Category: The Gun Thing

Over at AmmoLand, Jim Grant lays down some smack on the .38 revolver as a carry piece:

Despite the fact that revolvers are among the most recommended carry guns for new and female shooters, they aren’t all great choices.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’ve owned and carried revolvers for years. While six-shooters absolutely have their place in a shooter’s arsenal, they’ve often employed wrong. This isn’t to say that they’re a bad choice when shoe-horned into roles they weren’t built for, but more so that a combination of factors have caused some of their most shining moments to eclipse. Paramount among these is the .38 special snub-nosed revolver. Compact, reliable and fool-proof, the .38 wheel-gun should be the perfect concealed carry option for new shooters – but it’s not.
Here are four reasons why it’s not.

…and I’m not going to argue with any of them.  Here’s an example of the offending article:

I carry this S&W 637 as a backup most of the time — with the occasional exception being for a 2-minute trip to 7-11 to get lottery tickets — and I’ll also confess to not practicing with it as much as I used to (now, maybe once a month or so instead of twice a week).  The only weekly practice involves dumping shells and reloading with a speedloader (I keep ten empty casings around for that specific purpose).

Even with this amount of practice, the time from last shot fired to next shot after reloading is about seven seconds — compared to just over four seconds with my 1911.  (The time includes retrieving the speedloader / fresh 1911 mag from my left-hand pants pocket, because that’s typically where I carry them.  Real-world stuff.)  That’s not combat-adequate, of course, but in reality you’re not going to need more than what’s already in your gun to end the threat, one way or the other.  If the ChiComs were to invade, we can talk about adjusting to that threat later.

I’m not too worried about my accuracy with the 637 because it’s not bad, and the 637 is a halitosis-range gun anyway. which is just as well because even shooting “only” .38 Spec+P ammo, alloy-framed snubbies have an astonishing amount of kick;  which is why I’m idly thinking of replacing the 637 with a steel-framed Model 60 at some point, or maybe just going with a 4″-barreled 627 in .357 Mag instead:

…the other reason being one of Grant’s points, viz.  the terminal ballistics of a .38 Spec bullet coming out of a 1.5″/2″ barrel are just awful.  Even with a decent bullet design, you’re asking a lot from a snubby — which means multiple shots and only five rounds in the cylinder — but then again, the 637 is my backup  carry piece.

Yeah, the steel 627 is heavier to carry than the alloy 637, but saving weight is a big trade-off in terms of saving your life, and the 8-shot 627 still weighs about the same as my 1911.

I guess the point to all this is that snubbies are really just backup, and not primary carry pieces, and that’s how I’ll continue to treat mine.

A couple days ago, I made this statement:

Peter’s thoughts about maintaining your battle rifle are also why I prefer the AK-47 over the AR-15:  throw an AK in the mud, drop it off the back of a truck, and it’ll still shoot.  Good luck doing that with your AR-15, with all its electronic doodads and plastic furniture.

…prompting this response from Reader Amos:

“I have no real world experience, but Karl’s and Ian’s mud tests at InRangeTV dispute that AR/AK assessment.”

Purely coincidentally, a few days before that Longtime Friend & Reader JohnC had sent me this pic:

Frankly, I don’t believe the pic, myself — but even if an exaggeration, it’s probably not too far from the truth [/Dan Rather].  I’ve seen AKs in absolutely shocking condition that were still perfectly operable, and I bet that many Vietnam- and Sandbox vets would probably back me up.  Feel free to disagree with my original statement, however.

From Reader Martin M:

On your recent subject of rifle work during free time, here’s mine.  A Savage .22/.410, it was my dad’s Christmas present in 1940.  He decorated the stock with rivets while working on a fire lookout in high school.  The stock got old and oil-soaked, so I replaced it.  I had to fit and finish the stock from a blank.  This is how it came out:

Oh, that’s lovely.  And from scratch?  Even better.

I love those old Savage .22 single-shot rifles, and the .22/.410 combo even more so.  As a knockaround gun for a kid to play with while out in the fields and woods, it’s incomparable.

Longtime Friend & Reader Mark S. sent me this missive a week or so ago:

The attached is a photo of a high school classmate’s mother, taken at the Balboa Gun Club in the Panama Canal Zone (sometime in the 40s or 50s, I think). We were wondering if you had any guesses or opinions about the rifle and scope. The items near her right knee are cash bundles of her winnings in a competition.

The rifle was no problem, and I identified it immediately:  a Remington 513 Target Master (513T), made from 1940 until the late 1960s.  (I actually had a chance to shoot one of these beauties when I helped the TSRA instructors get Son&Heir’s Boy Scout troop get their rifle shooting badges.  After they were done, the TSRA guys very kindly let me shoot off the rest of the .22 ammo they’d brought along.  One-hole groups and Big Smiles From Kim followed.)  Here’s a 513T exactly as used at the Boy Scout shoot, with a Lyman peep sight:

(The 512 model had a tube magazine, but was pretty much the same rifle.)

I would shoot this rifle against any modern commercial .22, even an Anschutz or CZ 455.  I might be beaten, but I sure as hell would not disgrace myself.

The scope was also easy, although I couldn’t figure out its magnification.  It’s the venerable Unertl, used mostly by the U.S. Marine Corps until late in the Vietnam War.

I suspect that the actual scope in the rifle club pic has 8x magnification, as it was the most common in civilian use (the USMC used the 10x).  And here’s a pic of the two together:

…and an unscoped Sporter model (essentially the same gun as the 513T, except that the bolt handle isn’t raked back) at Collectors, for just under a grand:

Ask me if I love this old tackdriver…