Category: The Gun Thing

Not just the guns, but all the stuff that goes with them

Oh, Really?

The Gun Thing

A couple days ago, I made this statement:

Peter’s thoughts about maintaining your battle rifle are also why I prefer the AK-47 over the AR-15:  throw an AK in the mud, drop it off the back of a truck, and it’ll still shoot.  Good luck doing that with your AR-15, with all its electronic doodads and plastic furniture.

…prompting this response from Reader Amos:

“I have no real world experience, but Karl’s and Ian’s mud tests at InRangeTV dispute that AR/AK assessment.”

Purely coincidentally, a few days before that Longtime Friend & Reader JohnC had sent me this pic:

Frankly, I don’t believe the pic, myself — but even if an exaggeration, it’s probably not too far from the truth [/Dan Rather].  I’ve seen AKs in absolutely shocking condition that were still perfectly operable, and I bet that many Vietnam- and Sandbox vets would probably back me up.  Feel free to disagree with my original statement, however.

Homework

The Gun Thing

From Reader Martin M:

On your recent subject of rifle work during free time, here’s mine.  A Savage .22/.410, it was my dad’s Christmas present in 1940.  He decorated the stock with rivets while working on a fire lookout in high school.  The stock got old and oil-soaked, so I replaced it.  I had to fit and finish the stock from a blank.  This is how it came out:

Oh, that’s lovely.  And from scratch?  Even better.

I love those old Savage .22 single-shot rifles, and the .22/.410 combo even more so.  As a knockaround gun for a kid to play with while out in the fields and woods, it’s incomparable.

Excellent Advice

SHTF, The Gun Thing

Peter Grant has a post about equipping and handling a rifle, and there’s not a single thing he says that I disagree with.  An excerpt:

It’s easy to say, “I can get rounds on target out to 500 yards” – but that’s probably not true in all circumstances. On a square range, on a calm, sunny day, with no interference or distractions, and a well-braced position, and using good optics, perhaps you can. Now, take a wild, stormy, windy day, with you out of breath, panting and puffing, sweat running down your forehead and into your eyes (having just run a couple of blocks to get away from trouble, with “bad guys” in the offing who are after you, and your family bunched behind you with the kids screaming in fear because they don’t know what’s going on), and you with just “iron sights” or a red dot sight on your close-combat carbine, and no time to take up a settled, stable shooting position . . . now make that critical shot, at whatever range. Go ahead. It’s only your life at stake, and your families’ lives.

Absolutely true.  We had guys in our unit who were absolute monsters on the range, but when faced with serious trouble, it all went to hell in a hurry.  This is also why I know I was a far  better handgun shooter back when I did timed IDPA drills every week, as opposed to the leisurely range sessions I do now.  I went from “average” to “much-better-than-average”, and now I’ve slipped back to “marginally-better-than average” (to be extremely charitable).  What I do know is that the habits I picked up from all those hours of IDPA drills are still there, and can be resurrected (even if a half-second or so slower) in a pinch.

Peter’s thoughts about maintaining your battle rifle are also why I prefer the AK-47 over the AR-15:  throw an AK in the mud, drop it off the back of a truck, and it’ll still shoot.  Good luck doing that with your AR-15, with all its electronic doodads and plastic furniture.

And if you don’t own a copy of Jeff Cooper’s Art of the Rifle, that should be your next book purchase.

Flashback

The Gun Thing

Longtime Friend & Reader Mark S. sent me this missive a week or so ago:

The attached is a photo of a high school classmate’s mother, taken at the Balboa Gun Club in the Panama Canal Zone (sometime in the 40s or 50s, I think). We were wondering if you had any guesses or opinions about the rifle and scope. The items near her right knee are cash bundles of her winnings in a competition.

The rifle was no problem, and I identified it immediately:  a Remington 513 Target Master (513T), made from 1940 until the late 1960s.  (I actually had a chance to shoot one of these beauties when I helped the TSRA instructors get Son&Heir’s Boy Scout troop get their rifle shooting badges.  After they were done, the TSRA guys very kindly let me shoot off the rest of the .22 ammo they’d brought along.  One-hole groups and Big Smiles From Kim followed.)  Here’s a 513T exactly as used at the Boy Scout shoot, with a Lyman peep sight:

(The 512 model had a tube magazine, but was pretty much the same rifle.)

I would shoot this rifle against any modern commercial .22, even an Anschutz or CZ 455.  I might be beaten, but I sure as hell would not disgrace myself.

The scope was also easy, although I couldn’t figure out its magnification.  It’s the venerable Unertl, used mostly by the U.S. Marine Corps until late in the Vietnam War.

I suspect that the actual scope in the rifle club pic has 8x magnification, as it was the most common in civilian use (the USMC used the 10x).  And here’s a pic of the two together:

…and an unscoped Sporter model (essentially the same gun as the 513T, except that the bolt handle isn’t raked back) at Collectors, for just under a grand:

Ask me if I love this old tackdriver…

Constitution 1, California 0

The Gun Thing

For this round, anyway:

A federal judge in California ruled that a law requiring background checks to purchase ammunition violates the Second Amendment.
Voters approved toughening California firearms laws to include background checks on ammo purchases in 2016, and the restrictions took effect last July. The California Rifle & Pistol Association filed a lawsuit against the state shortly after.
…
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez called the law “onerous and convoluted” and “constitutionally defective.”
“The experiment has been tried. The casualties have been counted. California’s new ammunition background check law misfires and the Second Amendment rights of California citizens have been gravely injured,” Benitez, a Bush appointee, wrote in the ruling.

Suggestion to Californian gun owners:  get ’em while you can.  In your state, there are no guarantees against gun-control fuckwittery.

Quarantine Project

Gratuitous Gun Pics

Last week I posted how a friend decided, whilst being confined to quarters, to clean his shotguns.  Clearly, he’s not the only one getting twitchy.

From another locked-down Reader comes this project:

Nothing else to do, so I attacked my Thompson Center R55 .22 rifle.  The stock always felt clumsy and clunky to me, so I smoothed out the sharp edges, rounded the corners & cut away near the trigger.  Then finished it with automotive clearcoat.
And I think we can all agree that this was time well spent:
What a beauty.  And I’ve written before how good a rifle the R55 is.
[jealous]
If anyone else out there has been bored out of their tree and taken to fiddling with their guns in this time of cholera Chinkvirus, feel free to share the details, with pics.