Month: October 2019

Follow-Up Post

The Gun Thing

Harking back to my paean of praise to the Savage 99 last week, something else about the originating article has stuck with me.

The author suggests that of the ten rifles everyone should own, one should be a custom-made rifle.

Now I’ll be perfectly honest, here:  aside from the cost involved (which should frighten almost anyone not named Phil Thee Richbags let alone a Cheap Bastard like me), every time I’ve thought about what I’m looking for in a custom-made rifle, I list all the components and invariably end up with something made by CZ.

Here’s a partial list of “desirable” features:

  • Mauser-style bolt
  • hogsback stock
  • Schnabel fore-end or  full stock
  • single-set trigger

…which leads to something that looks very much like this:

…which is the CZ 427, basically.  Or in a more manly chambering, this:

…which is nothing more than the CZ 557 Safari (a.k.a. Brno 602).  As for the full-stock dream rifle:

…which is the CZ 550 FS.

See what I mean?

Sure, I could always say I want a “blueprinted Remington 400x action with a 21″bull barrel, Timney trigger and a Fajen walnut stock” etc. but that’s going to cost me thousands, and I seriously doubt that I’d like it more, or for that matter be able to shoot it better than any of the ones shown.

Maybe — maybe — I could call up the folks at Dakota Arms to make me something to the above specs, but why, when CZ makes exactly what I need as a matter of course, and for a very reasonable price withal?

And if none of the above rifles makes your heart go pitter-pat just a little, then we’re on different pages of the Gun Geek Book entirely.

Don’t even get me started on chambering.  Certainly, I would eschew any exotic cartridge such as a .280 Ackley Improved and forget any custom cartridge designed for me exclusively.  When it comes to the damage-causing projectiles, I’d be perfectly happy with light ones like .223 Rem or .243 Win;  medium ones like .270 Win,  6.5x55mm Swede, 7x57mm, or .308 Win;  or for the heavies, .300 Win Mag or .375 H&H.  Any further tinkering would be in the realms of bullet weight and -type only.

In fact, now that I think of it, I already own my all-purpose “dream rifle”:

For those who’ve been on another planet these past couple years, it’s a Mauser M12 in 6.5x55mm Swede, topped with a Minox ZX 5i scope.

I don’t need  a custom rifle;  in terms of what I love about rifles, I already have one.  And if I want one with more “desirable” features, I’ll get a CZ.

Red-Headed Virgin

Culture

Reader Jeff W. sends me this article, which suggests that the BVM was, in fact, a ginger:

I had no idea that she was Scottish.  Was “Mhairi” her real name, I wonder?

Anyway, never mind all that.  The blog wherein such is to be found looks very interesting, so excuse me for a day or two while I examine it closely.

BTDT

Bad News

So there’s this list which ranks the most miserable cities in the U.S.  I’ve checked off those in the top 10 which I’ve actually seen / driven through / stayed in (don’t ask):

No question but that Gary deserves its spot.  Under “Non-Third World Shitholes” in the dictionary will be its picture:

Detroit we all know about, ditto Newark, Flint and Camden, which all resemble the above pic in one way or another.  Huntington Park should be driven around  let alone through, and I don’t know anything about Warren (although its location near Akron and Youngstown probably gives us a clue).  Pine Bluff is actually little different from most Southern rural shitholes, except that its inhabitants seem to be more violent than most, for reasons which escape me.

I’m a little puzzled by Passaic’s position, though.  I lived just a couple miles away from it, in Lincoln Park, and other than the fact that it gets flooded out every other year or so by its namesake river — perhaps the reason for its high misery ranking, come to think of it — it’s little different from most of its Noo Joizee neighbors e.g. Paterson (a true shithole) and Verona (only a little less shitty), neither of which made the top 10.

Feel free to add your miserable candidates in Comments.

Wish I’d Done That

Eco-Crap, Weather

Found via Insty (thankee, Squire), is this incredible piece of investigative journalism done by someone who, I suspect, isn’t a journalist:

Horrifying: Media and Climate Hoaxers (But I Repeat Myself) Report That Literally Everywhere on Earth is Warming at Twice the Rate of the Rest of the Earth

You’d think an actual journalist (I know, more rare than a virgin at a Clinton cocktail party) would have noticed this, but as the headline suggests, most of the journo persuasion are riding the Doom Wagon (no relation) for all it’s worth.

Anyway, follow the link and read it all the way to the end, where Ace makes this conclusion:

One begins to suspect that climate “scientists” have made up a scheme of dozens of “adjustments” they have granted themselves to make to the actual data, enabling them to tweak any temperature down and any other temperature up.

As we say here in Texas:  ya thank?

New Development

Politics, The Gun Thing

Actually, it isn’t.  I was just teasing.

September 2019 saw 10 percent more gun sales than September 2018, according to two analyses of background check data released this week.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade group, estimated there were over one million gun-sale background checks last month, a 10 percent increase over September 2018.

Remind me again when the Commie candidates started blabbing about confiscating our guns?  September 2019, was it?

Keep talking, assholes, and we’ll keep buying.  We’re already the most heavily-armed civilian population on Earth — and if this trend continues, we’re soon going to be more heavily armed than all other nations on Earth, combined.

Remember this?
That was my ambitious goal.  I just never thought it was going to be Democrats  who actually did it.