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The Gun Thing

Reader LowKey asks in Comments:

“Speaking of your “frankenpoodleshooter”, how are you finding the platform now that you’ve had some time with it?”

I need to give a little background before I answer the question.

I love shooting.  I love shooting just about more than any man I know.  Ever since I first pulled the trigger (RWS/Diana air rifle) back in the (very) early 1960s, I’ve loved shooting with a passion that sometimes worries me.  No other activity gives me the same pleasure that I get from pulling the trigger, feeling the recoil, watching the result on the target and doing it again and again until I get tired or run out of ammo.  This applies most especially to rifles, probably because of a youth spent shooting through a box of five hundred (500) .177 pellets in maybe a couple-three sessions each week in our backyard.  (I grew up on a fairly large piece of land, with plenty of open space and a conveniently-placed backstop — a tall rockery built along the bottom fence line to give us privacy from the neighbor, whose house had been built a little too close to our property boundary to my father’s liking.)

Instead of a weekly cash allowance like other kids got, my parents bought me a 500-round box of pellets each week for two reasons:  a cash allowance would have just resulted in me buying candy from the corner store, and because I pleaded and begged for that substitution.  I loved candy (still do), but between shooting and eating candy?  No contest.

That love of shooting, that connection between me and that long device of wood and steel held in my hands has never left me, and at this point I don’t think it ever will.  It pretty much doesn’t matter what rifle I shoot, really, but I prefer single-shot rifles (going back to the air rifle, maybe?), especially my treasured Browning 1885 High Wall in .45-70 Govt:

…followed by bolt-action rifles like the Mauser K98k and M96 Swede — which formed by far the larger part of my shooting experience from age 18:

…and only eventually semi-automatic rifles, even though I graduated from the Diana to a Winchester 63 (now Taurus 63) semi-auto .22 rifle:

…which remains to this day my all-time favorite .22 plinker.

Much, much later came the serious semi-auto rifles like the M1 Carbine, AK-47 and SKS:


…the last, incidentally, being my favorite semi-auto rifle to shoot.

Which brings us, finally, to the frankenpoodleshooter (see pic above).

Here’s how I feel about it.  It is a very pleasant gun to shoot, because the little .223 cartridge is far lighter than its 7.62x39mm Commie counterpart, it runs like a top (so far, after about 700 rounds), and it’s probably a great tool for its intended purpose (crowd control in, shall we say, riotous circumstances).

And that’s also its biggest drawback for me:  it’s a tool, nothing more, and I get no more pleasure shooting it than I get from operating a power drill.  Unlike the other rifles I shoot, it’s a basic shooting “platform” (I hate that term) rather than an extension of my body.

Whenever I’m shooting another of the rifles I love, I end the range session with a profound sense of regret — “damn, I wish I’d brought more ammo”, or “damn, I’d better get back home before I’m late for dinner”.  In other words, something really important has to drag me away from the thing.

I get no such feeling after a range session with the poodleshooter.  I own it because it was essentially a gift from two great friends, and because I wanted to shoot the same gun with them as they were shooting at the range.  It’s part of a fellowship, in other words.  But outside that?  It’s a tool, and I’ve never regarded any of my rifles as a tool, even the hunting ones.  Basically, one or two mags downrange, and I’m done with it.

I love my rifles;  I don’t love the AR-15, and it’s the very first time I’ve ever felt that way about a rifle.  That said:  if anyone were to try to take it away from me (and you know who you are), expect a little resistance.

One Good Reason

Drive Time

I can think of about fifty good reasons not to live in Califuckingfornia [187, actually], but there is one reason to think about living in San Diego or thereabouts, and that’s to enjoy owning a car like this 1950 MG T-type sports car:


(details in the link)

You can’t really drive this beauty anywhere that isn’t warm and relatively rain-free — which would straight away rule out Texas (heat, massive downpours), Florida (ditto) and Wisconsin (bitter cold and snow), to give but some examples.  Or just resign yourself to driving it only a couple months a year, on a day-by-day basis.  So:  southern California exclusively.

But $25,000 for a sweetie-pie like this, in this condition?

Have mercy.  It’s almost enough to… errr no it isn’t.

Thursday’s Landscape

Travels

Boscastle, Cornwall

One of my favorite places in the world.  The arrow points to where I stayed (The Englishman’s B&B, Harbor Cottage), and the link in the pic’s title will take you to the LiveCam (from which the above still was taken).

Just back up the road is Sharon’s Plaice, which serves the best fish & chips I’ve ever eaten.  Over the five days I was there, I ate Sharon’s F&C four times.

