Category: The Gun Thing

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

Out Of The Past 2

Gummint, Old Essays, Politics

Barricades, Explained

November 26, 2008
5:04 AM CDT

In a long-ago discussion in Comments, I made the statement that if I had my preference, I’d like to die either asleep in my wife’s arms, or else on the barricades.

I think I’d better explain the latter, because someone may get the wrong impression, and I’d hate that to happen.

Although I’ve started to look like a Frenchman and am descended from the French, most Gallic qualities have long since been burned off by the passage of generations. Most especially, the need for le geste magnifique, mais inutile (the magificent, but futile, gesture) has long ago been purged from my psyche.

So don’t expect me to rush to the barricades when The Glorious Day comes, AK clutched in wrinkled grasp, with ringing exhortations coming from my lips.

I am uncomfortable in the role of “revolutionary leader”. I’m not a rabble rouser, or an agitator. I seek not to form an army, or an underground movement, or any kind of Maquis. I don’t care about glory, or notoriety, or any of that nonsense. I am, quite simply, a man who will go so far, and no further, and who will resist oppression without fanfare, without recognition, and without a qualm.

I am also not a terrorist, or “freedom fighter”, and I will never engage in any activities which are proactive against Our Enemy, The State.

I may, however, choose to resist, in a manner of my own choosing, because I have various boundaries, personal boundaries, which may or may not be the same as those of others.

So my “barricade” would be a lot simpler, and a lot more personal.

It could be at my doorstep, when agents of the State come to confiscate my suddenly-illegal guns.

It could be in a court of law, when I am forced to choose between paying a fine for disobeying an unjust law, and going to prison. (It will, I promise you, be the latter.)

It could be when the State tries to confiscate or trespass on my property.

It could be when the State threatens my family.

It could be when the State tries to load me, or any other “undesirables”, into the cattle cars (real, or metaphysical).

It could be when an agent of the State demands “Papieren, bitte” and I show them my tattoo instead.

It could be when I am restricted in, or forbidden to exercise my freedom of speech, or any of the other freedoms enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I will decide what constitutes “reasonable” when it comes to restrictions thereon, and not some Congressman, lawyer, judge, policeman or government bureaucrat.

Just like Nock before me, I’m not intent on “setting an example”, or influencing others, or making a splash of any kind. Those who wish, may do what I do, or not. Those who wish to castigate me for my choices may do so, but it will have no effect. Those who wish to use me as an example do so without my consent or blessing, and those who expect me to “lead” them will be disappointed.

I am a quiet man, a reasonable man, but I am not nor will ever be a slave to the State. I left one country to escape that, and I will not live like that in my adopted one.

So if I die on the barricades, it may be known to others, or else just an unseen spark which flickers and dies in the darkness. Either way, I am indifferent. But it will be known to the agents of the State, I can promise you that. I will not go quietly into that dark night of oppression. It may well turn out to have been a futile gesture, but it will not be futile for me.

I may have lost most Gallic qualities, as I said earlier, but the one I have most definitely lost is the impulse to surrender.

And that’s all I’ll have to say on the topic. Ever.

Magazines & Such

The Gun Thing

Firstly, I need to comment on CheaperThanDirt’s blog logo, which is outstanding:

…and I like their articles, too.  Here’s the latest, on Mec-Gar magazines.  This part got my attention:

An advantage of a new type of Mec-Gar magazine is a special coating. As cartridges are loaded into the magazine and roll against each other and also contact the side of the magazine, they create friction. Mec-Gar has developed an anti-friction coating.
Magazines with the AFC product number suffix have this special coating. This coating makes loading and unloading the magazine easier. By comparing the original magazine with a magazine with the AFC coating, it is obvious that the coating works.

Allow me to add my endorsement to this.  When I re-acquired my Browning HP, I only had one magazine which, as Loyal Readers will recall, I addressed tout de suite.  A couple of the new mags are quite difficult to load, while three others load as easily as slipping into a dockyard totty during Fleet Week.  When I examined the mags more closely (after reading the above piece), I noticed that — tra-la! — the easy-loading mags have the “AFC” designation.  Not only are they easier to load, they all accept the 15th cartridge without causing me a finger-hernia.

I haven’t tried the new Mec-Gar mags in the 1911 because Chip McCormick PowerMags, but I may do so in the future, as Replacement Time comes around.  Watch this space.

