Tag Archives: guns

On my way to 12-step

Posted on by

“There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.” – Rilke

Ok, here’s the thing….. I’d wanted a ‘tactical’ 10/22 takedown for a while. This one isn’t exactly what I had in mind but…Magpul takedown stock, Nikon .22 scope with BDC, Tactical Solutions threaded barrel…and all for less than the dealer cost of the other one.

Sexy bast, innit?

My impulse control on guns is so low these days. A psychologist would probably say I’m either punishing myself for something or I’m trying to fill some sort of aching void in my life. Regardless, there had darn well better be a zombie apocalypse at some point so I can justify this nonsense.

Moar Ruger

Posted on by

This time, though, not another 9mm.

Something a little different from the run-of-the-mill cataloged pistol…if you know what to look for.

ETA: It’s a Ruger #5058… a .44 Mag Redhawk but with special grips and a full-length barrel underlug that is unique to this model. Basically, its a scaled-up GP-100 in .44 mag. Special run for Lipsey’s Distributing. I beame aware of them a few months back and found that they were doled out to Lipseys in dribbles and drabs…I found this used one online. It’s been a while since I had a .44 mag wheelgun and I wanted the Ruger for it’s end-of-the-world durability but really disliked the aesthetics of the usual Redhawks. This guy, however, appealed to me. I need to swap the fiber optic sight for something more durable, but otherwise the only other thing that might happen to this is a trip to Bowen for a little tweaking here and there. Finding a holster might be a trick since no other 4″ Redhawk has the full underlug but I suspect a 4″ Anaconda holster will fit fine.

15 years after the ban

Posted on by

It has been brought to my attention that this weekend is the 15 year anniversary of the expiration of the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban. Fifteen years. If you remember the ban expiring, and you are, at this moment, scrambling to find ARs and mags “just in case”, then you’re one of those fools who, as the saying go, “…does not remember history is doomed to repeat it.”

If, after the ban expired, you had bought one AR mag a month, and one AR per year, you would have 15 AR’s sitting in the safe and 180 magazines to go with them, for a somewhat-comforatble gun:mag ratio of 1:12. And it would have cost you, by my math, $75 per month.

Not an AR guy? Well, you could  be sitting on around 540 Glock mags for that same $75/month

“But I only came to guns in the last ten years!”, some will say. Or the last five years. So what? That’s still enough time to have put away an AR and a dozen mags every year.

Kids? Job? Car Payment? House payment? Sure, that gets in the way. But you make room in your life and your wallet for that which is important to you. $75 a month is about $2.50 a day… drink one less Starbucks coffee each day, smoke two less packs of cigarettes a week, or just cut back from eating out once a week to once every two weeks.

I guarantee you that 95% of you make more money than me and even then I am still able to squirrel away a few (ahem) guns and ammo. The difference isn’t financial, the difference is intentional. To me, it’s important enough to give up buying a new bicycle, to pass on buying the expensive groceries, to make do with a ratty pair of shoes for another month or two, to ride my bike rather than drive, to eat another plate of rice and chicken rather than go out to dinner….because, to me, I’d rather have the guns in the safe.

No matter what it is you want out of life…money, fame, cars, women, expensive toys, whatever….if you want it bad enough, really bad enough, you will find a way to get it. You just have to want it more than the other things.

This is why I have no sympathy for anyone who, fifteen years after the ban, is suddenly now worried about getting more mags and Evil Black Rifles. You had fifteen years to get ready by doing something that takes most people one year. If you get caught with 10-round magazines and neutered rifles this time around it’s poor planning on your part, buddy. (and, of course, the fault of those idiots in Washington.)

 

Call it what it is: confiscation with compensation

Posted on by

I’ve gotten a couple emails from people asking me what I think about this push towards  mandatory ‘buybacks’ of ‘assault weapons’.

First, you can’t buy back what wasn’t yours to begin with, so right off the bat the name is flawed. Let’s call it what it really is: a “confiscation-with-compensation” program. Think of it as a form of eminent domain directed at your guns… like eminent domain against ‘real property’ the .gov gives you no choice in the ‘sale’, hands you a check for what they think is fair, and then say you ‘sold’ it to them.

You know, if I take your car out of your driveway without your permission but leave a check for what I think your car is worth on your doorstep…guess what?..I still go down for stealing a car. It doesn’t matter if someone pays you…if you don’t want to sell something, and they take it a give you a check, to me that isn’t a ‘sale’ … thats a crime. But, of course, the rules are different for .gov.

