Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bluelake]

Instead of taking the gun thread over on General forum OT, I came over to OT to make a gun thread...

This thread is to discuss firearms you've owned/shot. Here in Korea, there is not a lot of opportunity for it, but in many of our home countries it is very popular.

I own several firearms back in the States:

.45-70 Springfield trapdoor

.50-45 Remington rolling block

.32 Remington rolling block

.36 Remington Navy c&b revolver

On order: .45 cal. matchlock smoothbore and a .50 cal. Kentucky flintlock pistol. I'd love to have a Baker flintlock rifle (like in the Sharpe's series--hence my avatar of Patrick Harper), but I've used up my spare cash for the year--so, maybe that will be for next summer.

My first firearm was an 8mm Mauser, which I got when I was going to college in Columbus, Ohio about thirty years ago. I bought it from a friend who had several from an old armory. I also bought a couple hundred rounds of WWII-era Finnish ammo. My best friend (who also bought one) and I took them to my folks' place and proceeded to level a large pile of dirt. Our firing was so fast, my dad came down to where we were because he thought we had a machine gun We had lots of fun with them, but when I realized how powerful they were, I traded it in for a Ruger 10/22--the sweetest rifle I've ever owned. My best shot ever was on a crow a hundred meters away at the top of a 30m tree--nailed him (he and his cohorts had been ravaging my parents' hobby garden). It's a shot I would never try today, as a .22 cal. bullet can travel a mile; even though my folks' place is in the country, there are neighbors within a mile.

I ended up getting rid of my Ruger after I got married. When my wife moved with me to the States twenty-five years ago, I took her to see a friend of mine; he owned a veritable arsenal. I brought my humble Ruger, but my friend had another piece in mind for my wife to try a .357 magnum. I didn't think it was a good idea, but my wife was curious. So, I stood behind her, showed her how to hold it, instructed her to slowly squeeze the trigger... she quickly jerked it and the sound and recoil surprised her. She quickly handed it to me and simply said, "I don't like it." She hasn't touched one since.

As mentioned on the other thread, I am working on my Ph.D. dissertation, which is on firearms in the Joseon dynasty. It is proving quite interesting.

What's your story?

[ulsanchris]

I took my wife shooting on a trip to canada and she quite enjoyed it. I grew up in the country so I was surrounded by guns. My dad was always careful about teaching gun safety.

[superhoover]

back home i just carry around a mountain. anyone messes with me or if i need a little meat for the freezer, i just whip it out and whack a fool.

[bassexpander]

Had my permit to carry about 10 years ago. Didn't keep it up. I was in the shooting club when I was a university student, but I'm not accurate enough to do that with a pistol anymore. I developed a slight tremor in my hand (natural, and very slight, but enough to mess up my shooting in competition) due to some unknown reason.

In the past, I've owned a Ruger GP100 .357 magnum, a 9mm Star Firestar Plus, a .380 S&W, and a 9mm Taurus PT92 in nickel. The local police department hosted an event at an area firing range where you could fire fully-automatic machine guns for a price. I fired a Thompson and an M5. My friend fired an AK-47.

[Sleepy in Seoul]

My dad taught me to shoot a 22 when I was about 10 or 11. The first firearm I owned was a 303 Lee Enfield Mk III given to me by a family friend. I also have a 1903 model bayonet to go with it and have just bought a 1907 model bayonet. Perfect for the intruder!! Or my students~~

The only firearm I have ever bought is a Mossberg 500 Persuader but I handed it in during the amnesty after the Port Arthur shooting. Not very nice seeing your weapons bent in half in front of you

For work I used to carry a Sturm Ruger GP100 loaded with 38+P hollowpoints. Just after I left The Job they changed weapons to semi-automatic handguns and I spent a weekend training on H&Ks. 1,200 rounds in two days - what fun!!

When I was in the Army Reserve in Australia I fired everything from an F1 sub-machine gun to the Carl Gustav 84mm (Charlie Guts ache). I would love to own an SLR - wonderful rifle.

[bluelake]

From the General forum thread:

[bassexpander]

One of my friends tried to make gun cotton in junior high. It wasn't refined enough, or something, and burned very slow. He had to ask his mom to buy saltpeter from the pharmacy, as well as overcome her curiosity as to why a junior high kid would need something used to influence the male organ.

[bluelake]

[blurgalurgalurga]

We always used to blow stuff up as kids. Nothing new about that. I guess the internet has made it easier to make really powerful explosives, though...I get the impression that any halfwit redneck or frothing-mad Islamist with a truck and an agricultural supply depot can make a nitrogen bomb.

