Category: The Gun Thing

So apparently Americans are still buying guns in record numbers:

The FBI just reported that the number of gun sales background checks for May was the highest ever for that month, 1,942,677, a trend that will make 2017 the first or second highest year for gun sales.

Why? Well, duh:

“People are nervous about their safety, and rightly so. It’s a dangerous world we live in and American citizens know that we’re not immune to terrorist attacks. They’re taking the necessary steps to defend themselves. Frankly, the most recent terrorist attack in London underscores the importance of an armed populace. Remember that when seconds count the police are only minutes away.”

There was a time when even I would sometimes go out without a gun (quick trip to the store to buy lottery tickets, gassing up the car, daily walks, etc.), but now I never leave the house unarmed. Never.

And I carry more than one backup magazine for the 1911, because I might just need them (warning: annoying autoplay):

Back when I was a consultant, The Mrs. and I went through several periods of “chicken and feathers” — wealthy one minute, impoverished the next. During the chicken times, we’d travel, treat the kids and save, but during the feathers times, we’d be in trouble. In many cases, the trouble was a short-term problem: waiting for a client’s check to arrive, or for the check to clear, that kind of thing. There was always a credit card to tide us over, and then life could resume once the funds were released.

Then there were the longer periods of feathers, such as when a couple of our start-up business ideas failed. The first cost us about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which we paid out of our savings; the second cost us well over a third of a million — we had salaries to pay even though no money was coming in, and on that occasion we lost everything: savings, retirement accounts, and almost, the house. (I have no idea how we averted that disaster, but somehow one of us or the other always managed to get a small consulting gig which was just enough to keep a roof over our heads, but with nothing left over to pay bills. I even had a car repossessed during this time.)

So I had to sell off my guns. Pretty much all of them went, except for a junky old 16ga side-by-side which wasn’t worth diddly to anyone, and Connie’s little NAA Mini revolver. Most of them I sold to good friends, on the understanding that they could sell the guns if they wished, but that if they did so, I could at least get first refusal, as it were. Gradually over the past couple years, I’ve been able to buy a few guns back here and there, and a couple of really good friends even lent me a gun or two to tide me over — “on the non-return basis”, so to speak, because they couldn’t bear to see my family defenseless. These angels know who they are, and I’m not going to embarrass them by revealing their identities.

I won’t go into details of each of the guns thus sold and recovered because it’s unnecessary to this story, but here’s a pic (taken on a trip to the range with Mr. Free Market many years ago) of some of the guns I had to sell:

But one of those guns in the picture has stuck with me, because while it pained me to dispose of various beautiful Colts, Browning High Powers, Rugers and so on, my most anguished sale was the rifle at the top of the pic, this little thing:

To give the rifle its official name, it’s the Taurus Model 62C (.22LR) Pump-Action Carbine. To anyone who has ever shot one, its actual name is “OMG I haven’t had so much fun in years!”, always followed by a firm refusal to release the gun back to its rightful owner and a demand for more ammo.

As I’d mentioned a few days ago, I was seeking a semi-auto plinker — basically to replace this little darling — but all the time in the back of my mind, I kept thinking, “I wonder if [name redacted] would consider selling the Taurus back to me?”

There was really only one big concern: that its new owner would have fallen in love with the piece, as I had done, and would refuse to do so. (I should point out that this has happened to me with several of my friends; they’ve fallen in love with the guns and refused to part with them, even back to me.)

You see, the Marketing Department at Taurus are basically a bunch of morons, because several years ago they decided to drop this line from their catalog — all the Model 62 variants — which meant that a replacement would be difficult to find.

Happily, my kind friend decided, after considerable and doubtlessly-tortured reflection, that the rifle’s proper place would be back with its original owner. So today I can announce that I no longer need that .22 plinker: I’ve got my baby back. It’s resting by my chair, as I write these words.

One final word of explanation is probably necessary. The Taurus 62 is a pump-action, not a semi-auto rifle. Why, then, would I not need a semi-auto plinker, still?

The answer is obvious if one knows me well: I prefer to operate machinery rather than just use it — stick shift over auto transmissions, bolt-action over semi-auto rifles, revolvers over semi-auto pistols, and so on. I get added pleasure from working an action — it’s a feeling of control which is difficult to explain, but to people like myself, all too easy to understand.