Laws like this never start on a national level. They are birthed on state levels (NY, CA, IL, etc.) and are then held as shining examples to be replicated on the national level. You’re not going to see a national mandatory buyback before you see a city/state level mandatory buyback. Sure, it’s already happened in some places… somewhere there’s an ancient copy of the letter I received from the NYPD many years ago telling me I needed to turn in my HK93 to the cops, take it out of city limits, or render it inoperable…with no compensation, mind you. But those sorts of things are fairly rare. Expect that to change.

Solution? Well, there’s only two solutions.. first is you politically quash this thing with such extreme prejudice and furious righteous outrage that, to paraphrase Tip O’Neil, gun control becomes the ‘third rail of politics – you touch it, you [politically] die.’

The second solution, which isn’t necessarily a solution as much as it is a personal choice, is to head over to GunBroker, Palmetto State, GrabAGun, and all the usual firearms venues and work your credit cards so hard they lay limp in your wallet like sheets of overcooked lasagna.

I’ve been saying that the sky is falling regarding rifle/mag bans for over fifteen years now and I do not see that belief changing for the better anytime soon. Had I the financial resources, I’d have a case of 50 stripped AR lowers and about 500 Pmags sitting in a Hardigg case somewhere. :::shrug::: But that’s just me.

Anyway, someone asked me what my take is on the ‘mandatory buyback’ threat and that’s it – I see it happening on a local level in some places, but I do not see it on a national level for quite some time. Note, thats not me saying it won’t happen…Im just saying I don’t believe it will be happening (on a federal level) anytime soon. But, I’ve been wrong before so it’s up to you to decide if it’s the jet ski this year or another couple AR’s. Choose wisely.

Gun hoarding

Posted on by

:::sigh::: I still seem to be singlehandedly waging a War On The War On Guns…. it’s gotten to the point that even people who didn’t bat an eye when I had…’a lot’…of guns are now saying things like “they’re taking over your house”. I feel like I’m heading for an episode of ‘Hoarders: The Ballistic Edition’.

In reality, it isn’t that bad. The main crux of the issue is that I’ve just gotta pick up the guns laying around, box them up , and tuck them into the Deep Sleep. Certainly, thats what I need to do with the dozen Ruger P95’s I’ve got sitting here. (And the three matching PC9 carbines that go with them.)

I’ve long thought that I need to pick up a couple large Pelican rifle cases, drop an AR, 870, 10/22, and a Glock in each one and tuck ’em away…sort of an ‘in case of apocalypse, break glass’ kinda thing.

I still believe, with utter conviction, that 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: The Next Generation is brewing and will be served at some point…maybe next year, maybe in ten years…but I have utterly no doubt it’s going to happen. I’d like to be in a position to take financial advantage of it when it does and that means a big ‘ol box of stripped lowers and a couple footlockers of Pmags.

But, in the meantime, if it’s gotten to the point that even ballistically-minded people are starting to say “Dude, you’ve got guns all over the place” then perhaps it is indeed time to do a gun roundup and get these things put away.

 

Watergun: The triumphant return of the Watergun

Posted on by

Ok, for those of you who missed the backstory, you can do a quick trip down memory lane. 

The short version is this: a P35 from the bottom of Lake Michigan came into my hands. It was a shoebox full of parts, and although there was severe pitting everything seemed functional. I replaced three or four small parts and, surprise, the thing ran just fine. Only trouble was, the finish, such as it was, looked ‘like a topographical map of Utah’. At the gun show a couple weeks ago I met some folks who were local, had some very impressive samples of their coating work, and seemed to have some very good prices. So…why not? To recap:

And, as you’ve been waiting for:

And for full effect:

Work was done by these guys:

Now, let’s address an elephant in the room…yes, you can still see the deep pitting under the coating. Well duh. I didnt expect the coating to fill in potholes like those. Much like how there isn’t enough Bondo and tequila to make Hilllary Clinton look like Jennifer Lawrence, it would take a 50# bag of ceramic mix (or whatever they use) to smooth out this P35. But I wasn’t after ‘make it look like new’..I was after ‘make it look nice and protect the bare metal’. And…seems legit. Price? Well, the gave me a nice discount which I very much appreciated. You can see their prices on the website. I’ve no complaints.

