Tag: Guns and such

My favorite toy

Problematic

The Gun Thing

More than a few of my Readers have suggested that I start reloading ammo — at least the .38 Special — so that I can build up a decent stock without bankrupting my self by buying it retail.

One unbelievably generous soul has even offered to set me up with a complete reloading station (an older, simple affair that he no longer uses) including powder, primers, casings and even boolets.

Did I mention before that I have the best damn Readers on the Internet?

Here’s my problem.  Even with the best will in the world, I have no space to start reloading ammo.  When we moved from Plano, we moved into a tiny and I mean tiny apartment that is just large enough to hold two people.  There’s no way I could set up a loading station there, unless I set it up, reloaded for a few hours, then broke it all down again before New Wife got home, and then went through the whole rigmarole again and again.  She’s not afraid of the business, mind you, but we just have no spare room available — I’d have to move the dining room furniture out (where?) just to be able to set it up.

We do have a garage (not attached to the apartment, but a hundred-odd yards away), but it’s not insulated — think:  Texas oven — and in any event, I’m pretty sure that there’s something in the lease which says I can’t do it anyway.

So I have to decline all such offers (thanks, Bruce) and be content with buying the ammo as cheaply as I can.

Several Readers have stepped up with suggestions of places where I could do just that, and I’ll be doing the due diligence when the time comes for me to do some serious bulk purchasing.  In the meantime, I discovered that Texas Legends (my local range) actually sells practice ammo at quite a reasonable price, the only problem being that it’s the heavier 158gr. loads, with nothing smaller available.  Still that’s not going to kill me nor break the bank — a couple hundred rounds over the next month or so is doable — so while I hate being “short” of ammo, at least I’m not faced with the Covid-era situation where there wasn’t any ammo available.

And I have shall we say an adequate supply of premium self-defense .38 Special (chortle chortle)  so the situation is not too critical.

By the way, there’s a lesson here:  if you practice a lot, as I do, be sure to take stock of your ammo supply at regular intervals (as I didn’t, in this case) so you don’t end up in my predicament.  I’ve always checked my .45 ACP stock levels because that’s the handgun caliber I practice with the most, but because until recently I only had the little S&W 637 Airweight (my backup), I hardly ever bothered with checking the .38 Special stock because I hardly ever shot the thing — maybe twice a year.

Now, of course, I’m in a different situation with MOAR .38 revolvers (however did that happen?) and having rediscovered the joys of centerfire revolver shooting, I’m going to be doing that a lot more.

And there’s always the .22LR guns, for which I have sufficient stocks to last me (and the Son&Heir, and his Son&Heir) several lifetimes, regardless of frequency.

Once again, though:  thank you all for your concern and your support, as always.

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.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

From, of all places, Southern California:

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office said a home intruder armed with a shotgun died Friday night after being shot during an exchange of gunfire with a San Jacinto, California, homeowner.

Here’s the interesting part:

During the confrontation, the suspect fired multiple rounds at the homeowner. The homeowner returned fire, striking the suspect.  The homeowner was not wounded in the shootout but the alleged intruder was pronounced dead at the scene.

Well, so much for that “shotgun is better than a handgun” trope.  (I’m assuming that Our Hero was using a handgun because as usual, the press report is sadly lacking in important details.)  If my assumption is correct, then it drives home what I’ve been saying for years:  aimed, accurate fire beats spray ‘n pray, nine times out of ten.

Which reminds me:  it’s been weeks since I practiced with my bedside gun, so it’s time I remedied that situation.

So if you’ll excuse 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.