Culture Shock!!

I welcomed a new member to our extended family a few years back.  

He's a Brit who just retired from their Royal Air Force.  He was one of those special guys made out of spring steel, who needs not air or water or food to survive, and who made a career out of jumping out of helicopters and shooting bad guys.  All over the world.  From the ramp of a C-130...at 25,000 feet.  So you'll understand why I was anxious to welcome him aboard.

A family can always use a few more studs...

(BTW, he'll get his own window to defend here at "Fortress Chuckmeister" when "the balloon" finally goes up.  And it's surely going nowhere but up...)

Anyway, he married a beautiful niece of mine and they just moved back to Temecula from "Jolly Old."  So we got together for a BBQ the other day.  And while there the subject of the massacre at Uvalde and all the other Uvalde's came up.  And of course, the subject of gun control here in America came up right behind it.    

My new family member, "Jon" let's call him, knowing I'm sort of an expert on all things guns, asked my thoughts on the subject.  He opined that it's so different in England where nobody's supposed to have guns, and here, where nearly every right-thinking soul has guns.  (I added that "right-thinking" part there).  I thought for a minute, then told him to sit back and contemplate the following scenario from my past, and see how it might be viewed in the context of today.  

Firstly, I told Jon, one must consider the vast difference in the culture of gun ownership and usage between the U. S. and Britain.   We have the absolute, inherent, individual Right to own and use firearms ("...to keep and bear,"*), I reminded him.  But the Brits, and all of Europe and the entire world, are only afforded the privilege of using some firearms, by some elites,  some of the time.  And why we Americans so jealously guard our Right to - and of - self-defense.  And how when I was a kid everybody owned a gun, and as we used to say, should be considered "armed and dangerous."

Yet, there were no mass shootings.  There were no shootings of any kind.  There was no crime!  And if that shocks you, let me tell you a bit about my rather unusual upbringing... 

I was born and raised in the upper Midwest, I told Jon.  My Dad was a champion pistol, rifle and shotgun shot and he used to take me to competition matches with him.  So I naturally gravitated to hunting and the shooting sports.  So much so that I was entrusted with my first .22 caliber Stevens single-shot, bolt action rifle when I was barely 8 years old (imagine the howls among today's urban "Progressives!").  A friend of my Dad's owned a gun store, and as they said back then, he "took a liken' to me."  So much so he took me in as an apprentice gunsmith when I was only 12 years old!  And by the age of 13 or 14 I was building custom bespoke hunting and varmint rifles for my mentor's customers (slave labor!  I was slaving away in the back of his store after school and on weekends and Kenney Frost was selling my labor as his own!  Kidding, not kidding...).  

But while I was doing that I was also becoming first a Cub Scout, then later a Boy Scout, then an Explorer Scout, and finally an Asst. Scoutmaster all the way into my early 'twenties.  My Dad was the Scoutmaster and my gun store mentor was his Assistant.  In short, I learned everything there was to know about the Great Outdoors.  And firearms.  About working with my hands.  About applying myself and paying attention, when not doing so might kill me.  And about hunting and survival and staying alive in the often harsh outdoors.  I not only could go spent a week camping in the wild, I did.  Often.  And often with friends.  Friends who often knew as much about the outdoors as did I.  That was the time in which we lived, I told Jon, and the place where we lived.  

And it was glorious...

So anyway, I decided one day to also build a custom varmint rifle for myself.  And it, I told Jon, was to be my masterpiece (Jon is the namesake of the hero of the Terminator series, BTW!  He speaks softly and could kill you with anything that happens to be laying around.  It just couldn't get anymore perfect!).  

To get started, I told Jon, I bought a 30" Timken Bearing steel "bull" barrel blank with a 1" in 16" right hand twist, and chambered in .270 Winchester caliber.  That's a good, all-around caliber for deer, bear, antelope and moose, I told him, as well as for small varmints like woodchucks and prairie dogs when loaded light with hollow point bullets.  

He probably already knew that.  

I paired the barrel with a '98 Mauser Magnum, five-lug bolt-action, and then braised the two together into a working barreled action on my workbench.

I then cold-blued the barreled action over a period of several days.  It featured a lustrous, deep blue sheen that was a thing of beauty.  My Dad was so proud of it he took it to the pool hall with him to show it off to the "boys," I told Jon.   

My cousin was a guy named Reinhardt Fagen, I told Jon, and he was the foremost gunstock maker in all of America at the time.  He lived near the Lake of the Ozarks, which is just about my favorite place on Earth.  He offered me a slightly-flawed, so slight you couldn't see it, Circassian Fiddleback  beavertail-fore end walnut stock for only a few dollars, as I recall, and I snapped it up with many thanks.  It was probably worth a week's pay, I remember thinking at the time.  

