Author: Kim du Toit

Retirement Guns

The Gun Thing

Mr. FM and I were relaxing over a pint or two of whisky the other night and as always, the topic drifted towards that of guns. In this specific instance, it was “retirement” guns — i.e. when one has reached a certain age, and a miserly pension/SocSec payout prevents one from buying lots of rifles and/or ammo, what then are the guns that are most desirable to own, either by outright purchase (assuming the funds are available) or else acquired by selling off other guns to fund the purchases?

As I’m right in this target demographic, it’s a subject of keen interest to me.

The criteria are that they should be:

  • quality guns (high on the quality curve but acceptable costwise), to compensate for failing eyesight, shaky grip and unsteady footing;
  • only a few in number, yet able to address most shooting situations;
  • if possible, having gentle recoil (or at least gentler recoil) than the guns of one’s yoot;
  • and finally, chambered for a cartridge of which one already has a large supply.

Of course, the first priority would be a .22 rifle for both plinking and precision/varminting work. Mr. FM suggests an Anschutz 1416:

…or, if you’re going to go all benchy:

Then there’s the CZ 455 Luxe:

or, once again for the Benchies, the CZ 455 Precision:

I myself don’t need to buy either, as my Taurus Mod 62 / Marlin 880 SSQ / 880 SSV in .22 LR / .22 WinMag respectively, are probably all I’ll ever need for both plinking and varminting.

Yeah, the Marlins are no Anschutz or CZ, but they shoot better than I can shoot them; and I don’t have to spend any more money, so there’s that. And, of course, I do have a few boxes of both calibers in Ye Olde Ammoe Locquer. [/understatement]

In that vein, let’s talk for a moment about the guns which are chambered according to the contents of your ammo locker. As any fule kno, I’m a huge fan of the AK-47 rifle, and I have (let’s say) a sufficiency of 7.62x39mm ammo. So, if I wanted an accurate bolt-action hunting rifle chambered in that excellent caliber, then why not a CZ 527 Carbine:

Incidentally, if your preferred SHTF rifle is of the AR-15 persuasion and you have a boatload of its ammo, then obviously there is a plethora of bolt-action choices for you. But I would respectfully suggest that you could do a lot worse than the above-mentioned CZ 527 Carbine chambered in .223 Rem.

Let’s see… plinking/varminting, SHTF, short-range hunting; what’s left? Oh yeah, I almost forgot.

Everyone needs a rifle with which one can reach out and touch someone / something at distances up to 500-600 yards. I believe I now have that covered with my new Mauser M12 in 6.5x55mm:

Once again, if your preferred assault rifle is of the FN-FAL / H&K G3 etc. type and you have a lot of 7.62x55mm/.308 Win ammo, then you should by all means get a hunting / sniper rifle in that chambering.

So there you have it. By the above criteria, my rifle count is: three rimfires (.22 LR and .22 WinMag), one SHTF and one short-range hunting (7.62x39mm), and one sniper (6.5x55mm): a total of six rifles and four calibers. (I don’t currently own a CZ 527 in 7.62x39mm, but after much discussion / whisky with Mr. FM, I’m starting to like the idea.)

Another retiree’s rifle collection might be: one .22 LR for plinking, two in .223 Rem for SHTF and varminting, a .30-30 lever piece for short-range hunting, and a .300 WinMag for long-distance work: a total of five rifles and four calibers.

See how that works?

Feel free to add your combinations, using the above criteria, in Comments. Remember: funds are tight, you want to cut down on “caliber proliferation”, and you want to be able to address all the most likely shooting situations you’re going to encounter as an Old Fart. Have at it.

So What’s New?

Men & Women

According to the New York Post (always a bastion of careful reasoning and journalistic moderation):

Hackers could program sex robots to kill

In other words, it could be almost as dangerous as having sex with a couple of my ex-girlfriends. A couple of points need to be made at this juncture:

  1. For some men, this could be a turn-on rather than a cautionary tale
  2. Note the proliferation of “could”, “might”, “may” and all the other weasel words in this article — in other words, it’s total crap
  3. No doubt the “hackers” who actually  perpetrate this wickedness will be Russians, Ukranians, Central Europeans as opposed to, oh I don’t know, retarded British hackers
  4. I would imagine that for owners of said stuff, privacy would be paramount. So anyone who hooks his sex toy up [sic] to the “Internet of things” deserves everything he gets.

For the record, I don’t believe a single word of this bullshit. It’s probably a story dreamed up by militant feminists or (more likely) RealDoll‘s competitors.

Come on, Cherry 2000…

Read more

Falling Over

Health

For many years now, I’ve suffered from a mild form of vertigo — a feeling of dizziness felt especially in high places, but not necessarily just there either.

