Category: The Gun Thing

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

Minor Hassle No More

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

Following on from Saturday’s post about my revolver range session, I went off to the local Merchants Of Death Collective (Mesquite Gun Show) to see if I could rectify two problems identified at that session:  getting some decent (fuller) wooden grips for the Model 10, and replenishing my depleted .38 Special ammo supply.  I thought that the first might be difficult, the second easy.  Au contraire, mes amis.

The grips took me about 15 minutes to find (among about 700 tables):

Old:

New:

Much better, innit?  Can’t wait to get back to the range now, except that I don’t have any cheap ammo to shoot.  So I looked around for ammo vendors.

And here’s where the problems began.

Five big ammo dealers were at the show, so one would think…. but no.  If you were looking for 5.56 Poodleshooter or 7.62 Commie, you’d have had no problem.  Good grief:  it looked like the Army was having a clearance sale.  Ditto 9mm Europellet and all manner of similar teeny handgun ammo (e.g. .380, .327 etc.) were proudly displayed in bulk.

.38 Special?  Hardly any.  (And what was there wasn’t what I was looking for anyway.)  As I mentioned, I have plenty of defensive loads in .38 Spec and .38 +P — the goblin antidote — but I’m out of range ammo.  What I’m looking for, in fact, is something like this:

The cowboy stuff is what’s known as a “bunny-fart” load, and it’s both inexpensive (~ 45c/round) and pleasant to shoot because of the lighter bullets.  (Yeah, it’s lead flat nose and not copper-clad, but I clean my guns quite frequently so not a problem.)  The Winchester is ubiquitous, and a little cheaper.

And both are readily available online, except that shipping (for only 200 rounds) adds about $50 to the total, making it… [errr carry the three]  82c/round (?????!!!!).  The hell with that.

SGA Ammo sells the Winchester for a decent price, but you have to buy the jillion-round box to get free shipping.  Philosophically, I don’t have a problem with a bulk purchase (because duh), but financially… ugh.

Let’s see what they sell for locally.

One final note:  it seems as though revolvers are heading for a shrinking market (that would be Olde Pharttes like me)

…because all the new shooters seem to be enthralled by the gangsta/operator Glocks and SIGs and what have you, and not by wheelguns.  And so once-ubiquitous calibers like .45 Colt and .38 Spec are, it seems, being pushed to the sidelines and rapidly becoming unavailable.  Which means that we members of the Ancient Revolver Shooting Club need to buy MOAR .38 Spec.

Duly noted.

No Hassles, Just Fun

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

Yesterday, I decided that my range time was going to be of the “no fiddling, no hassles” sort — i.e. no adjusting sights, fiddling with scopes, etc., and definitely no malfunctions of the misfeed / bad ejection genre.

You know what that means, right?

Yup… that would be S&W Time, and only .357 Mag and .38 Special ammo needed for the trip, thank you.

And yes, I had an awful lot of fun and yes, it turned out to be a very long session.  In fact, I had so much fun that I actually blew through every last round of my .38 Special practice ammo — I mean, there’s none left in Ye Olde Ammoe Locquere at all.  (Ten guesses where I’ll be over the weekend…)

(I know, it’s not as cheap as buying online but then again, there aren’t any horrible $$$$hipping charges either.  And I need a couple of odds and sods of a gunny nature anyway, so…)

Things learned while having fun:

1) I need to put some beefier grips on the little Model 10.  When I tried some one-handed single-action drills, I damn nearly dropped the gun it turned so much in my hand.  I’m looking for something in wood, like these:

2) I’m done shooting .357 Mag out of a 4″ barrel.  Maybe it’s age, or maybe I’m just sick of being beaten up by a damn boolet, or both.  So all the .357 Mag ammo has been banished to the back of the Locquere until I get a lever rifle thus chambered, or else a revolver with a 6″ or even 8″ barrel.  Even the bedside gun (the shiny one) has been loaded with .38+P.

3) I really need to practice more with my revolvers.  I’ve been spending so much time with rifles recently that I felt like a frigging amateur when at last I put a revolver in my hand:  don’t even ask me how badly I shot the double-action drills.  In fact, I ended up shooting more accurately and more consistently towards the end of the session, when I did the single-hand (left- and right) drills — because by then I’d re-familiarized myself with the trigger pulls of each gun.  I was embarrassed b my performance;  in fact, as I told Mr. Free Market, my target looked like somebody had been having blunderbuss practice.

So:  gun show over the weekend, followed by MOAR RANGE TIME next week.

It could be worse;  I could be living in Southern California or New York.

Victory At Yorktown!

Self-Defense

Apparently, Gen. George Washington has just forced the English Army to surrend– oh, you knew that already?  Well, here’s some more of that kind of news:

Because Everyone Needs a Boot Knife
While EDC knives are certainly tools, I think anyone who carries a gun also acknowledges that they’re a backup weapon as well. Especially in a weapons retention situation. Even if you don’t carry a gun, if you carry a knife you’re probably cognizant of its defensive potential if needed. While there are a lot of knives out there that you can choose from, with a lot of good reasons why, let’s take a look at the humble boot knife.

