Click to embiggenate. I had to stand on the hood of the tractor to knock this bastard down with a polesaw, and it barely missed me. It was all of eight feet long and four inches around at the thick end. Would have been a hell of a headache.
Back in godonlyknowswhen, Zastava started making Mausers. They made them for the military, but their commercial production was pretty good too. A powerful lot of these were sold by George Herter- he put barreled actions together and even sold whole guns, sold this rifle as a J9.
Somewhere in there even Brownells got into the action, selling receivers and whole guns, at a pretty good price.
Harry McGowen put his hands on some and barreled them in 30-06, and I have one of those. The stock was nasty but I fixed that, and the scope mounts were horrid but I got new ones from Talley (Best rings I ever bought or used) and the trigger was abominable so I got a Timney, and the scope I had was sort of awful so I bought a Nikon Monarch 3.
This is the completed rifle on firing day, awaiting only it’s Made in America Harris Bipod.
(Click to embiggenate)
Anyway, I had gotten it close using a laser boresighter, and at the range I put a big shit-n-c target downrange, sighted the barrel on the huge dot provided by the target, and adjusted the scope to match it.
The first short was high and away. I held the rifle in position and moved the crosshairs to the hole, and took the second shot. it only took two clicks to get it in from there, and I filled the magazine and shot five times. Here’s the target.
This is at about a hundred yards with the scope set to 2.5 power. yes, there are five holes in that group, and you could pretty easily cover them with a silver dollar. I am most pleased.
Now I need to get trigger time, and that means a bunch of snap caps so I can teach myself never to flinch, and a lot of ammo so I can make sure it goes downrange. This is the first time all the pieces have come together for this rifle- trigger, scope, mounts, stock. I will have to get used to the nice as the suck I had before was so permeating. If this all goes well I will rebarrel this rifle, still in 30-06, but with a crowbar, a barrel heavy enough to impose it’s will on the round. And then I will start shooting at things which are far away.
Despite all the inveigling of what the founding fathers meant, the bottomline is, this Nation is about freedom.
We can and do legislate morality all the time. Law is in and of itself a codifying of accepted morality. You can legislate morality, you just can’t often enforce it.
Freedom does NOT MEAN everyone gets whatever they want, even if you don’t think they’re hurting anyone, because you aren’t G-d and you are not a predictor of unintended consequences. And this applies equally to Muslims and the Westboro Baptists, gays and bible thumping Pentecostals, corporate polluters and gloebull warmening morons.
Liberalism (as it is defined now, also called progressivism) is the very worst kind of mental disorder and you cannot fix stupid, you can only prevent it from doing harm.
We are in the end game of a class war, and it is not between the wealthy and the poor, but between the ruling class and US. And we are pretty well the losers. We have a process in place to fix that, and it works, but it doesn’t work quick nor is it easy. The moment I am convinced that this process is no longer tenable you will be able to tell because of the sound of gunfire coming from my general direction.
There is nothing more valuable nor more important than friends and family. I hope today you can be with yours, and that you cherish and value them.