I then spent more than 100 hours hand-fitting the rough-hewn, semi-inletted stock blank to my barreled action.  That involved using a rat tail file to slowly, carefully open the channel for the barrel in the stock.  And then hogging out the perfect place for the action to sit.  And of course, I told Jon I fiberglass-bedded the action into the stock and made sure the barrel was free-floating.  I could put a dollar bill around the barrel and move it all the way to the action without it touching.  That guaranteed the barrel would never touch the stock and heat expansion of the stock from rapid fire would never effect the point of aim.  And of course a mirror finish on the stock had to be gained by dedicating hours and hours and hours of hand polishing.  

Hours and hours.  

My Mom thought I was weird for spending so much time on a piece of wood.  My Dad tried to explain it to her, but it's a guy thing I think...  

The stock once fitted with my barreled action was a thing of beauty.  It was literally a piece of art.  The fiddleback grain from the wood shown through like magic.  Even Fagen posted a picture of my work above his cash register!  High praise, indeed!  

The stock featured a full cheekpiece and a beavertail fore end, as well as quick-detachable swivels and a one-arm leather sling.    

I then fitted my masterpiece with a Lyman Wolverine 10 x power telescopic sight, I told Jon, using helium-filled Redfield Jr. scope mounts.  I'm sure that tiny bit of helium helped a lot, I told Jon, because the entire rifle once put together weighed some 13 and 1/2 pounds.  Imagine carrying that beast around in the woods all day long!  But remember, it was designed to be a varmint rifle, accurate to more than 600 yards.  And heavy ain't a problem if you're out for accuracy...

Anyway, I finished the package off, I told Jon, with a Jaeger Trigger and an Ace trigger shoe.  The trigger was infinitely adjustable as to "break," to the extent you could cock the hammer with the rifle on the east-west level, I told Jon, and then rotate it to vertical, north/south, and the weight of the one-ounce trigger would cause it to fire.  Now that's fully adjustable!  

The results?  This rifle was built to produce super-accurate long-range performance, and it did!  I used necked-down .30-06 Caliber Norma cartridge cases and 110 grain Sierra brand bullets, along with 55 grains of Dupont #4350 powder as my preferred hand load (I handloaded all my ammunition, of course.  Didn't every pre-teen?).  This load produced phenomenal results.  How about five shots into a playing card from 600 yards away?  Every single time.  Good enough?

Jon's eyes had glazed over by the time I stopped giving him the background.  He'd long since stopped trying to gather in all the extraneous facts I'd been throwing out and simply stayed silent, as befitted his proper English upbringing.  Nodding periodically to seem interested.  But I sensed he was trying to ferret out why I'd been telling him all this.  And so were other members of my family.  And then I summed it all up for him, and them.  I decided this rifle I'd built was so magnificent that it needed to be shared with my other Upper Midwestern, 1950's, 12th Grade classmates.  So I of course brought it to... 

                   "Show and Tell."

Since I was kind of a nerdy kid at the time (ya' think?), I was delighted that my classmates loved my presentation!  I even captured the attention of a particular girl I was interested in at the time.  Did the school get locked down?  Did the sheriff and the highway patrol get called?  Did somebody yell, "Active shooter!  Get under your desks!?"  No, no they didn't.  They listened to my presentation with rapt attention.  And were all jealous as Hell of my creation.  As well they should.  I bought it in pieces, I hand-finished each and every one of those pieces over a six-month period into a finely-tuned, glorious piece of art.  A piece of mechanical art that could keep you in meat should we ever get to "Mad Max" time.  And I thought I was due the recognition such an accomplishment might bring.

So when it was over I left the building and proceeded to hop on my bike (!) to leave, sporting subject varmint rifle slung over my shoulder.  Before I could leave the Principal who'd watched my presentation called me over.  He congratulated me, told me my rifle was beautiful and asked if he could borrow it sometime!  

Now THAT'S the difference between then and now.  We had guns, God did we have guns!  EVERYBODY had guns!  There was not a single pickup truck in the parking lot of the school that didn't have two rifles and a shotgun on a rack in the back window.  And those belonged to the teachers!  But we also had parents.  Two of them.  And they had Paddles of Mass Correction.  And they knew how to use them!  That's how kids managed to grow from kids to adults back then without shooting up a grocery store.  Or a school.    

I think we need to bring some of that back again, don't you?

*  2nd Amendment, Bill of Rights, Constitution of the United States of America.  They come as a boxed-set, BTW, and you can't "pick and choose" like in a Chinese restaurant.  Don't like the 2nd Amendment?  Vote to change it...