A Brief Note About The Gratuitous Gun Pics
Kim du Toit
July 26, 2005
1:29 AM CDT
What follows in this section is a series of guns which have attracted my fancy over the years. I’ve fired a great number of them for myself, in varying quantities and under various circumstances. Other than the purely utilitarian pieces like the AK-47 and such, most of the guns are beautiful: poetry in steel and wood. Some further points:
-- I am a rifleman, not a pistolero. This means that rifles get more of my attention than pistols, although I make exceptions for the truly beautiful (Colt Python), the workhorses steeped in history (Colt 1911, Browning High Power), guns of military interest (Lugers), and so on.
-- I am not a technical gun writer, nor do I want to become one. If you’re looking for that kind of analysis, there are any number of gun magazines. I approach shooting from a perspective of love, not as a job.
-- I am hopelessly old-fashioned and romantic about guns. This means that a Colt Single Action Army will get more attention from me than a Heckler & Koch P7.
On a parallel subject: I’m not a huge fan of plastic / fiberglass / composite stocks—I think they’re pig-ugly, and while compo stocks may bring a great deal of utility to the gun, I’m enough of a romantic to believe that the compromise between beauty and utility isn’t enough to make me own one. People who live under waterfalls may feel differently, of course, but that’s my position on the matter. Ditto plastic frames.
And speaking of ugly, and plastic: Readers will discover a distinct paucity of Glocks in the GGP pages. This is because Glocks are:
1. ugly
2. plastic
3. made by furriners
which is sufficient to exclude them from my list of favorite guns. Yes, I know they’re very reliable, and accurate; I don’t care. There are other guns which are neither ugly, plastic nor foreign-made which are also reliable and accurate, and those will always get my support. Also, Gaston Glock has gone on record as supporting the stupid “ballistic fingerprint” GFW nonsense, so I have a personal peeve with him.
-- I love old battle rifles of WWI and WWII, and the years immediately preceding both. These old pieces have character and history all over them, and if there are finer rifles than the Mauser K98, Lee-Enfield Mark III No.1, Swiss K.11, or Springfield 1903, I can’t think of any. I’d rather own a Japanese Arisaka Type 99 rifle or a Mosin-Nagant M44 carbine than a modern Blaser (and I do); and I’d rather shoot a Swedish M96 in 6.5x55mm than just about any other rifle ever made.
The same is true of pistols. My all-time favorite semi-automatic pistol is the Colt 1911 in .45 ACP, my all-time favorite double-action revolver is the Colt Python in .357 Mag, and my all-time favorite single-action pistol is the Remington 1890 Police model.
-- Paul Mauser and John Moses Browning are the greatest gun designers who ever lived. While all their original designs may have been “polished” over the years, the fact remains that the Mauser 98 action remains the best bolt action ever, and the 1911 pistol, A5 shotgun, 1897 shotgun and BAR designs are all at the head of their respective classes too. While other excellent designers have come along since then (eg. Kalashnikov, Garand, Stoner, Ruger, etc), all have merely stepped on the shoulders of Mauser and Browning.
-- I have a jaundiced view of “new” cartridges. (See here for a longer explanation of this statement.) I applaud the advances in bullet development, of course: better bullet design has turned marginal calibers (.380 ACP, 9mm Para) into acceptable self-defense cartridges. But there’s not much to choose between a .270 WSM (2002) and the .270 Win (1925), after all.
That’s about it. Enjoy the pictures.
And for more about my philosophy on guns, and shooting in general, see my essays under The Gun Thing.
Gratuitous Gun Pics
