Blogging will be scarce, and possibly even of lower quality than normal, as I’m driving to visit a friend in another state. (No flying until I have to, thank you very much.) I’ll try to post while on the road, but I’ll be at the mercy of the Fleabagge Motel’s wi-fi, so if nothing appears, that’s the reason.
In the meantime, enjoy a little eye candy:
It’s the Beretta Model 75 in .22LR, and it’s the gun I learned to shoot handguns with. I’ve been spoiled ever since by the experience.
Back when I was a consultant, The Mrs. and I went through several periods of “chicken and feathers” — wealthy one minute, impoverished the next. During the chicken times, we’d travel, treat the kids and save, but during the feathers times, we’d be in trouble. In many cases, the trouble was a short-term problem: waiting for a client’s check to arrive, or for the check to clear, that kind of thing. There was always a credit card to tide us over, and then life could resume once the funds were released.
Then there were the longer periods of feathers, such as when a couple of our start-up business ideas failed. The first cost us about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which we paid out of our savings; the second cost us well over a third of a million — we had salaries to pay even though no money was coming in, and on that occasion we lost everything: savings, retirement accounts, and almost, the house. (I have no idea how we averted that disaster, but somehow one of us or the other always managed to get a small consulting gig which was just enough to keep a roof over our heads, but with nothing left over to pay bills. I even had a car repossessed during this time.)
So I had to sell off my guns. Pretty much all of them went, except for a junky old 16ga side-by-side which wasn’t worth diddly to anyone, and Connie’s little NAA Mini revolver. Most of them I sold to good friends, on the understanding that they could sell the guns if they wished, but that if they did so, I could at least get first refusal, as it were. Gradually over the past couple years, I’ve been able to buy a few guns back here and there, and a couple of really good friends even lent me a gun or two to tide me over — “on the non-return basis”, so to speak, because they couldn’t bear to see my family defenseless. These angels know who they are, and I’m not going to embarrass them by revealing their identities.
I won’t go into details of each of the guns thus sold and recovered because it’s unnecessary to this story, but here’s a pic (taken on a trip to the range with Mr. Free Market many years ago) of some of the guns I had to sell:
But one of those guns in the picture has stuck with me, because while it pained me to dispose of various beautiful Colts, Browning High Powers, Rugers and so on, my most anguished sale was the rifle at the top of the pic, this little thing:
To give the rifle its official name, it’s the Taurus Model 62C (.22LR) Pump-Action Carbine. To anyone who has ever shot one, its actual name is “OMG I haven’t had so much fun in years!”, always followed by a firm refusal to release the gun back to its rightful owner and a demand for more ammo.
As I’d mentioned a few days ago, I was seeking a semi-auto plinker — basically to replace this little darling — but all the time in the back of my mind, I kept thinking, “I wonder if [name redacted] would consider selling the Taurus back to me?”
There was really only one big concern: that its new owner would have fallen in love with the piece, as I had done, and would refuse to do so. (I should point out that this has happened to me with several of my friends; they’ve fallen in love with the guns and refused to part with them, even back to me.)
You see, the Marketing Department at Taurus are basically a bunch of morons, because several years ago they decided to drop this line from their catalog — all the Model 62 variants — which meant that a replacement would be difficult to find.
Happily, my kind friend decided, after considerable and doubtlessly-tortured reflection, that the rifle’s proper place would be back with its original owner. So today I can announce that I no longer need that .22 plinker: I’ve got my baby back. It’s resting by my chair, as I write these words.
One final word of explanation is probably necessary. The Taurus 62 is a pump-action, not a semi-auto rifle. Why, then, would I not need a semi-auto plinker, still?
The answer is obvious if one knows me well: I prefer to operate machinery rather than just use it — stick shift over auto transmissions, bolt-action over semi-auto rifles, revolvers over semi-auto pistols, and so on. I get added pleasure from working an action — it’s a feeling of control which is difficult to explain, but to people like myself, all too easy to understand.
