Take a good look at the pic below, which features the two dozen most-wanted fugitives by Britishland’s equivalent of our Feebs, the National Crime Agency:
Anything strike you about the pic? No? I’ll tell you, then. Read more
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Changing History, Just A Little
This little flight of fantasy was inspired by Chris Muir’s cartoon from yesterday and the day before.
In the spirit of our Crossing America series, imagine that you and a dozen of so of your best buddies were able to go back to any time during the Civil War and enlist in the army of your choice, at an appropriate age and level of fitness. In your travel back through time you could take the battle rifle and sidearm of your choice and 500/50 rounds of ammo for each piece respectively, subject to the following conditions:
- no full-auto rifles or machine guns of any type;
- no explosive ordnance e.g. hand- or rifle grenades
- no fanciful crap like lasers or photon pulse guns — you know what I’m aiming for, here. You’d be a foot-soldier but by the standards of the time, a Starship Trooper.
To make life even easier, let’s assume that you could pick the campaign or battle you’d fight in, under your choice of battlefield commander, but you and your platoon would have a certain degree of autonomy.
Your choices and supporting arguments in Comments.
My weapons of choice:
Swedish Mauser M96 (6.5x55mm) as equipped below:
…with a bagful of loaded stripper clips, to save on weight.
Next (to nobody’s surprise):
Springfield 1911 in .45 ACP:
…ammo pre-loaded in five 10-round Chip McCormick magazines.
As to the battles and such, I’ll have to think about that for a while longer, but I’m leaning towards Stones River, on the Confederate side.
Today’s Earworm
Well, it’s no disgrace at all, really.
Gratuitous Gun Pic: Beretta 486 (20ga)
I am a huge fan of Pietro Beretta guns, of almost any age, function, caliber, whatever. One of my all-time favorite .22 pistols is the Modelo 75, for example:
…which I think is easily one of the most beautiful handguns ever — almost Art Deco, with that slim frame and those flowing lines — and (coincidentally) the Beretta gun which I’ve fired the most, it being the pistol with which I learned to shoot handguns.
However: like its major competitor Browning, Beretta guns have always been just on the slightly-unacceptable side of affordable. I know, quality, value, workmanship etc. etc. aren’t free; but still, they’re always a priced a leeetle more than I want to spend on a gun.
And here’s the subject of today’s GGP: the lovely Berette 486 side-by-side in 20ga, as listed by Collector’s:
…and only the lack of a second trigger makes this an “Oooooh Kimmy wants!” object of desire.
That, and the price thereof: $6,850 (!!!!!)
Okay, maybe I’m getting jaded. But let’s be honest: with the improvements made in manufacturing by CNC and so on — i.e. churned out of some (admittedly high quality) production line — would it be too much to ask that this gun be priced at the $5,500 point? That would make it still expensive, but still maintain its premium well above Winchester, CZ, Mossberg and Browning, for example, and competitive with, say, an upper-end Fausti.
Because right now, if I were looking at buying a decent shotgun as specified above, the Fausti would get my order despite my reverence for Beretta. Fausti offers a drop-in double trigger for a few dollars extra, which Beretta doesn’t — not for a “few dollars extra”, that is — and having handled several Fausti guns in the past, I believe their quality is on a par with Beretta.
All thoughts are welcome in Comments, as always.
Post-War Beauty
Here’s an interesting question. How many of you, O My Readers, would be up for this little piece of German engineering (assuming funds etc. and all the stuff that goes along with my hypotheticals):
I, for one, find it quite charming. And if like me you’re sick of driving all the wind-tunnel identicars of today, this would certainly make a personal statement.
Remember, it would be a toy, not an everyday drive — but it would certainly put a smile on my face every time I stepped into the garage.
Don’t Mess With East Texas
While not a Righteous Shooting (an ordinary citizen wasting a goblin), this shooting is certainly righteous.
Executive summary: Scumbag waves a gun in a woman’s face as she’s sitting in her car. She calls her husband and the cops. Cops arrive, find said scumbag who points the gun at them, whereupon they shoot his ass dead, tra-la, tra-la.
I know that part of East Texas quite well. This is not a population you would want to mess with. As the goblin discovered.