Category: The Gun Thing

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

Get ‘Em While They’re Hot

The Gun Thing

Here’s an interesting line of thought from Mr. Free Market.  As we all know, one of the Greens’ major pushes to curb our beloved shooting fun has been to declare that Eeeeevil Lead Boolets are poisoning the Earth and We’re All Gonna Die Even The Cute Lil’ Animules Boo Hoo.

Now granted, lead is kinda yucky stuff, but I do feel that the Great Lead Poisoning Scare is probably overblown, like so many of the other claims of the Greenies.  And places like Califuckingfornia have already enacted bans on things like lead shot in shotgun shells and so on because OMG when we shoot birds and such, the lead pellets eventually soak into the ground and watershed etc. etc. etc. but we’re all familiar with that whine and that’s not what I wanted to talk about anyway.

Here’s the interesting part.  Over in Britishland, lead shot has been banned (if not outright, then nearly enough so to make the difference irrelevant).  Certainly, all I ever saw Over There was steel shot-filled shells, and don’t even talk about taking your own stuff over there because you would be lying facedown on the tarmac at Heathrow as soon as some enterprising twerp from H.M. Customs discovered your wickedness.  It’s steel shot, or nothing.

Now as we all know, steel shot does all sorts of nastiness to your shotgun barrels over time, especially if you are a keen shotgunner like Mr. FM (who each year buys his cartridges by the pallet rather than by the case).  It’s all fine and dandy, though, because if you’re shooting a boring old Beretta or similar (as he does — according the manager at James Purdey & Son, Mr. FM has terrible taste in firearms), it just means that every five years or so you either replace your shotgun altogether, or just buy a new barrel set and have them fitted to the old action.

As I said, this is no big deal if your guns are made by Armas Tsheep Y Nasti in Spain or some such place.  Nobody cares if your ugly old gun has to get replaced by another ugly gun (see:  Kim’s old No-Name Brand 16ga side-by-side, long overdue for replacement).

But what if you are a man of refined taste and deep wallet?  What if your shotguns are of this pedigree?

This 5-gun set of matched Holland & Holland guns (two 12ga, two 20ga and one 28ga) are selling, secondhand, for just under $300,000.  Yup: three hundred thousand Washingtons.

I’m not going to debate whether said guns are worth it* — actually, given the price of new H&H side-by-side guns, $60 grand per gun isn’t that out of line — but even hardened shooters like me, who shoot their guns instead of locking them up in a bank vault somewhere, are going to wince every time they pull the trigger and send steel shot scraping their way down the barrel.

In other words, these are not guns whose barrels will be replaced — they have become literally too expensive, and too much of an investment, to be used.  And if they are used, the depreciation of the investment is going to be horrendous.

What this means for Purdey, Holland, McKay Brown and all the other makers of bespoke guns is that the demand for their merchandise is going to evaporate.  Mr. FM reckons that in twenty years time, you’ll not see any of these fine guns out in the field anymore;  and I for one think that’s a very bad thing.

I know, I know:  this is probably the very epitome of a First World problem.  But it’s not just that.  It’s that the eventual  disappearance of quality workmanship and gunmaking is going to make the world a little less fine, and a lot more ugly and common.

It’s as though Ferrari, McLaren, Rolls-Royce and Bentley were to disappear, leaving us only the choice between Kia, Honda and Ford.   Or if cars’ engines, regardless of manufacturer, were restricted only to the “sensible” upper limit of 120hp.  What kind of world would that be?

I don’t like that thought, and I really don’t like the idea of a world without fine guns.

*even if I had that kind of money to spend on shotguns, I wouldn’t buy those Hollands because they have single triggers and pistol grips (ugh, and no).  My choice, of all the guns at Steve Barnett’s place, would be this matched pair:

…and a bargain they are, at only $72,500 for the pair. [/eyecross]

But I would never — ever — take them over to Britishland for some birdshooting in Dorset with Mr. Free Market.  Not if I’m going to destroy those beautiful barrels with poxy steel shot, that is.  (I know, bismuth / plated shot.  I’m too old to learn how to shoot lighter loads.)

Finally, the usual caveat applies:  I accept no responsibility for empty bank accounts, ruined relationships and other such bad things should you follow those links.

Not Scary

SHTF, The Gun Thing

By now, everybody (and his dog) has seen this pic:

Here’s what strikes me:  that piddly little 9mm carry gun looks like a child’s toy.  (I know, I know:  “You wouldn’t want to be shot with one” yadda yadda yadda.)

