M's New Toy

I wasn't going to blog about this. M sent me the picture a couple of days ago, so proud a pappa that I'm surprised he didn't enclose a cigar.

Now, while I think it's just as cool as muscle cars it isn't the sort of thing I'd normally think to blog about. Somebody, I thought, will see this and get all worked up about "illegal guns." We don't have any illegal guns because we find that legal ones work just fine, but still the long gun of choice for most of us would have the uninitiated yelling about "machine guns" and such. You know the drill. What needn't be known shouldn't be known even though there's nothing illegal about it.

I told M I wasn't going to blog about it, and his face kinda fell. So okay: I'm blogging about it. And further, I will now express my true, honest opinion of it:

IS THIS THING COOL, OR WHAT???

Gad, I want one.

M has been brooding over this little thing like a mama chicken for six months or more. He had the barrel and gas tube cut down quite a while ago, obtained the buttstock (funny story there) 'way back in the summer of '09, and I don't know how long he's had the receiver. But because it's a short-barreled rifle, he couldn't assemble it until he got the NFA tax stamp. And that took over six months from the time he made the application and paid the fee.

Yes, M has joined the august ranks of the "NFA Firearm Collectors." Statist.

Anyway they finally sent him the tax stamp, and about fifteen microseconds later he had built the rifle and was longing, longing for a chance to come shoot it.

So Friday night when he and Landlady traditionally come in, I'm usually all bedded down with the dogs. But last Friday I happened to be sitting up reading. I saw them come in, the dogs could hardly have left me in doubt about that, but I didn't expect a visit until the next morning, when Landlady and I are in the habit of getting together for coffee. Instead, before they could have unpacked the car M is at my door. "Joel? You up?" See, I would never have forgiven him if he hadn't come show me his new baby right away. Riiiight.

So you know some early-morning gunfire was in the offing. And maybe we were a bit early with that. But I just got off the phone with my neighbor J, and it seems we accidentally caused a bit of an incident.

J's wife H heard what she thought was automatic gunfire early in the morning, and alerted the neighbors who were all properly outraged and scandalized. The, er, version of the story I heard is that "unknown strangers" were suspected, but...