Category: The Gun Thing

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

New 9mm Or Old 7.65mm?

Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

Browsing through the “new arrivals” at Collectors, I stumbled across not one but two older Lugers.  If you haven’t watched Othias and Mae’s take on this splendid old piece — and shame on you if you haven’t — go there now and spend a worthwhile hour learning about the Pistole 08.

The first one that caught my eye is a “Swiss”-type Model 1900 Luger, issued to the Swiss police, and was the first Luger to be adopted by anyone.

What interests me is that firstly, we know that this little beauty was well-looked after for at least the first 50 years of its life because it was used by a 1.) Swiss 2.) policeman, and I bet that since its arrival in the U.S. some fifty-odd years ago, it’s been just as carefully maintained.  As its price (just under $3,000) would indicate, this is like to be a cherry, and scarce withal because the Swiss ordered only a few thousand of them.  Only later did those 1900 Police models (chambered in 7.65x21mm Parabellum / .30 Luger) get replaced by the P.08 in 9mm Parabellum, which means that this particular model spent most of its life in Switzerland locked in a cabinet somewhere as surplus (the Swiss never sold off their older-model Lugers to civilians until they opened them up for export in 1959).

The second of the Lugers is a “commercial” (i.e. private) piece:

Note that the Swiss model can be distinguished from the commercial one by the added grip safety (which was part of the Swiss list of requirements).  As with all such guns, we can’t be sure of this one’s condition because we don’t know how owners have handled the thing (and its price, under $2,000, reflects both that and its non-rarity, as they were produced in the tens of thousands).  Unlike most of the Lugers out there today, this particular one is also chambered in 7.65mm Parabellum.

…which of course is going to raise the question:  “Hey Kim, if you think the 115gr 9mmP  is a useless Europellet, why do you like the smaller 93g .30 Luger cartridge so much?”  and it’s a valid question.

Simple answer:  it’s more fun to shoot, and makes no claim to being an effective self-defense cartridge. It used to be thought of that way, back in the very early 1900s when the cartridge was first released, but the Euros hadn’t yet been exposed to the .357 Magnum or even the .45 ACP.  (For some reason, Euros have always preferred inadequate cartridges in their handguns.  No, I don’t know why either.)

More importantly, I actually used to own a Luger chambered in 7.65mm, sold it under extreme duress, and I can truthfully say that of the many hundreds of centerfire pistols I’ve fired in my lifetime, that Luger ranks #3 in the “fun gun” category.  (#1 is the 1905 Colt in .32 ACP, and #2 is the SIG Sauer P230, also in .32 ACP.)  I still wish I’d kept it.

Fun guns are those that you do not shoot for practice, e.g. self-defense or competition, but on those occasions when you just shoot at cans or something, and you don’t want to shoot .22 LR (it can happen), or you just feel like shooting a different gun.

And boy, is that Luger ever different.

Ammo cost is surprisingly low.  Prvi Partizan (bless their little Balkan hearts) make the .30 Luger, and the retail thereof is about 60 cents/round.  Sellier&Bellot 9mmP compares at 35 cents, but then again you’re going to shoot your Europellets in the thousands versus the .30 Lugers by the dozen.

Another point of query might be shooting a pistol with the severe grip angle/rake of the Luger (and Ruger .22 pistols) compared to my favorite style of the 1911:

The Luger grip doesn’t require familiarity — it is, after all, more of a curio than a “functional” gun.

All that said, if I had the dough right now I’d be talking about that Swiss beauty as a recent acquisition rather than as an object of desire.

Back To Greenbacks

Anti-Gun Nannies, The Gun Thing, Two-Minute Hate

How convenient:

Credit card giants Visa, Mastercard, and American Express will start categorizing sales of guns from gun shops using a new merchant code from the International Organization for Standardization. Previously, individual sales from gun stores were categorized as “general merchandise.”

And:

Now, the gun control lobby will go to banks and start pressuring them not to take credit card sales from gun shops. And isn’t it convenient that the banks can now easily identify gun sales by the code that was just approved by the credit card companies? Visa, Mastercard, and other credit card companies are middlemen between the merchant and the bank, and pressuring large banks to refuse to honor credit card sales would potentially devastate the firearms industry.

Most people should have enough “spare” cash on hand for a SHTF situation which can be used for this purpose, but I appreciate that in these times of Bidenflation, that may not be the case.

My suggestion:  assuming that you don’t have enough “ready” cash on hand to make the purchase, draw cash from your credit card (up to whatever the monthly limit is) until you have enough to buy the gun you want.  Use the first cash withdrawal to “hold” the item, and pay the balance when you’ve collected enough.  Most gun stores will do this for you, as I recall.

There are all sorts of other ways to circumvent this (e.g. private sales between individuals), and I welcome suggestions in Comments.

