Snowflakes in Hell

Tam, coming off her great analysis of the ammunition shortage, follows up with a taxonomy of gun nuts.  I’m mostly a “Gamer” and a little bit of “Trainer” and “Collector”.  Probably a bit more collector than trainer.

I have guns I don’t have ammunition for, so those are pretty much pure collector pieces.  But that’s pretty much just my taste, I have no discipline in my collecting.  For instance, I have a Russian capture Mauser from 1938, with the German markings ground off, from the J.P. Sauer and Sohn factory in Suhl.  Money wise, it will never fetch a fair prize, but it shoots well enough.  I like having it.  It’s a piece of history.  Its owner was likely captured or killed by the Russians.  Either way, it’s not likely that its owner ever set eyes on the Fatherland again.

… when you start thinking about places you could put shooting ranges, and thinking about it in this level of detail:

As you can see there is lots of empty space in this underground garage. And with the aid of my trusty laser range finder I found places where it was 345 yards from wall to wall. It’s not really practice for Boomershoot (minimum range is 375 yards) but it’s close. And it’s would be better than anything else within 20 miles or so.

I was discussing this with some Microsoft friends at lunch the other day and they had a concern about the ceiling height. As the range gets longer the midrange height of the bullet gets larger too. Would people start hitting the ceiling beams? In particular Jim was concerned about using a 45-70 which has a trajectory resembling artillery.

It’s a valid concern. With a 340 yard zero a typical .45-70 cartridge is going to have a midrange height of over 50 inches. My AR-15 shooting it’s favorite ammo is going to have only a 7.1 inch midrange height. And my .300 Win Mag would have only have a midrange height of 6.3 inches.

Go over and see Joe’s dream indoor range.  It certainly looks the part.  We have significant unoccupied space in our building too, and I’ve thought it would make a great air gun range, or even a smallbore range if you could get the right backstop.  We have a good 45 yards inside in the unoccupied part.  Joe is more of a long range shooter than I am, and his preferred targets a bit more, shall we say, reactive.  Thus his dreams are bigger too :)

… and I’m a brassaholic.

Went to the range today to fire off some .44 Special.  Notice a guy there doing some instructing, firing fresh boxes of .45ACP.  Waited around until they finished up.  The haul is 50 count of Federal .45ACP and 115 count of Remington .45ACP.   Plus 114 count of NATO stamped 9mm.  I don’t usually dig through the brass bucket for goodies, but when I know that the brass in question is only once fired, I couldn’t resist.

At least I’m not scrounging scrap lead to smelt and cast into bullets yet.

Bitter: “Umm… there’s ammunition under the microwave.”

Sebastian: “What caliber?”

Bitter takes a pen and sweeps it out from under the microwave.  Turns out it was a piece of expended ICC brass from Blackwater.  Must have gotten away from me when I was using the kitchen sink to clean all the dirt out of the brass I picked up before tumbling it.

… perusing through a friend’s collection of Mitch Rosen holsters, I discovered Bitter is a closet holster sniffer.  Hardly a holster went by that went unsniffed.  I have to admit, quality gun leather does smell pretty good.  My kydex holster smells more like dryer lint in comparison.  The day planner on the table is actually not a day planner, but a carefully crafted holster that holds my Glock 19 and a spare magazine quite nicely.  That could come in handy.

Mitch Rosen Table

What musical pitch does the case of a 30-06 make if blown across?  What about a .223 casing.  Neither case makes a perfect note, but they come close.

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… this is the finest example of gun nuttery I’ve seen for quite some time.  Hat tip to SayUncle for this one.

… when you use the space under the bed to store large 200 yard targets.  Additionally, if your two bed side tables have his and her pistols (she has a SIG P239 and I have a Glock 19, true love is sharing calibers) you might be a gun nut.

… if you find yourself saying any of these things.

