My favorite toy
Stay with me on this one.
If I were many years younger, and if I were not married, and if I lived in Colorado; and if this woman wasn’t already married, and if I happened to meet her, and if she wasn’t utterly repulsed by me to the point of shooting my fat ass — if all that, then I’d give her a big kiss on the cheek.
Which woman? This one.
And I bet I’m not the only man who thinks this.
I read with interest Colt’s fuck-you statement (via these guys) about discontinuing AR-15 sales to the consumer market:
There have been numerous articles recently published about Colt’s participation in the commercial rifle market. Some of these articles have incorrectly stated or implied that Colt is not committed to the consumer market. We want to assure you that Colt is committed to the Second Amendment, highly values its customers and continues to manufacture the world’s finest quality firearms for the consumer market.
The fact of the matter is that over the last few years, the market for modern sporting rifles has experienced significant excess manufacturing capacity. Given this level of manufacturing capacity, we believe there is adequate supply for modern sporting rifles for the foreseeable future.
On the other hand, our warfighters and law enforcement personnel continue to demand Colt rifles and we are fortunate enough to have been awarded significant military and law enforcement contracts. Currently, these high-volume contracts are absorbing all of Colt’s manufacturing capacity for rifles. Colt’s commitment to the consumer markets, however, is unwavering. We continue to expand our network of dealers across the country and to supply them with expanding lines of the finest quality 1911s and revolvers.
At the end of the day, we believe it is good sense to follow consumer demand and to adjust as market dynamics change. Colt has been a stout supporter of the Second Amendment for over 180 years, remains so, and will continue to provide its customers with the finest quality firearms in the world.
The second paragraph (as emphasized) is the only one I can actually go along with.
You know, I might have been somewhat mollified about Colt’s so-called commitment to the civilian market if they’d added something like: “To demonstrate our commitment to the consumer market, we’re going to re-introduce manufacturing of our heritage double-action revolvers — specifically, the Python, the Trooper and the Diamondback models — and reproduce them to the same strict quality engineering standards that make them, even today, the best revolvers to be found anywhere in the world.”
(Here’s a Trooper MkII in .22LR… just because)
In other words, take one gun away, replace it with another. As it is, however…
And an afterthought: in the Comments section to the statement, one guy made this observation:
“If Sam Colt was alive today, there would be pure hell to pay, the board of directors would be applying for welfare.”
Nope. If you’ve read anything at all about Sam Colt (and I have), you’d know that he was, more than anything else, a salesman — and he was constantly in pursuit of big military contracts. If he were alive today, he’d be as happy as a pig in muck; and he’d be the first to tell us to go and fuck ourselves. The current Colt management is probably just keeping to Sam’s principles.
OMG the Second Amendment is in danger!!!!!!!!!!!!
According to Rasmussen, 24 percent of survey respondents “favor repealing the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment which guarantees the right of most citizens to own a gun.”
In other words, about one in four of the respondents don’t want the Second anymore. Why is this statistic a load of fear-mongering bullshit?
Wake me up when the percentage of support for eliminating the Second grows to a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate — like that’s ever going to happen — or even if it does, let’s see if 38 of the 50 state legislatures agree to ratify the amendment.
Note to the Left: there’s no magic wand and pixie-dust here; if you want to make guns disappear, you’ll have to do it through the normal legal process, or (as Beta-Boy suggests), by forcible (and illegal) confiscation of all guns in private hands. Good luck with that, too. You may get just a little pushback, as the modern idiom goes:
Okay, we need to get some rules straight around this here back porch of mine. The proper order of things is that I post pics of beautiful guns and engender uncontrollable gun lust amongst you, O my Readers. You are not repeat NOT supposed to send ME emails of your guns which cause me distress, because as any fule kno, I am completely at the mercy of beautiful guns and have been known to auction off children to be able to buy said visions. (Not my children, of course; children I find wandering in the streets.)
