Tag: Guns and such

My favorite toy

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.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

“In what has got to be the coolest job in the history of jobs, American firearms engineers took the belt-fed mechanism from a captured German MG42 and grafted it onto the action of an FG42 paratroop rifle.”

If that sentence did not give you just the slightest hint of a woody, we are not the same kind of people.

The full story is here.

 

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

And yet another asshole tries to break into a home, and discovers that it’s not a good thing to do in Texas:

A Hopkins County, Texas, homeowner spotted a would-be intruder via a Ring camera Tuesday and shot him as the suspect was allegedly reaching into the house via a broken window in the door.  The homeowner watched the man, Buck Clary, via the Ring camera.  The Sheriff indicated the camera video allegedly showed Clary hitting the front door “and screaming.”

Clary then broke a glass in the door and reached inside the house, which is when the homeowner shot through the door.

And now the good news:

Clary was struck and wounded.  Hopkins County EMT transported the wounded man to a hospital, where he died.

Okay, that’s all well and good.

But I think we should demand more informative stuff other than the “goblin killed by homeowner while trying to break in” storyline.

I’m looking for answers to fairly simple questions such as “What kind of gun did Our Hero use?”  If a 12ga shotgun, then all’s well and good because we all know what it’s capable of.

But what if he used a handgun?  Then we need to know what caliber bullet went through the door and did its deadly job thereafter?  And following on from that, “What kind of door (hollow, solid etc.)?” because that also would also help us decide what kind of doorbuster guns ‘n ammo we need if faced with such a scenario.

The damn Press needs to get its shit together, if you ask me.

There will be a followup post to this one, on a similar topic.  Watch this space.

Range Report: Walther-Hammerli B1 (Part 2)

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

Last week’s test of the above rifle made me want to test how the thing shoots with serious glass (instead of the “meh, that’s close enough”  accuracy of the red-dot genre).

So suiting the action to the word, I mounted a Burris Fullfield 2.5-10x42m that just happened to be lying around in Ye Olde Odds & Sods box:

Looks better, dunnit?  Also, this time I’d brought a sandbag along, instead of having to rely on my shaky old grip off the bench.  Ammo used was CCI Mini-Mag 40gr solids, and CCI Maxi-Mag 40gr solids.

Anyway, for the life of me I could not remember when last the scope had been mounted, or even what gun it had been mounted on, so I started off slowly, at 30 feet with the .22 LR:

Okay, good enough for jazz / government work.  When I moved the target out to 60 feet and then 75 feet, the shots went quite high, as to be expected.  So I moved the target back to 60 feet, dialed the scope down, and fired off the unlabeled string in the orange target on the left.  (Yeah, I forgot to label it, sue me.)

So much for the .22 LR;  now came time for the barrel swap and the .22 WMR.

The top string, at 75 feet, was fired with the scope untouched from the .22 LR sighting-in.  High (expected) and much to the left (unexpected).  The next string, at 60 feet:  still high (okay) but a lot less to the left (not okay).  When I brought the target back to 30 feet, the group was a little high (to be expected, with the mag load) and still to the left.

So I said a few Bad Words, and decided to zero the scope for 60 feet as the default (which is the very bottom grouping).  Very much good enough for jazz / government work.

But when I left the scope untouched and changed the barrel back to .22 LR, at the same distance (60 feet) I got the un-labeled grouping on the left (with a called flyer because the guy in the bay next to mine chose that precise second to touch off a .44 Mag revolver, and I caught a fright).

Still, there seems to be way too much left/right variance between the two calibers — which means that I can’t swap barrels in the same session without messing with the scope each time.  And that’s somewhat annoying.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do.  If I’m going to be shooting .22 LR, I’ll use this setup:

…and if I’m going to be shooting the .22 Mag, then the scope:

Swapping the scopes — they both have quick-detach (QD) mounts — actually takes less time than changing the barrels.

So I’ll be using the red-dot for plinking .22 LR fun, and the scope for any serious .22 Mag shooting I may want to do.

Final thoughts:  while shooting the .22 Mag ammo, I had several ejection failures (FTE) and a couple of feeding failures (FTF).  As I was too busy doing the sighting-in thing, I didn’t pay much attention to it until afterwards.  Here’s what I learned:  even though the straight-pull bolt looks quite flimsy (plastic, what can I say?), it really isn’t, and the thing needs to be pulled back and slammed home with as much force as a turnbolt action.  I was actually being quite gentle with the loading process, and I shouldn’t be.  That will be addressed in future range sessions.

Next step:  acquire a suppressor.  More on that, later.