As a side question--do you think young people, perhaps inspired by video games and action movies, are more inclined to blow stuff up now than they were in previous generations?
Or, do you think the video games and movies and war news actually satisfies the destructive urge, somewhat, through catharsis or through simulation, and that kids are now less inclined to go a-bombing?
Or, is it the same as ever, and do kids love explosions neither more nor less than before?

When I was a kid in the 1980's, we used to blow stuff up every Hallowe'en. My father says he did the same when he was a kid. We're not frog-exploders in my family, mind you, and certainly never HURT anybody, but I can say with some conviction that blowin' stuff up is fun as hell.

I wonder how I'll handle it when my son hits 'that age.' Teach him explosives safety? Ban it all, and hope for the best?

[Underwaterbob]

I was a gun maniac as a kid. My Dad had a whole bunch of rifles, I learned to shoot a 22, 20 gauge shotgun, 12 gauge double barrel ancient monstrosity shotgun, 30.06, a bitchin Canadian tire pellet gun and a compound bow. We used to cut the shell casings around the wads of the 20 gauge shotgun ammo to make slugs for putting baseball sized holes in things (not particularly safe, but fun). I grew out of it, haven't touched a gun in years and don't really miss it.

[bluelake]

For better or worse, kids will be kids (I did some not-particularly-safe things when I was a kid about forty years ago--I get a kind of "What WERE you thinking" feeling once in a while). However, I think the ready availability of both information and materiel nowadays (thanks to the Internet) has made the situation more dangerous. If a middle schooler can make black powder, gun cotton, or even a thermite bomb, just imagine how easy it is for someone determined (and with the resources) to do great damage to someone/something. With that said, and in answer to a previous poster, I think educating the kids is the way to go. Teach them a healthy respect for firearms and explosives and I believe there will be fewer problems in the future. Of course, there are some kids (and adults) who should never be allowed around them.

[blurgalurgalurga]

Agreed.
Back to the guns...
I only ever shot long guns back home, but a couple of weeks ago I had expensive fun at the pistol range at Lotte World. Wow! So fun! and Wow! So expensive!
Any of you folks ever go there?
I was pleased--my score was respectable. My first time shooting a pistol, I got 73 out of 100 (ten points being awarded to the bulls-eye).

[bluelake]

Actually, I never shot a gun in Korea, but I'd love to try. I will probably have many chances in the near future, and probably mostly black powder (BP) firearms. As part of my dissertation, I plan to do a kind of Mythbusters section (hey, a guy's gotta have a little fun). There was a Korean matchlock called the cheonbochong (천보총), which literally means "thousand pace gun". It was a smoothbore with a 165cm length (another was 173cm), 2.3cm bore (about .91 cal.) and weighed about 10kg. By its name, it should have been able to shoot about 1.26km.

I asked a Korean expert in the field about it and he is skeptical that it actually shot that far; he believes the name just meant it could shoot a long distance. In the West, they had similar guns, called wall guns; they were about the same length, weight, and caliber as the Korean counterpart. Their purpose was to be used from fortress walls (hence, the name) to pick off commanding officers and gun crews at a distance. Of course, they used a lot of powder for each shot. I heard of shots commonly being about 500-600m (about half that claimed by the name of the Korean gun).

Currently, I have a gunsmith in the US making me a standard Korean matchlock smoothbore, which I will test out this summer. I am considering having a cheonbochong made here in Korea. My friend at the Korea Military Academy said to me, upon hearing about my idea, to bring it to the Academy for their officers to try out; even though they have lots of matchlocks (and even one cheonbochong) in their collection, none have ever fired one. They have the place and powder to test one out. So, my idea is to see if the cheonbochong could have actually shot 1.26km.

[kiknkorea]

I know it's too expensive, but I would like to make a trip to a range here anyway!

Here's an earlier thread-

http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=137086&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

And what I posted earlier,

Currently at home I have:
Winchester 1300 12GA
Norinco SKS rifle
Ruger P89 9mm (My first handgun)
H & K USP .45 (Without question my best gun)
SigPro 2340 .40
S & W Model 10 .38 (My father likes to reload for this one)

I did own:
CZ 100 .40 (OK, but would jam occasionally)
Ruger P90 .45 (Nice, but sold to my uncle when I got my H & K)
Ruger P95 9mm (Reliable, but not the most accurate)
S & W Sigma .40 (NOT reliable, not a good gun)
Jennings .22auto (Cheap, unreliable, not too fun)

Almost forgot, I also own a .22 revolver that was made in the late 1800's. There were many companies making small inexpensive guns then and a lot had creative names. I think this one is called Baby Bear Anyway, my uncle gave it to me last year and said his great uncle got it from his father when he was 12 in 1899. Of course, it doesn't work and is a bit rusty, but it's a great keepsake.