Out Of The Past 1

Grooming, Old Essays

Titfers

November 14, 2008
8:45 AM CDT

“Oh gawd, here he goes agaln, banging on about the decline of civilization…”

I know, I know. And yet, this piece by Tom Utley struck home:

The more I have thought about it, the more I believe that the urban male’s decision to abandon the hat — taken en masse on both sides of the Atlantic in the middle of the last century — is one of the most inexplicable phenomena of modern history.

I could have understood it if neckties had disappeared. They are a perfectly absurd adornment, serving no practical purpose but to attract egg stains and keep us feeling uncomfortable around the neck at the height of summer. Oh, and a lot of them are a great deal more expensive than the average hat. But the tie remains with us and it’s the hat that’s gone. Why?

Actually, I think that the disappearance of men’s hats is quite simple: JFK refused to wear them—who knows, maybe he knew that he looked like a total dweeb compared to other politicians of his day, most of whom, like Ike, looked as though they’d been born wearing them.

My beloved grandfather wore one all his life—I think he’d have gone out without a shirt before leaving off his hat—and had, as I recall, at least four: a selection (black, grey and brown) for “dress” (i.e. work, to match his suit of the day, and the black only for funerals), and one or two for “casual” outings (to work in the garden or to take fishing). Of course, he also always wore a jacket and tie when he went out, even if he was just going to visit friends, or going to the supermarket. Utley again:

There’s also something about hats — perhaps because they remind us of a past and gentler age — that seems to encourage courtesy and civility. The rituals of removing them indoors and raising them in greeting or deference to a woman seem to shape their wearers’ general conduct throughout the day.

Yup. That’s as good a reason as any why men today are slobs, and especially so towards women. The net result is boorishness, in appearance, speech and behavior. (Richard Littlejohn hates that, too. He’s talking about Britain, but we’re not far from that in this side of the Pond, either.)

In the pic which accompanies his article, Utley looks quite debonair in his new hat, although he could have tightened his tie, to avoid the Mike Hammer/Damon Runyon disheveled look. (And I understand his comment about ties being useless and impractical—I just don’t agree with it.)

I think, as I get older, I’m going to start wearing a jacket and tie every so often. I know I’d look better than I do now, and most of all, I’d feel better. (It’s the same reason why soldiers have “dress” uniforms: it’s impossible not to feel proud about yourself when you’re smartly dressed.)

I bet that if we all did that, the national civility level would improve—and that, my friends, would not be a Bad Thing in these, the waning days of our republic.

——————————————————————-

For my Murkin Readers, the title of this piece is Cockney slang for a hat: “tit for tat”, ergo “titfer”.

Not Much

The Gun Thing

The Washington Times reveals their list of the most exciting handguns of 2019.

So why am I not excited?

Okay, let me break the list down for you.  I see some “exotic” guns (e.g. Chiappa), a couple of line extensions (e.g. Glock 43/48. Springfield XDe), a “new” Colt .357 Mag revolver, a Ruger .357 that attempts to fix Ruger’s notoriously shitty revolver double-action trigger, firing the bullet through a skinny barrel which looks like it’ll droop like a wet noodle after a few dozen rounds — and don’t get me started on the little revolver that shoots two rounds of .22 WMR simultaneously.  (Has the world gone crazy?)

Then there are the two “pistols” which look like chopped AR-15 rifles — I mean, seriously:  does anyone outside Hollywood think these things are worth a damn?

And finally, a new Nighthawk 1911 which looks lovely, will work flawlessly and probably costs as much as a small Florida Keys beach cottage.

These guns don’t “excite” me.  To be quite frank, I wouldn’t accept a single one of them as a gift.  This gun, however, does  excite me: 

It’s a S&W Mod 35 in .22 LR, made sometime in the 1950s.  Sadly, because it’s somewhat rare, it sells for about the same price as a new Kimber 1911.  But it still excites me because a) it’ll shoot the eye out of a gnat and b) it’s nicer-looking than any of the 2019 guns.  And yes (hint to Son&Heir ), I would accept this gun as a gift for Father’s Day (even though I don’t observe Hallmark holidays).

Feel free to enlighten me, though, about the 2019 guns…

A Gun WTF

The Gun Thing

This in my email yesterday from one of the Usual Suspects:

Am I the only one who goes “WTF?” — and the price is only part of the issue.  Let me count the ways:

  • Fugly finish
  • Aluminum grips
  • That stupid extruded grip safety thing
  • A gun called “We The People” from a German  company.

