Ooooh baby:
First, what they are (i.e. via Gun Jesus, thankee Ian), and then one is brought back to life, with some shooty goodness at the end.
Of every sub-machine gun ever made, this might be the only one that could entice me to hassle with all the NFA bollocks.
Let me make myself crystal clear on this topic: every single time in the last century and a half that some asshole has tried to create a third political party (e.g. Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose, Ross Perot’s Reform) the net result has been an electoral victory for the Democrats.
So Elon, buddy, unless you want to see ALL your good works on DOGE and such overturned, quit this bullshit about forming a new “America” party. You’re acting like a spoiled child who fucks up everyone’s Christmas because you got a green bicycle with 3-speed gears instead of a red one with a 10 speed. Yeah, the BBB wasn’t everything we wished for. But it sure as hell was better than anything else on offer.
Because make no mistake: if Musk’s little exercise ends with the fucking Democrats taking control of the White House and/or Congress (which is what history tells us will happen), they will reverse everything that Trump has managed to get done: closing the border, ending the USAID boondoggle and hamstringing the loathsome Dept of Education, to mention just three of the domestic wrongs righted.
What this steaming bunch of Communists will inflict on the world with their pathetic attempts at foreign policy of appeasement of shitholes like Iran and China cannot be imagined.
Here’s what I hope, if Musk gets this silliness operational: that Trump ends all repeat all subsidies for the “alternate energy” industries like wind power and electric car manufacturers — because in the latter case, all that will happen will be that expensive electric cars like Tesla will have to face sky-high retail prices (in a market that is already in a tailspin as ordinary people turn away from the Duracell models), resulting in Tesla pretty much becoming an expensive toy for rich people.
And Tesla isn’t Ferrari, in case nobody’s noticed it before.
Oh, and one last thing. There’s no need for a third political party in the U.S. because we already have one: it’s called “MAGA” and it’s not a party but a movement.
One would have thought that a smart guy like Elon Musk would have figured this out.: politics is the art of the possible, not the display of spite when the possible wasn’t perfection.
If Musk had always let the perfect be the enemy of the good, his rocket program would have ended after the first failed launch. Why he now wants to embrace that policy ideal makes me wonder if he is as bright as everyone seems to think he is.
And finally, there’s this:
Quit co-opting our patriotic symbol to further your own little ego trip.
Sometimes an article appears that just resonates with me, but before I talk about this one I need to clear the space a little.
One of the problems that beset gun manufacturers is that they are, in effect, doomed by the quality of their product. My Swedish Mauser, for example, was designed in 1896 and made in 1906, and after probably several hundred rounds through the barrel — maybe over a thousand, who knows? — it can and does still shoot minute-of-angle (MOA) groups at 100- and 500-yard distances.
So from a manufacturer’s perspective, they produced a rifle that has lasted close to four generations, and counting; there’s no way they could stay in business with that kind of production cycle, even assuming that the number of shooters would moderately increase every year. That’s no basis for a business to operate.
Fortunately, gunmakers are blessed with a restless clientele who are always on the search for the “perfect” cartridge — flatter trajectory, higher velocity, harder-hitting, lessened recoil: you name the goal (or combinations thereof) and there’ll be a market for it.
So it’s no surprise that the manufacturers will come out with some new wunderkind-cartridge that will require a new rifle with a different chamber size, different barrel bore / rifling twist, and so on.
I used to have a problem with this, especially when — as it must — such “improvements” come at the expense of a cartridge doomed to reloader-only status simply by virtue of being old. There’s only so much room on the shelf, after all, and only so much profit to be made at whatever production runs.
The 6.5x55mm cartridge used by the aforementioned Swedish Mauser is a good example of the above phenomenon. That 6.5mm (.256″) bullet diameter has been proven to be perhaps the perfect dimension to create the compromise between performance and recoil for most small-to-medium-sized game (and amply adequate for ahem anti-personnel requirements).
One can play around, of course, with the cartridge casing size and/or length to change the propellant quantity that will slow or increase the bullet’s velocity. So the 6.5mm bullet can appear inside the 55mm casing of the Swede, the 47mm of the 6.5mm (BR) Lapua, the 51mm of the .308 Win (a.k.a. 6.5 Creedmoor), or the 63mm of the .30-06 (a.k.a .25-06 Remington): the list goes on and on.
