If I could only have one.

Rifle that is.

The Cabinet Man here. Long time, no post. I hope Fuze's offer to guest-post on occasion still stands. We'll know soon enough, I guess.

Fuze and I have more than once had a discussion that starts with the question: "If you could have only one rifle, what would it be?" [ed note: Can of Worms alert!!] Fuze is enamored with the AK platform and he has the nicely-done home-builts to show for it. But my impression of him is that he's an FAL guy at the core. He may choose to chime-in at a later time and prove me wrong. But I'm not here to speak for this blog's owner.

I too have strong affections for the AK and, for the no-notice, "Molotov cocktail hoodlums in the front yard at 2:00 AM" scenario, the milled Bulgarian SLR-101 tactically positioned at the front of the gun safe is my go-to gremlin repellent. I took that sweet piece of post-commie legacy to Gunsite and for five days held my own against all manner of Gene Stoner's Finest. Not once did the little carbine fail me and every pop-up hit out to 200 yards fell solidly with one round. The trigger is no work of art and, in its current form, it lacks any means of a bolt hold-open. But for the purposes of clearing my little 1/6-acre urban homestead of gang-bangers, Neo-Cons, zombies, Socialists, and other foaming undesirables, I'd rather have that Bulgy in my hands than any AR-15 I own. Not to mention that it's fun to shoot!!

I also have a soft spot for another Bolshevik import: the Mosin-Nagant. I have a number of these lying around, half of which are the superior Finnish-captured M39 variants. They are simply and soundly built and, when properly fed, reliable to a fault. The upgraded Finn sights are no small improvement over the Russian originals, though I went one step further and dressed-up a couple of the Finns with Mojo ghost rings. The 7.62x54R cartridge hits hard - and I mean 30-06 hard!! - and can be found in a good range of bullet weights. With Wolf Match Extra, one of my scout-scoped M39s shoots 1 MOA. Which means if it's acting hostile, using two legs for mobility, and under 750 yards distant, I own it. 'Nuff said.

But I digress. Sorta...

The reason for that little train of thought derailment was to highlight the fact that certain rifles do certain things very well. Equipped with a Surefire light and an Aimpoint red-dot, the Bulgy SLR is a hella' CQB weapon. When my eyesight is up to the task, the M39s can really reach out and touch someone. (Only onerous malcontents, of course...) But I wouldn't want to clear the house with the Mosin nor perform counter-sniper chores with the AK. We're talking compromise here, not perfection.

If I could have only one rifle...

...it'd be a Yugoslavian 59/66 SKS. The wretched commies win again!!

As with most things for which I have strong affections, there are a few SKSs lying around the house. Most are Yugo 59/66s but there's also a lone angry Russian. (I recently sold-off an odd-ball Albanian. Curious to look at but I never grew attached.) The SKS is by no means glamorous. It's a bit on the heavy side and when compared only to the compact form factor of the AK/AR, it borders on unwieldy. But it's commie-simple, as dependable as gravity, and actually looks like a rifle. There's wood and metal and leather: the three basic elements of the universe. The AK-47 was designed for rough use by largely uneducated and wholly unmotivated conscript soldiers. On the other hand, the SKS gives its operator some credit for understanding his role in the man/rifle pairing and, thusly, I suppose it's a truer proletarian weapon. For example, the SKS is considerate enough to lock back its bolt after the last round, signaling the rifleman through a subtle change in its recoil that renewed attention must be paid to its on-board ammo supply. And that's a good thing. There's no detachable magazine to misplace - nor extras to carry - and nothing to grind in the dirt while shooting from prone. The stripper clips, while imperfect, perform well and with adequate practice, can be employed as quickly as detach-mags. While a step or two more involved to field strip than an AK, the SKS requires no additional tools. Some folks don't like the look of the 59/66's grenade launcher gear and choose to remove it, replacing it with a muzzle break, flash hider, or other such Bubba-junk. Nossir. As is, the rifle has plenty of character so I leave that stuff alone. I don't ask my women to get boob jobs, either.

