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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.

Another Nail In The Male Coffin

Eco-Crap, Pussification Parade, Science!

There’s a massive danger to Earth, uncovered by !Scientists!:

Men are bad for the planet, a controversial new study has claimed.

Researchers from 13 countries have joined forces on a new paper, titled ‘Men, masculinities, and the planet at the end of (M)Anthropocene.’  According to the experts, men tend to have a greater carbon footprint than women, largely through travel, transportation, and tourism.  Blokes are also less concerned with climate change – and less willing to change their everyday practices to fix it. 

No shit.  We’re too busy building stuff, moving stuff, drilling for stuff and in general making the planet habitable for everyone.  But wait, we’re doing even MOAR Evil Things!

In addition, typically ‘manly’ activities negatively impact both the environment and the climate.  This includes things like fishing and hunting, as well as meat consumption.  ‘Men tend to be more involved in owning, managing, controlling heavy, chemical, carbon–based, industrialized agriculture, high environmental impact and extractive industries, and of course militarism, with its own devastating environmental effects.’

However did they miss “car racing”?  And only in the fevered mind of academia would hunting and fishing be a danger to the environment, when any fule kno that practitioners of the above are the most ardent supporters of environmental protection.

Of course, it’s all dressed up in the usual pseudo-scientific gobbledegook:

Professor Jeff Hearn, professor of sociology in Huddersfield’s Department of Social and Psychological Sciences, said: ‘There is now plenty of research that shows clear negative impacts of some men’s behavior on the environment and climate.  What is astonishing is how this aspect does not figure in most debate and policy in a more sustainable world.’

That’s because “most debate and policy” concerns itself with more important issues, such as whether Sidney Sweeney’s ever going to do OnlyFans.

On that topic:  they also missed “wanking”.  I’m not sure how that lovely activity is linked to Global Warming Climate Cooling Change©, but I am sure that as we speak there is a group of some asshole “scientists” busy working on a (taxpayer-funded) study on the topic.

People are being paid — in thirteen countries, no less — to produce bullshit like this.

Fach.

Another RINO Gone

Elections, Trumpism

U.S. Senator John Cornyn (TX) was always an Establishment RINO — hell, he only ever got into the Senate because his opponent was some nutcase, and then he’s had the incumbent’s advantage ever since.  And he’s been a royal pain in the ass, too.

Cornyn promised to support Trump’s recess appointments and then blocked the nominees the very next day.  He also announced that Trump could face indictment for insurrection after the events of Jan. 6, 2021, while promoting the fake news that protestors had killed a Capitol police officer.  The incumbent senator even endorsed amnesty for illegal aliens.  Oh, and he supported “red flag” gun laws after the Uvalde school shooting, thus pissing off people like Yer Humble Narrator and a few million other gun owners.

Not anymore.  Yesterday, I and (it appears) a whole bunch of other pissed-off conservative Texans got together and kicked his RINO ass out:

He got Dallas because that’s more or less his home turf, and Austin because a) Austin is asshoe, and b) they voted for him because they must have thought Cornyn would be easier to beat in the Generals later this year, which again shows how delusional the Left can be*.  (And nobody cares what Corpus Christi thinks.)

So long, RINO.

And well done, Pax.  Get up there and start representing Texas.  Just remember who brung you to the dance, and all will be well in the future.

*The Evil Party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate race in November will be one James Talarico, who thinks God is non-binary, abortion is Christian, and Jesus was a pro-transgenderism feminist.  (I am not making this up.)

Oh, and one last thought about elections:

Those Brits…

Prancing Horseshit

Drive Time

Yeah, so Ferrari’s not-so-little Duracell car has been widely panned, e.g.:

..which is kinda what they did, I think.  (No pics because I refuse to be party to mass vomiting, y’all.)

Best comment is from a former Ferrari honcho:

“At least the Chinese won’t copy this car.”

As someone commented underneath:  “Somebody call the burn ward.”

For those looking for relative values:

And yes, I know they probably did it to bypass the EU’s version of our awful CAFE nonsense.  Don’t care.  The Loo-chay looks like shit — about the same as the new Jaguar Faerie model — and who the hell wants an overpriced kitchen appliance anyway?

I bet they sell a jillion because it’s Ferrari, and the tifosi arrivisti  have never been renowned for their brains.  They’re welcome to it.

Here’s the thing.  If someone pointed a gun at my head and said “Here’s half a million-odd euros, but you have to spend it on a Ferrari or we’ll kill you”, I’d spend it gladly.

But it would have to be a creditable threat.

In Comments:  which Ferrari would you buy under those circumstances?  (And for the last time:  I don’t care about your fucking ’64 F-100 or 2003  Adam  Toyota Corolla.  Play the game.)

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.