The first time I felt it was when I lived in Chicago. I had a bad cold, I’d just had a hot bath, and when I got out, I nearly fell over. I thought the feeling would pass, but the dizziness didn’t go away, and I started to feel really bad. I was alone in the apartment — The Mrs. had gone shopping with the kids — so in a panic, I called 911 for an ambulance. As luck would have it [sarcasm alert], The Mrs. arrived at the lobby to the apartment block precisely at the moment I was being wheeled out in a stretcher. You can no doubt imagine her reaction.

Anyway, I had all sorts of X-rays and such at the hospital, and they found nothing wrong with me, and to add to the irony, I felt much better — so much so that I checked myself out and went home.

The next time I had a similar experience was much later, in Texas. Same thing, except I didn’t have a cold and hadn’t just had a bath. I was getting out of bed and couldn’t stand up without falling back over onto the bed. By this time, The Mrs.’s health had deteriorated to the point of being essentially bedridden, I didn’t want to pay for the EMS guys to carry me the few miles to the hospital, so the Son&Heir took me.

(Some background: I have a family history of heart disease — it’s killed several on my mother’s side — so I’ve always been wary of anything untoward happening because I’m generally in very good health. Hence my excessive caution, and going to the hospital in both cases.)

Anyway, on this occasion, the same thing happened in Plano as had happened in Chicago: tests, X-rays, MRI etc., and nothing bad had happened; that, plus the fact that I was (once more) feeling fine by the end of it, meant that I checked myself out again and went home.

A couple of years ago, you may remember that during the U.S. Open golf tournament in Chambers Bay, Oz golfer Jason Day had a severe attack of vertigo which almost caused him to withdraw from the last round. Greg Norman, one of the TV commentators, did a little research on the ailment and described the symptoms — and to my astonishment, it was like reading a list of the things that had troubled me in the past. (I should point out that my G.P. has checked me out very thoroughly, and concurs with my self-diagnosis. I should also add that my annual check-up always ends with him telling me to bugger off and quit wasting his time because he has really sick people to attend to. Apparently, when I do die, he’ll have to beat my heart to death with a stick.)

Now, as I’m getting older, I’ve since had some more mild vertigo attacks, but nothing serious: an occasional wobble if I make too severe a turn while walking, or I might lose my balance momentarily on a staircase, and so on. In each case, I pause for a few seconds, my balance reasserts itself, and on I go.

As a condition, vertigo is suffered by 5-10% of the population, is mostly caused by a malfunction of the inner ear balance mechanism, and occurs more frequently as one ages. (For a fuller description, the Wikipedia entry is as good as any.)

And yes, I also have fairly severe tinnitus caused by a lifetime spent shooting guns without much hearing protection (until fairly recently) and by a youth spent playing loud music in a rock band. Cliff Notes: my ears are fucked.

Anyway, I thought I’d just mention this issue in case some of my Old Fart Readers get dizzy and can’t figure out why; this may be the reason, but in any event, get yerself checked out by a doctor just in case.

As I’ve often said, this getting old shit is not for young people: you need to be tough and cynical (as brought on by age) in order to get through it.

This post does require a pitchur to help get the idea across; so here’s another Kim, über-hottie Kim Novak, getting directed by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo:

Don’t Threaten; Shoot The Sumbitch

The Gun Thing

I was reading this article about a woman who drove off some would-be carjackers with a gun:

Kari Bird just started law school and continues to work full time. Bird got home at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and when she got out of her car, a group of three or four young guys approached her.
“I really didn’t think too much about it, one of (them) was smiling,” Bird said.
He was smiling, but he quickly pulled out a gun.
“He told me to … give him my keys,” Bird said.
She did turn over her keys, but realizing all her law books and belongings were in the car, Bird made a quick decision. With the gun still pointed at her, she reached into her center console to pull out her own gun.
“(He said), ‘Oh s***’ and then ran,” Bird told Fox 59.

So far, so good. then I read this sentence:

She’s thankful it did turn out alright, but wants those boys to know that this is no way to treat anyone.
“They need to stop this. They’re not going down a good road,” Bird said.

I hate to break it to Ms. Bird, but it didn’t turn out all right. These little assholes know exactly what they’re doing: treating other people as victims, and prepared to kill said victims if they don’t get what they want. And they’re not going to stop what they’re doing, because you didn’t shoot the little prick pointing a gun at you.

So you frightened them off because you had a gun. What will happen next is that they’ll shoot their next victim just in case he or she has a gun, like you did.

Don’t expect criminals to see the error of their ways, because they don’t. The only way they’ll stop is if they’re arrested, or shot. And you’re not a cop.

The old rule applies: don’t ever pull your gun unless you absolutely have to; but when you do pull it, use the damn thing to the best of your ability. You’ll not only save yourself, you’ll probably save others like yourself in the future from a similar fate.

