Why RUM and not Jeroboam?
Posted by EdFriedman2, Yesterday, 04:44 PM
Like many of you, I had a glass or five of champagne to celebrate New Year’s. Actually, it was sparkling wine, as the French have a monopoly on actual champagne, but that’s another story. My bubbly came in a standard, 750 mL bottle. Better stuff comes in a 1.5 liter bottle called a magnum. And here we see why the magnum cartridge is so named. More champagne in a bigger bottle = more powder in a bigger case.
But a magnum of champagne is but the first of many oversize bottles, most named after biblical figures. You can have a Jeroboam, which is 3 liters; a Rehoboam, 4.5 liters; a Methuselah, a Salmanazar, a Nebuchadnezzar…all the way up to the mighty Melchizedek, a 30-liter tank of celebratory goodness.
Given the multitude of bottle sizes, why have cartridge designers limited themselves to magnum when naming new, more powerful loads? Who among us wouldn’t love to hunt with a .300 Winchester Short Jeroboam or a 7 mm Remington Methuselah? And Barrett would no doubt offer the finest anti-materiel rifle in .50 Nebuchadnezzar. Are we so uncreative that simply adding the word ultra to magnum is all we can come up with?
Here’s a picture of a Melchizedek of champagne and a gun that could fire a cartridge with such a name.
Ian McMurchy (1944-2008)
Posted by EdFriedman2, Dec 24 2008, 02:25 PM
The shooting and hunting world lost a good friend last Friday. Ian McMurchy passed away after a courageous battle with vasculitis. A funeral service is planned for Saturday, December 27th, in his hometown of Regina, Saskatchewan.
After a career as a game warden in Canada, chasing problem bears and training the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in marksmanship, Ian worked as an outdoor writer for American Hunter and numerous other publications. Those of you who like to reach out and touch a target have almost certainly read one of his terrific articles on the subject, and probably learned a thing or two from him.
Ian was one of the world's foremost experts on long range shooting. His knowledge was mined by optics and gun companies alike to help design products capable of extreme accuracy at extreme ranges. Ian was also one of the kindest, most softspoken people I have ever met. He was so humble, it took a fair amount of prodding to get pointers from him.
I had the good fortune to work with him closely in my former career at Nikon, and I'll never forget the time we were teaching some of Nikon's salesforce to use the then new BDC reticle Ian helped design. A man whose expertise was sought by military snipers offered advice to some relatively novice shooters with the caveat: "I'm not such a great shot myself, but..."
Horsepuckey. Ian took game with a single shot at ranges I would not be confident in hitting Mount Everest. When I sought his expertise in responding to a reader of Shooting Illustrated, Ian spent nearly an hour on the phone with me, despite our not having spoken in nearly two years. He was his usual humble self, preferring to talk about taking his granddaughter to the range with a .22 than his own voluminous knowledge about long-range shooting. As I like to tell people, Ian forgot more about extreme-distance riflery than most of us will ever know.
I'll miss Ian a ton, and so will all those who like to push their guns way out there...
Hmmm...
Posted by EdFriedman2, Dec 23 2008, 08:00 PM
I stopped by our library today and noticed an interesting book by noted gun-rights attorney Stephen Halbrook, The Swiss and the Nazis. The main thrust of this book is that the Swiss avoided a German invasion because they were very, very well armed. Germany concluded that an invasion of Switzerland would simply be too costly. This map seems to indicate German reticence to attack the Swiss, and this firearm seems to suggest that they restrained from doing so with good reason. Every able-bodied male Swiss had one and knew how to use it. This, along with some other factors, stayed Hitler’s hand when it came to his tiny neighbor.
Imagine that…an armed society able to fend off the worst of tyrants without firing a shot.
Hmmm…
Update
Posted by EdFriedman2, Dec 22 2008, 04:44 PM
So I finally bought some guns as per my promise a month or so back. On your advice, I avoided stuff unlikely to be banned by the change in hopes and went with two semi-auto rifles. I picked up a nice Yugo SKS and an H&K 91 clone. I’ll be posting some test results after they arrive. For now, here’s some info on the guns.
H&K 91
SKS
Sergei Gavrilovich
Krasniy Oktyabr
Us Wantses Gud Gummint
Posted by EdFriedman2, Dec 19 2008, 04:28 PM
I have an unreasonable expectation about the government my taxes fund: it should communicate in an existent language, preferably English. The government, which is responsible to us, expects the same of its citizens. And here is where things get a little hairy. You see, if I, a citizen to whom the government is responsible, make a small error on a government form, say ATF form 4473, I am in violation of laws and/or regulations.
A government agency, say the ATF, however, is apparently held to a lesser standard. I give you: the ATF failing 9th grade grammar in an official government publication.
All together now: THE PLURAL OF ATTORNEY GENERAL IS ATTORNEYS GENERAL.
