Idiot Scratch

[Ping]

Scratches give character!

[robheath]

I have heard it called the cresent of shame...but my guns serve ME, I don't serve them. Anybody who buys one of these things...well I don't know what to say.

[tombogan03884]

I have heard it called the cresent of shame...but my guns serve ME, I don't serve them. Anybody who buys one of these things...well I don't know what to say.

How about, "Hey, do you want to buy a bridge?"

[MikeBjerum]

The whole idiot or shame thing us a moot point if you use your gun as intended.  When your 1911 is in its holster or being held in a correct firing grip that area of the frame is not visible.  Only idiots that own safe queens need to be concerned.

I've had a couple people ask to buy some of my guns from time to time.  I give them a fair price, and they love to come back dickering with things like blotches in the bluing, dings in the wood, scratches, etc.  My response is always the same:  The gun works, it works every time, it is maintained, and it is 100% ready to go and won't give you any issues.  I actually feel my well worn guns are more valuable than nib condition, because they are proven reliable and accurate.

I laugh at people that are afraid to go through the break in procedure on a rifle, because that many shots will wear the barrel out.  Damn!  First you shoot it to see if it works, then you start sighting in, then you practice at different ranges, then you verify groupings.  Break in round count is a small compared to me just getting ready to take a gun out on a hunt, for competition, or for protection.  One of the handgun magazines took a poll and published the results:  The average personal handgun is shot less than 1,000 rounds in its lifetime.  Why even buy the gun if that is all your going to shoot it.  I know it isn't for self defense, because verifying it is worthy of carry takes 500 rounds by the time I test the gun and the carry ammo.

[JLawson]

WARNING: Thread drift begins... 

My geeky, computer science and natural language processsing background seems to be dominant this morning.  When I read this quote from m58,

Only idiots that own safe queens need to be concerned.

I was reminded of the problem computers have when parsing such statements.  Syntactic ambiguity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity) is a property of sentences which may be reasonably interpreted in more than one way, or reasonably interpreted to mean more than one thing.  So, m58, do you mean to imply that owning a safe queen makes you an idiot OR do you mean an idiot who also owns a safe queen?

I personally don't own any safe queens and feel that guns are indeed tools to be used in the pursuits for which they were designed.  However, if one wants to own a safe queen, I don't consider him an idiot.  Actually, the word 'idiot' is derived from the Greek idiotes meaning "one who lacks professional skill or training."  In Latin, the word 'idiota' means somenone who is "ordinary."  Given this etymology, I know a bunch of idiots.   

[Sponsor]

[Pecos Bill]

WARNING: Thread drift begins... 

My geeky, computer science and natural language processsing background seems to be dominant this morning.  When I read this quote from m58,

I was reminded of the problem computers have when parsing such statements.  Syntactic ambiguity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity) is a property of sentences which may be reasonably interpreted in more than one way, or reasonably interpreted to mean more than one thing.  So, m58, do you mean to imply that owning a safe queen makes you an idiot OR do you mean an idiot who also owns a safe queen?

I personally don't own any safe queens and feel that guns are indeed tools to be used in the pursuits for which they were designed.  However, if one wants to own a safe queen, I don't consider him an idiot.  Actually, the word 'idiot' is derived from the Greek idiotes meaning "one who lacks professional skill or training."  In Latin, the word 'idiota' means somenone who is "ordinary."  Given this etymology, I know a bunch of idiots.   

When I got to the second sentence my geek alarm brought all my neighbors out into the street to check if my house exploded!

[JLawson]

Sorry, Pecos... I didn't mean to cause a scene.  Wait a minute - a scene, an explosion, nothing to see, crowd control... Ok, maybe this will help:

[robheath]

UUMM...OOO...UUMM  These are not the droids your looking for!

[MikeBjerum]

While I do cut a little slack from time to time for a special safe queen, I think the idea of a safe queen is stupid.  Guns were made to be used!  I stock up on toilet paper by tearing the page out of owner's manuals that tell me "To protect the collectible value of this fine firearm, do not fire it."

I have two near safe queens:  One is a Ward Hercules 20 ga side by side, and the other is a Nobel lever action .22 lr,l,s.  The Hercules was my grandfathers, and the Nobel was my fathers.  Both guns were regular shooters and hunters until they went through a house fire.  They were eight feet from the starting point and hottest part of the fire.  They are safe queens because of uncertain safety of them.

Beyond that type of situation I believe that 99.9% of all guns should be shot, and you decide how it labels you one way or another.

[tombogan03884]

I won't slam a person for having safe queens.
There are guns that I would like to have, just to have them with no great desire to shoot them on any kind of a regular basis.
A Luger, a Webley Fosbury, and a Rhino for example, I would love to have one of each, but I might only shoot them once, there are other guns I would want for shooting.
All that being said I think this whole idea of worrying about a wear mark is totally asinine.