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Archive for the ‘Smith and Wesson’ Category
Random gun crankery, some hoplobibliophilia.
Thursday, June 9th, 2022Random gun crankery, some filler.
Tuesday, May 24th, 2022Long delayed BAG Day update:
It took a while to get things lined up (my local gun shop had trouble getting in touch with their S&W rep) but I have my birthday gun on order. Unfortunately, there’s a 60 day lead time from S&W on that gun, so I don’t expect to see it before the end of June.
In the meantime, though, my local gun shop took in a foster Smith and Wesson. It looked so sad and lonely sitting in the display case all by itself. Plus, they had a very reasonable price tag on it, and…well…I adopted it. Details and photos to come eventually. It really isn’t much to write home about. There’s a fair amount of wear, but the trigger feels good, it is something I can easily slip into a pocket or carry inside the waistband, and it was $250+tax out the door (thanks to my local gun shop knocking $50 off the tagged price: yes, this is an endorsement).
Tomorrow, I’m heading down to Houston for the NRA Annual Meeting. Blogging will be catch as catch can, but I’m hoping to get in some reports from the road, and maybe even get a chance to handle a few cool things.
Market report.
Thursday, February 24th, 2022Last year, Mike the Musicologist and I were talking about stuff. MtM suggested it might be interesting to take the money from our stimulus checks and invest it…in gun related stocks.
Thus was born what I refer to as “the gun hedge fund”, even though it technically isn’t a hedge fund. It is more just a collection of gun related stocks that I think have good growth potential. I have one (or in some cases, two) shares in each of the following companies:
- American Outdoor Brands (AOUT)
- Big 5 Sporting Goods (BGFV)
- Olin Corporation (OLN)
- Smith and Wesson Brands International (SWBI)
- Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings (SPWH)
- Sturm Ruger and Company Inc. (RGR)
- Vista Outdoor Inc. (VSTO) (Fark REI.)
I haven’t really been “trading”, per se. I’ve bought these stocks to hold, and any dividends I’ve reinvested in more stocks. This is just for fun, and experimental purposes. It’s also a way to use money that I’d otherwise probably have spent on whisky and women, or just wasted.
This has been going on for exactly a year today. What have the results been so far? Well, I funded the account with $408.10. As of the close of the markets today, my positions (and accumulated cash) are worth…
…$417.82. So I’ve made $9.72 on gun stocks over the past year, or roughly 2.3% on my initial investment. That includes the dividends I’ve received and reinvested over the past 12 months ($21.38), so, on the whole, I’ve probably lost money.
Better than what I would have made if I put the money in a savings account. I’m not too stressed, since I’m mostly doing this for fun.
Who did the best? As far as I can tell, Olin (bought at $32.78, closed today at $48.82) and Vista Outdoor (bought at $33.38, closed today at $34.39).
I can’t find a way in the Schwab app to graph the entire history of this account over the past 12 months, but looking at the history of all of my accounts, I was actually doing pretty well right up until February 21st. Then my accounts fell off a cliff. I blame the Ukraine and the vertical integration of the broiler industry for that.
Two side notes:
1) For all the complaints I have about work, this job has let me personally own stock for the first time in my life. I already had a Schwab account because I’ve been buying company stock on the employee purchase plan, so it was easy to open a second account for the gun hedge fund independent of that. The hardest part was moving the money from my bank to Schawb. (I think I also had to send them an ID.)
2) My employee stock purchase plan had $205 cash in it that I couldn’t do anything with: I couldn’t buy more company stock, and if there’s a way to reinvest dividends, I haven’t found it yet. So yesterday I opened a second personal account, because I wanted to keep the gun hedge fund as a thing by itself, and bought…one share of Apple.
Apple closed today at $162.74. I bought this morning at $152.42, so I’m already up $10.32 on that one share of AAPL, or more than the gun hedge fund made in the past 12 months.
Gratuitous gun porn (#4 in a series)
Thursday, June 19th, 2014For reasons I can’t fully explain, I’ve wanted a revolver chambered in .45 ACP.
When I went to my first S&WCA convention in Sturbridge, I was able to shoot one at the Smith and Wesson Shooting Sports Center. The gun I rented was a Model 625 JM. (The “JM” is for “Jerry Miculek”, who shoots for the Smith and Wesson factory team. The 625 is the gun he used to fire 12 shots in under three seconds, including a reload.) Model 625 revolvers show up used fairly frequently, and I’ve been tempted by them. But either I’ve not had the ready cash, or haven’t quite been able to overcome my bias against shiny guns. (Also, many of the used ones I’ve seen have these kind of pastel grips, for want of a better description, and those also turn me off.)
I think my affection for the .45 ACP revolver has something to do with being drawn to the oddball and unusual. With most revolver cartridges – your .38 Special, .357 Magnum, .44 Special/Magnum, etc. – the cartridge has a rim around the bottom. When you go to unload your revolver, there’s a little metal piece (“extractor star”) that catches the rim and pushes the cartridge out of the cylinder. With most automatic pistol cartridges – 9mm, .40 S&W, .45 ACP – the cartridge doesn’t have a rim, so there’s nothing for that bit to catch on, and the cartridge remains stuck in the chamber until you push it out with something like a pencil or cleaning rod.