I cannot wait to get out to some open country, toss a few cans or oranges onto the ground, and start shooting. And if you want to know how much I want to do this: I’d rather do this for a few hours than spend the same amount of time in Nigella Lawson’s boudoir. Yes, that much.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m not going to the range. I’m off to find some open country…

I’ve always loved the little WWII-era M1 Carbine, because it’s so much fun to shoot, it doesn’t weigh a ton, and the ammo isn’t fearfully expensive (relatively speaking, in today’s market).

In my various travels about Teh Intarwebz, I came across a YouTube video which looked at the ” Most Overpriced Mil-Surp Rifles On The Market”, in which the host opined that the M1 Carbine is the second-most over-priced. (I think that ALL guns today are overpriced, thank you again, Urkel Obama and Hillary Bitch Clinton, but I’ve ranted about that before.)

I’m not going to argue much with the man’s take on the M1 being overpriced; it is, and horribly so. (A refurbished Korean Inland M1 Carbine for over $1,200? Are you shitting me?)

However, welcome to the gun nut’s Rock (fun to shoot etc.) and Hard Place (damn spendy). It’s a problem as old as time, and one we gun nuts have always had to deal with — only now, it’s worse than ever.

Let’s just assume, however, that the Rock has won you over, and you just have to have this lovely little gun in your safe. How can you get some kind, any kind of a cost saving out of this? Here’s the rundown, as I see it:

• Rifle: $1,200 (which seems to be about the cost of a decent mil-surp M1 Carbine these days; less, and buyer beware; more, and you’re looking at IBM and Rock-Ola rifles, most probably)
• Three spare 15-round mags @ $11 each: $33
• Bulk .30 Carbine ammo (250-round bulk pack): $85
• Total cost: $1,318 (ignore shipping and FFL transfer costs, because they’ll be a constant no matter what you buy)

Here’s a thought. What you’re paying for with one of those WWII / Korean War M1 Carbines is history — the fact that some GI might once have used this rifle to whack Nazis and/or Commies (always a Good Thing, IMO). But if you can forego that nostalgia (and it’s hard, believe me), you can get a newly-manufactured M1 Carbine from Thompson/Auto-Ordnance (Kahr) for about $765… which means if you forego the history and end up spending the same $1,318 for the whole package, you’d essentially be getting the same shooting fun — only now with three free mags and 1,250 rounds of ammo.

Or, if you can’t shake all aspects of nostalgia and you want a carbine which can take the good old M3 bayonet, you can get a new Inland M1 Carbine (yes, they’re making them again) for about $980, which would mean your “package” cost of $1,318 would get you three spare mags and 750 rounds of ammo.

Or you could just pocket the savings, either way.

As with all my opinions on matters such as these, please don’t pepper me with “I can get this cheaper at X” or my favorite: “OMG I paid $250 for my Carbine” comments — yes, so did I… back in 2004. Unfortunately, we’re living in a different world now, where panic buying (did I forget to thank Barack fucking Obama again?) has caused prices of all gun-related stuff to skyrocket. On the one hand, I like the fact that more guns are in private hands today than there were in 2007, but on the other, those additions to armed citizenry have come at a cost to us Old Gun Nuts in the form of higher gun prices. Intellectually, I’m cool with the outcome, but the dollar-cost reality makes my nuts ache.

Also, don’t think you’ll be able to snap up an M1 Carbine for $600 at a gun show. One, there are no more decent deals to be had at gun shows anymore which leads to two, your $600 “cheap” Carbine will most likely require five hundred dollars’ worth of parts and quality gunsmithing to make it work properly.

So, if you have a spare grand and a half (shipping and FFL transfer costs, ugh), here’s one way to spend it.

One last thought: the regular .30 Carbine round with its little 110gr. bullet has always been knocked as being underpowered. Well, Buffalo Bore now makes these puppies with a 125gr. bullet, and with BB’s amped-up power, the muzzle energy of the .30 cartridge has been increased by over a third — more than twice as much, in other words, as a .357 Magnum firing the same bullet from a 6″ revolver barrel — which turns the .30 Carbine into a bona fide stopper. (Don’t ask about the price of Buffalo Bore ammo; but if you want the best, ya gotta dig deep, as any fule kno.)

