Wednesday, February 22, 2006

He who dies with the most ammo,

didn't go shooting enough

How much is enough? How much for which gun? And so forth.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine was over in Wales, and at one point discussion turned to firearms. Friend mentioned the several Enfields he owns and someone asked how much ammo he had for them. He thought a bit, then said "Only about 200 rounds right now". Shocked silence for a moment at the very thought of such a mass of ammo. Short time before a couple had been arrested and their firearms and ammo confiscated; the newspapers were aghast at the 'arsenal' of a couple of rifles, a shotgun, and almost two hundred rounds of ammunition! The firearms and ammo were legal, mind you, and they hadn't done anything illegal with it; it was just the opinion of the authorities that nobody should have such a collection of potential mayhem.

His description of the shock, etc., started me laughing. At the time I had about 400 rounds of .303, and enough stuff total- counting .22's to 8mm- to give Scotland Yard a hernia and the galloping trots just thinking about it. And on a few things, I thought I was running short. Ah, one of the wonders of this country; I buy a 400-round can of .30-06, or a 440-round can of 7.62x54r, or- as was the case one day- a case of 1140-rounds of 7.62x39(already on clips, don't you just love it?) without any hassle other than carrying it out. When the kids were small and I could finally afford it, I tried to never be at less than 2000 rounds of .22's(have you ever seen what two kids can do to a brick over a couple of hours?!?), and when I started messing with military surplus('milsurp' for short) rifles, let's see, a sealed 440-round spam can of 7.62x39 for $34.95 plus shipping here, 500 rounds of 7.62x39 for fifty bucks here(when it's back in stock), and so forth. And the stuff you can sometimes find at an Evil Loophole Gun Show, Oh, the Wonders!

Last year at the big Tulsa gun show I got three cans of .30-06(one for Dad), friend got a 440-round can each of 7.62x54r and 8mm, and some smaller boxes of various stuff, and they even dollied it out to the truck for us!

No, I did NOT take up a chunk of the evening counting everything. I do know that I'd like to have more 6.5x55 Swede, some of the Wolf 150-grain 7.62x54r to try out in the Mosin, and some more of those Winchester sabot slugs in 12guage to try out, and so on. More .303, of course, it's getting hard to find in milsurp anymore. I've got one old .50 caliber can full, but I don't really want to shoot it; I unsealed the can it came in and found that every box was dated 1942. I did take one box to try out, and it shot beautifully through my Enfield. But I felt like I was using up pieces of history, so the rest is stored.

Anyway, here's another reason to tell people like Schumer and Feinstein and Boxer and Clinton to go to hell; the freedom of being able to pick up a whole pile of ammo on sale without having to get approval from some minion of government to do so.

Including the two bricks of Eley Sport I ordered for the Martini. Thanks, Britain, for at least not putting Eley out of business, you GFW weenies.

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