This wasn’t a big deal until World War I. The military couldn’t get 1911 automatic pistols fast enough to supply everyone who needed a sidearm. Their other choice was to issue revolvers, but they didn’t want to deal with the logistics of having both an automatic pistol and a revolver caliber. They wanted revolvers that could easily use the same .45 ACP cartridge that the 1911 used. One of S&W’s engineers invented something called the “moon clip”, which comes in “half” and “full” moon variants. Cartridges snap into cutouts in the clip (a half-moon clip has three cutouts, a full moon clip has six), and then the clip is loaded into the gun. When you go to unload, the extractor star catches the moon clip and pushes it, and the fired cases, out of the gun. Moon clips are basically a primitive form of speedloader. Not that it matters that much in a defensive gun, but they are also a lot cheaper than a speedloader. (Amazon will sell you an eight pack of full moon clips
(Side note: you can also get revolvers and moon clips in 9mm and .40 S&W. There’s also been a trend towards moon clips in some of S&W’s .357 Magnum revolvers.)
Here’s a video from YouTube that explains how moon clips work. And no, I’m not just dropping this here for my own reference.
After the jump, more words! More pictures! You can do anything with words and pictures!
We do the legwork so you don’t have to.
Monday, October 1st, 2012Since I posted twice about the auction that included some of Bonnie and Clyde’s guns, I felt that I owed it to my loyal readers (all four of them) to give some final results. All of these are by way of Invaluable.com, which notes that these prices have not yet been verified.
Bonnie’s Colt Detective Special went for $220,000.
Clyde’s Colt in “Fitz Special” style went for $37,000.
A 1911 that Clyde had in his waistband during the ambush went for $200,000.
The S&W Hand Ejector went for $41,000, against a pre-sale estimate of $75,000 – $100,000.
The “Baby Face” Nelson S&W “Safety Hammerless” went for $17,000, against a pre-sale estimate of $40,000 – $50,000.
I’m not sure what to make of these two Smiths. It may be that “Baby Face” Nelson associational items don’t have the same draw as Bonnie and Clyde, but I’m not sure why Clyde’s S&W didn’t meet expectations. Perhaps the fact that it has been re-finished had something to do with that…
And the Emmett Dalton .44 Russian top-break went for $15,000, against a pre-sale estimate of $25,000 – $30,000.
(Edited to add: Invaluable.com requires you to have an account and be signed in before showing prices, so if you don’t see prices at those links, that’s why.
Also, thinking about it some more, the 1911 and Bonnie’s Colt were probably big money guns because they were actually recovered from Bonnie and Clyde’s bodies after the ambush. The S&W was apparently in the car, but not found on either of them, and the “Fitz” was recovered from a car stolen by Clyde. So that may explain the pricing. Maybe. What do I know?)
(Edited to add 10/2: Here’s the report direct from RR Auction, which gives the prices including bidder’s premium. Invaluable’s prices apparently did not include that figure.)
Delicious tears.
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010Apparently, I have been out of the loop, as I was unaware until today that Smith & Wesson has introduced a pistol version of the M&P15-22 which uses the standard M&P15-22 magazines. I guess they’re trying to compete with things like the GSG-5.
After handling one, I really can’t see the point; the gun is too big and heavy to shoot like a handgun, and can’t really be fired effectively like a rifle. It looks like it’d be a fun gun for plinking and other putzing around, except for size and bulk considerations.
Other than that, the only purpose I can see is making Sarah Brady and her ilk scream and cry and wet their pants. That’s a pretty good purpose, but I’m not sure that it would be worth $400+ to me.
(I will add that Austin Gun Liquidators is a very nice store. They don’t have quite the used selection Tex-Guns has, but they’re about five minutes from work and open until 6 PM Tuesday-Saturday. Their price on M&P15-22 magazines was pretty reasonable as well.)
Clippings
Thursday, July 30th, 2009I’m not exactly sure how to describe this *NYT* story; I would use the phrase “human interest”, but it’s actually about a revolver. Specifically, a vintage S&W .32 Hand Ejector that fell out of a perp’s waistband, went off, and hit a cop.
The revolver was traced to the Smith & Wesson plant in Springfield, Mass., according to law enforcement sources.
Oh, boy. That’s some fine police work there, tracing a Smith and Wesson revolver back to the Smith and Wesson plant.
But, when a .32-caliber revolver is fired, it keeps the casings inside its rotating chamber instead of spitting them out like a semiautomatic pistol, making it hard for forensic investigators to determine whether it had a criminal past.
Say what?
Like other guns seized by the police, it will be melted down and reincarnated as wire clothes hangers.
(insert cheap Mommie Dearest joke here)
(Above by way of the S&WCA mailing list.)
In other news, the legendary Reverend Ike has died.