And that’s just for the quarter-inch bullet diameter. Now take it up to 6.7mm (e.g. the .264″) and OMG 7mm, and all hell breaks loose.
So now you can go and read 6 Dying Rifle Cartridges that Deserve a Second Chance, and see if you agree. Your own choices for redemption can be posted in Comments.
For Readers Of More Recent Vintage, I first talked about this topic a couple decades ago, in Nothing Good Since 1955.
And yes, I know that all the cool kids swear by the 6.5 Creed; we Olde Pharttes know full well that the 6.5 CM is popular only with shooters who’d never shot the 6.5 Swede, which is a superior performer anyway.
In cartridges, as with all things, history is important.
Rosalind Russell was one of those impossibly-beautiful and classy women of Hollywood’s Golden Era. When I first started putting this piece together, though, I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen her in a movie. But as I looked at her pics, it all came back to me: His Girl Friday with Cary Grant, Mourning Becomes Electra with Michael Redgrave, and of course The Women — where she more than held her own against such divas as Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Ruth Hussey and Joan Fontaine. (All three movies come highly recommended, if you haven’t seen any of them before.)
And then there was that beauty and class:
I think I’m going to look for some of her other movies to watch, and marvel.
In a random rant about modern cars the other day, Reader JQ made this observation in Comments:
“I’m finding that the lottery dream car is typically a pre-1970 offering with few if any electronics other than an analog radio.”
And another thing: there have been a number of stories and articles about the potential dangers and chaos after an EMP attack — against which a car with no electronic doodads would be immune. Here’s a decent list of stuff which might survive, but I’m going to concentrate on the cars only.
There’s a huge overlap between these, and the type of car specified by JQ.
And to the surprise of absolutely nobody who has ever pulled up a chair on this here back porch of mine, I am completely on the same side. To me, simple beats complexity when it comes to cars, and although I will freely admit to being an Olde Phartte with a certain degree of technophobia, I don’t think the principle is altogether wrong.
The list of must-haves (but more specifically must-not-haves) would probably exclude most of today’s car models.
So allow me to suggest a two-part list: the first part would be to satisfy a need for simplicity (which I touched on before, here), and the second to address a post-EMP apocalypse. There can be some overlap, of course.
If you know enough about cars to be able to fix them yourself, the list of “simple” (i.e. pre-electronic) cars is practically endless, especially if you’d like to derive some actual pleasure from driving the thing.
One of the features you’d have to do without is electronic fuel injection, i.e. carburetors are mandatory, which keeps your date range pretty much to pre-1972.
Sticking with Murkin cars (because parts for older Euro cars like Mercedes might be difficult to come by), my top 3 (and 3a) would be the following:
1967 AC Cobra
1965 Ford Mustang
1963 Chevy Corvette C1
And the 3(a):
1956 Porsche 356 replica (w/ VW engine)
(I know, it’s furrin — but VW parts and spares are as common as GM stuff nowadays, and the simpler “crate” VW engines are practically bulletproof anyway.)
In the second category — we’re talking about post-SHTF survival here, where your vehicle might actually need to be able to do some work — here are my top 3 (plus non-Murkin) choices:
1966 Ford F100
(I’ve always had a soft spot for these good ol’ boys, sue me.)
1948 Willys Jeep M38
You can get one of these, fully restored without mods, for under $30k. Cool factor is off the charts, and transistors hadn’t even been invented back then.
1965 Chevy El Camino
These are regarded as kinda déclassé nowadays, but I like them anyway.
And my not-so-token 3(a) Euro option:
1970 VW Panel Van
I’ve spoken before of “Fred”, my old Brazilian-made VW. It had no creature comfort fiddle-faddle, no seatbelts even, and it withstood the travails of carrying practically all our band gear and three passengers, without complaint, for over 170,000 miles. Had it not been thus punished, it might not even have needed a new clutch at 80,000.
It’s actually my #1 choice, over all the others, and if I could somehow resurrect Fred as taken off the showroom floor, I’d be the happiest man in Christendom. (I’d have to leave Texas, though, because no a/c…)
And an afterthought (3b):
1968 Toyota HiLux
Argue with this choice, I dare ya.
Your ideas in Comments, please.
