One of my yearly traditions is to "winterize" my guns. This involves tearing each one down, cleaning, inspecting, oiling; etc regardless of the last time I shot them or even touched them, along with trying to find a more creative way to fit them all in the 3 gun safes I have. This involves a copious amount of cursing and the inevitable conclusion that I simply must forego the next two gun purchases on my want list and get a fourth safe.
I think we're all familiar with the classic anxiety dream of being back in high school or college and knowing we have a test to take but can't find our schedule, or the room or open our locker or whatnot.
I have a variation of that dream in which I am under attack and can't remember the combination to my gun safes or the even more common scenario where I can get the safe open and everything is a pile of rust, or I can't find the right mag for the gun I want to defend myself with or I can't find the right ammo if I find the mag. Inside the dream, it's a maddening search filled with regret for not preparing.
Another variation is that I come across guns inside my safes I don't remember ever buying.......and can't find any mags or ammo for them.
Well...damn...now the dream has become reality.
If the average gun owner owns 4 guns, I have twice that number of guns I've never even fired for a wide variety of reasons.
I emptied all the safes and did inventory....................I came across a bolt action .223 with a bushnell scope that for the life of me...........I have no memory of ever buying.
I am an honorable person and must now call my buddy and ask him if it's his and we somehow had a mix-up swap when loading up after a range trip; something which has never occurred before.
When considering my collection, it is feasible............but if I get to the point of discovering a gun safe I have no memory of ever buying, I'm going to stop eating spicy food after 7pm and hope that restores the universe back to something I know and understand.
III %
2 comments:
When my father-in-law passed we went over to his house to secure all the firearms, in case someone read the obituary and got ideas...
For quite a while he had been the person in his family that widowed aunts and grand-aunts had given old guns that were lying around the house. He had a dozen old shotguns, a bunch of rifles, and not a gun safe in sight. So we had to look under beds, in the back of closets, under couches, etc.
We had a good pile going on one bed, and someone came across a box of .45-70. After checking what we had found, we renewed our searches and finally found the missing rifle (and a couple more shotguns).
Long story short, buy some oddball caliber ammo so someday someone will tear apart your house looking for the missing gun :)
after my dad passed, I took it upon myself to make a listing of what guns we had in the house.
a few years later, cleaning out the garage, we found more. among them a stainless S&W .44 magnum.
then at the back of the closet, an M1 carbine and a pump shotgun..kept for a friend who was under a restraining order who never came back for them.
we're still slowly going through the garage. and we're still finding more guns. last week it was a cased match colt woodsman from the late 30's with what is probably ivory grips carved with a large thumbrest.
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