![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Temper; Mine, Guns; Mine
Oct. 4th, 2013 09:22 amI have to admit I lost my temper (online only, thankfully) a bit yesterday. I was (and am) very irritated at Suspects, Usual and Otherwise, for somehow not understanding that "shutting down the government" does in fact mean closing things like National Parks and monuments. Although these things may not need constant maintenance, they do need maintenance and, if open to the public, patrolling. (Not everybody is nice, smart or prepared.) Maintenance and patrolling cost money, which the government is not allowed to spend at the moment. I could segue from this into a general rant about how conservatives seem to define small government as "that government which I personally like and/or benefit from" but I'll skip.
Instead I'll talk about guns. Somewhere on this site (can't find the exact post now) the proprietor said "unpopular guns are unpopular for a reason." She then went on to comment that in this case the unpopular gun didn't function well and was awkward to use.
I do have to say that there are some "popular" guns (defined here as 'lots made') that suffer from those defects (see, for example, the Japanese Nambu pistols) although usually such weapons are popularized by virtue of being bought in quantity by governments. But in any case I own two unpopular guns, namely a Ruger Red Label shotgun and an Ultrastar 9mm pistol.
They are both unpopular guns, and no longer made. However, in both cases I know why they are unpopular, and it's not fit and function. The shotgun was Ruger's attempt to enter a (very crowded) market, and simply never caught on with shotgunners. The pistol was made by a Spanish company, Star Bonifacio Echeverria, which went out of business in the post-Cold-War shakeout of the defense industry. In short, the guns work, but the manufacturers moved on.
Instead I'll talk about guns. Somewhere on this site (can't find the exact post now) the proprietor said "unpopular guns are unpopular for a reason." She then went on to comment that in this case the unpopular gun didn't function well and was awkward to use.
I do have to say that there are some "popular" guns (defined here as 'lots made') that suffer from those defects (see, for example, the Japanese Nambu pistols) although usually such weapons are popularized by virtue of being bought in quantity by governments. But in any case I own two unpopular guns, namely a Ruger Red Label shotgun and an Ultrastar 9mm pistol.
They are both unpopular guns, and no longer made. However, in both cases I know why they are unpopular, and it's not fit and function. The shotgun was Ruger's attempt to enter a (very crowded) market, and simply never caught on with shotgunners. The pistol was made by a Spanish company, Star Bonifacio Echeverria, which went out of business in the post-Cold-War shakeout of the defense industry. In short, the guns work, but the manufacturers moved on.
