The Hippie Survivalist - 2013 Was A Good Year

*Happy New Year!  And with the New Year comes a tsunami-sized run on guns and ammunition, and the ever-increasing probability of systemic failure of the bloated institutions that inadequately run this great nation and world.  So, we survived the Mayan Apocalypse (that never was) but we find that we are indeed now facing that place in the cosmos that the Mayan calendar foresaw - a dark spot in the Milky Way called The Dark Rift.  I don't know about you, but that name scares the crap out of me.  And seeing as we appear to be in for a long slow slide instead of a fast crash, the Mayan Calendar finale means to me that we are now truly entering a time of great change because we have entered a new cosmic cycle.  Hippie Survivalists everywhere - this is it.  From now on we are in the roller coaster, on the tracks.  Get it together as best you can and turn your hearts to God and keep your weapons oiled and give this ride 125%.

*Below: The Little Beast with his new tires and rims, just in time for the New Age!

*Holy Cripes - Ohio Ordnance Works is marketing some incredible hardware!

Above, their M240-SLR - an improved, semi-auto version of the venerable M240.  WOW.

Below, their 1918A3-SLR, which is the only BAR produced in the world (yes, it is semi-auto):

The BAR comes with your choice of a walnut or bakelite stock, as shown.  My Poppa trained with one in the Marines before he went to Korea in the '50s and he always told me, "The BAR has a slow rate of fire but it packs a punch."  It's as much a legend as the Model 1911 .45 or the Tommy gun, and it made the .30-.06 round famous in America.

I turned my friend onto these weapons and he looked at me and said, "What's the point, Dude - they're semi-auto!"  I looked at him and said, "Who cares?!  It's a BAR and an M240 and this is 2013!  Damn, Dawg - get with the program!"  And here I thought we were friends.

To think that these weapons are legal in some states.  My oh my.

*All this talk of Browning Automatic Rifles has reminded me of an almost mythical version of the BAR, a little-known limited-production rifle called the Colt Monitor.  Per Wikipedia:

In 1931, the Colt Arms Co. introduced the Colt Monitor Automatic Machine Rifle (R 80), intended primarily for use by prison guards and law enforcement agencies. Intended for use as a shoulder-fired automatic rifle, the Colt Monitor omitted the standard bipod, instead featuring a separate pistol grip and buttstock attached to a lightweight receiver, along with a shortened 458 mm (18.0 in) barrel fitted with a 4-inch (100 mm) Cutts compensator. Weighing 16 lb. 3 oz. empty, the Colt Monitor had a rate of fire of approximately 500 rpm. Around 125 Colt Monitor automatic machine rifles were produced; of these ninety were purchased by the FBI. Eleven rifles went to the U.S. Treasury Department in 1934, while the rest went to various state prisons, banks, security companies, and accredited police departments. Although the Colt Monitor was available for export sale, no examples appear to have been exported to other countries.

 

And wouldn't you know it, Frank Hamer gunned down Bonnie and Clyde with a Colt Monitor.  Clyde himself was partial to the BAR and modified several into "whipits", as per the shortened top weapon in the photo below:

 *Ciao - happy weekend.  I'm out of here!