One of my 59/66s in particular has proven itself especially endearing. Its trigger doesn't completely suck, its stock is perfectly clean with no carvings or pock-marks, and its bore gleams as if it had been newly minted just yesterday. Fully de-cosmo'ed, it has never jammed nor slam-fired. It sports a Williams ghost ring rear sight and an OEM front post. On most days, even from a half-assed shooting position, I can put ten rounds in groups of ~5" at 100 yards. Certainly no medals will be awarded. But that's OK because it's not a target rifle and no amount of aftermarket froo-froo is going to make it one. And it doesn't seem to care much about its diet. It shoots Wolf as well as it shoots Winchester or Cheetah. (Yes, I still have some stores of Robert Mugabe's best 7.62x39 Cheetah ammo. Envy me.)

"But TCM, why the 59/66 for The Only One?"

Let's do the math, Grasshopper.

The middleweight 7.62 round is not ideal, but it's not the total slouch the AR banner-wavers would have you believe. From a 16" AK, the stubby 125-grain x39 bullet is - at best - a reliable man-stopper out to, say..., 250 yards, which is right about where its energy drops below 750 foot*pounds. But the 59/66 has a 22" barrel. That extra six inches is good for an additional 135 feet/second at the muzzle. (I have chronograph-sourced empirical data to support that claim, so don't argue with me.) That means the little commie caliber can still hit Plenty Hard Enough To Stop out to 300 yards, maybe 350 with a tail wind and a lot of holdover. Those ranges are no big deal to the Mosin, but we might wanna' clear the house, too, remember??

Now I know the 7.62x51 guys are already smugly asking how I'm going to engage the infamous 600-yard target. Well, folks, I'm not. We're talking your basic (mid-40s) visual range, hombre-a-hombre self-defense situations here. The evangelists of "The 600-yard Hit" are primarily concerned with (semi- or non-) organized civilian groups encountering organized, hostile forces armed with 5.56 NATO weapons. That's all well and good and I completely understand that way of thinking. For that kind of situation, nothing beats a true MBR: an M1A, an FAL, an HK-91, or a Garand. You'll get zero argument from me on that. But one of the criteria of this scenario is that I'm down to only one rifle, which means things have truly gone to hell. It's safe to assume that my problem is not 600 yards away with a crypto radio and mortars at the ready. I'm more concerned about the classic Zombie Biker threat. Maybe they're well armed, but probably not. Maybe they're well trained, but probably not. Maybe they're well organized, but probably not. So at 300 yards, I'm feeling pretty confident with ten rounds in the SKS and a clear exit strategy.

"Then why not stick with one of your Mosins?"

So, we're back to that, huh?? OK. Five-shot mil-surp bolt-action rifles are wonderful things. They're gifts from God and I can't own enough of them. But how about our Zombie Biker threat?? Or the group of agitated, trigger-happy squatters that won't move along?? Or the pack of wolves or a rapidly approaching bear?? I have to assume that I'll be facing these challenges by myself - I always assume that - and the process of engaging multiple, close-range targets with a bolt-action Mosin (or Mauser or K31 or 1903A3) is no minor problem. For that kind of work, I'd love to have my Bulgy AK. But we are talking one gun, aren't we??

Gimme' the SKS already!! I get ten shots as fast as I can aim, all while keeping both hands on the stock. I can quickly reload ten more rounds in a few smooth motions. I'm throwing out mid-power 30-caliber whoop-ass without 8mm or x54R recoil knocking me about the four corners of Central County. And I can still hit reasonably hard at 300 yards if need be. For additional assistance with that 300-yard target, the sight radius on the 59/66 is about 2½ inches longer than an AK's. I'll concede that that's not much but it is an improvement.

"Ha!! You're gonna' kill a bear with an SKS??"

A charging bear will get as many rounds as he needs to be dissuaded. All ten if that's what it takes. (The same goes for two-legged goblins.) And I'm likely to do a better job of changing the bruin's mind with 7.62x39 rounds than with 5.56 NATO. That said, I'm not going to hunt bear with a x39 chambered rifle. But given that little extra "oomph" afforded me by the longer barreled 59/66, at moderate ranges I could safely hunt deer, antelope, and wild hogs - assuming there are any left after the SHTF - and maybe even drop an opportunistic elk target that's up-close and personal. Predators such as coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, and feral dogs are no match for the 7.62 middleweight champ. Excepting alligators and the infrequent moose, that about sums up the four-legged critter issue for the Lower 48.

