My favorite toy
Oh man… when this is the outcome, you just have to read the article (and watch the video):
Seconds after police pulled up, the man attacked a female officer, striking her twice with a screwdriver. Most everyone on the scene then shot Payton 14 times.
And quit that sniggering.
snigger (v.) — the snort of laughter you make when some dumbass Black guy gets shot while committing a felony.
Forget that Valentine’s Day nonsense. THIS is the reason why Feb 14 should be a national holiday.
My 1911:
Feel free to indulge your gratitude in Comments. Just be aware that comments not pertaining to the wonders and greatness of the 1911 will be deleted, with prejudice.
Follow me on this one.
Let’s assume that all your life you’ve been a plinker-and-handgun kinda guy, whereby you own a handgun for protection, and inherited a .22 rifle from yer Dad… and that’s pretty much it. (Don’t laugh, I know they’re out there.)
But with all the crap that’s been going down recently, you decide that you should get a centerfire rifle… just because. Or maybe one of your old classmates invited you to join him on a pig- or deer hunting trip somewhere, you get my drift. Whatever the reason, you need a rifle.
The problem is that you are a little broke [insert Biden reason here] and your budget will not stretch to anything that costs more than a grand — and much lower would be even better.
Forget any of those AR-15 “assault rifle” things — they’re so far out of reach you may as well look for a ray-gun. In fact, most rifles now cost so much that the job seems impossible. Unless you lower your sights [sic] and get a second-hand rifle.
You discover a place that sells many second-hand rifles — some even quite affordable. It’s called Collector’s Firearms, and even though all your buddies warn you about their “collector’s prices”, you’re still able to find a few that will suit your needs.
Here’s one:
You ask around among your gun buddies, and yeah, that’s a decent rifle and a fine cartridge.
But you remember reading something about ammo scarcity, so you visit places like AmmoSeek to see whether you can get say, 100 rounds for practice and the hunt. Sorry. Only a couple of places have .300 Savage available, it’s expensive and all of them have “Limit: 1” in their conditions of sale.
So you try another rifle in a different chambering:
Once again, lovely rifle (plus a scope!) for an okay price, and the cartridge is excellent.
Except AmmoSeek shows that nobody has .257 Weatherby Mag ammo in stock. Damn. Oh well, on to the next choice:
Oh yeah baby, now we’re talking. Inexpensive, highly-regarded rifle, scope included, and a hard-hitting cartridge…
…but although AmmoSeek shows quite a few people actually have the cartridge in stock, it’ll cost you about $3 / trigger-pull. Ouch. Maybe another gun…?
Okay, this rifle is something of an unknown quantity, and there’s no scope; but at least it’s chambered for a common and popular cartridge, right?
…and you’re greeted with peals of mocking laughter, so to speak, as you discover that .308 Win is so popular that it’s no longer common — at almost any price. More distressing still is that the stuff that’s remotely available and affordable is full metal jacket — not yer optimal hunting cartridge — and a typical hunting cartridge purchase situation looks like this:
I could go on and on, but I think everyone gets the point, here.
I remember writing about buying guns and ammo during the G.W. Bush presidency, and saying that “these are the good times for gunnies”… and boy, was I ever right: guns were cheap and readily available, and you could buy ammo of any caliber by the (multiple) case load from a choice of sellers.
We live in different times now, and as much as I love the fact that more and more people are becoming first-time gun owners — the goal of the Nation of Riflemen, remember? — the result is that even I have to count the rounds when I go to the range (every other week, now, instead of weekly and even twice-weekly before).
Hell, my buddies and I used to give each other Christmas presents of 200-round bulk packs of .45 ACP; now, you can’t afford to do that not just because of the outrageous cost, but because you need the damn ammo for your own dwindling supplies. Without being sarky about the thing, I discovered over the past weekend that Ye Olde Ammoe Locquere is down to about 1,800 rounds of .45 ACP FMJ, and 200 rounds of self-defense stuff. Never mind holding off the Chinese Army (as someone once taunted me); I couldn’t hold off a piddly Antifa riot.
Aaaargh.
It seems like forever since I last did a piece bordering on idolatry about Mauser rifles, so here we go.
This one’s a pre-WWII ’98 Sporter in 8x57mm, and can be had at Collector’s for an obscene amount of money. Why “obscene”? Allow me to explain.
When I arrived in the U.S. after the Great Wetback Episode Of ’86, I was of course gun-less, having had to leave them all back in the old Racist Republic.
It took me few months before I managed to get my first gun Over Here, and it was identical to the one above except that mine had a single trigger and was, as the saying goes, very well-used. It was also quite accurate (especially as this was thirty-odd years ago, back when I still had young eyes and could use iron sights).
The seller was a work colleague — a bit of a dick, actually — who was based in South Carolina, and when on a business trip there I went over to his house for dinner and to flirt with his very pretty wife, he took me into his workshop and showed this wondrous thing to me, whereupon I was overcome with gun lust and made him an offer. He counter-offered, and we settled on $150.
Now the problem came about getting the thing back to Chicago.
Because I was stupid and knew nothing, I simply popped the thing into my garment bag, and when I got to the airport, checked the bag and was asked to fold it in two, I replied that I couldn’t because there was a camera tripod inside which was already folded up to its fullest extent. The airline check-in clerk just shrugged, found me a large cardboard box and taped it shut before sending it on its way.
Those were the good old days. Imagine trying to do that now.
Of course, I only found out a few days later that to own a gun legally, I had to have an Illinois Firearm Owner ID (FOID). This I learned when I went to Ye Olde Gunne Shoppe to buy ammo. Oops. That’s me: Oblivious Kim, breaking a stupid law again.
Anyway, I held onto the rifle for years, eventually selling it only in a time of great financial duress — I believe it was the very last gun I sold, back then — and I have to tell you, I still feel the wrench.
By the way: the guy’s wife and I had a bit of a fling not long after, so I got him for a twofer: his rifle and his wife, both very enjoyable to play with.
Last word on the .444 Marlin comes from Reader Mike S:
“I shot a TC Contender w/14-in. bbl. chambered in 444 Marlin. Once.
I couldn’t feel my right hand for 5 minutes. Then wished I couldn’t.
“Muzzle Flash” is such an inadequate phrase.”
The .444 is not a pistol cartridge, no matter what you might be told.
Guns are white supremacy’s deadliest weapon. We must disarm hate.
Oh, really. And who are these “white supremacists”, and who gets to identify them? Well, the answer to the first is easy: that would be “anyone who disagrees with my opinions” — uttered by any politician of the Socialist persuasion — and such disagreement is ipso facto a definition of a white supremacist.
Got that? Now read on to discover the primary identifier:
This deadly connection between white supremacy and guns runs throughout our history. In 1866, armed Confederate loyalists stormed the Louisiana Constitutional Convention, murdering 34 Black Americans in an attempt to block suffrage for freed slaves. In 1898, an armed White mob in Wilmington, N.C., proclaimed a “White Declaration of Independence,” then killed at least 60 residents before replacing the multiracial local government with white supremacists. In 1921, mobs of armed White residents of Tulsa attacked the Black neighborhood of Greenwood, murdering as many as 300 Tulsans for the crime of being Black and successful.
The commonality of all the above? Why, it should be obvious:
That’s right: all white supremacists have BOOBS !!!!!
(I’m just trying to follow this reporter’s logic, here.)
Okay, maybe that’s not what she was talking about. What could she be talking about? From the article itself:
Oh, okay.
So in the interest of racial comity, I’m calling on all women to throw off their Confederate bikinis. Pics (or preferably videos) can be sent to me for verification.