Our brains have been running Hunter/Gatherer 1.0 for 60,000 years without a software upgrade…
Some things are hardwired into our brains, regardless of what the POS and left want to believe…
Granted the ones still living in momma/daddy’s basement in their 30s and hiding behind their keyboards don’t want to admit that, but they know in their hindbrains that if they actually come out from behind the anonymity of the keyboard, and say those things to people with real experience, THEY will experience real consequences…
I don’t have a Model 10. I do, however, have a 1940 vintage M&P with a 5″ barrel and no finish. It shoots just fine.
Pretty much. 1. Does it work consistently? 2. Does it fit your hand? 3. Do you practice with it often? If so, it’s a good firearm for the job. (Although I wouldn’t go hunting mountain lions/bison/black buck with a .22. That’s hubris, and hubris begets nemesis.)
And its 71 degrees with a dewpoint of 69 with a stout south wind. Time to clean out the cellar and move the potted plants to under the patio table…
Until that terrible boating accident, I had a 40 year old Charter Arms .44 Special. I believe it was adequate.
I used to have a Ruger Redhawk, a bear ate it.
They DO come out. They show up in their stormtrooper black uniforms with their balaclavas and bandannas covering their faces and feeling safe in their anonymity (sound familiar?) shout and throw things. Then they go back to their caves and proclaim their bravery.
Have you noticed that it’s the places where these BRAVE souls proliferate that are making the biggest push to outlaw facial recognition? Can’t be brave if folks can find out who you are?
Years ago, before age and infirmity overtook me, I tromped the stubble fields and sage brush savanna’s of Eastern Idaho in pursuit of willy long eared rats (AKA Jack Rabbits). My Ruger standard .22 was my constant companion. You can get pretty damed good potting running Jacks with a .22 pistol. Later when hunting or fishing, I carried a Ruger Security Six with two snake loads followed by four hot 357 Mag handholds. Didn’t feel particularly under gunned.
My first Dan Wesson .357 purchase confirmed me as a Guy Who Loves Revolvers.
Wasn’t difficult, as it was an add-on, not a replacement. I also love my RIA 1911 in .45 ACP and my Browning Hi-Power in 9 mm.
I guess I’m just a hopeless romantic….
Jim- That works… Mine are Colts… 😀
TxRed- Agreed! And ouch… Triple point coming? Apparently we had ‘rotation’ over the house last night.
WSF- Yep, because we didn’t learn spray and pray, we learned to AIM!
Grog- Um…er… Okay…
Carlton- Concur, and always in places were guns are restricted… sigh… They made ONE try in Austin and got their butts handed to them by DPS. Haven’t been back since.
NRW- Nope, you weren’t undergunned… And I learned rifle shooting potting feral dogs, cats, and coyotes in East Texas…
Pat- LOL, so you’re bi-caliber… 😀
I think you meant to say Pat was either tri-caliber or an ammosexual.
I believe in universal caliber love…
I have 1911s in five different calibers now, having recently added .400 Cor-Bon and .40 S&W.
Hey, someone gave me several hundred rounds of some kind of “Ninja Death Claw .40 Face-Ripper” “maximum defense” ammo because he didn’t have a .40 any more. All I had to do was order some extra parts and set up a spare .45 slide. Despite net.lore, .40 works just fine with a .45 breech face if you use a 9mm extractor.
TRX ,
I was invited to shoot on the local range used by law enforcement for qualifying.
All the local agencies had transitioned to Glocks.
Calibers varied by agency.
I notice a piece of 9mm brass with a Glock firing pin imprint
It had been fired in a .40 and had belled out and fire formed to the larger bore.
I was impressed. Talk about Glock reliability!
It fed, fired, extracted, and ejected a cartridge not remotely designed to work in the gun.
Beans/Pat- Either or… LOL
In praise of the .22:
Actually, a .22 is good lion medicine depending on circumstances.
My grandfather was a professional hunter and trapper.
He worked for the state and hunted lions with his pack of hounds.
He discovered that if he shot a lion out of a tree with a .44-40 it still had enough fight in it to tear up his hounds.
He developed the strategy of shooting the treed lion through the lungs with a .22 magnum hollow-point, in what is known as “too far back”, when shooting a large animal.
