Category: The Gun Thing

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

Quote Of The Day

QOTD, The Gun Thing

From Reader Mike S.:

“Bloody High Standard pistols require as much fiddling as a Jaguar with SU carburetors.”

Made me giggle, that did.

But he speaketh da troof.  I once had a Supermatic Trophy, like this one:


…and it was absolute mustard.  But it was like an Alfa Romeo:   it was a dream to run, until it stopped working.  Which was often.

I’d just had it tweaked by Richard The Gunsmith, and took it to the range to see if it worked.  I set up in the lane, and was taking it out of the bag when another shooter came up to me.

“You wanna sell that High Power?”
“Not really.”
“I’ll give you $600, cash, right now.”
“You collect High Powers?”
“Uh-huh.  And that’s the purtiest one I’ve seen in years.”

So we settled on $700, and I used the money to buy something else — memory fails as to what gun, exactly.

Don’t You Just Hate It When…?

The Gun Thing

So yesterday I went back to the range because… well, I don’t have to explain it to y’all now, do I?

Gave the little Walther/Hammerli a good thrashing, just with .22 LR and not with the WinMag because… well, that’s a story for another time.

Anyway, all good things come to an end, and I hadn’t brought a semi-auto rifle or pistol along to finish off all the .22 ammo I had in the bag (I know, I know…).

So I decided to give the 1911 a little love and attention. so I packed the rifle away and reached into the gun bag for some practice .45 ammo, and came away empty-handed.  Well, shit.

Never mind, thinks I, I ‘ll just pop off a couple mags from what C.W. calls my “EDC” pack-out, and call it a day.

Well, I came up short there, too.  All I had was what was already loaded in the 1911… and instead of the two or three backup mags I typically carry, there was only one.

Well shit, Part 2.  No way was I going to shoot off the only two mags I had (and go home with an empty gun?  NFW, bubba).

So I blew through one mag at 50 feet (with quite a decent outcome:  apparently I haven’t forgotten how to shoot the 1911 yet)… and went home with only the one mag in the 1911.

I felt naked.  I mean:  just one mag for my carry piece? [shudder]

(I should point that really, the 1911 is just to buy me time to get to the trunk, where all sorts of other options are available, but still.)

Anyway, instead of doing a little grocery shopping on the way back, I went straight home and took care of the (miserly) EDC pack-out situation.  Then I went back out to do the extra shopping.

Lesson learned:  check your EDC supplies before leaving the house.

Oh, and one more thing.  It’s coming up to mid-July here in the Lone Star State, which means:

Apex Stuff

Hunting

I’m sometimes asked the best way to hunt dangerous game — specifically in Africa, where there are lots of things with teeth and claws and such, waiting for an opportunity to turn the next easy target into dinner.

Let me be perfectly clear about this:  human beings are the ultimate prey for hunters like lions.  We can’t run very fast nor very far, we have no sense of smell compared to, say, lions or leopards let alone antelopes, we don’t have sharp horns or hooves to protect ourselves or cause some kind of defensive injury to a predator, and we sure as hell can’t swim like a damn crocodile.

We are, in the animal kingdom, like marshmallows.  Pork-flavored marshmallows, to be precise, just the thing to make lions sharpen their claws before putting on a dinner napkin.

So why do these dangerous animals think that we are the apex predators?

Because we don’t fight fair.  As though fighting for one’s life, or hunting down food requires us to be all Marquis-of-Queensbury types;  what foolishness.

Fuck that.  If a pride of lions wants to target a few humans for brekkie, well… say hello to an A-10 Warthog or an Apache attack helicopter, and let’s see who’s really the apex predator, Fluffy.

The only reasons we don’t use our peak powers to hunt game are because the stupid government won’t let us, the weapons are a little on the pricey side (if you think .50 Browning ammo is spendy, try a depleted-uranium 20mm boolet).  And lastly, we don’t use all that cool wizardry because it kind of messes up the trophy hides and meat somewhat.  (Not much market for half-inch-sized hides and bloody slurry instead of steaks.)

So we’re stuck with rifles like this rather pretty Chapuis Elan Classique double rifle, in .470 Nitro Express:

For those unfamiliar with this beast of a cartridge, here’s a comparison to the 8x57mm Mauser (itself no slouch in the “killin’ things” business):

And speaking of hammer blows:

Of course, if you know what you’re doing, you’ll only need one or two blows to your wallet for that Cape buff or 600-lb Kalahari lion.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, refer to my “pork-flavored marshmallow” description above.

