Rich: Besides the Garvey story, I would venture to say that your piece on Steve Carlton ("Thin Mountain Air,” which originally appeared in Philadelphia Magazine in 1994) ranks right up there among your best. 329 wins. Four Cy Young Awards. First ballot Hall of Famer. A fitness freak. Arrogant. Stubborn. The Big Silence. Lefty was and is one complex, maybe even crazy animal.
Pat: The only thing I knew about Carlton was that he didn’t like to talk to the press. But when I met him, we started talking about guns and the next thing I know he was talking about black helicopters and the Elders of Zion. He was a nut.
Alex: And, like the Garvey piece, and, to some extent, the recent Jose Canseco essay, the Carlton story was controversial as it was released shortly before Lefty was going to be inducted into Cooperstown.
Pat: After the story came out, everybody started defending Steve. Tim McCarver, Jim Kaat, all these guys who were in the fraternity of ex-athletes. Even though they knew I had written the truth, I was not in the fraternity. I was the outside, outlaw freelance writer living in Florida. The guy you can’t trust. So the papers are running pieces about what a hatchet job I did, poor Steve Carlton. The Today Show comes down to interview me and I knew what they were going to do. They were going to ask me about guns. Now, in Florida, I have a carry permit. Perfectly legal, I carry a 9mm pistol in my bag wherever I go, except court room, athletic contests, post office, airport. It’s just the way it is. It’s a right to carry state. But the minute you mention guns in New York, you are immediately brandished as a right-wing lunatic. Sure enough, the interviewer asks, “Isn’t it true that you told Steve Carlton about a new gun you had bought?” I said, “Oh yes, I have a Czech-CZ-85, 9 mm semi-automatic, I have an East German military pistol, an American Smith and Wesson.” She said, “Well, why do you have so many guns?” And I said, “Well, it’s just like my right to vote. It’s my constitutional right to have guns, no reason why I shouldn’t.” They never ran it. They cut that part out of the interview. And that was the whole point of it all.
Alex: To make you look like a crazy schmuck.
Repoz
Posted: April 23, 2008 at 01:16 PM |
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I am instantly reminded of a bit from October 1964, where Halberstam mentions that Leonard Schechter printed something Roger Maris told him, Maris didn't like it, Schechter played the truth card, and Maris replied, "That's got nothing the f*ck to do with it!" (I think it was Schechter, anyway.)
Blessed with such a solid pistol, you'd expect the Czechs to be selling them to anybody. Unfortunately for the Czechs, the Soviets forbade them from exporting the CZ-75 or CZ-85 to the West during the 1980s (save for small amounts sent to Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Coincidentally, knock-offs of the CZ series soon appeared in all three countries). The Soviets also cut the Czechs out of the free gun market by mass exporting Makarovs, Stettins and anything else they had in the inventory to their revolutionary brothers worldwide. The CZ series did garner some sales after the fall of Communism. The Indians, for example, bought a large number for some of their police and paramiltary forces.
A fine pistol indeed.
Hey, Greg, what pistol would you recommend as a good starter one for someone with minimal experience who's interested in learning? I don't want anything too crazy, just something simple that'd be OK for concealed carry and range work.
A squirt gun?
Best Regards
John
Bah, humbug.
Wow - that's a loaded question.
That you - just, I am punderful.
Seriously, though, it depends on what you want to spend and if you have a caliber prefernce. I always recommend a first time or novice shooter start out with a .22 pistol just to make sure they like shooting and that they can master the basics of firing a pistol safely. Do you have a preference between a semi-automatic or a revolver? Caliber preference - something like a 9mm or do you prtefer the .40 S&W;that is sweeping the nation?
If you are beyond that stage, my suggestions would be:
1. Obviously, the CZs or Brownings. The pistol Mirabelliu Dictu mentioned, the Springfield, is an American copy of those pistols.
2. My personal preference these days tends toward SIGs. They are expensive, but I like the way they feel in my hand and they are quality Swiss made products. You might look at the P226 or P239 since you stated a need for concealed work.
Of course, the easiest thing to do is go to a shooting range that rents pistols and try them all. It's pretty cost effective and you get hands on experience. Most modern handguns are quality products. What I would stay away from are brands such as Kel-Tec or maybe some of the boutique brands (like Bauer or Firestorm) that are either expensive or lack reliability. There are many user groups and web sites that have hundreds of opinions out there as well.
I hear Pennsylvania might be able to weigh in on this.
Exactly. A .22 is a good confidence-builder -- low weight, light recoil, (relatively) soft report, easy to shoot fairly accurately. Nobody can't shoot a .22, including your wife / girlfriend / sister / friend with small hands and no upper body strength.
Later, if you do decide to move up to something like a 9mm, you won't regret having gotten the .22.
Nothing like taking out the plinker, buying that milk carton box of 100 bullets and putting some small holes in the target.
And, as any good hitman will tell you, the .22 is perfect for sticking in someone's ear. You don't even need a silencer since the report is pretyt quiet as firearms go.
Not saying that's what you buy a .22 for, but - never mind.
I know basic range safety and such, and I've fired a pistol before, although it's been a while. No real preference between a semi-auto and a revolver (although I definitely don't want a little snub-nosed revolver where I won't be able to separate my own bad shooting from the firearm's inherent variance at a distance). I'm pretty easy on calibers, too. I'm strong enough that recoil shouldn't be much of an issue, and I mostly just want to avoid ammo that'll be inordinately hard to find and/or expensive to shoot.
Carry isn't a strict need, as such, but since PA is so easy for getting a permit, I figured it'd make sense to find a weapon that'd work for both purposes (if I so chose), instead of some crazy hand cannon that's three feet long and 30 pounds.
I really appreciate all the feedback here. I know you can find anything nowadays with Teh Google, but I don't know enough right now to sort out the good advice from the cranks, so a sanity check like this is really a big help.
Good to read.
I would stay in the 9mm or .40 S&W;. Anything bigger than that and you looking at a hand cannon. The only decent small .45 is one from Para-Ordnance (in my opinion) and you run into limitations in the number of rounds you can carry. (in my opinion - which I bet a numbe rof people would be happy to disagree with. I don't buy the bigger is better groupthink and I think toting twice as much ammunition in a 9mm or .40 pistol is probably a better solution to non-porfessionals.) I don't know if the .357SIG is going to take hold and be a long-term viable option for ammunition, either. If you plan to reload, then you shouldn't worry about ammunition costs.
I'll add one more to consider - the H&K;USP Compact. You can get it in a couple of different calibers and it shoots very nice (at least the ones I have shot). It'll be expensive, but if you cna afford, it's an excellent choice for what you described.
BTW, Greg, you've got excellent (if expensive) taste.
And I completely second the idea of a .22 pistol. A Ruger Mark II or Mark III is an excellent, reasonably inexpensive, starter.
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