I don’t know where he’s been living, but a boot knife is anything but “humble”.  I’ve been carrying one almost my entire adult life — whether the local constabulary had declared them “illegal” or not — and I loves it, oh yes I do.

Here it is (next to my 1911 for scale):


(Kershaw “Special Agent”)

Now I must confess that it’s not an everyday carry (EDC) thing for me, mostly because I don’t wear boots, cowboy or otherwise, every day.  And it’s a little too big and bulky to be worn on my belt — so I prefer to carry a decent folding pocket knife instead.

But if I’ve got the old Ariats on, you’d better believe that the Kershaw is clipped inside (the left boot, so that my right is free to wield the 1911, of course).

So of course everyone needs a boot knife.  I bet ol’ Cornwallis didn’t have one clipped to his boot.  Now I’m not saying that’s why he lost the battle, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

Semi-Automatic Musings

Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

For some time now, I’ve been thinking about getting a shotgun as an accompaniment to my bedside revolver.  Now the advice is going to be predictable:  “12ga pump-action, Kim!”  followed by a host of brand recommendations/warnings.

I don’t want to do that.

I don’t want a 12ga, because my aging shoulder is going to hate me for the recoil, and I’d rather have a semi-auto bedside shotgun for the same reason I carry a semi-auto 1911:  one up the spout, cocked and locked — a flick of the finger and away we go.

I have fond memories of a semi-auto shotgun I once owned (and sold because Poverty, with lasting regret).  It was one of these:

Browning Gold Hunter (20ga)

…and it was an absolute joy to shoot, reliable as hell and featuring minuscule  recoil, so one might think that I should just get a new one.

Silly rabbit:  Browning no longer makes them (#Idiots) which means that because they are such good guns, the second-hand market thereof is priced at Ferrari levels, i.e. unattainable to one of Humble Means such as myself.

Oh well.  So off I hie to the various Merchants Of Death to see what’s on offer in the same chambering.

Franchi Fenice ~$2,500

Lovely, but way too spendy.  I’d have to sell at least two guns out of Ye Old Gunne Sayffe to be able to afford one of these, and I don’t want to do that.  Next?

CZ 1020 ~$750

Not bad, and I do like CZ guns as a rule, but these are Turkish-made pieces, and I’d rather buy Murkin.

The problem with both the above is those 28″ barrels.  That’s kinda long and ungainly for use inside a home, and one thing I liked about pump-action guns is that they have shorter (18″) barrels, which to my way of thinking is much better for close-quarters work of the anti-social persuasion.  So what else can I look at?

Remington 1100 Lt-20 ~$900
Okay, that’s much better, with its 21″ barrel.  But it’s listed as “New Production”, which means… “new” Remington quality?  I’m not so sure, and given the price of nearly a grand, I don’t really want to take the risk.

And would I really want to get, say, a CZ 1020, only to have to pay for my Friendly Local Gunsmith to give it a 9″-10″ circumcision?  (If the proposition gives you a bad taste in the mouth, it does that to me, too.)

All comments and suggestions are welcome.

Afterthought:  another reason why I’m set on something in 20ga is that during a recent inventory of Ye Olde Ammoe Locquere, I discovered two cases of sundry 20ga ammo:  buckshot, birdshot and slugs, all a legacy of the late-lamented Gold Hunter which I (fortunately) did not include in the sale of said gun.  So there’s no ammo cost involved, just the gun itself.

Marketing Ploy

Marketing / Advertising, The Gun Thing

Some time back, Reader Mike S. sent me this pic, with the comment:  “Marketing trumps Good Taste every time.”

My initial reaction is to agree with him.  Clearly, this rifle is not aimed at Grumpy Ole Pharrttes like him (or me, for that matter), but at some new genre of gun owner — my guess, a Gen Z person who wants to look cool and doesn’t want to look like his grandpappy (again, like Mike or me) with our old WinMar wooden-stocked “cowboy” rifles.

And yes, while I think that the tacti-cool thing in the snow pic looks like dog’s balls on a Noritake dinner plate, there’s no denying that it would work just as well as its predecessor — I mean, a lever gun is a lever gun is a lever gun, regardless of its cladding.

Also, in places that Must Not Be Named — places that ban “assault rifles” — there is no question but that Snow Gun would escape the baleful scrutiny of said gun-haters because it is, after all, just a lever rifle.

Finally, the marketing executive in me says that we Grumpy Ole Pharrttes are entering the Twilight Years — i.e. we’re not long for the gun world, or any world — so we are, to put it crudely, a shrinking market.  In that spirit, therefore, manufacturers should extend their product line to accommodate the tastes of a New Generation…

…as long as they continue to make traditional lever rifles, and not make it an “either/or” situation, because that would make me  fucking enraged  very sad.

But hey, considering that I had to change my sixty-year deodorant choice because the manufacturer decided to do the above, what the hell.  Let’s just join the in-crowd and get some ghastly new thing instead of a rifle that has served its users perfectly well for over a hundred and fifty years.

Update:  Panzer Arms has decided to get in on the  faerie  “white gun” trend, with its semi-auto 12ga:

I’m kinda interested how that thing is going to look after a thousand rounds has been put through it.  My guess is that it’s going to look as worn out as a Kardashian’s pleasure pit.  But I could be wrong.

Street cost is around $500.