Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Department of Redundancy Department:

Another Browning P35 rescued from a life of belonging to someone who isn’t me. T-series serial number putting it as made in the mid/late 1960’s….gun is as old as I am, apparently. It appears to have weathered the years a bit better than me, though. Came with four mags, Pachmyers, buncha ammo, a low end leather pancake holster, a Safariland doublemag pouch, a surplus canvas mag pouch, and a set of Redding dies (steel, unfortunately…carbide woulda been too much to hope for.) Price? $400. And I kicked back $20 to the guy that turned me on to the widow who didn’t have the upper body strength/coordination to work the slide and thus wanted to sell her deceased husbands Browning to get a .357. (The guy in question who turned me onto this deal also gets his own freakishly weird deals too…like guy two weeks ago who brought in a keg of ‘gunpowder’ he found in his grandfathers garage. Turned out to be a 25# keg of DuPont blasting powder. Some guys have all the luck.)

What number HiPower is this? Uhm…well, lets just say we passed the tertiary level of backup a while ago. The Browning is a ‘secondary standard’ handgun for the LMI and, honestly, I’ve always liked them. This one will probably go into the safe for The Long Sleep, but you never know…might trade it out for another Glock at some point. Seriously, who wouldn’t buy a high-quality paperless semiautomatic handgun these days when given the opportunity?

So…I had my outrageous impulse purchase of the day and, if I were smart, would have quit while I was ahead. Then I made the exceedingly poor tactical decision to stop in at a local gun shop to say hi to the fella behind the counter. And found this:

Ruger MkII bull barrel .22 LR. Not the newer, and in my opinion less desirable Mk III, but the older MkII. Gun came with 2 mags. (Picked up a few extras while I was there.) I’ve been wanting a heavy barrel MkII for a while now but havent been able to find one. What I really wanted was a stainless, slab-sided MkII Target model but figured it might be a while till I can find one and have the cash at the same time. So…half a loaf being better than none, I picked up this one. Price? $225. I have hit my threshold for gun purchases for a while…I need to lay off them until my wallet heals. However, I am pleased…the MkII was a hole in my gun wishlist and it is now filled. I need to pick up about a dozen more mags and I’ll be set. Oh, and I’m gonna try to find a nice aftermarket Baughman ramp to replace that holster-destroying undercut Patridge sight. And maybe get it threaded for a supressor.

In the meantime, we really really really need to get another gun safe.