hurt following the attack while a class was out on a walk in Bella Coola, northwest of Vancouver. 

Veronica Schooner said her ten-year-old son Alvarez, who was in the Year 4-5 group, was so close to the animal ‘he even felt its fur.  He was running for his life,’ she told local media.  Ms Schooner said several people attempted to halt the attack but one male teacher ‘got the whole brunt of it’ and was among the people taken by helicopter from the scene.

Guess that school-issued bear spray didn’t work too well, huh?

Some time ago I watched one of TV shows where realtors took people to find their dream off-the-grid cabins in Alaska.  This generally involved a long trek by road, a trip upriver in a boat, or even getting ferried in by float plane.

Here’s the interesting part:  every single realtor, male or female, was packing what looked like a serious gun — mostly large-framed revolvers, but on at least two occasions, the realtors had a rifle slung over their shoulder.

This is what used to be known as “common sense”:  when you’re in bear country, take a frigging gun with you so that when Ol’ Smokey Tha Bahr is looking for a meal item, you can either disabuse him of the urge or else make it his last trip to the human buffet table.

And if realtors can do it, why not the teachers who are nominally responsible for the safety of pupils under their charge?

Oooh I know, guns are icky and you’re twice as likely to be shot by someone you know (Gun Wussies Bible, Chapter One Verses #3 and #4), but ignoring that lunacy, let’s at least acknowledge that pretty much the whole of northwestern America has a decent population of bears of the several varieties, all of which have no problem with munching on the occasional human if sufficiently hungry.

But lest we forget:  we humans and not the bears are at the top of the food chain — unless, that is, we don’t avail ourselves of the implements that put us there.

And as long as we indulge ourselves in this foolishness, there will be more casualties because bears are not like Baloo in the Jungle Book, no matter how much we tell ourselves they are.

Those Missing Four Grains

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

You might assume that since I first started shooting .22 ammo at age 7 or 8, over the following 60-odd years I have sent quite a few rounds thereof downrange — “range” being our backyard, any open piece of land I happened upon, and so on all the way to indoor ranges here in northwest Texas.

And your assumption would be correct.  The other day I was organizing Ye Olde Ammoe Locquere, and at a rough count I had on hand about 30,000 rounds of the lovely stuff*.

When I broke it out and tried to sort it out by type, I discovered that about two-thirds of that was 40-grain bullets, and the rest 36-grain.  And that puzzles me because for some reason, I’ve only ever had consistent accuracy with the heavier bullets, regardless of the gun used;  so why do I have so much of the lighter stuff?

I think it has mostly to do with price, as exemplified by the latest offering to arrive in my emailbox from Lucky Gunner:

It is rather tempting, I will admit:  that five cents per pull is very alluring, but for the fact that over time I’ve found the 555 brand rather spotty in terms of consistency, in terms of both accuracy and ignition.  (If there’s anything more irritating than hearing a click rather than a bang after squeezing the trigger, I’m not aware of it.  And my go-to CCI Mini-Mag ammo is astoundingly reliable:  I cannot remember a non-fire with that brand, ever.)

As far as I can recall, however, I don’t believe I’ve ever shot anything with a pulse using the lighter bullet, so I can’t testify as to its effectiveness.  For some reason, I’ve always preferred to use 40-grain ammo out in the bush, for reasons I just can’t explain;  “bigger is better”, maybe?  And what price those extra four grains?

Given that the likely target is going to be small game of the rodent variety, I’m not sure that the hollow-pointed 36-grain stuff is that much more effective than the solid 40-grainers.

But I’m willing to entertain war stories from others on this topic because as the Krauts say, immer werder lernen.

Anyway, all this talk of rimfire has got my digit tingling, so if you’ll excuse me…

…this may take a while.

 

*I later discovered another thousand or so rounds (all 40-grain solids) in the hall closet and range bag, not to mention a few dozen secreted in the gun bags I typically carry the rimfire guns in.  There may also be a box or two hidden away in the car, I dunno;  it wouldn’t be the first time.