Sipsey Street Irregulars: Just got back from my first gunshow viewed from wheelchair level.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Just got back from my first gunshow viewed from wheelchair level.

My recovery from the strokes has been good, but while I can walk further and better than at anytime since the strokes, I don't have a whole lot of stamina and begin to go wobbly on my pins after a while. So, with the help of a friend, I did it in a wheelchair.

The show was, for me, a complete disappointment. Matt had sent some money so I could find him some items, but they were not to be found. For myself, I was simply looking for some cheap empty ChiCom/Soviet style wooden crates to nest two M19A1 cans per in (like the one below) to finish out a previous reloading job.

In the past, I've found them readily for a couple of bucks each. Nobody had any they wanted to part with. In the process of asking around I did find a fellow who simply gave one of this type below, but although I appreciated it and will find a use for the box, the entire experience wasn't worth the $8.00 admission.

We went early this Sunday morning, and the aisles were filling up as we left, but the prices on military-pattern semi-autos were ridiculous although there seemed to be ample stocks.

Also, trying to view anything from wheelchair level was both frustrating and dangerous, with the situational awareness of others being the main concern. Hopefully, by the next show I'll be done with wheelchairs.

10 comments:

Old NFO said...: Glad to hear you're out and about a bit! And prices ARE just stupid...; November 25, 2012 at 1:51 PM
Loren said...: I have one of those olive drab crates. I'm using it for general firearms accessory storage. When I can find the kit I packed away when I moved(or maybe just go ahead and buy a new one) I'll replace the latch with a lock hasp so I can lock it. In the AF we had lengths of steel cable with loops on the ends, loop it around something and put the lock around it, and it'll discourage casual snatches.; November 25, 2012 at 2:35 PM
armedlaughing said...: Suggestion: put a cow-catcher or spikes forward of the wheelchair. Failing that a gas-operated O-OO-GA horn!
Hopefully, you won't need any next time.

gfa; November 25, 2012 at 3:38 PM
William Flatt said...: For $8, one could make the box and paint the darn thing!; November 25, 2012 at 3:48 PM
Erinyes said...: Just for curiosity, why the need for the ChiCom crates when you have the ammo cans?; November 25, 2012 at 7:46 PM
Trinity said...: I haven't been to a good gun show in Colorado for almost a year. Getting too much junk, newbies trying to play arms dealer and too many old hands holding out for prices that are unrealistic. While it's their right to charge whatever they want for their property, the only people I've seen buying from them are newbies.

Most of the former regulars who provided good merchandise and were willing to haggle a little for a fair mutual price are taking some time off to let things settle down at the shows. Meanwhile, some decent deals can still be found online on the private sales lists if you're willing to negotiate some.; November 25, 2012 at 8:30 PM
Dutchman6 said...: Erinyes said... "Just for curiosity, why the need for the ChiCom crates when you have the ammo cans?"

For twenty years I have humped cans and crates in and out of various cache and storage settings. It is far easier to move, store and stack crates than individual cans.; November 25, 2012 at 9:10 PM
Trinity said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; November 25, 2012 at 9:55 PM
CowboyDan said...: Those ChiCom boxes are well built. I was going to ask you to take measurements inside & out and share them, but dovetail joints aren't easy to do.

Please share what you can, and I'll see if there's anything I can do to make your life easier.

Stay safe.; November 27, 2012 at 1:04 PM
Erinyes said...: Thanks, Mike, I see now. Cowboy Dan: If you have a tablesaw, it's fairly easy to set up dovetail jigs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EootxBzj4Yk; November 27, 2012 at 7:02 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Just got back from my first gunshow viewed from wheelchair level.

10 comments:

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