C&R Firearms Availability Blues

It certainly sucks to see how the available stock of C&R guns is declining and not being replaced with other types of C&R guns. Several months to maybe even a year ago I recall having read something at one of the C&R dealer's sites about how the Bush Administration had made deals with foreign governments not to offer up surplus arms in exchange for favorable status as to joining NATO. It was hard to swallow then because I still held out hope that Bush was truly a Republican; however now that he has pulled all of the other socialist crap he has rained down on us, I can look back with hindsight and see it fit his agenda well.

As for the C&R guns, it is virtually to find new conditions SKS rifles, Mosin Nagants are becoming quite scarce, with M-44s virtually gone from dealer's shelves and only other and usually less desirable models are left over, and they are not in that great a condition. Many of the Mausers still are available, but also seem to be in shorter supply. Same thing with most of the C&R surplus pistols. As far as prices go, well the inability for dealers to replenish stock, already had prices going up. Then to add insult to injury prices skyrocketed after election of George W. Bush's socialist first cousin Barack H. Obama. This also badly effected C&R firearms availability.

What really sucked for me is that I ordered a new Yugo SKS from SAMCO and they sent me some piece of junk gun with stock repairs and gouges and dings, scratches on the metal and at least one bent part. I sent it back for an exchange, but only after waiting well over a month for them to send me a return mailing label. I finally got it sent in at the end of last week, and was expecting an exchange from them - but then came the bomb. I had contacted American Express about the charge asking a hold to be place don it until they made the exchange since it was taking so long to get any reply out of SAMCO in the beginning. They said okay. After a month they called me to ask what was up, or I called them, and I told them SAMCO said they would do the exchange so please don't take any further action unless they heard more from me. So what does American Express do - they get me a refund from SAMCO - the ineptness in that riles me badly. Since I ordered mine on the night of election day, the price has gone up substantially, and I suppose if SAMCO even offers and exchange now they will want to charge more for it because AMEX got me a refund. Maybe it was just not in the cards for me to have another one, but it would have been nice to have father and son Yugos.

Of course, I may get very lucky and SAMCO may still send an exchange that is in as advertised condition - which was NEW, and they will charge the same price. Time will tell. If they do not offer an exchange at the same price I can assure you I am done dealing with SAMCO. Their customer service was terrible until I spoke to a supervisor and even then it was not great. Over a month to get a return label is pretty poor service at that. In addition I ordered a Spanish Mauser from them about 6 months ago. I still have not seen that one. Oh well, there are always other C&R dealers, I can only hope there will be a continuing supply of C&R firearms available to us.

All the best,
Glenn B

A Find InThe Basement...

...in my house usually means my wife has found one of my escaped pets (fill in: snake, lizard, frog, mouse, hamster), or that I have found a leak in a pipe, a problem with the toilet, or something else that has gone wrong. Today though, I was rather pleasantly surprised when I looked into a long box in the corner and found this:



No not a bad ind at all. Yes that is a Mosin Nagant M44. Not one with matching serial numbers from what I can tell so far, but one that looks to be complete nonetheless. No it was not left there by the previous owner(s). Yes it is legally mine. I just forgot about having it. If I remember right this was sent to me in lieu of a as credit for sort of an overcharge on a Yugoslavian SKS I had purchased from Inter Ordnance Firearms a few years ago. Actually, I had ordered three SKS's in excellent shape, got 2 in that condition, and 1 in good to very good condition; when I let them know about the foul up, they offered me a credit, or I could pay a few bucks more and get this rifle.
Now I have a job ahead of me, and maybe I'll start tonight. I already had something else to do since I have to prepare for a job interview coming up next weekend, I'm applying for a teaching fellowship and need to write a short lesson for presentation; but my bet is I can fit in both tasks tonight. Well maybe at least part of each, because the Nagant will need a lot of cleaning up and the wood needs to be refinished.


Sorry about the quality of the pics, my digital camera is none to great, and neither am I when I use it. Still, you can see the stock is dinged and scuffed and could use a nice refinish. The metal will just get a good cleaning, once, twice, heck if you know cosmoline then maybe three times before it maybe clean enough to shoot. Then a trip to the range, maybe on a warmer day this month or next.

Oh joy.

All the best,
Glenn B