Month: April 2023

Gooder And Harder

Elections, Third World

…to quote Insty.  I see that Chicago has replaced Abject Failure Lori Lightweight with her male counterpart Brandon Johnson in the mayoral elections just held.

Of course, things are going to go from worse to worser:

Johnson is a paid agitator for the teachers union and a ‘defund the police’ type.

…and Chicago slithers ever closer to the abyss within the abyss into which it’s already fallen.  Just watch as the exodus flow of businesses and their executives changes into a flood, and the city moves closer to Detroit-style bankruptcy and failure.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of socialist assholes.

I note that the vote total was just over half a million people out of a voting population of over two million, so clearly 75% of Chicago residents just don’t give a fuck.  And there ya go.

Changing History, Just A Little

History, The Gun Thing

This little flight of fantasy was inspired by Chris Muir’s cartoon from yesterday and the day before.

In the spirit of our Crossing America series, imagine that you and a dozen of so of your best buddies were able to go back to any time during the Civil War and enlist in the army of your choice, at an appropriate age and level of fitness.  In your travel back through time you could take the battle rifle and sidearm of your choice and 500/50 rounds of ammo for each piece respectively, subject to the following conditions:

  • no full-auto rifles or machine guns of any type;
  • no explosive ordnance e.g. hand- or rifle grenades
  • no fanciful crap like lasers or photon pulse guns — you know what I’m aiming for, here.  You’d be a foot-soldier but by the standards of the time, a Starship Trooper.

To make life even easier, let’s assume that you could pick the campaign or battle you’d fight in, under your choice of battlefield commander, but you and your platoon would have a certain degree of autonomy.

Your choices and supporting arguments in Comments.

My weapons of choice:

Swedish Mauser M96 (6.5x55mm) as equipped below:

…with a bagful of loaded stripper clips, to save on weight.

Next (to nobody’s surprise):

Springfield 1911 in .45 ACP:

…ammo pre-loaded in five 10-round Chip McCormick magazines.

As to the battles and such, I’ll have to think about that for a while longer, but I’m leaning towards Stones River, on the Confederate side.

Gratuitous Gun Pic: Beretta 486 (20ga)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

I am a huge fan of Pietro Beretta guns, of almost any age, function, caliber, whatever.  One of my all-time favorite .22 pistols is the Modelo 75, for example:

…which I think is easily one of the most beautiful handguns ever — almost Art Deco, with that slim frame and those flowing lines — and (coincidentally) the Beretta gun which I’ve fired the most, it being the pistol with which I learned to shoot handguns.

However:  like its major competitor Browning, Beretta guns have always been just on the slightly-unacceptable side of affordable.  I know, quality, value, workmanship etc. etc. aren’t free;  but still, they’re always a priced a leeetle more than I want to spend on a gun.

And here’s the subject of today’s GGP:  the lovely Berette 486 side-by-side in 20ga, as listed by Collector’s:

…and only the lack of a second trigger makes this an “Oooooh Kimmy wants!” object of desire.

That, and the price thereof:  $6,850 (!!!!!)

Okay, maybe I’m getting jaded.  But let’s be honest:  with the improvements made in manufacturing by CNC and so on — i.e. churned out of some (admittedly high quality) production line — would it be too much to ask that this gun be priced at the $5,500 point?  That would make it still expensive, but still maintain its premium well above Winchester, CZ, Mossberg and Browning, for example, and competitive with, say, an upper-end Fausti.

Because right now, if I were looking at buying a decent shotgun as specified above, the Fausti would get my order despite my reverence for Beretta.  Fausti offers a drop-in double trigger for a few dollars extra, which Beretta doesn’t — not for a “few dollars extra”, that is — and having handled several Fausti guns in the past, I believe their quality is on a par with Beretta.

All thoughts are welcome in Comments, as always.