My Arsenal

Guns are in the news again.  My Facebook posts put me on the NRA side of this issue, though I am a civilian with no combat experience and also no personal experience with violent crime, either as victim or aggressor.  I do like guns, however, and over the years have accumulated a few.  Here is my arsenal, such as it is.

Beretta 92FS.   Handgun, 9mm caliber. For quite some time, the standard issue handgun of the US military.   Beretta has the distinction of being the oldest Italian gunmaker – since the 1500s – and about the only one which knew what they were doing during WWII, such that Germans would use Beretta submachine guns themselves.  This gun also shows up in popular culture, notably “Lethal Weapon” (the gun Riggs, i.e. Mel Gibson, carries) as well as the first “Boondock Saints” film.  9mm, with a double stacked 15 round magazine.  It’s on the large side, about the largest gun you can reasonably carry concealed.

Ages ago I bought one new, then sold it to a friend.  More recently I bought a used one at a gun show in Manassas – so I’ve owned two, though not at the same time.  For a brief time, I had a concealed weapon permit and carried the new Beretta, but not on a regular basis.   

Mauser KAR98K.  Bolt action rifle, 8mm Mauser (7.92x57) caliber.   In 1898 Mauser finally made a bolt action rifle for the Imperial German Army, the Gewehr 98.  Shortly after, they came up with a much shorter carbine.  Fast forward to the 1930s, and they simply decided to split the difference with one rifle in between the two in length and just go with that as standard issue for everyone.  It’s bolt action with a 5 round double stacked internal magazine, which can be fed from stripper clips.  The bolt is turned down.

There are millions of copies of the 98 model alone, with Yugoslavia being responsible for a lot of them – their M48, made shortly after WWII, is probably the most common, though they were making copies before WWII.  Spain, Belgium, Argentina, Poland, Turkey and China are other big Mauser fans; Mausers were so common and popular in China that the Chinese simply referred to all rifles as Mausers.   [Incidentally, up until 1937 the Germans were supplying Chiang Kai-Shek and his Nationalist Chinese army not merely with Mauser rifles but also the M1935 helmets most often associated with WWII German soldiers, so Chinese soldiers in the early stages of the war, 1937, have a distinct German appearance.]  The US Springfield was such a blatant copy of the Mauser that we ended up paying Mauser royalties on that rifle.  I made it a point to get an actual WWII German K98. 

Ages ago when living in Paris and buying German WWII stuff from the local store, OPTAS, I picked up the bayonet that goes to this gun.  Decades later, immediately after acquiring the rifle, I pulled out the bayonet, and it fit exactly.  Awesome.

This was the standard infantry rifle of the German Army during WWII, plus the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine (to the extent the air force and navy need infantry weapons) and the ever-popular Waffen SS.  According to the markings, this rifle was made in 1942 by Steyr, which used Mauthausen camp workers to make their weapons.  Note, because quantities of the more advanced Gewehr 43 (semi-auto) and StG44 (select-fire assault rifle) were limited, no more than about 400,000 of each, the bolt-action K98 remained in production throughout the war.  

Mosin-Nagant 91/30.  Bolt action rifle, 7.62x54R caliber.   One of the earlier bolt action models, a joint design of Belgium and Russia.  This served as Russia’s #1 rifle in the Russo-Japanese War (1905), WWI + the Russian Civil War, then WWII, though by that time the PPSH submachine gun became more popular.  It’s usually seen with a spike bayonet on the end (which I have).   This is the full-size rifle, with bolt facing straight out, not the carbine version or the sniper version (bolt turned down).  Best chance of seeing this on countless Soviet propaganda posters.  Vasili Zaitsev, the famous Soviet sniper played by Jude Law in “Enema at the Gates”,  used the sniper version.  [His fictional rival, Major Koenig, played by Ed Harris, of course uses the Mauser Kar98k.]