Air gun, 200 dollars. Tin of 500 .177 caliber pellets, 7 dollars. 25 box of CO2 cartridges, 15 dollars. Being able to pop the ram between each of these sentences, priceless!

Target Rich Environment points out a piece of real estate any gun nut would love.  I’ll be in the market for a new house in a few years, but sadly not right now.

… when you go to clean the lint out of your dryer screen and notice an empty .22LR casing.  Bonus gun nutty points if you notice how clean it came out, and think maybe you should tumble some more of your brass through the laundry.

… when you have a burn the exact size and shape of a .22LR casing, including the rim, from where the casing ejected into your shirt while you were shooting little metal animal shapes.  I figured that one was going to leave a mark.

I think it’ll have to happen, at some point.

You know your a gun nut when your realtor tells you that you need to remove some “clutter” from your fridge, in order not to scare potential buyers.

Last night I had one of those gun nut moments as I moved an empty PSL magazine and a Soviet PSO-1 scope from my table to make room for the laptop.   BTW, if anyone knows how to make fine adjustments on that scope for zeroing, I’d be most appreciative.  The manual for it is in Cyrillic.

… when your girlfriend is borrowing guns from you. The conversation goes something like this:

Me: “We’re going to meet a couple of other bloggers at Geno’s in Philly. It’s been a long time since I’ve been there. Used to be an ok neighborhood. There was a shooting nearby not too long ago, so I don’t know about now. If parking is tight, we may have to walk a bit.”

Bitter: “I’m leaving straight from the district once work lets out, so I won’t have a gun.”

Me: “Well, if you want, you can borrow my Makarov.”

Bitter: “OK, I’ll do that.”

And that she did, but it’s still an OK neighborhood. I hardly ever carry a backup gun, but it is kind of cool to have a backup girlfriend :)

… when you resort to trying bore cleaner and hoppes number 9 to remove dry erase marker from your kegerator.  I was finding the center line to drill last night, so I tried to mark center line with dry erase marker.  I tested an area with it before I marked, but I wiped it off before it really dried.   Once it dried, it refused to come off.   I tried alcohol, nail polish remover, bleach, you name it.   Eventually I got the idea of trying hoppes number 9, and some Smith & Wesson bore cleaner.   Neither really worked.

What did work was lava liquid soap, mixed with some alcohol.   It was enough of a mix between abrasive and solvent to get the job done.  Hoppes is great stuff for cleaning guns, but for getting dry erase marker off a surface that wasn’t meant for it, not so good.

…when the President of the NRA hugs your girlfriend when she sees her.

You know you’re a gun nut when, for the first time in a few months, you use your oven, not a cook a roast or a turkey, but to heat up some parts from your AK-74 so they’ll dry out after you gave it a nice bath in warm soapy water to wash out all the corrosive primer residue that built up on it after a day’s shooting.

I’m about 1/3rd through my batch of the corrosive stuff.  I might take the other tin that was in the crate and reserve it, and bring it out sometime when I’m either short of 5.45×39 or nostalgic.  The good thing about corrosive primed ammo is that it lasts forever.  Non-corrosive primers have a shorter shelf life.

You know you’re a gun nut when you read about Blues Traveler’s John Popper getting arrested for doing 110MPH with load of guns and marijuana in his car, see the media spread on the police table and think, “I can do better than that.”

Of course, I won’t be doing 110 down the highway, nor will I have any controlled substances in my vehicle either, and I don’t have a nice gun case built into the back of my vehicle. But seriously, considering what I’m taking to Texas, my police table spread will look far more impressive than this if I got pulled over, searched, and hauled in for questioning.

… You find yourself using SHTF (Shit Hits the Fan) with non-gun nuts, and are shocked they have no idea what it means.

… when it’s snowy out and you realize that you forgot your ice scraper and the only thing you can find in your car that can remotely scrape ice from windows is a spare AR-15 magazine. It works too!  Not that well, but in a pinch it’ll do.