The Gun Thing – Page 129 – Splendid Isolation

Iconic Handguns

November 24, 2018 Kim du Toit Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

The Washington Times recently published a list of the top dozen “Most Iconic Handguns”, and unusually for topics of this nature, I couldn’t find much fault with their choices. To save you having to page through their stupid slideshow, the guns are:

Colt 1911 Government (.45 ACP)
Mauser C96 Broomhandle (7.63mm Mauser)
DWM P08 “Luger” (9x19mm Para)
Browning P35 High Power (9x19mm Para)
S&W Model 27 (.357 Magnum)
Walther P38 (9x19mm Para)
Colt Detective Special (.38 Special)
Walther PPK (.32 ACP / 7.65mm Browning)
Colt Single Action Army “Peacemaker” (.45 Colt)
S&W Mod 29 (.44 Magnum)
Glock 17 (9x19mm Para)
Desert Eagle (.50 AE / .44 Magnum)

Like I said, I can’t find much to argue with, if you define “iconic” as “guns that are instantly recognizable to most people” either by their shape, their popularity or their place in legend / the movies. Among gunnies, the list might look quite different.

But even then… one could argue that the two S&W revolvers are almost identical outside the caliber and frame design (to handle the extra recoil of the .44 Mag), and purely by the above definition, the Mod 29 (Dirty Harry’s gun) deserves its place, the Mod 27 less so. Ditto the Luger and the P38: the older P08 is instantly recognizable as much for its shape as for the name, but its replacement, the P38? Not so much, even though the P38 is the better pistol of the two. And as much as I hate to say this, the same is true of the 1911 and the High Power. To us gunnies, the two are instantly distinguishable; but to the general public? Probably not.

Frankly, any such list which ignores the Colt Python (.357 Mag) must surely be suspect.

And finally, for the history buffs (and there may be one or two among us), there’s the British Webley Mk VI (.455 Webley or .38/200), which must surely rate as iconic, by any standard:

…and of course, there’s the the Smith & Wesson Model 10 (a.k.a. the Military & Police and/or Victory model in .38 Special), which some might justifiably consider the iconic revolver — certainly, with over six million manufactured, it was the most-produced handgun of the 20th century.

If I were doing the list, I might omit the Walther P38 and S&W Mod 27, and substitute two of the three beauties above (which two? aaargh). How about a top 15?

Your observations in Comments.

Ammo Day Update

November 20, 2018 Kim du Toit The Gun Thing

I actually did a little more than the bare minimum purchase this year, simply because Ye Olde Ammoe Locquer is bursting at the seams. Seriously. I don’t have less than a thousand rounds for any of my guns, and it’s usually five times that. (Forget .22 LR; it’s like asking me how much sugar I have on hand because as any fule kno, .22 is not ammo, but a household commodity.)

Only one caliber is “deficient”, and that is .22 Mag. As I’ve said on these pages before: FFS, when did .22 WMR become (so much) more expensive than .45 ACP??? The only thing that saves me us that I don’t shoot much .22 WMR nowadays, so having only a few hundred rounds on hand is probably excusable.

So what ammo did I get?

This year I did a little “forward” buying — i.e. buying ammo for a gun (or guns) that I don’t yet possess, yet plan to buy in the very near future. They are 1) .357 mag for the S&W Mod 65 (or similar) and its companion lever-action carbine, and 2) 9mm practice ammo.

I know: 9mm? Kim bought 9mm? WHAT IS HAPPENING? ARE WE FACING END TIMES?

Relax; early next year I’ll be buying back Connie’s Browning High Power from a good friend, as much for sentimental value as anything else. As Loyal Readers know, I’ve been complaining that the 1911 has been beating me up during practice, and even the lighter 185gr loads are a trifle wearying on the old wrist after 200 rounds’ practice. Will I carry the BHP instead of the faithful Springfield 1911? Time will tell; in the interim, however, I did buy a thousand rounds of El Cheapo FMJ practice feed, and a couple-three boxes of assorted anti-goblin types, for testing. That should keep me going till at least February.

As for the .357 Mag, I got a bunch of Winchester White Box 110gr (for practice), and some meatier anti-personnel stuff: Federal Fusion 158gr for the Mod 65:

…and some heavier Federal 180gr (for the carbine).

“Which carbine,” you ask? Well, I’m still saving up for BAG Day (April 15), so I’m a little undecided, but right now I’m leaning towards Henry’s Big Boy All-Weather:

…or if I’m in a sentimental mood, the case-hardened model (because I’ve never owned a case-hardened rifle, and so why not?):

If I get the stainless S&W Mod 65, I’ll go for the stainless rifle; if, however, I can’t find an acceptable 65 and decide to go traditional, then I’ll get the case-hardened Big Boy and a blued revolver, e.g. the Ruger Service-Six.

I don’t think that either pair would be a bad choice, n’est-ce pas?

National Ammo Day

November 19, 2018 Kim du Toit The Gun Thing

You know what to do…

Let’s make Baby Vulcan happy and simultaneously enrage the gun-control fuckwits by purchasing a shitload of ammo, not just on this High Holy Day of the Second Amendment, but any day you damn well feel like it. Ammo prices are reasonable at the moment, so do some forward buying against the day when some politician like Barack Bastard Obama gets into power and drives prices up again.

And just remember: National Ammo Day’s big brother, Buy A Gun (BAG) Day (April 15) is just around the corner, so start saving now. (Of course I’m not saying that you should wait till then to buy a gun, especially if that sweet little Colt Diamondback suddenly becomes available, but you get my drift.)