Manual Labor

Advice

I have often advised young men to get a trade before going off to college — and more especially so if they are unclear as to what career they choose to follow. There’s no point in getting into debt when a well-intentioned degree in, say, Languages does not result in decent job prospects, and even worse when you realize that your career preference is not really congruent with your degree — a youthful desire to become a recording engineer transforms into a real desire to become a doctor when maturity comes into play. (And note that I’m not even talking about worthless degrees in nonsense such as Post-Modernist Poetry or African-American Studies.)

In fact, I’d counsel young men to join the Armed Forces if they still haven’t made their mind up about their career by age 19. (My good friend Doc Russia is a case study in this scenario: shiftless yoot at 18, USMC for a few years, med school and now a respected doctor.) The military has a wonderful way of crystallizing one’s thought process and compelling maturity.

Now comes this little snippet from Over Here:

Electricians are earning as much as £3,000 a week as they cash in on a chronic shortage of skilled workers across the country.
That amounts to £156,000 a year – around six times the average wage and more than the £150,000 earned by the Prime Minister.
Plumbers and bricklayers are also benefiting, with wages rising by as much as 10 per cent in the past 12 months.
Plumbers can earn as much as £2,000 a week, while brickies can bring home £1,125 – more than £50,000 a year.

Of course, this should come as no surprise. I recall some years back when Reader Mark C., at that time an executive at a large corporation in the oil exploration / development business (think: Bechtel, Asea Brown Boveri, those kinds of companies) was bemoaning the fact that he was unable to find enough warm bodies to train as welders and oilfield technicians, even when after a two-year apprenticeship, newly-minted workers would have an internationally-portable skill set that could command a starting annual wage of over $75,000 — for a 21-year-old.

The same is true for carpenters (rough, finished or cabinet-makers), electricians (light- or heavy current) and many other such trades. All you need to do is look at the progress made by that Jason guy on the Holmes on Homes TV show — a raw, inexperienced kid with nothing but a strong back and willingness to learn; three years later a qualified construction project manager who could start his own business and make a small (or even large) fortune. Don’t even get me started on the pro electricians, plumbers and such who featured on the show: even for Canucks, they must each have made a fortune, and were worth every penny. (As I recall, Holmes used a young Polish plumber, an immigrant who could barely speak English, on his earlier shows; by the end of the third season, this same kid had his own business with lots of other kids now working for him, and spoke perfect English.)

Compared to that, a drama major or Womyn’s Studies professor look quite insignificant — which they should be.

I’ve said before that my late father always told me to work with my brain and not my hands. Considering that he started off as a welder / boilermaker and ended up as the owner of a civil engineering company, it was the worst advice I’d ever got. (He went to night school at the Tech while working his day job, and eventually graduated with a civil engineering degree. Not bad for a farm boy.) He always told me to get a degree — any degree — because I could always fall back on that if my chosen career as a professional musician didn’t work out. What he should have said was, “Do a trade apprenticeship — any trade — and you can always fall back on that if you decide that being a lawyer sucks.”

I often wonder what would have happened had I done a few years’ carpentry right after leaving school. Whatever I’d finally become, I’m pretty sure that there would have been far fewer periods of abject poverty in my life.

Shootingham, U.K. — Part 2

The Gun Thing

There are a couple of shotgun ranges at Royal Bisley; the first is all competition-Olympic style, with traps, skeet and sheltered shooting positions:

Long Siberia isn’t at all like that.

Essentially, it’s in the middle of a forest, with only a few open clearings to shoot from. There is no cover for the shooters, no doubt because the Brits need to practice standing in the chilly rain and trying to shoot fast-moving birds flying over the treetops while water is streaming into the eyes — you know, having fun. (An aside: Mr. Free Market has informed me that having fun at Bisley is very much frowned upon, because shooting is Serious Business, don’tcha know.)

I had more fun than a sex maniac in a brothel with a Gold Card.

Granted, it wasn’t raining, so we could leave the rain gear (wellies, Barbour coats etc.) in the Range Rover. But OMG what an experience.

Basically, one walks through the forest until a clearing opens up to a shooting position with clay activators and such. The positions are tailored to reflect the kind of birds one would be shooting: driven high birds, grouse, pheasant etc., all with the flight characteristics thereof: low skimmers, high fliers and everything in between. I’ll shut up now, and just let you take in the fun. (All pics taken by Mr. FM, with my eternal gratitude; I was having so much fun, I barely took any.)

…and let me tell you, those lil’ thangs were moving, Bubba.

… got ‘im:

All in all, I think we shot from over half a dozen shooting positions. Best of all, towards the end, I was hardly missing — and when I did, I knew immediately why and where — but as Mr. FM dryly commented, “Nothing like trigger time, dear heart.”

All good things must come to an end, and eventually Mr. FM dragged me kicking and screaming away from this wondrous place.

So massive was my pout that my friend and host had to calm my raging spirit at this fine establishment on the world-famous River Test trout-fishing stream:

A perfect ending to a perfect day…