Over the years, many people have written to me asking what I would consider the ideal home-defense handgun. (And yes: I know that a handgun is what you use to fight your way to a shotgun. But sometimes your shotgun in locked away in your safe. So let’s just stick with the handgun, for the moment.)

Now, let’s understand what I mean by “home defense”. I don’t mean that your house is under siege by Al-Qa’eda fanatics or even the local neighborhood homeowners’ committee (California residents will know exactly what I mean).

No, what I mean is that you’re fast asleep, when suddenly you wake up and realize there’s mischief afoot, inside your house.

Let me be perfectly clear about what I’m going to say next.

If you have practiced and practiced and practiced with your trusty 1911 or SIG whatever, and the operation thereof is as automatic as breathing, by all means keep a semi-auto in your bedside drawer.

But unless you’re a total loony, if there’s a round in the chamber you should have the safety engaged. Or, if there’s no round in the chamber, it means you have to chamber one first — noise and fumbling may ensue. In other words, operation of your gun is a two-step process.

Or you can just do it the easy way, and use a double-action revolver. Nothing to think about, nothing to operate except the trigger (like that wonderful line: Smith & Wesson — the original “point and click” interface).

Ultimately, of course, you’re going to do what you want to do, with the gun that feels the most “comfortable” to you — i.e. the gun that you feel is most likely to get the job done.

And that’s fine. Just be aware of the potential drawbacks and advantages of all the options.

After all the hundreds of hours and many thousands of rounds I’ve spent with my beloved 1911 pistols, my bedside gun is a double-action .357 Magnum revolver, chambered with Federal Hydra-Shok 125gr. JHP (jacketed hollowpoints).

Ultimately, as I’ve said before, it all depends what you’re comfortable with—and if you’d rather park your Glock 17 next to the bed, be my guest. Just be sure when you’re half-awake and fumbling for the thing that you don’t hit the magazine release by mistake (it’s been known to happen, more than once)—and that can happen with any semi-auto pistol.

A revolver is like a fork: you pick it up, and it works. Here’s my old S&W Model 65, just to illustrate the concept:

Now for some other thoughts:

I talked a little about ammo earlier, and I need to offer some advice to people who own guns in GFW states like Massachusetts, California or New York.

If you whack a goblin in your home in a Righteous Shooting, there’s always a chance that some asshat prosecutor (or lawyer for the dead goblin) will go after you because you used “killer” ammo.

Yes, I know, all ammo is supposed to kill, but there’s no arguing about this when you’ve just used a full cylinder of Black Talons you picked up at that gun show in Alabama. If that happens, you’ll be painted as a “bloodthirsty vigilante killer” quicker than Tom Sawyer’s fence.

Here’s a tip: Use the same type of bullets as your local police force does. If you use “police” cartridges, then no one can paint you as a vicious killer.

Ask one of your neighborhood cops what kind of bullet (not just caliber) his department uses. Mostly, they’re going to use CCI/Speer Gold Dot, Winchester PDX or Silvertips, Remington Golden Saber or Federal Hydra-Shok. The caliber may vary, but the bullet type is probably going to be one of those brands. Generally, the same bullet type will be available in your caliber.

(Ditto shotgun shells, by the way—you may think it’s a really cool idea to BBQ the goblin with one of those “Dragon’s Breath” rounds, or turn him into a pincushion with a “flechette” shell, but, regrettably, it’s not a good choice. Use “game” loads: you’ll be a “sportsman”, not Rambo, and he’ll be just as dead.)

And one last caveat for everyone: whatever you’ve got in your bedside drawer, make sure that your kids or grandkids can’t get hold of it.

How you arrange that is up to you.

My kids, even when small, knew better than to go into my bedside drawer — but even so, I used to lock my bedside gun away during the day anyway, and take it out again at night. Did I ever forget to do that? Not once. After a while, it becomes a ritual, like cleaning your teeth in the morning and at night.

Trigger locks are okay, I guess, if you don’t want to mess with locking the gun away — just remember to lock it every morning, and unlock it every night. That I have forgotten to do (unlock it, I mean) — and it’s no fun to be fumbling with a trigger lock when all hell is breaking loose in your house, which is why I prefer to lock it away during the daytime.

I can’t stress this enough. A gun is a lethal object in a kid’s hands. A dozen or so kids, and their parents, find that out every year, and I just want to smash my head against the wall every time I hear about another incidence of that, because it’s so unnecessary.

