Not just the guns, but all the stuff that goes with them
It’s not often I come across a rifle I’ve not only never seen, but never even heard of. So step forward Collectors, to show me the error of my ways:
Now that lil’ thang is as cute as a button — and would make a wonderful companion piece to a Ruger Blackhawk, similarly chambered:
Want. I want that Marlin carbine, and I want my Blackhawk back, except that its current owner won’t sell it back to me. Aaargh.
The Greatest Living Englishman has an opinion on big-game trophy hunting:
People who hunt big game are evil…
That’s why Boris Johnson (remember him) received universal support in 2019 for pledging to end the practice of big-game hunters bringing back the severed heads of animals they’d shot in Africa.
I was so supportive, in fact, that I went outside and banged my frying pans together, like we used to do for the nurses.
Because I just cannot understand why anyone could go to Botswana to shoot a lion or a giraffe.
It simply doesn’t compute in my head.
Fear not, however, because:
…but here’s why they are necessary
Because as the House of Lords debated the ban on severed heads this week, six African governments wrote to The Times newspaper begging them to let the hunting continue.
And they have a point.
They argue the big, wild animals in Africa often attack villagers and trample crops.
They are seen as a nuisance and are often shot by farmers.
But if a rich white hunter arrives on the scene and is prepared to pay upwards of £20,000 to shoot an animal, it’s suddenly worth the farmer’s while to make sure he has something to shoot at.
So instead of killing the wildlife, he starts to protect it.
Because he’s going to get a LOT more money from Hank the Texan dentist than he is from half an acre of maize.
The fact is that the rich white hunters who do this kind of thing are actually paying for the animals to be protected and looked after beforehand by the locals.
They’re even reintroducing rhinos to areas they haven’t been seen in for decades. I know this. I’ve been to a park and witnessed it happening. And I’ve met the locals who patrol the area at night, hunting the poachers.
If hunting was banned, all that would stop.
So it’s a weird conclusion but if a halfwit with way more money than sense and no moral fibre at all wants to fly to Africa to shoot an elephant, the kindest thing we can do as a nation of animal lovers is . . . let him.
Here’s my take on all of this. Firstly, as Clarkson notes, without hunting the game will just disappear. Farmers will either shoot, shovel and shut up or else they’ll set out poisoned bait. To a farmer, a predator isn’t just a dangerous pest: it’s something that takes away his property — and as I’ve said before, a leopard will kill an entire flock of sheep, just because it can, before taking one away to eat. Lions are not any better. A large herd of springbok will eat all the farmer’s grazing for his sheep or cattle, and the farmer will end up with starving herds. Don’t get me started on elephants, which are more destructive than governments.
So spare me the maudlin “O the pore wee beasties” PETA nonsense.
All that said, however, I should also point out that I’ve never been a trophy hunter. I’ve hunted either as part of a (very unofficial) game management system — helping a farmer protect his herds from lion and springbok, for example — or on very infrequent occasions for the sheer joy of the stalk, in terrain and climate so inhospitable it would make your nuts retract into your body. On the latter occasions, I’ve been close to death so many times that my ultimate survival was a matter of pure luck. That’s why I did it — and that’s why I don’t hunt anymore.
All that said, however, I understand the point of trophy collecting. When you have hunted something and taken its life, it is the ultimate form of possession, and there is a profound intimacy between hunter and prey — an intimacy that demands that one keeps a part of that animal, not as proof, but as a form of gratitude. Even on those stupid “wilderness survival” TV shows, you’ll see someone who has just killed an animal for food say, “Thank you giving me your life so I can survive.” It’s not hokum: it’s about as primal a ritual as one can find, and it’s embedded deep within our hunter-gather gene code.
People like Jeremy Clarkson, who’ve never experienced that emotion, will say that they don’t understand that need to keep a bond with one’s conquest. The key lies within the phrase “who’ve never experienced that emotion”. You can’t explain it to them, and they’ll never understand it because, of course, food comes from the supermarket and not from the barrel of your gun. (You’d think that Clarkson would understand this, seeing as he keeps cattle and — at one time — sheep. But there ya go. He may be the Greatest Living Englishman, but he’s not perfect.)
Of course, trophy hunting isn’t about getting food. But the emotion it brings out is no different — “moral fibre” has nothing to do with it — and if we weren’t so coddled and anesthetized by our oh-so civilized society, we’d all know that.
That aside, we’ll just have to justify big game hunting as “game management” to assuage the hurt feewings of the Weepy Animal Lovers Set. Like Jeremy Clarkson.
A reminder that I get no kickbacks from anyone (damn it), but here’s a decent deal from Lucky Gunner:
Myself, I tend to prefer 40gr .22 LR, but I’ve shot this particular variant before and it preforms as advertised. Don’t recall getting any duds out of a 525-round brick, either.
Oh, this is jolly:
In an unprecedented move, twenty armed Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents carried out a raid on a gun store in Great Falls, Montana, seizing all Form 4473 – documents that record buyer’s information during firearms transactions.
“We have now confirmed that both the IRS and the ATF were at Highwood Creek Outfitters in Great Falls around 7 am this morning. Both the IRS and ATF would not say why they were there,” KMON Radio reported.
“A spokeswoman for the IRS would only say they were there on official IRS business. The ATF says it was providing assistance to the IRS. We attempted to enter the store today and were stopped by agents at the door who would only say that the gun store is closed and will reopen tomorrow,” the news outlet added.
Considering that this raid was conducted under the auspices of the fine folks at the IRS, one would question whether the agents needed to confiscate the 4473 forms — which, lest we forget, contain absolutely no financial information.
However, ’tis an ill wind that blows absolutely no good, and there’s this little snippet:
Highwood Creek Outfitters is America’s largest online firearms and accessories mall, according to its website. The store is known for selling what Van Hoose calls “fun guns,” including AR-15’s and AK-47s.
And they did all that despite my never having heard of them before. Sadly, I’m not in a position to give them any business at the moment, but if any of you are thinking of making an online purchase of a gunny nature, you might want to give HSO a look.
As for the Gummint thugs… [taking the Fifth here, Boss]
I’ve always maintained that it’s an injustice for someone to lose their Second Amendment rights because of a criminal record imposed by the commission of a non-violent crime. By all means, deny the Second to recently-paroled armed robbers and the like — but for non-violent offenses like forgery or tax evasion? No.
Seems as though some judges are coming to the same conclusion.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held this week in Range v. Garland that the government cannot disarm people convicted of minor, nonviolent offenses.
Unless I miss my guess, this is headed straight for the Supremes — and they’d better get it right.
I have long loved shooting the Browning Buck Mark .22 pistols, having owned several in my lifetime. They are accurate, have an excellent trigger, and the only small drawback to ownership thereof is that stripping them for cleaning can be a PITA until you get used to it — unlike say the Ruger pre-Mark IV models, which were almost impossible to reassemble without assistance.
Anyway, here’s Browning’s excellent Buck Mark Micro Bull Barrel, on sale at Collectors:
What makes this model so special? As Collectors notes, it has a threaded, suppressor-ready barrel.
And they have four of them on sale.
Read into that what you will.
And Texas residents should note, there are some interesting legal developments coming up re: the issue of Texas-made suppressors and the Supreme Court. But I’ll cover those in a separate post later, once the dust has settled.
I have to say that I’d like to own one of these little sweethearts anyway, but this may be a deal-closer.