Also recommended is The Cobweb Inn:

It’s as nice as it looks (especially when it’s cold and rainy outside).  Also, Cornwall’s best beer, Tribute Pale Ale.

Yes, I want to go back there so badly.

Here’s What I Know

Patriotism

There has been a great deal of angst among conservatives about how the evil bastards on the Left have been trying with might and main to sabotage the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation.  It starts from the childish petulance of artists refusing to participate in anything remotely connected with Donald Trump, and continues with other members of the Pissers & Moaners Set going on about how we have nothing to celebrate because we are really an eeeeevil rayciss patriarchal capitalist bunch of Bad People which has been exploiting and discriminating against homosexualists, Black people, transsexualists, people with blue hair…. the list goes on and on ad nauseam.

Okay, I’ll cop to the “capitalist” bit.

Here’s the thing.  Conservatives shouldn’t be worried about all these childish tantrums.  We Americans have a great deal to celebrate, even if the screaming loonies are howling all that twaddle on their iPhones, at BlueSky or in institutions like The New York Times — and please note the irony that they are able to do this because of that First Amendment to the Constitution (written by those slave-owning White men two centuries ago), which guarantees the freedom to say the silly bullshit they are putting out.  “Silly bullshit”, lest we forget, is absolutely one of the parts of speech protected, much as it makes my hackles rise.

And here’s what I know.  I’m going to wake up on Saturday morning, on that very 250th anniversary of our foundation, with a song in my heart and a deep, abiding sense of gratitude that I am an American citizen, and not a citizen of some other shithole country (pretty much all countries not the U.S., as it happens).

I’m going to post a celebratory entry on my website (First Amendment), and then I’m going to head off to Texas Legends shooting range (who have informed me that yes, they’re going to be open on July 4th even though it’s technically a public holiday and they needn’t be), and I’m going to exercise my Second Amendment freedom — something that I damn sure wouldn’t be able to do in all the other shithole countries, because my firearm of choice for the day is going to be the frankenpoodleshooter AR-15 (which is streng verboten  in said states of Shitholia).

(I would go to watch the fireworks later, except it’s Texas and even at 9 o’clock at night the temperature will still be set to “Broil”, so I’ll pass on that — but I’ll be there in spirit.)

Dinner will no doubt be extremely carnivorous:

I’m sure that the above innocent activities would no doubt piss off just about the entire population of the Left (also furriners, some overlap there), but there it is.

I don’t need those big public celebrations, in other words, because while they’re fun and all that, the real celebration is personal — an individual’s activity, said individuality being at the very heart of our nation and our Constitution.

We are a nation of individuals, not just cogs in some collective machine, much as it pains the Left that we stubbornly refuse to submit to that coercion (aided by that pesky Constitution thing).

We do have a great deal to celebrate:  never forget that alone among the nations of the world — past and present — we are a nation founded on an ideal, a principle, and not simply by being part of some kingdom’s fiefdom.

And we’ve survived and prospered — good grief, how have we prospered! — for two hundred and fifty years (and counting).  That’s worth celebrating, even if the Perpetually Aggrieved don’t think so.

No Great Loss

Legal Stuff, Rights

So DJT lost his Birthright Citizenship case at the Supremes.

I for one am neither surprised nor even that upset about it.  Here’s why.

I agree that the whole idea is fatally flawed:  that the principle of just being born on U.S. soil makes one an automatic citizen is without equal in just about every other country in the world, where the nationality of one or both parents (if one, usually that of the mother) is the sole determinant of the baby’s citizenship.

And yes, I also know that the 14th Amendment had an entirely different purpose when it was originally passed, and has no proper justification today.  But it’s still a Constitutional Amendment, and said document gives very explicit terms under which an Amendment can be altered or abolished;  and that process has nothing to do with the sitting President.  It remains, quite rightly, the proper preserve of the Congress and of the states, with those pesky two-thirds majorities required at every step of the way.

As such, I’m not comfortable with any POTUS trying to abolish parts of the Constitution by fiat or executive order, for obvious reasons, and that’s why I’m not upset about the Supremes’ decision.  We have enough trouble with tinpot politicians deciding that the Constitution — or the part(s) they don’t agree with, anyway (hello, Second Amendment) — can be bypassed with some local law or regulation, and I’m of the firm belief that these people and/or governments need to have their pee-pees whacked, and hard, every time they try to do that.

If we want to end birthright citizenship, we need to do it the difficult way, the way the Founders intended it.  That may make it impossible — I hope not — but sometimes the principle is just more important than the action.