Machines wear out. Guns are machines. Maintain the machine properly, changing disposable parts if necessary, and they\u2019ll last longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are serious shooters who keep track of their round count. I am not one of them. When I test a firearm for a gun magazine, I pass it around to as many different shooters as I can to see how well it works in various hands with various skill levels. I\u2019m not always there with a notebook when each member of the de facto test team is pulling the triggers, and I\u2019m lucky to be able to say within a hundred rounds how many shots went through the test gun. I do require all the testers to keep meticulous count of any malfunctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s kind of like automobiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was a kid, if anyone we knew had a car that reached 100,000 miles and was still running it was an occasion for hosannas of praise and maybe a party.\u00a0\u00a0Vehicles are better now. The last several cars the Evil Princess and I have bought new didn\u2019t get traded in or sold until they had well over six figures on their odometers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Case in point: A certain Chrysler Town & Country. The EP and I figured out long ago that mini-vans were ideal for our needs. Lots of space for luggage, handout materials for students, AV equipment for classes, and of course guns and ammo. (I think of them as \u201cBarbie Vans,\u201d she calls them \u201cUrban Assault Vehicles\u201d\u2026whatever. ) We bought it new in Rochester, IN when a 2010 Dodge Caravan we\u2019d bought that year and was WAY past its 100K showed signs of being ready to go into automotive hospice. When the Chrysler was way past 100K we bought a then-new 2019 Dodge Caravan SXT and kept the older van for spare, which worked out this year when my wife had to drive to Chicago in the Dodge to give some long-term assistance to her aging and ailing mom. (She\u2019s still there at this writing.) NO problem: I had the old van to drive way up north for a class in Pennsylvania, and was driving it home when Cylinder #5 finally gave out just after I crossed the WV\/VA line. It was about 3:30 on a Friday afternoon in a torrential downpour, and by the time AAA got a tow truck there, all the receiving auto repair centers were closed, leading to a four-day stay in the Southland over a weekend. By the following Tuesday afternoon I had it on the road again. So, maybe 173,000 some odd miles was pushing it\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We drive a lot. A month ago I bought a new Chrysler Pacifica van, which as of today has 4,215 miles on it. (Like I said, we drive a lot.) Interestingly, the older Chrysler had gotten me back home just fine after $2100 in repair bills, and is still running fine as it approaches 175,000 miles.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lesson: we maintained it scrupulously with oil changes at the prescribed intervals, new tires when needed (current set was put on in first quarter of this year) and the prospective buyer of the nine-year-old Town & Country, who runs the auto repair shop that has taken care of it and knows how scrupulously they maintained it, figures it will give its new owner many more miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lessons I see are twofold. (1) Whether it\u2019s a car or a gun, if you take care of it, <\/em>it will take care of you. <\/em>(2) When you sense it is wearing out, however much you have bonded with the machine, it may be time to retire it and replace it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Machines wear out. Guns are machines. Maintain the machine properly, changing disposable parts if necessary, and they\u2019ll last longer. There are serious shooters who keep track of their round count. I am not one of them. When I test a firearm for a gun magazine, I pass it around to as many different shooters as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8399,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8398\/revisions\/8399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}