The lion would bleed out while in the tree and fall dead on the ground and not harm his dogs.
He killed a lot of lions.
I knew a young fellow on the Nazko River in British Columbia that harvested moose routinely with his Ruger 10/22 that he had bought with the proceeds from one beaver pelt he had trapped.
Then there was the young woman in Canada who dropped a huge griz with her single shot .22 by placing the round through its temple at live-or-die close range.
A fair number of years ago I read that the lowly .22 had killed more people,in the civilian landscape, than all other calibers combined.
I could go on, but as has been noted in the past beware the man with one gun because he probably knows how to use it.
I wish I could claim I had a Model 10 that was lost in a canoeing accident fifty years ago, but I could not have afforded the ammo as a young man to learn to shoot it well. Ammo for a .22, on the other hand, was semi-affordable by bucking hay and building fence.
The FBI maintains a lists of shooting deaths by caliber. .22 (both LR and Short) are pretty far up the list, along with the various .32s.
I suspect there were a *whole lot* of .22 and .32 “Saturday Night Specials” made before 1968, and they were cheap and easily concealable, so were often used.
I shoot God’s calibre as per His disciples, John Moses And St. Cooper. I do that with a high end 1911 and I will take on all challengers at slow fire bullseye. I shoot the best I can, whether it’s for coffees or trophies and I give it everything I got. Needless to say I’ve lost count of the spankings I’ve gotten over the years. It’s seldom the old fart with the revolver that gets me… it’s usually the damn kids with brighter eyes and steadier hands and better guns.
For the run n’ gun stuff I get beat like a rented mule by everyone but I don’t care. I shoot for fun and that’s it. The best gun for you is the one you have. The only guy you have to beat is the bum you see in the mirror. His is the only opinion that matters too. When things get real, tactics and mindset will count far more than equipment.
St. John’s chosen caliber was the .38 Auto, which we know now as “.38 Super.” The original .38 Auto was actually a tad hotter than the Super, but Colt had some quality control problems and downloaded the ammunition while they were sorting them out.
The .45 ACP wasn’t Browning’s design; Colt had him do the minimum amount of redesign needed to adapt the gun to take the Army’s .45 cartridge when they were angling for the new Army pistol contract, which they eventually got. But the 1911’s peculiar feed path is a legacy of originally being designed for a smaller-diameter cartridge.
Actually, Browning’s *original* cartridge was truly rimless, but the American powder industry wasn’t able to deliver the required powder in time, and by the time Colt added enough crimp to get the pressure to come up quickly enough, the cartridges wouldn’t headspace any more. Presumably Browning was using German powder for his prototypes. So Browning added the rim so they could crimp and headspace at the same time.
Get some .38 Super Comp rimless brass, load it hot, and *that* is Browning’s preferred pistol cartridge.
Depending on whose loads and numbers you prefer, the .38 Super has from 15 to 25% more muzzle energy than the .45 ACP. John Moses’ original loading was on the hot side for .357 Magnum.
TRX,
Thanks for the education.
I had never heard that was the way that Browning developed the 1911.
Very interesting!
Years ago I remember studing projectile penetration through armor and until bullet design evolved velocity was king. A round with a copper tip ahead of a hard penetrator combined with velocity was the winner for awhile.
I can see why the .38 Super, with its greater velocity, was chosen to penetrate the vehicles of the ’30s.
I would shoot in our back yard against a pile of firewood as my backstop. One day I decided to go to a public gun range, just to see what it was like.
It was a real learning and growth experience, let me tell you.
I felt a little intimidated by all these other men with their .44s and such. One hand canon shook the room every time he torched one off. Another guy put 15 shots downrange in five seconds.
Then I saw the targets. Out of ten lanes, only me and one other guy had our shots well into the black stuff in the center of the target. A few targets could easily be recycled, as they had no holes in them. Anywhere.
So whatever it is you’re shooting today, everyone reading this blog will follow the four rules of gun safety, and will hit the target. My real fear is with the rest of the men at the range who tend to be a bit unsafe at times.
Later on they installed a range officer, a self-important little man that barked orders at me and Big Mike regarding the positioning of our target on the target holder. The same arrogant, pompous little ass failed to notice or rebuke a man sitting behind the firing line and trying to clear a jam.