An example of this kind of untoward behavior (the gun-bragging, not the kidnapping) is shown by Reader PC from the Great State of Texas, who writes thusly:
“I carry an S&W 627 Performance Center revolver (.357 eight-shot, N frame). Lobo Gunleather makes an inside waistband holster that, when coupled with Perry Suspenders and no-tuck shirts, carries as easily as a small Glock.”
Here’s a pic:
[whimper]
I do declare that this is quite easily the most beautiful stainless revolver S&W has made in ages, if not forever. And eight rounds in the cylinder?
“Hand me mah smelling salts, Prissy.”
S&W also makes a 2″ snubby version (which I think is the type Reader PC carries, from his description); but for me, the 5″ barrel as pictured is the business.
Were it not for the fact that the Performance Center models retail for well north of a grand ($1,200 at our local Academy aaaargh), I’d already have bought one by the time you read this.
As it is… oh, mommy. I am so weak.
I hope I’ve made myself quite clear about this bad behavior from Readers.
A number of people have been angered by Walmart’s recent decision to stop selling guns and ammo of various types. I’m a little angry myself, but no that much — because I was wise to Walmart’s game a long time ago. Here’s what I wrote about the giant chain back in 2003 (!!!):
I’m aware that a whole bunch of people out there buy guns and ammo from Wal-Mart (not to mention all the other household stuff), and that’s fine. A couple of people know that I don’t especially care for Walmart myself, and have written to talk about it.
I’ve worked in and around the retail industry for over twenty-five years, for small operations and huge chains, and on two continents, so I know a little whereof I speak. Here are my thoughts on the matter.
1. I don’t like one organization, especially a retailer, to have a huge (or near-monopolistic) market share. I don’t think it’s healthy for the economy, despite the short-term consumer savings that a large organization brings to the market. When most of the smaller operations get put out of business, the community suffers, both economically and in spirit.
2. Despite the folksiness of their public demeanor, Walmart is a pretty damned predatory company in their dealings with both suppliers and competitors. They go after competition with a ferocity and lack of conscience that are truly disturbing. That’s fine, of course—it’s good business—but at some point, that attitude will turn around and bite the consumer too. When you become the only game in town, eventually you become arrogant. If Walmart tries to deny that this will happen to them, they’re ignorant of history: it always happens. Always.
3. Most insidiously, when one store becomes the sole channel for a specific product, it becomes progressively easier for that product to be controlled by legislation. When there’s only one faucet, it’s easy to stop the flow of water—when there are thousands, it’s more difficult.
4. Along the way, eventually, product choice becomes narrower when only one or two stores control all the sales. When all a store cares about is what sells now, the more esoteric items disappear because they either don’t move quickly enough for the store to generate profit, or the price is increased to generate a larger profit. So you either won’t find it, or it will be too expensive. This is Retailing 101.
That’s it. I don’t think that Walmart is good for the country in the long-term: near-monopolies seldom are.
As far as the gun business is concerned, I don’t think Walmart is good for the country right now. To their credit, they’ve made guns and ammunition cheaper in rural areas, and many people swear by them. But when you live in Wahoo WY and Walmart is the only game in town, don’t think for a moment that you’re going to have the ultimate gun store in Walmart, because you won’t.
Frankly, Walmart doesn’t give a shit about the gun business. It’s just another product category to them, like shirts or jeans, and most of their decisions are made at head office in Bentonville, not at the local level. If guns and ammo become too problematic for them in terms of regulation, product movement or return on investment, they’ll drop the category without a second thought—once again, that’s good business, and you can’t fault them for it—but gun owners will be totally screwed.
Sure, the gun store is more expensive: because he doesn’t have the daily profits from other categories like toys, CDs and sweatshirts to keep him in business. I know how it works: you shop around at the local gun stores, get all the information from the guys behind the counter, and then go to Walmart because that Remington 870 is $80 cheaper there. Congratulations. You got a great deal—and shafted the guy whose entire living depends on your dollars. If you’ve done this kind of thing before, and this paragraph didn’t give you a twinge of conscience, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Walmart can survive without selling guns and ammo. Your local gun store can’t. Think about it.
