A couple of Saturdays ago, the Elfen Niece and I attended a cookout down on the river at a place owned by Buckshot's youngest son. The son, a couple of grandsons and one of their friends were there for a day of grilling, relaxing and a little shooting.
I brought along a few guns for the younger crowd to try out. They quickly learned that you do not make a habit of shooting your steel pistol target with a 25-06. The Accubomb penetrated the steel spinner, the jacket fused to the inside of the hole and the core landed in the next County. It probably actually did since the place is on the County Line.
I brought along a 12 ga Parker VHE and some Vintager shells so the youngsters could shoot a 12 ga without getting beat up. They each got to shoot a 101 year old GEW 98 too.
The friend brought along some kind of big plastic 9mm that he just bought cheap and proceeded to shoot about a five foot group. I don't think he ever even hit the paper. I don't think the problem was the gun. It could have been a smooth bore and shot a better group at seven yards.
I wanted to show off TEN's Remington R51 so she shot next. She hit two bullseyes and the rest were in the black too. We refrained from commenting on the previous shooter's suckage and let the others try a few shots with the Remington. Everybody liked it for all the right reasons: ease of racking the slide, ease of loading and less felt recoil that most 9mms of similar size. All expressed appreciation for the grip safety too.
Less than a week later, I was talking to a couple who are just getting into shooting and have a Ruger LCR. The lady is partially disabled and has limited manual dexterity. As with Aunt Clickity, she found that she could operate the LCR while she could not operate any of the automatics she had tried. Instead of listening to expert advice and getting something just dripping with Tacti-coolness that she couldn't shoot, she got something she can shoot. She voted for Trump too.
I saw her target. She had 15 out of 15 rounds in the black and it was the first time she had fired the LCR and only the second time she had been shooting. The LCR is a good fit for her but the husband asked what I thought of Hi Point and what I'd recommend instead of his Hi Point since it hasn't worked since he fired the first round.
We talked about different handguns. He wanted something less expensive than the LCR and automatics were definitely options for him. We talked about the Kimber BelAir and several others. Naturally, with the R51 fresh in my mind, I got around to talking about it.
The trouble is the R51 was at home in TEN's room so I didn't have it with me to show them how well it does what it does. The obvious solution was to buck up and get myself my own R51. Seriously. Are we still living in America or aren't we? Gears started turning and eventually churned out a plausible justification for it: "if I sell these two I will make $300 more than I will spend on the R51..." I began to look around.
Gooseburg couldn't get anybody to even look at them until I bought one back before Thanksgiving (seriously, the sales guy said he'd never had one out of the display case) but now they were sold out. Its never easy to get waited on there and I tried twice just so I could ask if they'd be getting anymore in but had to give up for lack of time.
On a whim, I decided to check one of the older, local sporting goods stores. They are known for their high prices but I figured it couldn't hurt to look. Danged if they didn't have one for twenty bucks less than Gooseburg's last known price and danged if I don't have it now.
So now I will be selling a couple of guns and participating in the Wussification of America by carrying a gun in a caliber that doesn't start with Four. I'm still trying to figure out whether this was caused by advancing age or the block of Tofu I found in the pantry last weekend. Whatever the cause, I don't know when I've liked a carry gun this much.