Tag: Guns and such

My favorite toy

Gratuitous Gun Pic: Carcano Model 91TS (6.5x52mm)

Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

While browsing through Collectors recently, I came upon this old girl:

I have often sung the praises of the Mosin-Nagant M44 as a short and handy carbine, but I have to say, the Carcano (often incorrectly called the Mannlicher-Carcano) Model 91TS as pictured would do pretty well in the same role.  I’ve shot quite a few in my time — one even back in South Africa — and what impressed me most is the pure handiness of the carbine.  One of the common complaints about battlefield carbines is their recoil — less mass means more recoil, because Sir Isaac Newton will not be denied — but the M91’s little 6.5x52mm cartridge is an absolute gem, and I have no idea why the Italian Army replaced it with the larger (and not much more effective) 7.35x51mm cartridge in the reworked Model 38.  (Maybe they thought that size mattered.)

Anyway, that long, thin 156gr boolet means excellent sectional density and therefore quite adequate penetration on humans:

…but as with all old cartridges, there’s always that availability problem.  And with the state the ammo industry is in now, it’s even more scarce than usual.  Graf & Sons, normally my go-to guys when it comes to old military ammo, doesn’t have any in stock (surprise, surprise) and even when they do, it runs about $2 per trigger pull — unless you go with the lighter Prvi Partizan variant at a very reasonable $0.83 per round.

Had I known then what I know now (back in the early- to mid-2000s a.k.a. The Happy Times), I’d have snapped up a decent M91 carbine for about $95, which is about what they cost back then compared to over $400 nowadays, and a few hundred rounds of ammo for less than half of what it costs now.

But that hindsight is a bugger, innit?  Here’s the much-longer M91 rifle, just for comparison’s sake:

Provenance

Entertainment, The Gun Thing

I understand the concept of “provenance” — I sometimes call it “touching history”, in that when one can establish through an object some kind of lineage which can take one back in time, it’s always interesting.  It’s why people continue to brave all the hassle and potential ills of going to Egypt, just to see and stand next to the Sphinx and the Pyramids.

I get all that.  I’ve spoken how it felt to show the kids a church in Austria which had been built in 937AD, or going to a pub somewhere in southern Germany which had first served beer in 1256AD (and smelled like it — Daughter:  “Eeewwww do you think they’ve cleaned the floors since then?”).

Those are all Good Things, and that kind of provenance is wonderful.

Much less wonderful is this nonsense:

The pistol used by the late Sir Sean Connery in the first ever James Bond movie – the 1962 classic Dr. No – has sold at auction for $256,000 (£190,000).

Now granted, the James Bond movies brought the old Walther PP/PPK back from the dead — it was never that great a pistol, despite being the sidearm of several European police departments — but… a quarter-million for a studio prop?

I don’ theenk so, Scooter.

I’ve never understood “collectibles” when applied to movie rubbish — Judy Garland’s Wizard of Oz  shoes fetched some ungodly amount of money a while back (can’t be bothered to look it up) — and I’ve always considered this kind of thing to be akin to the groupie syndrome.  I mean, who wouldn’t pay a boatload of money for Sonny Corleone’s bullet-riddled and (fake-)blood-drenched shirt from The Godfather, as somebody apparently did back in 2003?

Well, I wouldn’t, for starters, nor for any piece of make-believe “heritage”.  Lord knows I love guns, but emptying out the old bank account for a piece of historical gunnery — even for Frank James’s Remington revolver?  Nuh-uh.

And coming back to the Bond thing:  Ian Fleming was a fine writer, but he didn’t know shit about guns.  I think his original Bond gun was a Beretta .22 pistol, later “upgraded” to the .25 ACP and finally to a Walther  (.32 ACP, not the .380 ACP as in the movie prop), as though this was the very apogee of weaponry a spy should use.  Hell, even back in the late 1950s, those guns were already in disfavor as sidearms.

As the expression / cliche goes:  A fool and his money are soon parted.  And this is just the latest proof of the thing.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

So you and a buddy decide you don’t want to go through all that jive about applying for a car loan, making payments, paying for insurance, and all that other “White” jive.  Also, you’re a 14-year-old “youth” and therefore unlikely to be able to get all that done anyway.

Why not just steal a car, you think — but you don’t want to break its windows to get in because it’s getting cold, you see, so you just decide to hijack one.  After all, you live in St. Louis, right? so it should be easy-peasy.

Only problem is that St. Louis is still in Missouri, and a lot of Missouri folks carry guns.  Which leads to this situation:

The St. Louis County Police Department indicates an alleged 14-year-old carjacker was shot and killed by a 53-year-old driver Sunday afternoon at 3:47 p.m.
KSDK reports the St. Louis County PD received a warning of a shooting “at Jennings Station Road and Lewis and Clark Boulevard” and arrived to find “a 14-year-old boy who had tried to run away after he was shot.”
The boy was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead.
A 53-year-old was taken into custody for questioning, and early stages of the investigation indicate the man “was carjacked by the boy and another person near the Gas Mart on 9301 Lewis and Clark Boulevard.” The man retrieved a gun during the incident and shot the 14-year-old.

My only complaint is that Our Hero only snuffed one of the choirboys — the other one fled and hasn’t been caught yet.

Of course, even though this is Missouri, I expect Our Hero to fall foul of a poxy St. Louis asshole D.A. and/or judge, so let’s hold thumbs and hope things turn out all right for our Righteous Shooter.

Want One

The Gun Thing

From Insty (link included):

…just nobody at this website.

Although, given both the cost and scarcity of ammo these days, it would probably be better to go with an SKS:

…especially as you can’t fit a bayonet to the MG-42’s barrel.

Present

The Gun Thing

The kids clubbed together and bought me a birthday/Christmas present:

Never owned a Savage 64F before, and this stainless-barreled one is as pretty as all hell — once one loses the black compo stock, that is [sigh].  Came with scope mounts, but I’m in two minds whether to scope the thing or not, given that its function is “plinker”.  I guess it depends on whether my old eyes can get it inside a respectable circle or not.

Apparently, the store was not able to include even a single box of .22 LR, but I believe I’ve got a few rounds of rimfire lying around somewhere.  (I’ll also need a few spare mags at some point, but that can wait awhile.)

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range to test it out.

Update:  I couldn’t get a ten-shot string offhand inside a palm-sized ring at 25 yards, but the Son&Heir could (damn his young eyes) — so I’m gonna need a scope.  [deep sigh]
Thanks for all the scope advice.

On the bright side:  the 64F loves Aguila 40-gr Match more than any other ammo I tried.  Fortunately, I bought a couple cases on a great deal back in about 2007, so there we go.