Other than all that, it’s not bad (apart from the price).

A Better Sweepstakes

The Gun Thing

Received in the mail:  the NRA’s latest sweepstakes details — “Win 44 guns!” or something — which works as follows:

Out of a total of 44 guns, First Prize Winner must select 12 guns from Group A, 2nd Prize Winner 10 guns from Group B, 3rd Prize winner 8 guns from Group C, and so on.

Sounds good, but there’s a HUGE problem with the way it’s set up.  Here, for example, are the 18 guns from the 1st Prize selection, which I’ve grouped for easier comprehension:

Semi-Auto Rifles
Armalite M-15 Tactical Light Carbine (5.56mm/.223)
Bushmaster XM-10 Standard (7.62mm NATO)
Savage Arms MS Recon (.224 Valkyrie)
SIG M400 Elite TI (5.56mm)
Benelli R1 (.338 Win Mag)

Bolt-Action Rifles
Browning X-Bolt (6.5mm Creedmoor)
Remington 700 XCR (.308 Win)
Winchester 70 Extreme SS (.30-06)

Semi-Auto Pistols
Colt Delta Elite (10mm)
Desert Eagle (.44Mag)
Kimber 1911 Raptor II (.45 ACP)
S&W SW1911 Performance Center (9mm)

Revolvers
S&W 500 (.500 S&W Mag)
Colt King Cobra (.357 Mag)

Shotguns
Benelli Vinci (12ga)
Beretta A440 Extreme Plus (12ga)
Remington 870 (20ga)
Browning A5 Sweet Sixteen (16ga)

It’s a decent-enough selection of guns, I suppose — but the problem is that I would only want to own a few of them (4/18), namely:

  • Browning A5 Sweet Sixteen (16ga)
  • Remington 870 (20ga)
  • Kimber 1911 Raptor II (.45ACP)
  • Colt King Cobra (.357 Mag)

,,,and I’m kinda iffy about the short barrels on the last two anyway.  The rest of the guns are either in the wrong chambering (.224 Valkyrie?), duplicates of stuff I already own (.30x bolties), or a type of firearm I don’t care to own anyway (AR-15 variants) — even for free.  (If I were promiscuous when it came to guns, then I could take any of the eighteen, but I’m not That Guy.)

The same, by the way, is true of every other group of guns they’ve arranged for the prize winners:  3/10 in 2nd Prize, 5/8 in 3rd Prize, 3/6 in 4th Prize, and 1/4 in 5th Prize.  And of these prize guns, only a couple get me really  panting.

But here’s what’s interesting.  If you add up all my choices across the prize groups, you’d get 16 in total — and if pushed I could easily trim that to 8 or 10.

So why shouldn’t the NRA ask contestants to rank their top 10 favorites (out of the 44) on their entry forms, with a guarantee they’d get at least eight guns for 1st prize, six for 2nd, etc.  That way, contestants would get at least some  guns they actually want/need, instead of moaning that all the guns they wanted were in 4th Prize and they’d won 2nd instead, which contained only one favorite.

Yes, there might be a duplicate or two, but that’s not important.  And the NRA could share the “favorites” aggregate with the various gun manufacturers — and let me tell ya, that info is valuable.

Here’s the thing:  right now, I have little inclination to enter the sweepstakes, not only because I know it’s just a ploy for the NRA to get extra donations, but also because quite frankly, I don’t care for many of the guns they’re offering and even if I won a prize, it’s not worth my time to fill in the stupid form.

And because this wouldn’t be a Kim post without at least some kind of “favorites” list, here are my Top 10 Guns from all prize offerings in the NRA’s Stupid Sweepstakes, in order of “want”:

  1. Auto-Ordnance M1 Carbine (3rd Prize)
  2. Remington 870 in 20ga (1st Prize)
  3. Savage 110 in .300 Win Mag (3rd Prize)
  4. Remington 1911 R1 in .45 ACP (4th Prize)
  5. Browning A5 Sweet Sixteen 16ga (1stPrize)
  6. Marlin 1895 in .45-70 Govt (4th Prize)
  7. Henry Golden Boy lever rifle in .22 LR (2nd Prize)
  8. Ruger SP101 in .38 Spec (5th Prize)
  9. CZ 557 in .243 Win (2nd Prize)
  10. Winchester 94 carbine in .30-30 (4th Prize)

Feel free to add your own thoughts in Comments.