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By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

Over this past weekend, Wal-Mart announced that it will no longer sell firearms at about 1,000 of its 3,200 stores. This news was greeted with the expected yowls from the expected sources that:

Americans are finally losing interest in guns. Wal-Mart is betraying a major segment of their customers. Wal-Mart is finally acting like a responsible citizen.

I think it means that Wal-Mart is obeying one of the inexorable laws of commerce, which states that you carry in your stores those items that sell best, and if people would rather buy jockstraps than firearms, why, clear the shelves for all the new athletic supporters.

Or there might be another factor. Last December, I went into the Wal-Mart in Keyser, WV to buy a Styrofoam cooler to transport the last earthly remains of Bambi’s mom. Five different Wal-Mart employees (all friendly and helpful) could not agree whether they had Styrofoam coolers, or where in the store they might be. It turned out they were out of stock.

If I had that much trouble buying something as simple as a Styrofoam cooler, what would have happened if I’d tried to buy a gun? Probably I’d still be there. Maybe that’s why people no longer buy guns at some Wal-Marts.

...

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

Planning to buy that brand new 870 you’ve been eyeing behind the sporting goods desk at Wal-Mart. You’d better act fast. Yours may be among the estimated 1,000 Wal-Mart stores that will soon its drop gun sales. On the bright side, you should be able to find a nice exercise ball or yoga mat, as the plan at many locations is to replace firearms with home fitness products.
http://channels.netscape.com/pf/story.jsp?floc=FF-APO-1333&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20060414%2F1547028321.htm&sc=1333 [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

While looking over the photos of the Marine Corps M40A3 sniper rifle, I was horrified to see that the sling swivels were attached to the side of the stock, rather than the bottom, and assumed that the Corps had now relegated the Model 1907 shooting sling to use merely as a carrying strap. Teach your grandmother to suck eggs! A Marine sniper rifle without a real, working sling is unthinkable.

Closer inspection revealed that it can be mounted on the side of the rifle as a carrying strap, but lurking demurely on the bottom of the McMillan A4 stock was a pair of swivels, one for the issue Harris bipod, and the other for the old M1907. Right where it should be.

Civilians, especially hunters, now tend to ignore the old three-piece M1907. It’s heavy, slow to use unless you practice with it, and far more than you need as a carrying strap. But these slings were once common, and I recall that a lot of hunting rifles came with M1907 slings as standard equipment.

The secret to using one successfully is simple: Get it tight enough so that your left hand goes from red to blue to purple. Then you go through... [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

For anyone in the minority, say hunters for example, the majority is a potential oppressor.

Our second president knew this, of course, famously saying, “That the desires of the majority of people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated on every page of the history of the whole world.”

On Wednesday, the Missouri House of Representatives passed a bill that would prevent a simple majority from limiting hunting and fishing rights via the ballot box. Instead, such measures would require two-thirds approval from voters, which is good news for sportsmen. Still, I’d guess that John Adams wouldn’t be comfortable with a super majority, either.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/14327521.htm [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

. . . you get a lesson in humility. I have a very, very accurate .22 with a Lilja barrel that was installed by gunsmith John Blauvelt, of whom you will read in the June issue of Field & Stream. John gave it a tight chamber, because the less slop there is in .22 rimfire chambers, the better they shoot.

But after a while, the rifle wouldn’t extract the fired brass. So I went whining to John, and asked him to see what was wrong with the extractors. It turned out there was nothing wrong with them.

“Do you clean the gun?” he asked.

“Of course I clean it.”

Well, he put the bore scope up its bore, and lo and behold, there was a disgusting ring of lead and burned powder near the front of the chamber. It had not been removed even by regular cleaning with a bronze-bristle .22 brush.

It turns out that tight-chambered .22s often suffer from this type of loathsome deposit, and the way to get it out is to take a 6mm phospor-bronze brush and scrub the hell out of it. A .22 brush won’t do because it doesn’t fit tight enough. I gave the .22 the treatment and... [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

Last year we posted a spate of reports about the confiscation of firearms from registered gun owners by Louisiana state officials following Hurricane Katrina, as well as the NRA’s reaction to it. Now, the state Senate has unanimously passed a bill that would prevent police from stripping law-abiding citizens of their right to possess legally owned firearms in the event of another emergency or disaster.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-3/114473745211400.xml [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

Teeing up on the par-four fifth at SilverRock Resort in La Quinta, CA, golfers have a decent shot at spying a group of at least six Peninsular bighorn sheep that have been wandering down from the Santa Rosa Mountains onto the fairway. Those who have seen the rare animals have been delighted. What they may not know, however, and what this Desert Sun article points out, is that the rules of golf do not allow relief if the ball comes to rest in an animal’s hoofprint.
http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060412/NEWS07/604120321/1006 [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

The good folks in Longwood, FL, became a tad agitated this past weekend when they noticed a black bear walking down the street and roaming in and out of peoples’ yards. Check out the slide show accompanying the story below (Click on “Photos: Images of Bear”) . While no black bear has ever attacked a Floridian, you probably can’t really blame these folks for getting a little worked up.
http://www.local6.com/news/8590527/detail.html [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

I’ve been reading The New York Times every day since 1959, and in that nearly five decades, I’ve learned that if the Times reports on a gun story, it will screw up. This is not because its reporters are dumb or lazy, it’s because they know nothing about the subject, and are unable to understand what they’re being told.

Yesterday morning, however, I got a bad fright while reading “Armed and Competitive” in the Times’  Business Section. The story was about Smith & Wesson’s journey back from near death, and I was almost at the end of the story when I realized that the writer, one Leslie Wayne, had not made a single mistake.

Beads of sweat formed on my brow. My hands began to shake. My heart switched to an ominous, non-life-sustaining rhythm. Feeling like a man taking a stroll to the gas chamber, I got to the next paragraph, and…saved !

According to Ms. Wayne, “The company has come up with a single-shot rifle that is the law enforcement version of a military assault-style weapon. The rifle, the M&P15, is popular with police departments as an alternative to pump shotguns.”

Wow, I thought, those are some ballsy cops who are willing to... [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

It’s hardly news that some Missourians believe cougars live in their midst, some don’t, and they tend to argue about it. But now, state conservation commissioners have put a new iron in the fire by voting to remove the mountain lion from the state endangered species list, saying that the species’ restoration is not desirable.  Lo and behold, some people disagree.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/14298492.htm [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

You, fellow bloggers, can help us here. We’re trying to decide whether to include rants on gun legislation in this space, but we’re of two minds:

One mind says, “They don’t want to hear about it. It’s the same stuff over and over, and it’s depressing. They’ll get it elsewhere, so don’t bother.”

The other mind says: “What kind of Americans are we? Our duty is to get the word out, whether  people are amused by it or not. If we lose our guns, we lose our phony baloney jobs, and will end up as editors at McCalls or The New Yorker.

So now it’s your turn, fellow bloggers.  What do we do? [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

Who manages our borders is a question of some concern these days, but here’s one thing we can feel totally secure about: As long as the US Fish and Wildlife Service is on the job, there will be no fishy flies entering the country. Just ask well-known Canadian fly-tier Warren Duncan. USFWS officials have finally cracked down on him, turning back one of his shipments to L.L. Bean and making him account for the contents of each fly. Previously, Warren had been getting away supplying American anglers with beautiful handcrafted salmon and trout flies without incident for some 30 years from his shop in east Saint John. The scoundrel.
http://www.cbc.ca/nb/story/nb_flytieredtape20060406.html [ Read Full Post ]