Another rant.

I could not wait for next week's FFOT thread for this one. I'm still steaming. I'd like to go to the range, but have no one to watch the boy for me.

Yesterday, my other half and I dropped our son off at his grandparents' so that we could go Christmas shopping. Part of that Christmas shopping was for me: since I'd gotten him a CZ-52 for Christmas/birthday last year, he wanted to get me something I'd been drooling over longer than he had the pistol: a Mosin-Nagant rifle. And there was a gun show going on.

Well, the gun show was a bust. Not that there weren't Mosin-Nagants, just not any that we wanted to buy, or could afford to. There was one that I would have loved to own--a pretty much mint condition sniper variant--but was about $350 out of our price range.

What peeves me is that there was a table full of Nagants, all priced $95-$110, armory refurbished. And each and every one of them had been ruined by the fucktards selling them! The idiots had shot corrosive ammo (most of the ammo for these rifles is the cheap, WWII surplus) through each one, and not cleaned the rifles!

There were several signs that demonstrated that the father-son duo didn't know what they were doing:

1. The bolts were all zip-tied closed.

2. Each and every one of the armory refurbished rifles had been fired, and not cleaned, "to prove they worked."

3. Neither father nor son had ever heard of the Windex trick* to neutralize the corrosive elements in the surplus ammo.

4. They bragged about leaving the rifles dirty! They bragged about leaving guns uncleaned after having fired them! THEY DIDN'T CLEAN THE GUNS!

Y'know, there are reasons why most states have laws against siblings marrying. And the boy proved that those reasons hold true when the laws are ignored: "All the rifles work. I've shot each and every one of them."

Duh. The Mosin-Nagant bolt assembly is one of the simplest and most fool-proof out there. The trigger assembly is the same. When the rifles were turned in to the armory for storage, each one was tested, parts replaced, barrels replaced, and carefully stored to preserve the rifles in brand-new condition. THE RIFLE WILL WORK WHEN UNPACKED AND CLEANED UP. DO NOT fire the rifle to make sure it works. And especially DO NOT FIRE CORROSIVE AMMO THROUGH THE RIFLE AND NEGLECT TO CLEAN IT AFTERWARDS!

God only knows how many rifles they've ruined like this. The barrel of the one we looked at was so pitted that it wouldn't have fired eight inch groups at 100 yards, much less the eight inch groups they're supposed to be able to fire at 800 yards or better.

Stupid fucks. I came this close to beating them with the beautiful, mint-condition rifles they'd ruined.

*The Windex trick is something I learned from a friend who has several war relics that he shoots corrosive surplus ammo through: as soon as you're done shooting, remove the bolt and squirt Windex down the barrel to neutralize the corrosive elements. Then run a dry patch down the barrel, followed with a couple of patches of Hoppe's No. 9. My friend does this every time, and each of his guns is in mint condition, with perfect, mirror-shiny barrels. So is my husband's CZ-52.