Chad Love: I Dream of English Doubles

I am an unabashed anglophile. I love the British sense of humor and wit. I love British literature and film. I love British culture and history and despite my reservations about food products named after embarrassing medical conditions. I’m even growing fond of British cuisine. But what I love most of all, what I covet more than a personal serenade by British hottie Harriet Wheeler are British shotguns. I never thought anything could tear me away from my beloved and well-used Beretta BL-4. That is, until a few years ago when a local quail guide let me play around with his 20-bore Birmingham-made side-by-side. It was a revelation. That gun felt alive in my hands, and I decided right there I had to have one.

But thanks to the dollar/pound exchange rate even a plain-jane English boxlock double was more – way more – than what I could get by selling my spleen for medical research. Nevertheless, on our last trip over I had this crazy idea I’d visit some London gun shops and find a great deal on a plain workingman’s English double. Yeah. My debit card didn’t survive the airport and I had to find a co-signer just to buy lunch in Covent Garden. My plan was deader than Cromwell. So, dejected and broke, I resigned myself to life with my little Beretta, despite having traveled to Italy and, quite frankly, wondering how anything – much less a fine gun – could get made in a nation where the preferred means of interpersonal communication involves car horns and fist-waving. But then I saw this story and hope welled up once again.

LONDON — The British pound fell to a nearly 25-year low against the dollar and a record low against the yen Wednesday amid mounting fears about the British banking sector and expectations the Bank of England will start pumping money into the economy within weeks.

So what if we’re on the brink of the Greater Depression? Fine firearms are at least as good an investment as anything else out there. And let’s see your 401k bag a rabbit for your starving family. So if ever you wanted a fine English double, now is the time to get it. What else are you going to do with what little money you have left? Invest it in a hedge fund?