Let's not forget a couple of easy-to-overlook features. Assuming Bubba didn't remove it, the SKS has a permanently attached, collapsible bayonet. Don't underestimate its utility. How would you feel if at what appeared to be the final moments of a good brawl, your opponent initiated a bayonet attack?? Not scared, huh?? Ask a WWII Pacific Theater front-line combat vet what he thinks of desperate Japanese suicide charges. I'll bet he won't be laughing when he tells his story. And, as a last resort, the heft of an SKS would make it a formidable club. The AR - and maybe even an AK - could sustain terminal damage after a heart-racing bout of head bashing. The SKS loves that kinda' stuff!!

And lastly, there's the issue of cost. What are essentially unissued 59/66s can still be had for $200 and change. For that price, forget about a spare parts kit. Just get two rifles. Or three. And while 7.62x39 ammo availability was a big problem the last couple of years, that's no longer true. It's available in quantity today. It's not priced at $90/1000 like it was in 2003/2004 but it is affordable. And the prices are tolerable enough to justify a little stockpiling for the next drought. While the 7.62x51 folks are forking over 50¢ or more per round for their bit of the rarified supply of mil-surp x51 fodder, you're at the range getting in good practice time for 15¢ a pop. Few of the Average Joes can afford (the Pure Joy of) a $2000 Fulton Armory or LRB M14, a $250 Sadlak scope mount, a $1000 Valdada BDC scope, $800 worth of USGI 20-round magazines, and enough ammo to practice with 150 rounds every other weekend. As the saying goes, it's better to have $2000 worth of training and a $200 rifle than to have a $2000 rifle and only $200 worth of training.

So that's my take on the problem of Just One Gun. Gimme' an SKS, a Yugo 59/66 to be more specific. YMMV...

TCM

After the SHTF, please find me a good dentist

Swen reminds me of a post I've been brewing; I heard in real-time Rush's famous chiming-in on the "men afraid of using tools" kerfluffle.

Not over here, boss.

I've made with my hands: an air-cooled Volkswagen engine, assembled a couple thousand rounds of ammunition for pistol and rifle, brewed more than a few gallons of ales, butchered a few antelope, ground up a bit of it into sausage. I've built 3 Kalashnikov rifles, and am working on a few other blasters.

This weekend I replaced the shock absorbers on my truck. A couple months ago I replaced the gear oil in its transmission. I'll replace the oil in the front and rear differentials next.

The next large game animals I harvest will have their hides tanned, some brain and some vegetable.

Though even I don't get this part: I usually hire the oil changes out to someone else.

Met Fred, got the T-shirt

. . . but did not make "Rifleman" at the Worland Appleseed Shoot. And dammit, I drove the whole way to Worland and didn't shake Swen's hand.

Mortality sucks

I recently received news that my brother, 4 years my senior, suffers from a tumor surrounding his brainstem. His prognosis is poor, his wife tells me, but he is in the best care available.

I should plan to visit him soon, and bring my youngest, my Toad, with me because he is the only offspring unit of mine who has not met this uncle. This may be his only chance.

It also reminds me to draw these offspring units a bit closer. I took Boy out to Vedauwoo so he could handle a 10/22 and Jadwiga. He liked the Kalashnikov far better, because he hasn't figured out optics and he's still too short for a cheekweld on the 10/22. With Jadwiga's stock folded, he could rip out 3 rounds and hit a grocery bag at 20 yards.

Steal this television program

TCM laments in comments below that we'll be stuck forever with the cliffhanger at the season-ending of Jericho because the b@57ards at CBS cancelled the program.

Perhaps, but then perhaps not. If there is a burgeoning cottage industry of fan-production for Star Trek (think of the dollars they sink into props and costume) there has to be a way for fans to step in and keep a show like Jericho alive without CBS.

All you need is a run-down little town, a few police cars, a school bus, an amateur radio . . . nothing you can't already find in some deserted plains town a stone's throw from the Front Range.

