Wouldn’t you?

Minding my own business, I swing by the shop to visit my buddy. I notice a styrofoam clamshell box on his desk. Hmmm.

  • Me: Whats in the box?
  • Him: Thompson Contender
  • Me: What caliber?
  • Him: .45 Colt / .410
  • Me: Ugh. Whaddya want for it?
  • Him: $150
  • Me: Uh..Ill be back in a few minutes. I gotta swing by an ATM.

And thats how that happened.

I actually already have two Contenders and a handful of barrels. My favorite is a 21″ .30-30 carbine sitting in a Choate stock. With open sights it weighs just under five pounds. A wonderful lightweight carbine for running through the timber.

And for a hundred and fifty bucks….why not? I think the .45/.410 barrel is useless, so I’ll dump it on eBay and get $150 for it which will make the frame and furniture a freebie.

I like the Contender as a test platform for my reloads. As a break open single shot it eliminates a lot of variables and makes an excellent test platform. Does it have any survivalist-centric special uses? I suppose someone will think that the interchangeable nature of the barrels gives some sort of advantage but….no. Why wouldnt you just have a .22 rifle, a .30 bolt gun, maybe a .223 of some kind, in full-size repeating guns? About the only advantage I can see is that if you live in some environ that limits the number of firearms you can own, it might be useful. But, really, its just a fun gun to play with various calibers.

Sure, I’ll slap the 14″ .44 barrel on it and go knock down Bambi. But in a world where knocking down an animal means the difference between full bellies and starvation? I’ll use the gun that gives me the most advantage and thats probably gonna be a .308 of some kind.

But for a hundred and fifty bucks….why not add a little range toy to the collection? Especially if I can get it to pay for itself by unloading that .45/.410 barrel.

CostCo canned beef…from pre-Trump days

On todays episode of “Will It Digest” we have some of the Kirkland canned roast beef from CostCo. As far as canned meats go, I’m a big fan of this stuff and recommend it highly. Todays test subject was ‘Best By’ back when MAGA hats were just being introduced:

So…’Best By’ was six years ago. Shall we crack it open and see what happens? Well, the first thing that happens is that no matter what it is..beef, chicken, turkey, whatever…it always smells like cat food the minute you pierce that can. But, I know from experience that once you put the heat to the meat the smells start changing drastically.

Looks unappetizing, smells worse, but….as we bring it to temperature, the fats melt and mix with the meat, and after about ten minutes…..

Dumped it back in the pan with some spices, grabed some onion, cilantro, taco sauce, sour cream, outta the fridge, and…..

The point of this post isn’t to point out my half-assed attempts at cooking. But rather that some canned goods, especially a low-acid product like meat, kept in the classic ‘cool, dry place’, can be quite satisfactory long after the ‘Best By’ date. Ok, sure, it’s early and I really should wait eight hours and then make this post, but I’ve done this sort of thing before and I can tell you with empirical first-hand evidence that quality canned meats (meaning not something from some cannery in Samoa or Venezuela) can be useful a number of years after the date stamped on them.

And as far as the CostCo brand goes, if you have it in stock at your local CostCo (because it does tend to come and go) it is very much an excellent choice for stocking up. I normally find canned meats a bit repulsive, but I have to admit that once you get this thing in a pan and get some heat under it, it’s quite good.

In for a penny, in for a kidney

Remember I said “I have a ‘favorites’ list at one of my vendors websites. Its a list of things I want to buy when they eventually become ‘in stock’. I check that list several times a day. As of late, I have noticed that around 2-3am they are adding stock to their online inventory and it sells out almost instantly. But…sometimes I sneak one past the goalie and get lucky.“?

So…this happened:

:::sigh::: I don’t know whats worse…my trying to time the market, or my trying to time the magazine market. (Although to be fair…I did really, really well in the market this year.)

Two hundred more for the Deep Sleep. No, I will not sell you any, don’t ask. Normally I’d say go hit your local FFL and have them contact RSR and order them but I’m fairly confident these will sell out in the next 24 hours.

Edited to add:

Did I just spend a buttload of money that I didn’t need to spend? My neighbor thinks so. We were talking and I mentioned that I foresaw a magazine ban on the horizon. My neighbor, a learned man and retired military officer (though a Biden supporting Democrat) said that a magazine ban had been ruled unconstitutional. He was, of course, referring to the Ninth Circus Circuits decision earlier this year that struck down Californias magazine ban as unconstitutional. (And, yes, who would have seen that coming from the Ninth?) So, as I understand it, states within that Ninth district should be free from any onerous magazine capacity ban (on a state level. Federal level is a different story. Federal law usually supersedes state law. We kinda had a war about that). But on a federal level it is still an undecided thing. Same for states outside the Ninth. Is California going to appeal it to the Supreme Court? If they do, I hope that the legacy Trump has created there would smack any ban down without even blinking. I suspect California knows that and might not be willing to push the issue further, but rather bide(n) their time for a leftist court-stacking as opposed to risking creating a nationwide precedent that they really don’t want. In short, they might be content to live with a ‘maybe’ instead of pushing the issue and getting a ‘no’.

So, back to the question at hand… should I be spending money on magazines like this when there might be enough legal juice out there to preclude another magazine ban? I really don’t know. Historically, .gov does what it wants and when it gets smacked down on constitutionality it takes some time. California’s mag ban, for example, has been around for decades and only now is it finally getting threatened. Additionally, there are probably several ‘loopholes’ that .gov (state or federal) could exploit to give a de facto ban. Registration of magazines with high registration fees, expensive enhanced background checks….basically a tedious and discouraging NFA-style process that doesn’t strictly limit your ability to own a magazine…it just makes you wanna throw up your hands and say ‘screw this’.

Note that we’re just talking about magazine bans in this case. The other elephant in the room, “assault weapons”, are a different story. My neighbor says that he does foresee that one coming. I agree with him on that one. But the magazine thing….hmmm… I hope it winds up going to the Supremes and gets decided in my favor but until it does I have to operate on the assumption that a magazine ban could stand. So….I wish I didnt have to spend this money on magazines, but I’m not sorry I did.