Tag: Guns and such

My favorite toy

Crossing America – 2019

Guy Stuff

Time to play this game again.

The Challenge:  You have the opportunity to go back in time, arriving on the east coast of North America circa  1650 in the early spring, and your goal is to cross the North American continent, taking as much time as you need.  When / if you reach the Pacific coastline, you’ll be transported back to the present day.  Your equipment for this journey will be as follows (taken back in the time capsule with you):

— enough provisions for the first five days’ travel
— a backpack containing some clothing essentials
— a winter coat, raincoat and boots
— waterproof sleeping bag
— an axe, and a small sharpening stone
— a box of 1,000 “strike anywhere” waterproof matches
— a portable water filtration system
— a topographic map of North America
— binoculars and a compass
— a current U.S. Army First Aid kit
— ONE long gun (shotgun or rifle) and 800 rounds of ammo (but no scope;  and no interchangeable-barrel rifles like a Thompson Center Encore or Blaser;  drillings are acceptable, but you still only get 800 rounds of ammo, total)
— ONE handgun (and 1,000 rounds)
— and THREE knives (which can include a multi-tool knife like a Leatherman).

Once there, you’ll be given a horse, a mule and a dog — but apart from that, you’re on your own.  Remember you’ll be traveling through deep woods, open prairie, desert and mountains.  You may encounter hostile Indian tribes and dangerous animals en route, which should be considered when you answer the following questions (and only these):

1.  What long gun would you take back in time with you?
2.  What handgun?
3.  What knives?

Unlike previous surveys, I’m not going to tabulate the answers;  just have at it in Comments.  Reasons need not be given, as the choices will pretty much speak for themselves.  If you must  justify your choices, keep it short (as I have with mine).

Kim’s choices:

Long:  Mauser M96 (Swedish) 6.5x55mm.  Flat-shooting, manageable recoil, super-reliable, and more accurate than I can shoot it, at any distance.

I’d probably add some kind of peep sight:

Handgun:  Ruger Redhawk Stainless in .357 Mag with a 5.5″ barrel and (new from Ruger!) 8-shot cylinder.  Indestructible, and in a pinch can be used for hunting.

Knives:  Fox 440 bush knife, Anza skinner and Swiss Army Champ (no explanations necessary):

Oh, and by the way, I’d take a sharpened roofing hammer instead of an actual axe:

All the above must assume that I would be forty years younger, and have better eyesight than I have now.  At my current age and rickety state, I might as well just give up and lie on the beach on the Atlantic shoreline, eating my provisions and waiting to die…

Over to you, in Comments.

Safe Queens

Beauty, Drive Time, The Gun Thing

I’ve talked about this topic before, but I’m not sure I’ve ever told this story here.

Many years ago, a guy heard from a Reader of this website what a sucker I was for WWI- and WWII-era guns, and offered to sell me a brand-new, still-in-the-box, never-been-fired Colt Government 1911 from that time (with Colt certification).  As it happened, I was a little flush with cash right then, and after a little pondering (and deciding not to pay down the car debt), agreed to his price.  I went over to his house to complete the transaction, and checked it out.

(Not a pic of the actual gun.)

It was a beauty.  Needless to say, I was nuzzling it and whispering terms of endearment to it (as one would a new puppy), but I did let it slip that I couldn’t wait to take this beauteous thing from my grandfather’s era out to the range and see how it could shoot.

The seller looked aghast.  “You’re going to shoot  it?” he asked.
“Hell yes,” was my response.

Whereupon the guy immediately canceled the sale, clearly traumatized that someone was going to take his baby’s virginity.

I told you that tale as an intro to this foolishness:

If you had a supercar, you’d probably drive it, right? Not the three owners of this Ferrari 328 GTS over the last 30 years.
They’ve clocked up a combined- and frankly meagre – 283 miles in total, making this one of the best time-warp examples of an iconic ’80s supercar we’ve seen for some time.
And it could soon be yours, if you have pockets deep enough. That’s because it’s being sold at auction in the UK next month, and the expected purchase fee is set to hit £150,000.

And the accompanying pics (out of several):

Now I have to say that I’m casting lustful eyes upon this beauty, and if those bastards at PowerBall had fulfilled their side of the bargain over the weekend, I’d be winging my way over to Britishland as you read this, letter of credit from Gringotts Bank clutched in my sweaty little hand.

And let me tell you that once I’d got it back Over Here, and after having had it checked and serviced by Giovanni at Boardwalk Ferrari of Plano (yes of course  we have a Ferrari/Maserati dealership in Plano — do you even have to ask?), I would turn that 283 miles/30 years into 12,830 miles/30 years+1 month faster than you can say “Scuderia Maranello“.  I’m thinking of an epic road trip around the southern states, going from one Ferrari dealership to another (because Ferrari) before the weather turns chilly.

I’ve never understood the concept of “safe queens”, whose possession is so precious that usage is forbidden.  As Longtime Friend and Ex-Drummer Knob puts it so elegantly:

“Owning a beautiful car and never driving it in case you lower its value is like having a supermodel girlfriend and never fucking her, just to make her more attractive to her next boyfriend.”

In fact, now that I think of it, I’d not only drive this 328 GTS, I’d invite Knob over to drive it as well.  (What the hell, as bandmates, we once shared two girls — not simultaneously — because in those days we both liked the same kind of woman:  low moral standards, voluptuous figure and huge breasteses.)  I figure we’d each get as much fun out of the 328, so to speak, as we did from Penny and Big Jenny.

