It being Memorial Day,

I give you the M1 Garand rifle. There's been lots of stuff about the M1 lately(picture, for instance, found at Countertop and stolen without hesitation), so I won't go into a lot of detail. Service in WWII, Korea and early in Vietnam. Fires the .30-06 cartridge, pushing a 150 grain bullet to about 2700 fps. Strong, reliable, and accurate.

If you have a chance, put some rounds through one of these. If you want one, there's gun shows, there's the CMP program, there's places like Fulton Armory, and if you want a new one, Springfield Armory is again making them(in both .30-06 and .308). They're fine rifles, a pleasure to shoot- between the weight and action the cartridge ain't bad at all to shoot- and you can get from good to very good accuracy out of them.

A lot of them out there went through some part of war, and are still in fine working order. Yeah, they've almost all been rebuilt to some extent(considering what they've been through, are you surprised?), but they still have the feel of a tool that's been and done the job it was designed for. Definately, give one a try if you can.

Note: if you check the Fulton Armory site, in the Garand info pages it has, among other things, how to smooth out the trigger. I've used their method, and it worked very well.