I love guns.
This, of course, will come as no surprise to anyone who’s ever read more than a page of posts on this website, or has been on this back porch of mine for longer than a couple of months.
There are many like me, of course, but to a lot of men, guns are tools (for hunting or pest control) or hobby implements (such as for competition shooting).
I’m not in that category. I’m not a very competitive person, and frankly, I lack the dedication to want to put in hours of practice to become really skilled — and by the way, I was precisely the same way when it came to playing guitar: I got good enough to make a living by playing bass in a band, but was too lazy to practice hard enough to become really good, like Chris Squire or Paul McCartney (never mind the gods like Mark King or Billy Sheehan).
Back to guns.
What brought all this to mind was when I re-watched the Forgotten Guns episode with Ian McCollum talking to Ken Hackathorn about the M1 Carbine. McCollum is, as we all know, one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet when it comes to guns, and Hackathorn is one of the most accomplished shooters (and cognoscenti ) likewise.
However, when you watch the show, I want you to pay attention to Hackathorn when the two of them start talking about the M1 Carbine. McCollum is holding the carbine and basically just… holding it. Then he hands the thing over and you can tell by Hack’s every action that he truly loves the damn thing, and can’t stop playing with it, holding, stroking and patting it like a grandchild or a beloved dog.
I feel the same way about guns, especially guns of a previous generation. In fact, about halfway through the video, I had to pause it while fetching my own M1 Carbine, and the rest of the time I spent basically mimicking Ken Hackathorn.
I have to tell you that while I agree pretty much with everything that was said on the video, I think Hack missed a key part of the attraction of the M1 Carbine. He talked about how the men who actually had to use the thing liked it, despite all the gun’s perceived (and actual) shortcomings — but both he and Ian put it down to the carbine’s light weight and other physical characteristics. They both missed an important point: people love the little gun, love it beyond reason.
Like I do.
I’ll go as far as to say this: every man who has any pretensions at all to being a shooter should own one of these wonderful guns.