And when the kids get older, teach them about guns and about gun safety. The incidence of accidental shooting deaths among kids who have been trained in gun safety is almost zero. Follow the stats, folks.

But most importantly of all, if your kid have friends over to play, lock the damn gun away. You may be able to trust your kid, but a group of kids has the collective responsibility of a treeful of drunken chimpanzees, and that will include yours.

Don’t give yourself a broken heart by your carelessness — and don’t give the gun-fearing wussies more ammo to use against other gun owners, either.

Here endeth the lesson.

Yeah, and it’s about time.

After carrying the M16 or one of its cousins across the globe for more than half a century, soldiers could get a peek at a new prototype assault rifle that fires a larger round by 2020.
Army researchers are testing half a dozen ammunition variants in “intermediate calibers,” which falls between the current 7.62 mm and 5.56 mm rounds, to create a new light machine gun and inform the next-generation individual assault rifle/round combo.
The weapon designs being tested will be “unconventional,” officials said, and likely not one that is currently commercially available.
Some intermediate calibers being tested include the .260 Remington, 6.5 Creedmoor, .264 USA as well as other non-commercial intermediate calibers, including cased telescoped ammo, Army officials said.

All those who’ve heard me rant endlessly about the Mattel (M16/M4) rifle and its poodleshooter (5.56mm/.223 Rem) cartridge may now breathe a sigh of relief at the upcoming cessation of ranting, as the Pentagon is finally facing up to the reality that the aforementioned were inadequate pieces of shit that our kids should never have had to carry into combat.

I really have no input into what rifle/machine gun/”delivery platform” the Army is going to implement, other than I hope its an adaptation of an existing, proven design — “ground-up” (i.e. wholly-new) designs are generally shit unless created by John Moses Browning (BBUHN) — but considering that the Army always has to dabble with the new-and-untried (because otherwise how else could they kill more of our troops unnecessarily?), I’m probably wasting my time.

As for the cartridges: Doc Russia and I had a long and detailed discussion about this topic. I like the .260 Rem because of its meaty energy at 500 meters, while he likes the 6.5 Creedmoor because of its proven accuracy — as he says, all you need for a combat round is accuracy, range and power. Any half-decent quarter-inch- to 6.8mm bullet with a mass of about 140-150gr will do the job, almost without exception. Here are two of the cartridges mentioned in the article (from left to right), the .260 Rem (142gr) and the 6.5 Creedmoor (140gr):

Either would be an excellent choice, and there’s absolutely no need for the Army to come up with any new cartridge. Why? Because over the past century of cartridge design, just about everything has been tried and tested, and quite frankly, the answer is already out there e.g. with either of the above cartridges.

All the talk about the need for a bullet to penetrate body armor is mostly silliness, by the way. If you’re hit at short range in the body armor with a high-velocity medium-caliber bullet, the bullet will penetrate any armor, and even if it doesn’t — say, with a glancing blow — the impact is most probably going to knock you unconscious and/or cause massive internal trauma — broken ribs, collapsed lungs, etc. (Steel-core 6.5x55mm Swede — my favorite of all medium cartridges ever made —  can blast straight through both sides of body armor at 300 yards, but it’s not an optimal cartridge in today’s world because of its weight and length.) Penetration is also a moot issue because anything would be better than the current poodleshooter 5.56mm cartridge, which can barely penetrate drywall at 300 yards (some hyperbole there).

Regardless of the bullet size, though, I love the idea of lightweight polymer cartridge cases — brass is great but heavy, relatively speaking — and the Army doesn’t reload, so polymer seems to fit the bill. And brass is a commodity metal, prone to supply shortages, whereas if you’re running low on polymer sheets, you just build a new factory and the problem goes away. (Of course, should the military demand for brass slacken, that could make regular ammo cheaper for the civilian market, but let me not be swayed by base personal motives here.)

I worry, of course, that too much time will be spent trying to create a perfect cartridge (to do “everything”) and the perfect rifle (with a jillion bells and whistles), instead of getting something which is a 90% solution and running with it. In truth, I think an intro date of 2020 is far too distant, and the M4/5.56mm system sucks so badly, it should be replaced now, let alone three years hence.

I welcome additional thoughts and input in Comments.