I cannot wait to get out to some open country, toss a few cans or oranges onto the ground, and start shooting. And if you want to know how much I want to do this: I’d rather do this for a few hours than spend the same amount of time in Nigella Lawson’s boudoir. Yes, that much.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m not going to the range. I’m off to find some open country…
I am really, really old-fashioned when it comes to being on time for anything. In the first place, I spent seven years in boarding school whose attention to time meant that second bell for morning roll-call rang at 7:02 am, and if you arrived even a few seconds after that time you were adjudged late, and got punished. (Note that it was 7:02 am, and not 7:00 or 7:05.) In the second instance, I have always worked in industries where time was measured in seconds or minutes, not hours or days, and deadlines were critical — hence the “dead” in deadline — so timeliness was not only important, but tardiness was expensive.
My motto is quite simple: “Five minutes early is on time”, and no matter where I’m coming from or how fraught the journey, I make every effort to make the 5-minute deadline. The corollary to the motto is that I get pissed when people are as little as a minute late, which makes me something of a tight-ass, and I’ve been thus called many, many times.
I don’t care.
As far as I’m concerned, by arriving late you’re telling the other person that his or her time isn’t important, or at least isn’t as important as your time, and that attitude is unbearably rude and inconsiderate. Don’t even ask me how I feel about “Mediterranean-” or “African Time”, where an appointed time is not even a “guideline” but wishful thinking. Likewise, I’ve walked away from doctors’ offices when I’m kept waiting for longer than half an hour — and when one doctor had the effrontery to bill me $70 for “breaking the appointment”, you can imagine his surprise when in return he got a bill from me for $250 (my rate for the hour-and-a-half I spent driving to his office, being ignored and driving home). The only excuse for lateness that I’ve ever accepted in a business situation is if the guy was talking to a client, or if the guy is the client.
So you can imagine my reaction to this little snippet, wherein a woman admits cheerfully that she’s always a few minutes late for social engagements, but always on time when it’s a business appointment — and is then astonished when she’s called a bunch of rude names by people who have the same standards as I have. Here’s a tip: if you know that you may be held up by traffic, or a family emergency (e.g. a full diaper belonging to a baby), then leave half an hour before you would otherwise do.
We’re always told that “time is money” by so-called efficiency experts. It isn’t. It’s worth a lot more than money. Time is the most precious resource on Earth, we each have only a finite amount of it, and when people waste my time through their careless and rude tardiness, I get so angry I have to be restrained from slipping the safety off the 1911.
And please: of course I make exceptions if someone had an actual car crash, or had to take their kid to the Emergency Room or some such situation. I’m not an unreasonable man. But outside those situations, it pisses me off that when I excoriate someone for their rudeness that somehow, I’m the bad guy for being so persnickety about time. Well, you’re fucking right I’m persnickety — and I’m going to get worse as I get older and time becomes all the more limited and precious.
This comes from a friend’s grandfather, shortly before his death:
“You know, over the course of my life I spent most of my money on whiskey, women and guns… the rest, I just wasted.”
I got nothing.
I have talked about this phenomenon before, but this latest Mrs. Robinson event (please look at it) has triggered a few further thoughts on the topic.
Let’s leave aside that the 38-year-old woman is not bad for an old broad (from a teenage boy’s perspective), with blue eyes and a sorta trailer-park-Elizabeth-Taylor look about her.
In my foul yoot, I might easily have availed myself of her offerings (certainly the sex and the booze part, but not the cash and definitely not the weed). What I would have done differently is kept my mouth shut. Now, the report on the affair [sic] is severely lacking in details, but this “fifteen-year-old” sounds like quite the little weasel, ratting the woman out and taking money from her bank account.
I’m going to ignore the fact that the woman is quite clearly demented and/or retarded, as witnessed by her stupid behavior, and I’ve already confessed to my ignorance as to why older women are doing this stuff in the first place. It is abundantly clear, however, that this youth took massive advantage of her. If I were to put a timeline on the various activities, my guess is that she invited him in for a little nookie — and maybe a beer to help him along — and then he quite possibly blackmailed her into all the other stuff: more booze, weed and visits to the ATM — all aided by the fact that she’d already committed a felony by having had sex with an underage boy. And the whole sorry thing came to light either because he bragged about his “conquest” (as teenage boys will do because, duh, teenage boys), or else he was busted with weed in his possession and howled, “The old lady gave it to me while we were having sex!” or some such excuse. Whatever.
