Gun-Blog Topics Which Have Become Boring because they are so repetitive

• Why are Anti-gunners so mean?  (Because they don't like you)
• 
  
• Oh, look!  A New Gun!  (Duh)

• Oh, look!  A New Holster (Double Duh)
• 
  
• What's the best way to Carry Concealed?  (see: new holster)
• 
  
• Why do people think I'm a dork go crazy in the store just because I open carry?  (Could it be .. because they can't tell whether you are making a political statement, or you're about to shoot everybody in sight?)
• 
  
• Why should I believe that "nobody wants to take my guns" is a lie?  (They Do want to take your guns, but they also know that you have guns and .. uh .. well, it's kind of obvious that they want someone ELSE to take your guns but they can't talk them into confronting you, either, because they already think that you're some kind of suicidal freak-job)

• I think that xmm caliber guns are much better than Ymm caliber guns for Z purposes, because of (a) modern bullet design, or (b) bigger is better.  (Yes, you are correct.  Of course.)

• There's this new technology which is suppose to make our country safer because it provides a 'tool' for law enforcement to more easily find the bad guys when they do bad things.  But I think it's just going to make guns/ammunition/components so expensive that they will become unavailable.  (Yes, it's only going to infringe on legitimate gun owners.  And your point is?)

• This girl in Amarillo has posted an anti-gun opinion to Salon, and she's so DUH because she doesn't know anything about guns and yet she's telling us how we should live our lives.   Isn't that a perfect target to dis her?  (Yes, she's a dork. But telling her so won't do any good, because (a) 2,134 gun nuts have already explained the zillion ways she's an ignoramus, and (b) it really helped to build up her stats on Salon when you reply to her article, and (c) she isn't reading anything you said anyway, and (d) she's not your type and you are DEFINITELY not her type, so (e) don't bother fisking her; she will not be impressed.)

Wayne LaPierre To Announce He's Breaking Up The NRA

Wayne LaPierre To Announce He's Breaking Up The NRA - Misfires And Light Strikes:
(April 22, 2014)

Faced with overwhelming and relentless opposition from Michael Bloomberg’s grassroots “Every Town For Gun Safety”, Wayne LaPierre will announce that he’s disbanding the National Rifle Association at the conclusion of this week’s NRA Annual Meeting in Indianapolis.

“Look, everyone”, Wayne said at a press conference today, “We gave it a good run, but it’s over. We just can’t win against the dozens of people who have joined Michael Bloomberg on his new crusade. I mean, have you seen what they’re doing on social media to show how they can get people involved in gun safety and educate people about the realities of firearms? The NRA just can’t compete with that kind of know-how, so it’s time to call it a day and go home.”

 Michael Bloomberg was busy purchasing the entire state of Rhode Island as a location for his new mansion and was unavailable for comment.

[emphasis added]
(April Fools' Day came late this year)

Revolvers .... YECH! (response to comments)

I've very much enjoyed the feeble defense of Revolvers by the 12 people who actually read this blog.  My question is .. I've only had five comments, what are the other 7 of you doing?

Here's the story:  I'm a 911 Snob. Always have been, even when I tried to compete in IPSC with a S&W 659 (9mm).

I also tried to shoot ONE IPSC Match with a revolver, and that was in a December "Concealed Carry Match" at TCGC.  (I use my race gun in the annual "Concealed Carry" match the year before.  I didn't understand why the match staff decided to discount my scores; after all, I started each stage with my Open Pistol with my coat completely concealing my 12" pistol and all the 170mm magazines!)

In short, I'm just not man enough to shoot Revolver Division in IPSC.  AI admit that freely.

However, I object to the suggestions that I'm not qualified to be critical about Revolvers.  I think they're just fine!  I just wouldn't want my sister to carry one.

I currently own five revolvers.  There's a .357 4" N-frame and a .38 special 5-shot stubby in two rooms, and in a third there's a Ruger Blackhawk (Single Action) in .41 magnum tucked away.   The other two revolvers are not appropriate for home defense:  One is an ancient .22lr and the other is another Ruger .41 with a 2-1/2x scope mounted on the top.

Frankly, I think revolvers have their place, and that's stashed in the home.  There are no springs to weaken over the years, because there is no tension on them; for example, a magazine spring (which could cause miss-feeds in a semi-auto, or even the tubular ammunition spring in a pump-action shotgun).

In my own defense ... I use revolvers in "My Own Defense".

(PS: For the humor-deprived ... which does not include any of "The Usual Suspect" readers and certainly not those who offered comments ... the video in the original post was, um, satire?)

