GARY'S GUN NOTES

 Around the first of the year a friend gave me some news that he heard from his deaf and blind brother in law who saw it written in sand on Daytona Beach and recognized it as the note on a hand out flyer a lady handed him outside a Happy Ending Chinese massage parlor that he had just left that he had seen written in crayon on the wall in the unisex rest room. It guaranteed that all the shortages would be over by the end of the first quarter. Now for you football fanatics that didn’t mean the first quarter of the game between the Gay Liberation League ladies football team, the RedHead Hairy Legs against the Biden Blow Hard Boys. He was talking about the end of the first quarter of the year, the last day of March. Somebody lied.

Unfortunately the shortages are still with us. I won’t go into all the shortages as I have already bored you spitless in the last several Gun Notes. Suffice to say the news ain’t good. And a distributor friend of mine said with Biden sending a gazillion rounds of ammo and guns and licorice flavored Polish beer to the Ukraine situation don’t expect things to get peachy keen anytime soon. Then figure in Biden’s banning of anything Russian from vodka to the Russian version of Playboy magazine Hefty Wenches.

Where is this going to end, nobody knows. After Biden calls Putin (what a horrible last name) some nasty names and threatens to send him an autographed nude picture of Hillary Clinton, anything could happen. I am planning to take back all the bad things I said about all the preppers.

But things may look up eventually and some of the following may end up actually available in our life time. Maybe.

The Winchester 1886 is a classic rifle, one of the finest Winchester ever made and many are still in use today. Taylor & Company are bringing a new version of the 1886 into the country. It is the TC86 Takedown and is chambered in 45-70. The gun is first class all the way with color case frame and a 16” barrel plus deluxe checkered stock and forend. I do wish it weren’t in a take down form as I have seen a lot of take downs work loose after a few times of taking it down and back together again. But hopefully this one won’t suffer from that problem. At a bit over $1800 it won’t be cheap but should be worth every penny.

For you AK-47 lovers there is a new U.S. made version called the BFT47 that has a lot of fine features and has fixed all the minor bad features the old AK was known for. It is being sold by Century Arms.

Years ago I bought or traded or hornswaggled someone out of an arrow gun. It is a “gun” that shoots a 14” arrow at around 450 fps using special blank 22 LR rounds. It looks like a real rifle and uses a Ruger 10-22 action. It is a really neat air rifle and I bought it for some hog hunting. With a 125 grain broadhead it will shoot completely thru a hog broadside. Now to get to the reason for this thrilling action packed story, Umarex Airguns has several versions of their own air rifle. One is a nice looking double barrel. The company is promoting it for big game, as in elk size. The air rifle is set up for scope too. Now I have my doubts as far as using this on bull elk or larger, but then I poo poo’d a 50 caliber air rifle for Elk until I actually saw one being used. So if you like shooting a pointed stick at a big game critter check the Umarex Air Rifle.

If you have been thinking of buying an AR-10 check out the S&W M&P10. Chambered in 308 it has some really nice features and coming from S&W it should be a good one. It runs a bit over $1100.

A few years back I saw a Mossberg lever action in 30-30 that had an M-4 collapsible stock, picatinny rail, wide lever and black nylon AR-15 style stock and forend. Figuring Mossberg had hired a mentally imbalanced designer I sorta laughed at it. I don’t think it was a great seller for Mossberg. I am sure it was a good one as far as quality goes but I could never be drunk enough to carry it out in front of my friends. Well, now Henry rifles has their version of the same thing. A few features have been changed but it is real close to being a tactical lever action 30-30. Black nylon stock and forend plus a small Picatinny rail under the forend makes it is real close to the Mossberg tactical lever action. A grand will get you your very own tactical 30-30.

A while back Taurus bought out the Heritage revolvers including their 22 LR Rough Rider model. Now they have gone tactical with it (sorta like the Henry 30-30), but not a bad design at all. It is a 6 ½” barrel with a Picatinny rail on the top of the frame for special sights or a red dot, it has a threaded muzzle for special accessories or a suppressor.

If you are one of the 6 people in the U.S. that doesn’t have an AR-15, there are a couple of really nice ones out recently. Radical Arms makes one and it is about as perfect as a standard AR-15 could be. ATI, American Tactical has their new Alpha-15 out and it is a really lightweight AR, using a lot of polymers. It looks and feels good too. Rock River Arms has a new AR out called the Assurance Carbine (getting away from anyone calling it those nasty words …AR-15. Lord know we wouldn’t want to hurt a liberals feelings.) They would probably cry for a week if we mentioned AR-15 in front of them. Poor babies.

Taurus had a couple of really good small semi autos in 9mm that I think most gun buyers had to have. First was the G2C, then the G3C and then the G4 something or other. Now they have a new hybrid 9mm out. Gun companies love that HYBRID word. They use it a lot. I bet they have hybrid dogs and drive hybrid vehicles. Anyway Taurus has a new hybrid out called the G3X. It has the better features of the guns just mentioned. It has the full size frame like the G3 pistol with the slightly wider frame that holds 15 rounds. This one should be a good one and is priced right at well under $350.

The new Ruger LCP 2, called the Lite Rack is getting a lot of good response. Quite a few folks are coming into our gun shop asking for the new Ruger Lite Rack. The Lite Rack isn’t named after a less than well endowed lady but is called that due to the slide being very easy to rack back to load the first round. Perfect for ladies or guys that have a hard time racking the slide on large autos. The new LCP Lite rack is chambered in 22 LR and fits in the palm of your hand. Great pocket gun too.

We had a close out sale on our custom knives today. With the steels and other parts to the custom knives we have been building not available and having had to discontinue some of the more popular series due to this, I decided to drop our custom knives. I hope in the near future we can go back to making custom knives as I enjoy designing them and offering them to the public. But for now I have dropped them completely.

There are a lot of new guns and accessories coming out, hopefully before this falls hunting seasons. For the most part the shortages are still with us. In some way they seem to be worse than earlier this year. But hopefully by this fall some of them will have eased up and ammo will be easier to get along with the new rifles and shotguns.

Until next month if you get a chance to get out and do some shooting or small game hunting, take a youngster or lady with you. They are absolutely our future.

God bless,

Gary