Like I’ve said, I’m guessing because I have no proof of any of this and I don’t know what actually happened; but you have to admit, it’s certainly a plausible situation.
What makes it all the more tragic is that if the above scenario is close to the truth, then the woman fell foul of a kid who was, shall we say, mature beyond his years, and who could take advantage of her to a much greater degree than she ever took of him. Had this happened in, say, the 1950s or around that era, I’d be the first to look severely at the older woman. Nowadays, however, boys are a lot more venal and worldly, and more likely to be total shits about something like this.
I’m not excusing her behavior, by the way, nor am I “blaming the victim”; but you have to admit, the world has changed since statutory rape laws were enacted and not, I would suggest, for the better.
I’ve always loved the little WWII-era M1 Carbine, because it’s so much fun to shoot, it doesn’t weigh a ton, and the ammo isn’t fearfully expensive (relatively speaking, in today’s market).
In my various travels about Teh Intarwebz, I came across a YouTube video which looked at the ” Most Overpriced Mil-Surp Rifles On The Market”, in which the host opined that the M1 Carbine is the second-most over-priced. (I think that ALL guns today are overpriced, thank you again, Urkel Obama and Hillary Bitch Clinton, but I’ve ranted about that before.)
I’m not going to argue much with the man’s take on the M1 being overpriced; it is, and horribly so. (A refurbished Korean Inland M1 Carbine for over $1,200? Are you shitting me?)
However, welcome to the gun nut’s Rock (fun to shoot etc.) and Hard Place (damn spendy). It’s a problem as old as time, and one we gun nuts have always had to deal with — only now, it’s worse than ever.
Let’s just assume, however, that the Rock has won you over, and you just have to have this lovely little gun in your safe. How can you get some kind, any kind of a cost saving out of this? Here’s the rundown, as I see it:
Here’s a thought. What you’re paying for with one of those WWII / Korean War M1 Carbines is history — the fact that some GI might once have used this rifle to whack Nazis and/or Commies (always a Good Thing, IMO). But if you can forego that nostalgia (and it’s hard, believe me), you can get a newly-manufactured M1 Carbine from Thompson/Auto-Ordnance (Kahr) for about $765… which means if you forego the history and end up spending the same $1,318 for the whole package, you’d essentially be getting the same shooting fun — only now with three free mags and 1,250 rounds of ammo.
Or, if you can’t shake all aspects of nostalgia and you want a carbine which can take the good old M3 bayonet, you can get a new Inland M1 Carbine (yes, they’re making them again) for about $980, which would mean your “package” cost of $1,318 would get you three spare mags and 750 rounds of ammo.
Or you could just pocket the savings, either way.
As with all my opinions on matters such as these, please don’t pepper me with “I can get this cheaper at X” or my favorite: “OMG I paid $250 for my Carbine” comments — yes, so did I… back in 2004. Unfortunately, we’re living in a different world now, where panic buying (did I forget to thank Barack fucking Obama again?) has caused prices of all gun-related stuff to skyrocket. On the one hand, I like the fact that more guns are in private hands today than there were in 2007, but on the other, those additions to armed citizenry have come at a cost to us Old Gun Nuts in the form of higher gun prices. Intellectually, I’m cool with the outcome, but the dollar-cost reality makes my nuts ache.
Also, don’t think you’ll be able to snap up an M1 Carbine for $600 at a gun show. One, there are no more decent deals to be had at gun shows anymore which leads to two, your $600 “cheap” Carbine will most likely require five hundred dollars’ worth of parts and quality gunsmithing to make it work properly.
So, if you have a spare grand and a half (shipping and FFL transfer costs, ugh), here’s one way to spend it.
One last thought: the regular .30 Carbine round with its little 110gr. bullet has always been knocked as being underpowered. Well, Buffalo Bore now makes these puppies with a 125gr. bullet, and with BB’s amped-up power, the muzzle energy of the .30 cartridge has been increased by over a third — more than twice as much, in other words, as a .357 Magnum firing the same bullet from a 6″ revolver barrel — which turns the .30 Carbine into a bona fide stopper. (Don’t ask about the price of Buffalo Bore ammo; but if you want the best, ya gotta dig deep, as any fule kno.)