I’ll be sending a couple guns out for coating, I think. Most notably an AR and PTR to get bit of Danish M84 on ’em.

So there you have it, gang. The Watergun is now pretty much done. Since it is in no way a ‘safe queen’ candidate, it is pretty much a ‘truck gun’ in terms of being babied. Can’t really ruin any value on it since my basis is darn near zero and any collector value sailed about the same time the gun did.No, this might just get tucked into my Avenger holster and start carrying the P35 again.

 

The circus comes to town..but it never really left – Redux

Posted on by

“…and somewhere at Cheaper Than Dirt headquarters, they are readying the pricing algorithms on the website for $100 Pmags.”

CTD is notorious for used GI aluminum mags for $100 each during the last panic, PMAGs weren’t far behind.

Well, not yet. CTD still seems to have AR mags at ‘normal’ prices listed on their website. I suspect that they’ve simply not gotten around to jacking ’em up by several hundred percent yet because it’s a weekend.

I give CTD a ration of crap because they really should have had a much more long-term outlook on what this sort of thing would do to them. But maybe they did…they are still in business after all, and it seems theres no shortage of customers for their wares.

How does a $99 PMAG happen?  Actually, its pretty simple. As the supply of inventory dwindles, the software keeps raising the price to slow down the sales so they never go out of stock. This normally works because most items are a) replaced in inventory fairly quickly and b) most items aren’t suddenly flying off the shelves like they’re free gold bars.  So, a couple hundred thousand people hit the website looking for PMAGs and maybe CTD has a few thousand in stock. The things are flying off the shelf at a furious clip (heh,,see what I did there?) and any potential resupply is an unknown. So, with no anticipated restock date, a limited inventory, a metric buttload of customers, and a software-driven mandate to not let things get out of stock….the price automatically goes up to apply the brakes. But demand is so high that the software has to stand on those brakes like a pilot landing on a tennis court. Result? Price changes that keep going up, up, up. And finally someone at CTD takes a moment from checking their Facebook account to see that social media is excoriating CTD and someone runs into the IT department and says “Fix this!”

But CTD should have dropped human intervention in there long before people screencapped the outrageous prices and saved them for posterity.

I’ve been to this dance before.

Watergun: coating

Posted on by

You guys remember the Watergun?

Found some folks at the gun show who do cerroko…cerok..cerrocoa..cer…screw it….they ceramic coat firearms. Their prices were very reasonable and the examples of their work looked pretty good. So…I left the Watergun with them and in a few weeks we will see what it looks like. For those who don’t recall, the Watergun is a HiPower brought up from the bottom of Lake Michigan. I purchased it as a box of parts and was surprised to find 90% of the parts were present and usable. Shoots fine, looks hideous. SO…in a couple weeks, we’ll do a grand unveiling. Stay tuned.

Guns of Wisdom

Posted on by

Went alllllllll the way out to the Wisdom gun show today. Wisdom is a really small town. In fact, it is so small….

“How small is it!?”

Its so small the “You are now entering..” and the “You are now leaving…” signs are on the same post. :::Rimshot:::

Ah, but seriously folks……..

I was there for the gun show which is pretty much the biggest function the town has during the year. In the evening they have a street dance, there’s BBQ, and you can pretty much camp in your truck by the side of the road. It’s quite nice. I hadn’t been there in a few years because, honestly, its a bit of a haul. Its in the middle of this enormous valley. An island in a sea of green hay. Seriously.

But, because of its isolation and the bucolic demographic, you get a lot of used and old guns. Me likey used and old guns. And, while I was planning on not spending more than a few bucks on some reloading gear I walked away with this:

A pre-Remington Marlin 1894 in .44 Mag. Has the crossbolt safety, unfortunately, but it also has this:

The “JM” stamp showing this gun was made before Remington bought the company and destroyed it’s reputation with crappy quality. Go look on GunBroker…the JM stamped guns bring markedly higher prices over the REM stamped guns. Price? Well Old Dude wanted $500, I wound up getting it for $400. Honestly, if it didnt have the safety I would have been okay with $500.

I have the .357 version of this gun sitting in the safe. Paid $300 for it ten years ago. I see them on GB for about $500 more than that now. :::sigh:::

Anyway, this’ll go in the safe until I pick up a Ruger .44 of some flavor to match it with.

I Sold a Glock 30 last week that had been sitting in the safe since last September, so I’m going to consider this a zero-sum game. Basically just transmuted the G30 into the 1894.