By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

I recently got a plaintive letter (it smelled strongly of government cheese) from a young man who asked me to write something about cheap rifles that ordinary people could afford. Very well.

During my formative years as a shooter, I was as poor as a church mouse (actually, a church mouse was too wealthy to be me) and could only afford cheap rifles. The first centerfire rifle I bought was a Model 340 Savage in .222, and it was a true inanimate hideosity. It cost something like $50 used (in 1961), but it shot acceptably and went bang when you pulled the trigger.

My next rifle was also a Savage--a new Model 110 left-hand .22/250. It was a  better than the .340, but not much. It had a soda-straw barrel with a rear-sight bulge (but no rear sight), a stock that would have doubled nicely as a canoe paddle, and a 15-pound trigger with lots of creep. But it was cheap.

Eventually I replaced the stock and had the trigger stoned down to a dangerously light pull, but I still had a cheap rifle.

It was about this time that I met John Dewey, Larry Koller, and Russ Carpenter who, along with their other talents, were fine gunsmiths, and took the trouble to explain to me that a cheap rifle almost always had something major wrong with it, and would not allow you to do your best shooting (or in some cases, even acceptable shooting), and that no matter how you cobbled on it, it would never really be right.

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

I have been asked what the high point of my job as a shooting editor has been, and it has nothing to do with guns. It occurred in Anchorage Airport at 3:30 AM about ten years ago when the lady agent at the ticket counter and I discovered that we both knew the lyrics to "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha," which made it to #3 on the Billboard charts in the summer of 1966 before it was yanked off the air.

Recited by someone who billed himself as Napoleon XIV, the song was deemed offensive to the mentally ill, and the ticket agent and I recited the whole thing at the top of our lungs, causing the airport cops who were listening to unsnap the straps on their holsters. I have a 45 rpm record of it and play it because it irritates my wife intensely. You can find the lyrics on the Internet with very little trouble.

From the Mini Gun/Suburban Post. The cyclic rate of fire for the original modern-day Gatling, the 20mm Vulcan, was 6,000 rounds per minute. The current 7.62mm Mini Gun, the M-134, has an adjustable cyclic rate of 1,000 to 10,000 rounds per minute. Hoo boy! When I was in the Army, they told us that at 6,000 rpm you could put a round in every square inch of a football field in 60 seconds. Who figured that out I have no idea. A fighter jock I know (F-15s) says that at the rate his 30mm cannon spits out the lead, he has about 6 seconds of gun time. Why not carry more? Because it weighs a ton.

A blogger who signs himself Anon (for Anonymous, I presume) tells me to get over my irrational hatred of Hillary--she's not that bad, he says. To which I reply:
I do not hate Hillary, but she is a natural object of scorn, mockery, and derision, as is her husband. Some politicians lend themselves to this naturally. For example, I got this photo from three different sources in the space of an hour.

Others do not. Anyone heard any good Ron Paul jokes recently?

As for her likely performance in the nation's highest office, I believe she would do us in. If there still was a United States at the end of her term it would not elect another woman president for 100 years.

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

I got seriously interested in rifles in the late 1950s, and being a sensitive and intelligent lad, I quickly realized that there was something terribly wrong in that particular universe. My first .22, a Winchester Model 77, spit bits of brass and gunpowder into my right eye. When I shot on a summer camp rifle team cinched up in a military sling, my right thumb was more or less permanently implanted in my nose. I was, you see, a left-handed shooter in a right-handed world.

In 1958, Weatherby came out with a left-hand Mark V, but it cost $200, and who had $200? In that same year, Savage announced the left-hand Model 110, but while serviceable and affordable, it was no rifle for a person of taste and culture like myself.

And so I swore that one day I would make rifles so wonderful that everyone would lust after them, but they would be made left-hand only, and right handers could only grind their teeth in envy. Well, I got into this business instead, but someone else has done what I swore to do. His name is Mike Morreal, and his company is called Bedrock Industries.

Bedrock is the distributor for Noveske Rifleworks LLC, which is run by a gifted and meticulous gunsmith named John Noveske. There are two lines of Noveske rifles. One is left-hand bolt-action sporters; the other is true left-hand ARs in various configurations. They do not make right-hand guns. I’ve wanted to write that sentence for 50 years so I'll do it again. They do not make right-hand guns.

I haven't seen the ARs but I have shot a Noveske bolt-action in .280, and I can tell you that there is no one doing better work. The gun is so good that, if I were a right-handed shooter, I would be grinding my teeth. In both design and quality there is simply no way to improve it.

Eat your livers, right-handed swine!

For details and prices and more pictures, go to lefthandrifles.com.

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

Brass is wonderful, malleable stuff, and about 30 seconds after the first brass cartridge saw the light of day, someone undoubtedly beheld that case and thought that if they could modify it to get a little more powder in it, they could really get the sumbitch cooking. Thus was wildcatting born, and The Great Wildcatting Boom lasted roughly from the end of World War I until the mid-1960s. During that time, factory loads were necked up, necked down, given different shoulder shapes, less body taper, and endowed with fanciful names. Many wondrous claims were made for them, and the shooting public lapped it up.

The most popular approach was to "improve" a cartridge. It involved firing a factory case in an improved chamber, which caused the case to re-form itself with a sharper shoulder, less body taper, and somewhat greater powder capacity. The wildcatter would then stuff it full of powder, shoot it, listen to the ear-splitting crack it made, and claim whatever velocity he felt was appropriate.

Until the 1970s chronographs were rare indeed, and these claims went unchallenged. But as time went on, chronographs became simple and handy, and they took most of the steam out of the wildcatters. Almost simultaneously, ammo makers snapped out of their lethargy and began producing new cases at a far faster rate than anyone could use them. This is still going on today.

If you want more velocity than you already have, you must look for at least 200 fps more. Anything less is ballistic onanism. And the only way to get that kind of an increase is by burning a lot more powder. To do this, you need a bigger case. So, if you have a .270 and need more speed, you do not torture it into a slightly different shape. You buy a .270 Weatherby or a .270 WSM.

Wildcatting was not altogether futile. Roy Weatherby's line of cartridges were once wildcats, as was the .22/250, .35 Whelen, the .25/06, the .243 and 6mm, the .257 Roberts, and on, and on. Wild claims or no, they were good, useful cartridges and they've lasted. Most of it, though, was just a lot of hot air--but people had fun, and that's what matters. This is, after all, a hobby.