If you want to buy ammo online (sorry California, Massachusetts and Cook County, IL) and you’re unsure where to get it, here’s a short (and by no means comprehensive) list of good places to do it:

Ammo.com
Ammo Man
Ammunition Depot
Buds Gun Shop
Bulk Ammo
Cheaper Than Dirt
Georgia Arms
Graf & Sons
J&G Sales
Lucky Gunner
Natchez Shooters Supply
Sportsman’s Guide
Sportsman’s Warehouse
Surplus Ammo

If you have a favorite ammo dealer not on the above list, feel free to add the link thereto in Comments — but get that ammo in. Do it now, if you haven’t already done it.

Hyperbole — Or Is It?

November 19, 2018 Kim du Toit Politics, The Gun Thing

So having taken back the U.S. House, the Socialists are starting to feel their oats:

WASHINGTON — A Democratic congressman has proposed outlawing “military-style semiautomatic assault weapons” and forcing existing owners to sell their weapons or face prosecution, a major departure from prior gun control proposals that typically exempt existing firearms.
In a USA Today op-ed entitled “Ban assault weapons, buy them back, go after resisters,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., argued Thursday that prior proposals to ban assault weapons “would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.”
Swalwell proposes that the government should offer up to $1,000 for every weapon covered by a new ban, estimating that it would take $15 billion to buy back roughly 15 million weapons — and “criminally prosecute any who choose to defy [the buyback] by keeping their weapons.”

And when he got some blowback, the little turd went full Stalin:

It is a recurring fantasy of socialists that they can disarm Americans without too much difficulty. Of course, we know that’s not true, and if the FedGov were ever to try it, the cost would be prohibitive (in so many ways). And for the record, let’s forget all about nukes. That’s just a wet dream on the part of socialists like Swalwell; they want to wish the problem away with a wave of a magic wand — it’s a recurring fantasy of theirs for just about every issue — and “nukes” is just a shorthand.

Where this socialist scumbag and his ilk are dangerous is this bullshit talk of “common ground”. Let me make this clear: between gun owners and gun confiscators, there is no common ground. It’s the same with the “commonsense gun control legislation” that they bat around: there’s no such thing. Every single piece of legislation suggested by gun controllers has one, and only one goal in mind: the eventual disarming of the American people. They can protest all they want, but we know the truth of the matter, which is that all gun control legislation is incremental, because they know that sweeping gun control (confiscation and disarmament) just ain’t gonna happen, dreams of the Swalwell types notwithstanding.

It is quite possible that gun confiscation might have some small success — e.g. in Swalwell’s own district (see below), where the incidence of legal gun ownership is probably quite low and the ~~Democrat~~ Socialist-majority voting population might even support the idea of giving up whatever guns they have. (And I know what you’re thinking: nuking the 15th district, and especially with the concomitant fallout, would actually solve quite a few problems, but let’s not go there.)

Also, Swalwell might have at his behest the loathsome assholes of the California State Police, who were so notably efficient in disarming households in New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina floods. So yeah: it’s quite feasible that confiscation could work there.

In North Texas, not so much. In the first place, the would-be confiscators would have to overcome Texas political sentiment about guns — good luck with that — and according to our last county sheriff, the confiscating force would first have to go through his deputies to get to our guns. And I’m sure that north Texas isn’t alone in this attitude, not just in Texas but all over the U.S.

We don’t have to worry about gun confiscation, the wet dreams of pissants like Swalwell notwithstanding. What we have to worry about is, as I said above, all the “reasonable” gun control legislation such as, for example, legislation that would limit the type of gun you can own, or equally bad, limits on things like the amount or types of ammunition you can own, or whether you have to register with government as a “gun owner” before being able to buy it. (Don’t laugh; that’s the situation that faces Californian gun owners right now.)

Did I already mention that today is National Ammo Day?

Let me offer a little additional advice: if you don’t already own a semi-automatic rifle (and we all know what I mean by that), you might want to improve your gun collection by buying an AK-47, AR-15/20 type, SAR-58 or HK-91 (to name but some options) — and buy it today (along with a “sufficiency” of ammo for the rifle, of course). Send me an email if you want some more details.

Gratuitous Gun Pic: CZ 75B (9mm and .40 S&W)

November 16, 2018 Kim du Toit Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

Despite my aversion to double-action 9mm pistols, I’ve always had a soft spot for the CZ 75:

Made by the fine Ceska Zbrojovka Company in the Czech Republic, the CZ 75 is probably one of the most respected DA pistols ever made. Reliable to a ridiculous degree, I think it was prevented from beating out the Browning High Power as the world’s most popular 9mm pistol only because Czechoslovakia had the misfortune to be once part of the Evil Empire, and as such it was difficult to export the guns to the Running Dogs of the Capitalist West. To add to the irony, the CZ 75’s action is based on that of the High Power, so the design is as sound as a bell.

CZ is such a damn good company in so many respects, they put most American gun companies to shame. For starters, their marketing is excellent—there are as many variants of the CZ 75 as you could wish for. Their advertising is likewise great (check out their website for an example of how a gun company should advertise their product line, with great pictures and feature-rich product data).

And they are accurate. It should be remembered that I am, in all honesty, no better than a “competent” shooter with a handgun, but I can shoot the CZ 75B well enough to impress even serious shooters. Oh, and one more thing: take a CZ 75B out of your gun bag at the range, and nobody will ever look down on your choice.

Here’s the best part, however. For what you get, the CZ pistols are great value for the money. You can get a new CZ 75B for less than $650. For that price, you may have to spend another $90 on a trigger job — like all DA pistols, the pull is not always to the individual’s liking — but then again, it may suit you fine.

As I always say: IF I were in the market for a 9mm pistol, and IF I didn’t prefer single-action (e.g. Browning P35 High Power) over double action, I’d already have a CZ 75B. And all that said, I’m still tempted. Maybe a stainless model? I don’t have one of those…