Notice, the website the ATF urges us to check for the most up-to-date information, the NAAG, gets it right. Even The Onion knows!
But don’t you dare write “Y” when you mean “Yes,” you bitter clinger!
Sage Wisdom
Posted by EdFriedman2, Dec 17 2008, 02:31 PM
So I caught a re-run of the wonderful HBO series “Deadwood” the other night. For those who haven’t seen it, run and pick up the DVDs. It is fantastic, if incredibly vulgar. Anyway, one of the main characters, Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) says to the sick camp doctor, “No one gets out alive, Doc.” This is sound advice, and it would prevent most awful laws from passing if only politicians understood life as well as Al.
Lead in venison has caused precisely zero cases of lead poisoning in humans, but even if it had, who cares? Is it more important for people to starve than be exposed to lead? No one will ever be so safe that they can avoid death. At some point, birth will have to be banned, because all who are born eventually die. Therefore, to save lives we must stop procreating. And why stop there? Since the same folks bedwetting over lead in venison also shriek about the irreparably damaged environment, all living humans must cease breathing, as our exhalations contribute to the surplus CO2 in the air.
Face it, we’re all going to die. Let us have fun on the way, huh?
Worker & Parasite
Posted by EdFriedman2, Dec 15 2008, 04:29 PM
Steve over at The Firearm Blog links to a translation of a Russian report on the launch of a new AK line by Izhmash, the real AK factory. The most interesting bit, Steve notes, is Mikhail Kalashnikov’s response to the hate mail he receives asking “how do you sleep at night?”
Comrade Kalashnikov’s answer is beautiful and 100-percent correct: “it is politicians, not guns, that kill people.”
Amen to that.
I’ve always been fascinated by Mikhail Kalashnikov. He is probably the most screwed man in history. The guy invented a spectacular product, which his government appropriated and proceeded to make about 100 million of them, and he saw no dollars and no cents for it. Yeah, they gave him a pension, but can you imagine if he invented the gun in a sane country? He wouldn’t need to license his name to vodka, that’s for sure.
Beaten by a Little Girl
Posted by EdFriedman2, Dec 12 2008, 05:16 PM
Want to be emasculated?
This little girl can take down an AR and put it back together in 53 seconds.
Can you? I can’t.
Of course she didn’t remove the handguards, so I guess there’s some hope that it would take her more than one minute.
I’m off to a tea party with my dolls now…
Aerial Toys
Posted by EdFriedman2, Dec 11 2008, 08:31 PM
We don’t generally delve into military aircraft, but you could mount guns on these, so I will. UAVs are cool.
Here is an unmanned helicopter with a 12-gauge shotgun. For…duck hunting?
(Hat tip: SayUncle)
Here is an unmanned drone allegedly for missile defense, but it would make a great burglar alarm system.
(Hat tip: Jonah Goldberg)
Don’t try to build anything like these at home. You needn’t fear the wrath of BATFE, but the FAA will be very annoyed.
Fudds
Posted by EdFriedman2, Dec 10 2008, 06:16 PM
There is something of a divide among people of the gun. Some folks are like me; if it goes boom, it’s cool. Others want guns for self-defense and simply don’t care much about hunting. The folks I’d like to discuss are the folks who like their rifles to be meticulously handcrafted works of art designed to bring down game, and think any other type of firearm is worthless. The other groups often derisively call them Fudds after an inept animated fellow named Elmer, and sadly, Fudditis infects many members of my profession. I want those folks to know that while I can’t agree with their view, I understand why the only firearms they care about are those that are tools for the hunt.
Hunting can be romantic, especially if it takes place in 1950s Africa and you happen to be a depressed alcoholic veteran of the Spanish Civil War. If you drink enough and reminisce about that Catalan nurse enough, some Swedes may find you interesting enough to give you a prize. Ultimately, every outdoor writer, myself included, has this fantasy of being the next Hemingway or Ruark. And they don’t give tickets to Stockholm to guys who write about tactical reloads on a Kalashnikov.
There is no romance, at least not yet, in writing about black rifles, home-defense tactics or other tactical-firearm-related topics. No “Old Man and the Boy” type tales of taking a child or grandchild to Gunsite to learn about door-breaching techniques. No mustachioed, bespectacled former President to join on a trip to Blackwater for shoot-house training.
As the gun world goes black, it loses some of its literary chic, but it gains so much more. Is it all that important to discuss the sheen of the morning dew at some Tanganyikan game reserve or the sensual curves of a Purdey double rifle the Kaiser can’t afford? Don’t get me wrong, I love to hunt and I would like nothing more than to one day follow in Robert Ruark’s footsteps through Africa, but let’s face it, times have changed. There is no reason why a writer more talented than me can’t create some kind of romance for the black gun. After all, it is the black gun that keeps us safe at night, be it in the hands of a vigilant citizen protecting his house or in the hands of a Marine in Khandahar protecting us all.
on Ian McMurchy (1944-2008)