Anyway, to wrench this train of thought back from the branch line:  I have no time for people who treat machines and tools like investments, even though they can be regarded as such.  And as for the Ferrari’s owner/idiot:  if he’d plonked the original purchase price of the 328 into a stock index fund (to name but one  investment vehicle) thirty years ago, he’d have made far more money than he’s currently going to realize from its sale.  Some investment, smart guy.

And in the meantime, that gorgeous car has been wasting away like Rapunzel in the tower.

Fach.

Headline Of The Day

Elections, The Gun Thing

Oh boy, this is priceless:

Beto Goes to Kent State, Argues Only the Government Can Be Trusted With Guns

I know the little Texas twerp is clueless;  but how clueless is that?

These socialist turds haven’t yet figured out that in America, threatening to ban a type of gun doesn’t cause us to stop buying it — on the contrary, it makes us run out and buy more  of them, in greater number and variety.  Even the ladies join in the fun:

And such is the ignorance among college students nowadays, I bet ol’ Beta-boy’s speech was rapturously applauded.  Morons.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

It’s not often that we get to applaud a self-administered  Righteous Shooting, but this one deserves special mention as it happened in Britishland.  Try not to burst out with raucous and joyful laughter as you follow the link, lest you frighten the other people at the office.  Here’s a brief synopsis:

Choirboy wants to do a little impromptu (or maybe planned, see below) property redistribution by breaking into a parked car.  Holding a shotgun, he smashes the butt thereof into the car window.

Thus far, all is happening as per usual in these cases.  Here’s where it gets (wonderfully) different.

Perhaps being unaware of the maxim, “Keep the booger-hook off the bang-switch”, said choirboy has finger on the trigger, and when the shotgun’s butt hits the window, he pulls the trigger, blasting a full load of buckshot(?) into his own fool chest, and dying on the spot.

[pause to allow the laughter and cheering to subside]

But it gets better.

There is surveillance video (see the link) which shows the other  members of the choir seeing what happened, holding him, trying to revive him, and generally wailing with shock and horror before running away.

Now  you can howl with laughter, with my permission.  And if this tragic tale doesn’t help you start the week with a smile on your face, you need help.

Gratuitous Gun Pic — Browning Buck Mark (.22 LR)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

I think the Buck Mark .22 pistol is one of the best modern rimfire semi-autos to be had.  It’s certainly one of the prettiest.  Here’s a Buck Mark Plus from Collectors Firearms, for example:

…and no serious shooter is going to argue with me that much.  Perhaps you can get a more accurate .22 pistol than the Buck Mark, but you’d have to spend a whole lot more money, because it’s more accurate than almost anyone who shoots it — and other than the high-end competition .22 guns like Pardini and so on, I certainly don’t think you can get a pistol with a better trigger  than the Buck Mark’s.

Best of all, Browning makes a dizzying number of variants to suit absolutely everyone.  I’ve either owned or at least fired most of the major types — typically, the Campers have a lightweight carbon bull barrel, and the Standards have a slab-sided heavy steel barrel, viz.:

My favorite, though, is the Plus Stainless:

I don’t have one of these brilliant little plinkers anymore — not after handing off various models to friends, my children etc.  But it’s on my shortlist, simply because I miss shooting it so much.

All that said:  field-stripping the Buck Mark should never be done in the field, as such, because unless you love scrabbling on hands and knees looking for the recoil spring and / or recoil buffer, you need to be really familiar with the Buck Mark’s innards.  Ask me how I know this.  Actually, your first attempts at cleaning it should preferably be done in a clean white room with a smooth cement floor just to make retrieval of said parts a little easier.  A Ruger MkIV it ain’t, folks.  (Here’s the back story on all the above.)

Still, I miss shooting the Buck Mark — one of the reasons I traded my MkIV for a Single Six revolver was that the MkIV wasn’t as much fun to shoot as the Browning.  (And oh baby… do I love shooting the revolver.)

And on and on it goes… if I didn’t love shooting guns so much, I’d have beaten myself to death long ago over all the stupid decisions I’ve made in the selling of them.  I need a Buck Mark, badly.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD, The Gun Thing

From Stephen Green at PJM:

My AR-15 weighs about 7.5 pounds unloaded, and a bit more with a 10- or 30-round magazine filled with common .223 rounds. Or rather I should say it did, before I lost it and my banned 30-round magazines in a tragic fishing accident shortly before Colorado’s 30-round magazine ban went into effect.

Seems that people need to exercise more caution with their guns when going fishing, O My Readers, because Stephen’s isn’t the first time I’ve come across this sad story.  In fact, my own beloved Hungarian-made AMD 65 (with the doubleplusungood folding stock) met a similar fate on the Brazos (or maybe it was the Trinity) River some time ago — I’m a forgetful old man, and I don’t remember exactly when it happened;  a week ago?  last year?  sometime during the spring, and if so, which  spring?  When you get to my advanced age, the days, weeks, months and years tend to all blur together into one messy soup of half-remembered events… hell, maybe it wasn’t even an AMD-65 at all, but a Romanian SAR-1, something like this one:

Terrible thing, this forgetfulness.

Feel free to share your own tragic tales, in Comments.  If you can remember them.