How much more threatening if the woman had been carrying something a little more businesslike:

And one last thing, to the frightened hubby:

Dude.  Get your wife some shooting and gun-handling instruction.  Having her stand in the background waving her gun around like a two-year-old doesn’t do anybody anybody any good.  She could have nailed you in the back of the head on about four occasions that I could see, and I wasn’t even looking that hard.

And finally, here’s a 6-minute video link (in the pic) of some girls having fun at the range.

It’s so easy, a child can do it.

Yer welcome.

Dry Wells

SHTF, The Gun Thing

And we all thought Obama was the world’s best gun salesman.  We didn’t know about the Chinkvirus:

There have now been an estimated 8.3 million firearms sold in the United States since March—a record-setting pace likely to make 2020 the greatest year for gun sales in American history if the trend continues.
Gun and ammunition retailers are having trouble keeping up with the demand as Americans flood stores.

And a quote from an FFL:

“Pretty much everything is out of stock. We have been doing it since the late ’70s and have never seen literally no supply available. As of last week, at all major distributors you could not get any guns. Everything was literally sold out. Can’t even get hearing protection.”

At my local gun pusher FFL, I’m told there’s at least a two-month wait for a whole bunch of guns — and an indefinite wait for AR-15s.  I often use Bud’s Gun Shop as a dipstick into the state of the firearms business (also to get an idea of prices), and here’s what a cursory look showed me.  If I applied only two search filters (semi-auto  and 5.56mm NATO ), here’s what came up as being in stock (out of 560 items listed):

…in other words, a “California compliant” monstrosity that nobody wants, and an overpriced POS from Colt.  Everything else — Palmetto, IWI, S&W, Ruger, SIG, Daniel Defense, DPMS, Diamondback, you name it — was out of stock.  Even the Ruger Ranch Rifle was MIA.

One of my contacts at a major distributor confirmed that Bud’s and my local guy are the norm, not the exception.

So I went to Option B:  semi-auto rifles in 9mm Parabellum, once again at Bud’s, who typically advertises / carries about a hundred and thirty different models.  Here’s what they had:

All the rest were MIA.  And note that in the above, I said “had”.  When I went back a few hours later to check, even the Beretta Storm was OOS.

And if people are buying everything in sight in 5.56mm and 9mm, that leads to… yup, ammo scarcity.

Windham Taylor, the outreach manager for Ammo.com, one of the largest ammunition dealers in America, said the company experienced the same strains as the gun dealers. Demand for popular self-defense rounds such as 9mm and 223 has kept the store scrambling to find stock to keep their customers supplied.

Now for my Loyal Readers, none of this is either surprising or alarming.  We have (don’t we? ) an adequate sufficiency of both guns and ammo to tide us over — hell, ammo-wise, in some calibers I’m still living with stuff I purchased during the Dubya Administration — which should keep us going through this rough patch.

And speaking of the Dubya Administration, I remember posting back then:  “These are the Good Times for us gunnies;  this is the time to buy guns and ammo, when restrictions are few, supplies are plentiful and prices are sane.”  I recall that many of us heeded that — at least, according to Reader feedback — and I know that I took my own advice, bigly.

The economic lesson is timeless:  don’t buy during times of scarcity;  buy in times of plenty.

If you do have an itch to buy a gun (and don’t we all, all the time?), this might be a good time to look at bolt-action rifles, lever-action cowboy guns and some revolvers. We all know that in a pinch, a lever-action rifle can do sterling duty as a replacement self-defense gun — yeah, it doesn’t have a 200-round magazine — and I for one would not feel undergunned by any means, if that were all I had.

Back to Bud’s, where if we look at just .45 Colt (because neither the guns or ammo are scarce at the moment), we find that there are over 90 options available, e.g.:

…and for a “companion piece” for the above, there are over 150 options in .45 Colt:

Ooooh that’s better.  In fact, you have to get to Page 3 before the guns start running out of stock.  (Gotta say, Kimmy likes the look of this one, oh yes he does):

…but let’s not get sidetracked here.

One more time:  I accept no responsibility for bank accounts emptied, kids’ college funds raided nor relationships wrecked as a result of the above temptations proving too difficult to avoid.

