6/30/2011

Well, as I am wont to do, I've gone and done a stupid thing. Oh, it’s a way cool stupid thing, but it is a stupid thing nonetheless. Before going to meet Jeff to go to Springtown to get his “new” motorcycle, I stopped in at Blood Bath & Beyond to do a little shopping. I had no intention of buying anything but I was looking. Well, dumb ass that I am, I asked to see the Saiga 12 gauge shotgun on the rack. It was about $50.00 more than I saw them at the gun show. I thought about it long and hard (Huh, huh. Long and hard!), and walked away. Of course, I walked back. The sales dude handed it to me again and I field stripped it. I put it back to gether and he asked if I wanted him to go get one from the back. “Hang on,” I said, “let me check with the catalog guys and see if they have the pistol-grip stock and fore end.” They had the stock in Desert Tan, I believe, but not the matching fore end. They had the fore end in black though. I couldn't pull the proverbial trigger on a two-tone gun though. I wandered around the store some more until the sales dude caught my eye and held up the gun again. “Damn it,” I muttered and went back to have one last look. As soon as I sighed, he was off to the back to get “my” gun. I filled out the paperwork and grabbed five rounds of 000 Buckshot ammo then headed to the counter. I resisted the urge to buy the 20 round drum magazine for it, partially because it was $99.95, but mostly because it would have been illegal to use it until I reconfigure the gun to be 922r compliant. So, $800.00 later, I'm the proud owner of a Saiga 12 gauge shotgun. Yeah, I know; stupid, but way cool. So from BB&B I head to Jeff’s house and pick him up. We roll to Springtown and pull up to the dude’s house. The garage door is open and the bike is sitting inside. Jeff rings the doorbell and tells the lady we’re here to pick up the bike. We roll it out to the truck and borrow the dude’s ramp to load it. I tie it down and we wait a little while to see if the dude is going to come home. His car won't start at work so we bail and head back to Lake Worth. The bike rides well in the back of the truck and doesn't move an inch. We get to Jeff’s house and I have to remove Fifi's tailgate to get his “ramp” to work. We get the bike down and under his car port. I head home and have some dinner with mom. After dinner, I go have a look at my new “toy.” I like it. I field strip it a couple times and load up the five round magazine. I think, “Well, I'm going to buy all the stuff to ‘Hot Rod’ this thing eventually, I might as well do it now,” and go on line to Mississippi Auto Arms. There I select a butt stock, fore end, piston puck, and muzzle device to make the thing 922r compliant. Then I start looking at magazines. They have a couple different drum mags so I choose the “cheaper” 20 rounder and plop it into the shopping cart. I look at some others but decide that the eight, ten, and twelve round mags look funny. I drop three more factory Izhmash five round mags in the cart. All told... well, it was a little more than half again what I paid for the gun. Oh, I see I told y'all up above what I paid for it so I guess you can do the math and finger out I dropped another $500.00 on parts. So, having said that, would I have come out ahead buying one of the already tricked out Saiga 12s at the gun show for $1,100.00? Not by much. Actually, if you subtract the magazines from my order, I've got right around $1,000.00 in the gun the way I did it. So there, I am not as dumb as I originally thought. OK yes, a grand is a lot of money for a gun I probably won't be able to shoot anywhere, but damn! It is cool as hell! And on that note...