Gratuitous Gun Pic: Rossi Model 62 Pump-Action (.22 LR)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

This comes courtesy of our friends at Collectors, and even for them, it’s a little cheeky to ask $250 for a 1970 Rossi pump plinker in only average condition.

But that’s not the point, here.

What I want to know is this:  why does nobody (except Henry) make .22 pump-action rifles and carbines anymore?  You might say that they don’t move off the shelves anymore, which is a perfectly good reason to stop manufacturing them.

Okay, then the real question is even more puzzling:  why doesn’t every home in America have at least one of these little beauties in a closet or gun safe?

The reason I find this inexplicable is that I don’t believe that there is any more fun to be had than plinking with a pump-action .22 rifle.  This has certainly been my own experience — not just for myself, because I am a completely promiscuous shooter of .22 rifles — but for everyone I’ve ever gone shooting with, and handed them a pump rifle to shoot.  Let’s just say that huge and I mean HUGE grins of delight have been universally in evidence, coupled with a look of utter disappointment when there are no more boolets left in the tube.

Everybody loves shooting a little model 62, whether a Winchester, Taurus, Rossi, or the Henry H3 (which costs new about $500, or double that of the Rossi).  (You can’t shoot a Winchester 62 anymore because they are a Collector’s Item, i.e. they cost over a grand, regardless of condition,  if you’re lucky to find one at all.)

Here’s what I think:  if anyone were to get a .22 pump rifle, they’d never get rid of it.  As stated earlier, there is no more fun plinking to be had, with any other rifle.

So why doesn’t everyone own one?

Here’s the one I lost to burglars, a Taurus Mod 62 stainless carbine:

Ooooh that little 16.5″ barrel… [pause to let uncontrollable sobbing die away]

I’ve looked all over for a replacement, but they’re like virgins in a knock shop:  if you can find one, they’re too expensive to consider.

Let’s Hear It For Convenience

The Gun Thing

Here’s a fine tale of woe:

When I bought the safe, I chose a Sargent & Greenleaf electronic lock because it was much faster to open than a dial lock, and I was in and out of the safe a lot, so I appreciated the convenience. This time, however, I hit the combination, and the numbers beeped when I keyed them, but I didn’t hear the “wearnt-wearnt” of the locking bolt moving. Just a “wearnt” sound, and no movement.

No worries. Probably just needed to change the batteries. Swapped them out with brand-new Duracells, and the keypad beeps sounded fine, but I still heard just a single “wearnt” sound after the combination. And the handle wouldn’t turn. Hmm.

So in comes the Larry The Locksmith, who gives it a going-over, and:

“The lock mechanism is dead. Happens with the electronics. Sometimes they just quit. And we can’t get replacements these days because the boards are sourced out of China.” There weren’t any in the U.S., and there was no prospect of any becoming available for years.

End result?

     
…plus a locksmith’s bill for drilling and installing a new lock:  $1,100.

Not so convenient in the end, was it?

Here’s my problem with all this electronic shit.  Occasionally, it acts like a sheep.  It just says, “Ah, fuck it,” and dies.

My various safes all have keys, whether ordinary-looking keys (a.k.a. “pin-tumbler lock”) for the cabinets (ammo etc.) or for Ye Olde Gunne Sayffe, cam locks.

Here’s the secret about all this.  All safes are inconvenient and time-consuming to get into:  that’s just the function and nature of the beast.

But I’ll take fumbling with keys and their operation — cam locks are a royal PITA — over random entombment — via electronic locks — any day of the week.

My real choice would be an old-fashioned combination lock with a fallback key mechanism, but they’re finicky to work — almost as bad as one of the above — not to mention beastly expensive because they are, after all, precision machines.  Here’s the ultimate compromise, also from the abovementioned company:

Never forget:  if someone really, really wants to get into your safe, they will.  What you want to do is make it as time-consuming and difficult as you possibly can.

If you’re consumed by some fear that you might be attacked and have to go for the guns, then don’t lock all of them away.  Have at least one gun close to hand — bed, office, workshop, wherever you feel the most vulnerable — and deal with whatever problems this may cause.  (Small, inquisitive kids?  Teach them about gun safety, and either hide the guns or put them out of reach.  Whatever works.)

And finally:  don’t trust electronic technology to work faultlessly all the time.  Sometimes, old-fashioned mechanical just can’t be beaten.

Searching Question

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.