An aside:  I checked on my stocks of AK-47 feed (7.62x39mm) the other day, and discovered that I had only a single can (~600 rounds) left.  EVERYBODY PANIC! until I discovered a couple of cases lying forgotten in some remote part of the garage — and then, by some cosmic coincidence I’m not even going to try to explain, I got a call from the Son&Heir, who wanted to know why he had five cases of 7.62x39mm in his garage when he doesn’t own an AK.  Guess I lost track of them in the move from the old house.  Panic over.

Big Box Shotguns

The Gun Thing

I confess to being conflicted on the topic of mag-fed shotguns like this one:

As any fule kno, when it comes to MOAR FIREPOWER I am generally on the side of the angels, i.e.  the MOAR, the BETTAH.

But having handled several shotguns of this type in the past, I have to say that I’m not sure they’re for me, simply because they are unbelievably cumbersome and unwieldy.  Shotgun ammo is heavy, Bubba, and unless you are of the Ahnuld / Stallone type, these guns are a bitch to be around.  (More so for anything on the naughty end, of course, but we can discuss that topic another time.)

My thought is that if you’re going to need ten or twelve shots of 00-Buck, that would be what we Old ‘Uns used to call a sticky situation, and I for one would rather employ an AK (or even an AR-15) which would give me all the follow-up shots I’d need, and more (20-, 30- or higher-capacity magazines, none of that 10-round stuff).

Remember, I’m not saying “Don’t get one”, but be aware that these are not movie guns to be waved around — at least, not for long.

I remember a friend once showing me his Franchi-SPAS shotgun, which could switch from pump to semi-auto by clicking a toggle and jiggling the slide:  I could barely lift it, unloaded.  It weighed nearly ten lbs, and the prospect of actually running around with the thing made me tired just thinking about it.  (Unloaded, a decent over-and-under weighs about seven lbs, a side-by-side about six, and a Mossberg 500 about five.)

I can’t help but think that mag-fed shotguns fall into the same category:  excellent concept, but unrealistic in practice.  It’s like those sexy 50-round drum mags one sees for Tommy guns, AKs and so on:  wonderful, until you have to work with them.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings, The Gun Thing

Haven’t done one of these for a while, so:

A 72-year-old homeowner shot and killed an alleged intruder he discovered in his Nashville, Tennessee, home Wednesday morning.
WSMV reports the incident occurred around 5:30 a.m., when the homeowner, Henry Schuster, returned to his house after eating breakfast.
Schuster told police he noticed the screen from his kitchen window had been removed, making him suspect someone had made entry into the home through it. Schuster then pulled his gun and conducted a room-to-room check through the house.
When he entered the bathroom 27-year-old Taylor Lowery was allegedly there and “lunged at him grabbing for the gun.”
Schuster responded by shooting Lowery, fatally wounding him.

[pause to let the raucous cheers and rude catcalls die down]

You know it’s going to end well for people like Our Hero when the cops come into the room, take one look at the corpus delicti  and say, “Yep.  Thought it might be him.”

Note that the news report doesn’t say if The Late Choirboy was Black or White, which doesn’t matter, of course:  scum is scum, and people who need killing need killing, regardless of race, creed or color.

All violent criminals’ lives don’t matter.

Not Gonna Happen

Elections, The Gun Thing

Here’s a hopeful thought:

The record-breaking gun sales during the coronavirus pandemic could bolster candidates that support the Second Amendment in 2020 and alter the course of American gun politics for the foreseeable future.

You mean guys like these?

Nope.  They’re Democrats, support BLM (by their own admission) and if you think that they and all the other liberals buying guns are going to become Trump voters in November, you’re delusional. The only reason they’re waving their guns around like idiots is because the Great Unwashed happened to come close to their precious house.

Even worse is this:

Amy Hunter, a spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, said that the group’s success could change the political landscape at the local, state, and national level.
“The NRA believes voters who recently purchased guns for self-defense will join other Second Amendment voters and be an even more formidable voting bloc,” Hunter told the Washington Free Beacon. “They’re educated, passionate, and they know anti-gun politicians are the biggest threat to their fundamental right to self-defense.”

Well, if the NRA thinks this is the case, that’s even more cause for gloom and skepticism.

Sure, I have no doubt that many first-time gun buyers, especially those in the poxy socialist enclaves like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, had their noses rubbed into the consequences of their home cities’ gun control laws (which they probably all supported before the Chinkvirus thing happened);  but a) they’re probably not going to vote for Trump or even a Republican mayor or city council, and b) even if they did, their numbers will be too small to make much of a difference to the outcome in said cities.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.