It Was A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Saturday was a sterling Fall day and a perfect day for the blog shoot.  We missed some people this year - hope ya'll come next year.  But there was still a lot of bangety goodness going on.

Having only a tiny arsenal myself, I'm always grateful for the generosity of folks who let me play with their boomsticks. And there were some seriously fun boomsticks brought out. 

Excels at Nothing brought a hackbut, which seems to be related to an arquebus.  Bottom line is that it's a small hand cannon from the 16th century era and playing with that thing is a giggle-fest.  Maybe it's related to our love of poking the campfire - it was so much fun to light up the priming powder and see it flash, get a face full of sparkling powder, and have that thing roar.  I suppose we should have worked on aiming but making the boom was so much fun that hitting a target was irrelevant.

Stretch brought his lovely .22s, as well as an M-1 Girand, which visited with it's baby brother, my M-1 carbine:

Murphy's Law was kind enough to make up some ammo for some historic rifles:

I don't know the stories of the others, but my Arisaka came home from Japan with Dad in 1946.  I was so distracted by watching others and running my mouth that I only took a few shots, but I like it.  I think I'm going to have to learn how to make the ammo and take it out more.

Of course, a day like this will make the Nanny Bloomberg's of the world get their panties in a twist anyway because quite a few people own Evil Black Guns:

But Larry the Historian brought something quaranteed to make Bloomberg downright pee his pants - a Barrett .50 caliber.

The funny thing was the conversation that went something like...

Larry the Historian: "I haven't had it long."
Me:  "Oh?"
Larry the Historian: "Got it about a month ago."
Me:  "A month...at auction?"
Larry the Historian: "Yeah."
Me:  "That's Ron's Barrett?!"

I blogged a little about the sudden loss of a neighbor a while back, as did ML.  His guns went to auction and although I was there to bid for the absent ML, the bidding rocketed up so fast that I barely had time to get my hand up.  Larry the Historian won the bid, and this was my neighbor's gun.

That thing isn't just a giggle-fest to fire, it's a "OMG THAT IS SO COOL!"-blow-everything-off-the-table-and-leave-ears-ringing-even-with-protection hoot!

As usual, we toddled out to have dinner after we had exhausted ourselves at play.  It was good times with good folks.