Revolvers ... yech!

I'm working on a war-story post (part faulty memory, part fiction, all bullshit all the time) which so far is outlined in four parts.  Yes, it's too long to read already, even without all the extra added editorial flourishes!   It may take me a while to get around to actually WRITING the damn thing!

So you'll have someone else to laugh at in the meantime, I'm posting a video made by a man who shares my disdain for Revolvers.  You remember Revolvers, don't you?  Great bud-vases, pretty good doorstops?  Yeah, them.

Clueless Gun Store Owners

I went to a gun store today!

That may not be as exciting to you as it is to me, but listen!

It has been a long time since I went to a gun store. All of the local gun stores have gone out of business, and I have to drive 12 miles to find the nearest one.

Okay, so there's one less than ten miles away in Philomath, and I've bought 3 guns from them ... but I've been burned at least one. It was my fault for being gullible, but the rancor still burns. I was looking for my own .22 pistol. I let them talk me into selling a revolver with no finish, double-action but with a hammer-spur, and the only way to eject empty cases was to remove the cylinder and use the cylinder pin to punch the empty brass out ... and I payed them $200 for it!

I hate people who take advantage of me. Worse, I hate having to admit I've been taken! (That was over a year ago, and I haven't fired a round out of the pistol yet; I'm afraid to risk the "Collector Value"!)

Most of those in "that town" (Albany) are "specialty" stores. The single exception is a very small one-man operation with a very classy store and very classy merchandise. Except he's mostly a S&W dealer, and no matter what you walk through his door looking for, before you leave the store he's going to try to sell you a S&W.

Let me illustrate:

One of my ex-co-workers asked me if I knew where he could pick up a .22 pistol. At the time, I was still working so I couldn't go to this store in Albany that I've always wanted to check out, but they're closed on weekends. (WTF?)

But I've since retired, so this afternoon I spend an hour driving to Albany, checking out the store, and driving back without either a gun or a business card.

I show up about 3:30, charge into the store and the owner is standing at his counter with a perplexed look on his face. I say "Hi! I'm looking for a .22 pistol for a friend of mine!"

"Oh!" (he says) Well, we're closed."

[Picture me looking around] "Huh? The door was unlocked, The sign says open from 1 pm to 4 pm and it's only 3:do. I came in looking for a gun, and ..... ?"

So he explained that he is closing early today, he had turned the lights out and turned the sign on the door to "CLOSED".

Geek Perplexed Look. (I've gotten pretty good at looking perplexed. Practice ... constant practice .. that's the ticket to communication!)

The guy is a nice guy, but his marketing skills need work. He has signs all OVER his shop reading:

NOTICE!
If you are unable to legally possess a firearm, you may NOT enter the premises!

I can't blame him for that, but I would have thought that the sign on the door would have been enough. The sign on the wall facing the door, the sign on the sidewall leading to the counter, and the sign over the counter ... that strikes me as overkill. But it's his shop, and obviously he has a LOT of time on his hands since he's only open 6 hours a day, seems to close early and won't let anyone in his doors on weekends.

Still, he relents when I explain that my mission is to find a .22 pistol for a friend.

"I have a Walther .22. $800."


He doesn't have a card, but when I ask for one he hands me a flyer. I haven't read it yet.

I turn and begin to leave, and on the way out I notice the display of handguns (mostly S&W) in his display cabinet. "Nice Guns!" I mention.

I may have pushed his hot-button; either that, or he woke up and realized he had a customer in his store. Running around his counter he invites me to look at the Forty Caliber S&W. Being a nice person, I decide not to tell him my opinion of the .40 Slow-and-Wimpy cartridge, or how much I love (not!) the flipper/de-cocker mechanism of the S&W Semi-Automatic Pistols. Instead, I say: "Real nice. Looks just like my old Model 659. I gave it to my son."

It is always, ALWAYS a Bad Idea to say anything to a gun dealer which may lead him to believe you are interested. I wasted five minutes listening to his tales of the Mighty Forty, the Wonderful (all steel) 4006, and what a "stopper-cartridge" it was.

Then he hits me with the bad good news: ONLY $895!

Just to impress me, he adds that S&W only made (I don't know, some obscure like "235 of them", and adds: "I have twelve". I think I was suppose to be impressed.


I'm looking around, he's got a steel gun-cabinet (rifle-length floor model, looks like a 5- or 6-gun capacity), also priced at ONLY $895.

