Atomic Nerds

Will a beautiful big-breasted woman fall naked from the sky? (Hint: The answer is almost certainly “no.”)

…

What, it’s not going to work twice? Oh well, can’t blame me for trying. So early this afternoon we packed up our redneckmobile and trudged up the mountain to see if we could find something among the “getting ready to pack up and leave soon” crowd at the gun show. Like I said yesterday, I’ve been scrounging around for a stripped AR receiver so I can start finally building my own evil rifle from the ground up the way I want it. On the way home, LabRat and I counted up and figured this search has been going on for roughly three years. Sure, I could’ve just ordered one and used a local FFL, and at one point I even tried to do so. The company I was dealing with was, however, less than competent and the deal fell through. Rather roughly. The company lost my FFL’s paperwork, twice, misrepresented things, and generally sucked golfballs through garden hoses. The good news is I dodged a bullet by that deal failing, because apparently the lowers they were cranking out were about as in-spec as if they’d been machined with dremels. Either way, after that one fubar’d “Just order the damn thing” attempt, life stayed in the way and it was more a matter of just keeping an eye open when hitting gun shows. The downside is that New Mexico is more hunting oriented than tacticlol, so prices were more than a little inflated. Last year there was an assembled lower (with no stock) for $250 as the best deal. I passed.

Anyway, it was day two of the show, and we figured all the really good stuff (which we couldn’t currently afford anyway) would be either bought or packed up. Making the loop (y’all spoiled folks with regular sized gun shows, or the really spoiled folks with thinks like the Indy500 don’t get the size here, I suspect - we’re talking 25-30 tables, tops) there wasn’t a whole lot of interesting stuff. One of the dealers I’ve done business with before was still trying, for about the third or fourth show I’ve seen him at, to move a severely bubba’d Swedish m94 complete with a pickup bedliner coated stock. And nickel plating. One of these days if I win the lottery I’m going to buy that thing from him at a fair price and burn it. Finally we came upon the AR-centric table, and lo and behold, they had an actual bare receiver. No parts kits already installed, no stock, just the basic paperweight version of the firearm. A nice forged Rock River with a $160 price tag. We moved off and discussed. The discussion essentially wound up being “If we can afford it, buy the damn thing. You’ve been after one for three years and I’m tired of wandering around these shows with nothing to show for it.” I told y’all I married a good one.

“Will you folks take $150 for that lower?”
“Only if you’ll tell me where you got that shirt.”
Information was exchanged, I did the BATFE dance and swore on the 4473 I’d never had an impure thought in my life, and now I am the proud owner of a federally regulated paperweight which will slowly and eventually be transformed into a rifle.

If this is my karma for babysitting yesterday without throwing the kid into the path of a taxiing jet, I might have to show a little patience more often.

Posted Arms races, Ballistic Mood Improvers |