Category: The Gun Thing

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

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.

Asking The Important Questions

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

Key takeaway from the test:

  • The AK is the most reliable but after seeing how many have broken over the last two and half years on the range, it’s not the indestructible weapon everybody talks about (and I always thought it was).
  • This may sound crazy but it’s fair to say that they finally suffer a catastrophic failure (cracked trunion) at 80,000-100,000 rounds.

Oh.  Positively glass-like fragility, then.

Well, that means that on my current AK (obtained almost NIB), I have about 79,000 more rounds to go.  (I hardly ever shoot much through mine because a) I know how it works and can shoot it just fine,  and b) I prefer shooting my other guns.  I shoot it fairly often, but only a mag or so’s worth at a time — more a “hi there, how’re ya doin?”  kinda thing.)

I know how to fix the thing if it ever breaks — I just don’t care to.  If I were ever in a (SHTF) situation where my AK breaks, I’m sure there’d be a couple of other options lying around.