Scooting for the door, I make the final mistake of actually listening to his "I See A Customer Heading For The Door" spiel. If I am a 'close' family member of a serving member of the military, he will sell me a special-order firearm without charging me the usual price for "special order" firearms. (Anything that he had on his shelf, of course, was not subject to any kind of discount.)

It took me another five minutes to get out the door. And it struck me, as I as leaving, that there was something peculiarly WRONG with his salesmanship.

• I wasn't greeted as if I was a valued customer.
• In fact, he acted as if I was an inconvenience, and I was stupid to have walked through the (unlocked) door during posted business hours.
• He didn't have what I was looking for in any kind of variety except for a very narrow (and not widely popular version).
• He didn't seem interested in trying to find out MORE about what I wanted, or offering suggestions that might be helpful to me.
• He wasted my time in trying to sell something to me ... a product in which I was obviously NOT interested.
• He made it clear that a pistol (which was so widely unpopular that there was only a very limited run) was something in which he was obviously overstocked.
• And he put a premium price on the pistol.
  

The guy had a very classy store front, and obviously is living off his inheritance because I cannot see how a man with a narrow inventory, a narrow mind, closes his shop arbitrarily early and has no people skills ... can stay in business without an extraneous source of income.

---

The best gun store I even patronized was in Salem about 10 years ago. The owner was a guy whose hobby was trapping. He opened the store to sell trapping supplies. Because that didn't fill many shelves, he also added a 12-point indoor shooting range, rented guns for the range, sold a LOT of reloading components at a competitive price, had an in-store gunsmith, had a very wide range of both new and used firearms (and ammunition, holsters, and other accessories), sold the brass swept up from the range as "once-fired brass" at a reasonable price, and always had at least three salesmen on the floor besides the guy who ran the indoor-range (gun rental) counter.

That store would have been open .. and profitable .. indefinitely, except that one day he became despondant that he wasn't selling any traps, lost interest in the store, and arbitrarily just closed it down. Almost overnight.

What IS it about Gun Store Owners that they can be so clueless?

Mental Floss

Ever have one of those nights when you just want to do mindless mind-games on your computer?

No? Is it just me?

Well, I guess that says something about me, doesn't it.

On the other hand, if you're one of those people who are similarly afflicted with Internet Escapism-itis -- nobody else need ever know.

Here's one site I tripped over while I was surfing the net tonite: Mental Floss.

Mostly comprised of trivia, factoids and quizzes, it's one of those all-purpose online utilities which attract a certain class of bored geeks. We call them ....

"TIMEWASTERS"

Under the tagline "Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix", Mental Floss provides information about things you never knew you wanted to know.

For example:

• Cheetos Lip Balm & More Bizarre Brand Extensions
• 13 Nostalgia-Heavy Commercials To Make You Pine for 1987
• 10 Stories Behind Doctor Seuss Stories
• From Zippo Cars to The PeepMobile: 7 Bizarre Marketing Vehicles
• What's a Ponzi Scheme? (And Who Is This Ponzi Character?)
• Money For (Practically) Nothing: 4 Very Big Paychecks For Very Little Work

And, there are QUIZZES! Do you like to take tests? Do you secretly complete dating quizzes in Cosmopolitan magazine, just to find out if you a "A Good Lover"? Well, perhaps not that, but still ...

Mental Floss includes "Name All The Presidents In 8 Minutes". Well, no, I didn't take that one. I couldn't name all the presidents in eight years. But that page includes links to a lot of OTHER tests which I found more interesting. That means, I thought I knew something about the topic. Like, name the state by the license plate, and guess the state motto, and ... um ... some other stuff that I didn't do so well at.

(I am NOT going to take the "Troy McClure Film or Actual Terrible Movie" quiz, in part because I don't think I know anybody named Troy McClure -- or "the filmography of Springfield’s favorite screen icon" -- and if I do, I don't want to find out about it. I think it's a character from "The Simpsons", and that's already more than I care to know. Or guess. Especially Question 1, which asks about "The Erotic Adventures of Hercules". Eeeyewwww! )

If you have read this far and NOT clicked on one of the Mental Floss links ... okay, go ahead and stand on your pride. I'm gonna put the link on the sidebar, too, under "Hot Link(s) of the Week". That way you can secretly click on the link in those wee small hours of the night.

Nobody needs to know. I sure won't tell.

Oh, and did I mention that Mental Floss is a magazine? And you can subscribe to it? Heck, you can even subscribe to a Digital version of the magazine for only $29.97, and get a free t-shirt, too.

Just don't show up at the next match wearing the t-shirt. I'd be so embarrassed for you.