After November, let’s start a concerted lobbying effort for Congress to write a law that disallows this practice, as an infringement on the Second Amendment.

I’m saying all this because all my other thoughts are a great deal blacker and more, shall we say, drastic, but let’s not go there.

Calling Bullshit

Resistance, The Gun Thing

While I’m all over the idea of some stout patriot bringing down a modern jet with a hunting rifle, this one just flat-out didn’t happen:

VLADIMIR PUTIN will be left fuming after a Ukrainian pensioner shot down a SU-35 fighter jet over the skies of Chernihiv, according to claims. Marketed as “world-beating”, the plane costs a whopping £74 million to manufacture. The jets have been deployed to Ukraine and have flown many sorties during the current war. They boast all the qualities associated with the best modern fighters in the world, such as super-manoeuvrability and supersonic speed.
Yet despite these advantages, a humble Ukrainian pensioner was allegedly able to shoot down one of the jets with his hunting rifle – leaving the Russian President incandescent with rage.

Read the article, and study the photographs to understand my skepticism.

Organic Weapons

The Gun Thing

Mr. Free Market sent me this excellent article (and please read it before carrying on), which extols the virtues of a wooden-stocked hunting rifle:

Beyond performance requirements, I want the rifle to look like the rifles of my childhood. That means a nice wood stock. I can remember back to when I was a little kid, my dad first showed me his deer rifle—a beautiful Browning A-Bolt Medallion that my mom had given him as a wedding gift—and instructed me on how to handle the gun safely and avoid touching the metal on the barrel or the lenses on the scope with my grimy hands. Even as a little kid I could tell that the rifle was imminently important, even if I wasn’t sure why. My dad loves that gun, and he still hunts with it today.

Mr friend Mr. FM knows me well. But it goes further than looks.

I always get a twinge of unease when somebody says that a gun is just a tool, like a hammer or drill.  A gun is much more than that.  A real gun isn’t a tool — it’s an extension of your body and soul.  Picking up a gun is not the same as picking up a  tool like a hammer, just as picking up a fine sheath knife is very different from picking up a steak knife at a restaurant.

And I’m sorry, but picking up a plastic-stocked rifle just doesn’t do it for me.  I know all the pros and cons of plastic stocks vs. wooden stocks, but the biggest con of a plastic stock is that it feels artificial — to put it bluntly, I feel like I’ve picked up a tool.

In my response to Mr. FM, I said that I’m going to replace the (very few) plastic-stocked rifles in my gun case with wooden-stocked ones.

So here we go.  I’m having a secret auction for this gun:

It’s a Marlin 882SSV (stainless steel varmint) HB in .22 Win Mag, and anyone who has ever seen me use it will attest that it’s a one-hole shooter.  It’s topped with an El Cheapo Shooter’s Edge 4x32mm scope, which is surprisingly good for the price.  I’ll throw it in or take it off, if you have something better.  Also included:  a couple spare mags and (for N. Texas / S. OK bidders only) 200 rounds of .22 Mag.

Marlin discontinued the 882SSV back in the early 2000s, because they’re idiots.  Ruger’s not going to reintroduce it anytime soon (if ever), because they too are idiots.  Parts and spares, however, as plentiful and inexpensive.

I’ll take the highest bid over $350, because you can’t get a decent .22 WMR rifle for less than $450, and the Marlin is a proven tackdriver.

What I want to replace it with:  CZ 457 American (below) or the 457 Varmint HB (if it’s still available):

Bidding opens today and closes at midnight Friday night.  All bids must be sent to my email addy.

I Don’t Think So

The Gun Thing

Ron Spomer makes the case that the .300 Blackout may be to deer hunting in the 21st century what the .30-30 was in the 20th.

Granted, the numbers he shows make a pretty good argument in terms of bullet performance (in terms of drop, drift and so on), but at the end of the day, it fails to convince me — and it’s not just because of my hidebound traditionalism, nor its effect (by extension) of my old-fashioned preference for the venerable lever-action vs. my antipathy towards the semi-auto AR type.

Indeed, as Ron points out, one of the reasons for the AR’s popularity these days is that the latest generation of kids come from Army service with well-honed familiarity with the AR-15 /M4 rifle, so naturally they would gravitate towards that platform and a heavier non-5.56mm cartridge, which the .300 BLK certainly is.  In previous generations of G.I. Joes, they would have felt the same way about the Springfield 1903, the Garand and the M14.

I think, however, that the modern hunters are spoiled for choice when it comes to cartridge choice, in a way that earlier generations were not — for the latter, the .30-30 was pretty much the “fall-back” chambering because just about everyone had a lever rifle in the house already.  Whatever the .300 BLK’s performance and advantages, it isn’t the fall-back choice for hunting — but the .308 Win most certainly is.

Whatever, I’ll stick to my Winchester 94 .30-30, thank you.