BTW, I watched the second episode the other night, and still no fat women. But suspense of my disbelief was much further impaired by the tatted convicts impersonating cops. They picked up the blonde along the road and they were desperate for . . . gasoline?

And they kept the real deputies in the trunk? Alive? What for? And the deputies' uniforms fit the convicts? Gimme a frigging break. Sorry, I probably would have dropped this series by Ep 3 or 4 anyway, at this rate.

Which only supports my point. I'd wager that those implausible devices were inserted into the plot at the insistence of the Beeeg Teevee Netvoohhrk executives because that's what TV execs have always done.

If fans pick this show up and keep it alive, they won't have tin-eared empty suits telling them what to do to the script. The fans won't have any advertisers to please.

Debating season over there, Boss

My lackluster Senate campaign gets a kick in the yarbles with a good showing at the debates.

Ride like the wind, Bullseye!

Of all the lame derivatives Disney has made of their properties, they are missing a goldmine:

Woody's Roundup.

Sic

I just cracked open a case of Uncle Sugar's finest Caliber .30 Springfield Model of 1906 Ball Ammunition, recently delivered from the Civilian Marksmanship Program.

Some functionary of CMP decided that a liability statement of some kind must appear on the package to clarify that the ammo was delinked from milsurp machinegun belts and wasn't fresh new milspec.

This is really embarrassing. There must be tens of thousands of these cartons in circulation with the word "strickly" in all-caps.

Don't forget Wayne

Please send a few dollars to Wayne Fincher's defense. I did recently, and his wife sent a brief note of thanks and good spirits in reply.

The Wayne Fincher Defense Fund
c/o Mr. Don Bright
2225 No. Mockingbird Ln,
Fayetteville, AR 72703

Does it always have to be about football?

Senator Brownback's misapplication of metaphor is a more grave insult to the language than his failure to invoke Wisconsin's athlete named Faahhrv.

It also takes down a peg or two my consideration of Sen. Brownback for the position of chief executive of the Republic. He's technologically illiterate.

"Blocking and tackling" does not refer to defensive techniques in the game of American football--or if it does, that is a recent misappropriation of the term by linguistic thugs, cutpurses, and pitchmen. It is far older than that, a reference to the use of ropes and pulleys ("a block and tackle") to lift heavy objects. In modern times, it is used to signify drudgery, the repetitive tasks that do not demand raw strength so much as perseverance along a simple plan, one pull on the rope after another after another. It connotes slow progress. Blocking and tackling does not leave one exhausted so much as it leaves one sore, having traveled through several times more in length of rope than has the weight that was lifted.

In comparison, the blocking and tackling of football are glamorous, instantaneous, bruising spectacle. An angle of attack gone wrong, a misplanted foot, and an athlete's career can end.

It's a geek-vs-jock thing, and as jocks would have it, the world turns around jocks. Another term for "jock" is ambitious.

In Kansas, of all places

I just watched the first episode of Jericho. Only one observation of the show that sticks with me as improbable: no fat women.

There was a deaf girl. There was a school teacher on the bus with some likely internal injury---that didn't kill her after being stranded on that bus for hours and hours---she was kinda hot. The ex-girlfriend who drove over the crow corpses, she was hot. Heck, at my age the mayor's wife and protagonist's mom, she's passable. Any of them could fit down the aisle of a commuter aircraft without spilling someone's coffee.

Not one diamond-shaped quarter-tonner. Not a single one. I don't recall a fat guy, either.

And I didn't notice a Kansas accent.

Kinda hard for me to suspend my disbelief for the rest of the show, y'all.

Sure, wtf, take a survey

Please take my blog reader survey!

It has arrived!

My first shipment of 6.5mm Grendel ammunition has arrived. At about $.70 per round delivered, it'll be a while before I have a SHTF-adequate quantity. Midway gets my money.

But in what shall I shoot it? That's another post.

One of my suppliers

In my K'lash building of late, I've used several parts made to order from "one of the guys on the boards."

After placing another such order recently, one "guy on the boards" has been particularly effusive in gratitude for the business. Only fair that I bring him to light here.

So hotbarrel, please take a bow. Quality kit and shamefully low price, he does it for the fun. The only way to reach him, that I know, is to join the gunco.net board and look for him under that name, 'hotbarrel', and PM him.

