Fair enough. Since I was a small child I was consumed by
reading stories about big game hunting and the choice of guns associated
therewith. Way back when, writers didn’t
refer to guns as “weapons” because weapons were tools to be used on bad guys as
in times of war. Even bad guys, as in
“cops and robbers,” were not subject to having tools of their trade called
“weapons,” but rather guns.
The “rule was always that a rifle
was a rifle, a shotgun was a shotgun, and a pistol was a pistol. And, all that changed, too.
A rifle was something that was
shoulder-fired and generally required two hands to shoot. Someone blurred the definition by insisting
that a rifle was not a “real” rifle if it was not firing a centerfire
cartridge. That’s incorrect – if it shot
a rimfire cartridge, it was called a rimfire rifle and dismissed as sort of a
toy, rather than a real method of shooting targets or gathering food.
It should be kept in mind that shooting
a rimfire rifle, accurately, at a 100 yard target requires genuine skill, and
that is more than a “toy” can usually deliver.
Besides, rimfire rifles have been filling pots and freezers for
generations with squirrels and rabbits and other critters, and those bunnies
and bushy tails don’t consider them as child’s accessories by any stretch of
the imagination.
Then we arrive at the controversy
of pistols, and what to appropriately call them. When first invented in the 1700’s, they were
called “flintlock pistols.” Eventually,
they were modernized with new percussion firing mechanisms and renamed
“percussion pistols.” For your
information, both of those pistols fired only one shot before needing to be
reloaded.
Oddly enough, for all you
self-centered jerks, the term “pistol” does not refer to semi-automatic
handguns, only! It seems as though any
writer who refers to a revolver as a pistol has just committed a mortal sin. Get a life.
Then there are “real” outdoor
scribes who want their readers to believe they need to buy a .22/250, .257
Roberts, or a .25/06 rifle to shoot a 20 to 45 pound coyote. They also pimp range-finding scopes that sell
for “only” $850. Not real world stuff
for a small potatoes guy like me.
All this leads me to cringe when
these buffoons spew their overly thoughtful comments to anti-gun folks in op-ed
newspaper and magazine columns, and on radio shows.
They make my innocent .22
squirrel gun sound as though it came off the battlefield in the Middle East, or
my wallet sound as if it was filled chock full of crisp fifties. Neither is true.
My squirrel gun is a hold-over
from 1970, my wallet is gasping for gas and bait money.
So, unless some Eastern Shore
farmer allows us Virginia