Model 1917 Enfield, bolt action rifle, .30-06 caliber.   My mother’s father, i.e. my grandfather, served in the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in France during WWI.   Our soldiers in the trenches facing off against the Kaiser used either the 1903 Springfield (the more famous and popular model) or this one, the Enfield.  In practice, 75% used this one.  My grandfather died when I was a baby, and no one else in the family knows which one he carried, so I played the odds and got this one.  It’s about as fun to shoot as any other bolt action and fires the same caliber as the Springfield, BAR, M1 Garand and any .30 Browning machine gun.   I have the bayonet as well, something long enough to make the Huns nervous.

AK47.  Semi-auto rifle, 7.62x39mm caliber.   A few years ago, a shooter caused the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, New Jersey to be shut down briefly, although he didn’t actually shoot anyone.  I realized that my three bolt actions, though firing full power rifle rounds, were not really suitable for contemporary “s**t hits the fan” circumstances, so a modern semi-auto rifle was probably a better bet.  I bought this one.   It’s all black (no wood hardware).  I never bothered to get the bayonet for this one.   Although it won’t fire full-auto, cosmetically it looks identical to the familiar rifle of the modern Red Army, the Warsaw Pact, and countless guerilla and jihad groups. 

[Update 4/19/20].  AR15.  Semi-auto rifle, 5.56mm (.223) caliber.  Back around 1994 I purchased a new one, with a full 20" barrel and cylindrical handguard, looking exactly like an M16A2.  I took it to the range in Warrenton (Clark Brothers) once, and soon after sold it.  More recently I finally managed to replace it with a Springfield Armory Saint.  This has a 16" barrel, collapsing stock, and various other goodies which I'm not fully aware of, except to understand that Springfield took its time to develop its own AR15, and when they did so, they chose to incorporate all the design features which have been developed over the years for civilian AR15s.   They even designed their own proprietary handguard.  I'm very pleased with it.  

And in the past…

Walther PP.  Handgun, .380 caliber.  Just a little bigger than the famous PPK (“Bond, James Bond”), in the same caliber.  This has a smaller 7 round single stack magazine. 

....

Upcoming?  Well, not in the market for any more purchases, but I would love an FN FAL, which would give me a semi-auto weapon in .308 (7.62x51) caliber.  Moreover my budget precludes any Class III (full auto) weapons, which are insanely expensive.

As noted, I haven’t been in a situation to use any of these in combat or crime.  I take them to the range – NRA or otherwise – and fire them there.  Bolt actions are actually a bit more fun to shoot than semi-autos, as you have to work the bolt after each shot and load the internal magazine.  With semi-auto you simply pull the trigger over and over again, reloading via magazine.  In the event I need a gun, I have several choices. 

Morbidly curious:  most plausible victims.   Since I haven’t killed anyone with any weapon I’ve ever owned, who has?  Several are vintage military weapons, acquired well downstream of whoever might have originally wielded the weapon in any combat situation.

The AR15 and AK47 are/were semi-auto civilian weapons, as was the PP.   I sold the AR15 to a friend, and bought the AK47, and the PP, from the same friend, whose character is known as definitely non-criminal.  So no blood at all on those. 

Beretta.  “Defense contractor surplus” is what I was told.  Meaning some Blackhawk mercenary might have shot someone in Baghdad.  Most plausible victim:  JIHADI.

Mauser.  As noted, made in 1942, at a concentration camp.  By this time the Einsatzgruppen were phased out in favor of the death camps.  The rifle could have gone straight into the hands of a local SS camp guard, issued to a Waffen SS soldier, or a Wehrmacht soldier.   In that case the likely victims would be, A) concentration camp inmate, B) Russian soldier, or C) Allied soldier.  I’d say B is most likely.

Mosin-Nagant.   This appears to be Soviet era.  Possibly used to kill a kulak, though more likely fired at a “Fritz”.  Perhaps reissued in Korea, in which case the targets would be UN soldiers, but WWII is the most likely scenario.  Most plausible victim: WWII German soldier.

Enfield.  Some were issued to US troops in the far East, some to British Home Guard, but most to US soldiers fighting in France in WWI.   Most plausible victim:  WWI German soldier.  (Sorry, Kevin).