Then in April 2006, I noted this development:
Walmart Stores Inc. has decided to stop selling guns in about a third of its U.S. stores in what it calls a marketing decision based on lack of demand in some places, a company spokeswoman said Friday.
The world’s largest retailer decided last month to remove firearms from about 1,000 stores in favor of stocking other sporting goods, in line with a “Store of the Community” strategy for boosting sales by paying closer attention to local differences in demand.
Once again, Walmart demonstrated that as far as they’re concerned, guns are no different from jeans or audio CDs: no sales, bye-bye.
None of our Plano-area stores sell guns or ammo, I suspect because there are about a dozen gun stores (including Bass Pro and Cabela’s) in the immediate area; and I suspect that we’re not a price-sensitive group anyway so cheap shotguns aren’t going to attract too many buyers when for a dozen dollars more you can get personalized service from a proper gun store. And as far as I can tell, most gun owners up here have been buying their ammo online for over a decade — I being one of them, for sure. So it’s unsurprising, from a purely merchandising rationale, that Wally World doesn’t stock any gunny goodness in this neighborhood. Frankly, I wish WalMart would make it policy across all their stores (although I don’t think they will because of their rural stores’ contribution).
Now read what the CEO of Hornady has to say about dealing with these assholes:
In my previous life, I worked for a company that lived and died by Walmart. And like many companies, Walmart treated them poorly. And, as we were going through these things with Walmart, I decided that if I was ever in a situation where I didn’t have to do business with them, I would not. And when I got to Hornady, we were doing some business with them, it wasn’t a lot, but they started to become difficult to work with again. I was in a situation where I made the decision for our company to walk away and everybody in the company supported my decision. And we have not looked back.
And here’s my favorite part:
“As long as there is a Hornady at Hornady, we will never sell Walmart direct. They don’t support our industry.” – Jason Hornady, 2007
He points out, by the way, that if perchance you see Hornady products at Walmart, those would have come through a wholesaler — and from his tone, I don’t think Hornady is too happy about it.
So there you have it: Walmart is not our friend. Make changes to your own shopping habits as it suits you. And support your local gun store, regardless.
Tami Keel on carrying spare parts for one’s guns around:
I actually have two spare-parts trays for my Glocks. One is a larger tray that stays at home and has all the things that came off guns when replaced by aftermarket bits, as well as routine-maintenance parts like recoil-spring assemblies and such. There’s a spare set of uninstalled night sights in there in case the ones on my carry gun start leaking tritium or spit their little vials or inserts out.
I too always carry spare parts for my 1911 or High Power (whichever I’m carrying at the time), and it’s not recoil buffers, extractors or springs.
It’s a collection of parts known as “Smith & Wesson Model 637 Airweight”.
And Tami provides just such a rationale when she writes (emphasis added):
With Glocks, it’s generally trigger-return springs or extractors that break, and I’ve got a couple of each in the tray. And, thanks to the reminder in the discussion that started this train of thought, it’s going to have a couple spring-loaded bearings in it now, too. When I used 1911s, I generally had a second, fitted extractor, as well as a recoil-spring plug. With revolvers…well, there’s not too much that’s likely to break or fall off on a revolver, and what there is generally can’t be fixed while watching TV in a motel room.
Actually, all this is making me increasingly want to carry a revolver as my primary goblin repellent. Either of these would do:
Whether the blued Colt Trooper MkIII (~$1,000 secondhand) or the stainless S&W Mod 65 (~$650 ditto), I would suggest that either of these oldtimer .357 Mag wheelguns would do the trick (along with, it should be said, a couple-three speedloaders)*. And instead of the S&W 637, I’d carry a small semi-auto in my pocket as backup, such as the Kahr PM9 (~$400) in 9mm Europellet:
I await with equanimity my Readers’ scorn, insults and opprobrium in response to this plan.
*Of course, given my druthers I’d go for a Python, but the price (~$3,000) makes my nose bleed. Even the King Cobra (~$2,000) brings the red stuff from my nasal passages,beautiful though it is:
I wish I wasn’t so damn poor…