BAG Day 2004
Kim du Toit
April 16, 2004
12:00 AM CDT
Well, after dealing with the Gummint yesterday, there was no other thing to do but to buy a gun—that’s the purpose of April 15th “Buy A Gun Day”, after all.
So off I went to see Richard, whom I had not seen since February, before we left for The Great South Germany Invasion Of 2004.
Thanks to the fact that Europeans are a bunch of foul thieves and highwaymen (to say nothing of the U.S. Gummint), money is extraordinarily tight right now, and I was forced to browse the “budget rifle” rack.
Fortunately, there was a decent selection there, and I ended up with a rifle I’ve talked about before, the Mosin-Nagant M44 carbine, with integral bayonet:
Actually, I had a choice of Mosins: the M44 above, and an old 1918 Russian M91, with its loooong barrel—and ordinarily, the older rifle would have got the nod, because, well, because this is the Gun Guy speaking.
But the M91 didn’t have a bayonet; and somehow, the idea of having a 12” bayonet on the end of my rifle just made more sense for Tax Day, in so many ways.
So I got the carbine, and the usual 120 rounds of ammo (actually, it was all Richard had on hand).
Details: my M44 was made in 1953 by the Hungarian FEG company, and its bore is nice and shiny (better than the 91/30’s bore, which looked like someone had taken a round file to it—all that old corrosive Russki ammo).
The stock is normal for a sub-$100 mil-surp rifle, ie. bloody horrible. I’ll sand it and polish it, but I’m not going to make a production of the thing. This rifle may just stay in the truck, with a box or two of ammo close by. I’m not going to shoot it a lot—that 7.62x54R ammo kicks like hell in a short carbine, and I’m a Recoil Wussy.
But that bayonet will come handy in case I feel like indulging in one of those “drive-by bayonetings” that seem to worry the GFWs so much.
It’s not a rifle that would piss off Michael Moore and frighten Dianne Feinstein, of course, but it’s a rifle, for all that, and I feel a lot better now.
Apart from the fact that I now have yet another caliber in the old ammo locker…
Range report to follow.
Update: A couple of people have asked for a comparison of the 7.62x54mmR to other WWII cartridges, so here we go with the German, Russian, Brit and American ones, respectively:
For the metric among us, the actual cartridge dimensions are, in order:
7.92x57mm—7.62x54mmR—7.7x57mmR—7.62x63mm
Gratuitous Gun Pics