By all means, do, if you're taking up the (endangered) craft of home Kalashnifacture.

Happy happy, Joy joy!

Examination Scored

Congratulations on passing the NREMT cognitive examination. Your passing result on the cognitive examination will remain valid for a one year period from the date of the examination, 4/x/2007 (provided you meet all current requirements for National EMS Certification).

Please allow 2 weeks for the NREMT to mail out results letters.

Quote for the day

. . . changes in corporate law cannot eradicate poverty or materially change existing distributions of wealth, except by impairing the creation of wealth. Changes in corporate law will not clean the environment. And changes in corporate law will not solve the labor question. Indeed, the only changes in corporate law that will have a substantial effect on such issues are changes that make the world worse, not better.

HT Instapundit. And what, exactly, is "the labor question"?

What do you get when you cross . . .

Probably the greatest incarcerated fraction of society in US history, receiving the closest thing to socialized medicine short of the VA, drawn from an illiterate underclass, that still has access to all the drugs it wants and gives hypodermic needles and tattoos to each other?

A hepatitis-C time bomb.

Whom do we get to thank?

Addendum, 1 April: Don't forget prison rape.

Idea number 1201

Megan McArdle, guestblogging at Instapundit, quotes a blogger charting the trajectory of music along technology, wondering what comes next, and how to recapture the magic of music you haven't heard yet:

[the iPod confers] incredible levels of control over what we listened to at any moment. It’s simply next in the progression from LP (moving the needle from track to track), to cassette (pressing FF and guessing), to CD (pressing next, but still limited to one album). Now, at your fingertips, there is the power to pick any song, play it for any length of time, and skip to another song, and keep skipping until you find what it is you want to listen to. While there is great, great joy to be had in simply shuffling at random (the wild success of the iPod Shuffle definitely illustrates this), I think all will agree that it is not enough.

Well, it seems simple enough : equip your player with a Bluetooth transceiver and hope enough other player owners do too. Tuck a protocol between the Bluetooth and your player, such that when two players come within range of one another, they compare their inventories and exchange songs that the other does not have. For intellectual property purists, set a flag to play it once and delete it, but leave a chit identifying the incoming, once-played track. At the end, sound a prompt to the listener, "keep, or clear?" If you choose to keep it, it stores the artist, album, label, license terms and so forth so you can find it and (if the artist demands) buy it.

If you are among several people with shareplayers (a long workout, say), enter a share-ffle (shruffle?) mode that gives each player a turn to offer a track to everyone else.

A lurker mode allows you to walk down a crowded street, allowing other shareplayers' tracks to fade in and out of hearing. The protocol already skips tracks you already have, could even be told to skip artists, albums, labels, and genres you choose. FF allows you to skip a track from one player and go to the next-most-audible player. Play grabs a track, or its tag, whenever it sounds interesting.

As much as it pains me to say it, mobile phones with mp3 features are probably better-positioned to deploy this capability than straight mp3 players. They already pack Bluetooth and they're supported by companies that have a history of charging out the ass for simple features (remember paying a separate fee for "tone dialing" on your landline phone?).

As always, this reminds me of High Plains Drifter: somebody is leaving the door open and the wrong dog can come home. Serious consequences for a mobile phone. Equally serious for a non-phone mp3 player that eventually comes to dock in at a computer. But these are the same risks that file sharers take already.

Abject terror in the Di'trick

I've skimmed the ruling on Parker v DC, and read much of what the blogosphere has had to say about it, and have little to add, other than:

• About damned time.
• The Supremes can still dick it up, by ruling its applicability so narrowly, and government's compelling interests so broadly, as to render the Parker ruling itself immaterial. See what good the Fifth Circuit's Emerson ruling did for Emerson the man.
  
• The Republicans in the Congress and the Executive can also snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by bowing, scraping, being conciliatory and bipartisan, and otherwise slicing their own throats along with ours.
  

I'm still stocking up on C/BE of various flavors.

Update, 30 March: GOP preparing to dick it up. See, I told you.

Andy, where's my 15 minutes?

All I want to know about 300 is whether Elephantinos the tinker appears and utters his signature line.