steampunk | Member Posts

First off, I want to say that, even though I have been posting a lot about shooting sports recently, this is still not a gun blog. It’s supposed to be steampunk. It’s just that the late unpleasantness has kept me out of the public, and steampunk festivals and comic conventions are so very public. So many disease-ridden monkeys. The shooting sports, however, occur in an environment that has fewer people at any one time and are almost entirely out of doors, lowing the COVID risk to the point of my participation.

So, the steampunk I do tends to also involve guns.

This may become more relevant later.

“The first rule of gun safety is to have fun.”

It’s actually not, but it also is. As Obi-wan said, "From a certain point of view."

Enjoyment increases engagement. If you are not engaged, you can more easily become complacent and distracted which leads to negligence. A negligent discharge means the a whole lot of people aren’t having fun anymore.

I have experienced this. Thankfully not the “shooting someone” part but the “engagement is attentiveness” part. In Cowboy Action Shooting, each stage is pretty much the same. Ten rounds pistol, ten rounds rifle, two or maybe 4 shotgun. The order is mix or match, the targets vary a little, but it’s all very routine. Many shooters take this very seriously and focus very intently on shooting as quickly as possible and that intensity is, I don’t want to say infectious, but you can certainly feel the air of intensity that, honestly, doesn’t feel like they are having fun. Subsequently, I do note a significant number of safety warnings. When moving right to left, I have been warned numerous times about the possibility of sweeping the spectators with my shotgun barrel. Never DQ’d, but there have been warnings.

On the other hand, having attended several Brutality matches, each stage is very different. A lot more variation in the target sizes, the ranges, the movement between them. Additionally, the participants are clearly having a lot more fun. They are more invested in their cosplay. They seem less invested in the perfect run. They laugh more. There is more comradery. More encouragement. I would characterize it as not jut fun, but joyful. And, from that, I don’t recall a single safety warning being issued. I ran stages much more attentively. More safely.

The point of this post, though, is not so much about safety but about increasing the fun. Hobbies are supposed to be fun and I want this hobby of mine to be more fun. Really, we could all use more fun at this point.

One way to have more fun in the shooting sports is simply to do more shooting. I have done more shooting this past year after having discovered Brutality Matches and the Cabin Fever Challenge than at any time in my life, even counting that summer I was a rifle instructor and when I was at Boy Scout summer camp at the rifle range with all my free time. My partner has a job repainting murals on a castle wall on periodic weekends and, after I have driven her to that I traverse to a nearby State Game Lands and have been availing myself of their facilities. My skills have improved, and that makes it more fun.

But it is also expensive. My chosen primary guns are cowboy guns in 45 Colt. When I started, a box of 50 round of that cartridge was $27. A box now costs at least $50 and as high $70 a box. A simple range day can cost hundreds of dollars.

Not so much fun.

It’s ironic that the way for me to save money shooting more is to spend even more money to buy more guns. I have a Heritage Rough Rider, something of a copy of my Single Action Army pistols but in 22LR rather than 45LC. Ten cents a round compared to over a dollar a round.

But to do something similar with my lever gun, Henry has a 22LR lever gun for $370. With the different sight picture, I’m not sure practicing with that would benefit me as much a doing dry fire exercises with my Rossi 92. Dry fire costs zero money, which is good, but dry fire isn’t as fun as live fire.

One of the other considerations was to just simply add a new gun to shoot. Influenced by the YouTube channel BrittishMuzzleloaders, I was considering getting the bolt action Lee-Enfield. I already have a Martini-Henry and so getting the period successor Lee-Medford would keep me in the steampunk realm, or rather, getting the successor to the successor that is the Lee-Enfield would be period adjacent. I think such a rifle would be more fun to shoot than the M-1 Garand I have now filling the battle rifle role.

Except, that getting ammo for such a thing ($1.50/rnd) is even more than what I am paying for either my 45 ($1+/rnd) or the Garand ($1.50/rnd). Well at least it’s still cheaper than the Martini-Henry ($5/rnd).

Remember how I said “shooting more is more fun?” Well, to shoot more it needs to be more affordable. I need to use a cheaper ammunition and one of the most popular, thus most plentiful, thus cheapest ammunition available is .223 (5.56×45mm NATO). A quick search finds ammo for 45 cents a round and buying in bulk (something I have found very difficult to do for 45 ammo) can bring that down to 34 cents a round. That buys me three times as much shooting

And the most popular, thus most plentiful, thus cheapest platform for that ammunition is the AR-15 and its gazillion variants. There are over 20 million AR-15s in the United States (I’ve seen estimates over twice that) and, the way I hear it, the market has bubbled and may be beginning to collapse, driving the cost down. For the return I could get selling off my M-1 Garand, I could finance an AR-15 platform that is almost half as expensive to shoot.

But it’s not period.

It’s not that I have anything against modern firearms, I just find those of the 19th Century more interesting. It was a time of tremendous innovation and development. The half century between the time of muzzleloaders, which had been the state of the art for 300 years, and the foundations of nearly all modern designs. I am in steampunk after all and it was being in steampunk and seeing a Single Action Army on a table at a gun show for an amount of money I currently had in my pocket that started my Cowboy Action Shooting career, as it were.

How then to reconcile my 19th Century sensibilities with the economic drives of the 21st Century?

Cyberpunk.

I grew up when cyberpunk as a literary genre was being born. Sure, I was still reading Welles and Verne, and steampunk was also growing with Jeter, Blalock, and Harrison, but I picked up “The Difference Engine” by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and easily shifted over to “Neuromancer.” I was playing “Space 1889” and “Cyberpunk 2020.”

And if there is one thing that Cyberpunk books, games, and movies could all agree on about the future of firearms technology, it was that bullpup was going to be the future. And it is not a coincidence that Brutality Matches has added a Steampunk division that requires bullpup rifles.

So, as I get closer to an actual decision, I move away from emotional responses that might lead to a Lee-Enfield impulse buy, into research and analysis. I think I have only one time fired an AR-15 and so need to make sure I know what is what if I am to spend a bunch of money.

And what is a fuck-ton of money is a bullpup. Design built bullpups tend to start at $2,000 and go up from there, though I was able to stop in to a gun shop the other day and they had a used Springfield Hellion for only $1,250. I didn’t dislike it but I thought it a bit heavy. Especially compared to the SIG-built AR-15 they also handed me. That gun was also over the $1,000 price tag but I know the platform can be had much cheaper. I’ve seen Andro Corp ACI-15s on sale at $380 new. There are probably guns even cheaper out there (though I don’t want to go to cheap into the Temu range).

But that’s not bullpup.

The SARB-15, however, is an add on housing that converts a standard AR-15 into a bullpup configuration for $430. Of course, the guys at the gun shop hated the idea and advised against it, one guy hating on the idea of bullpup altogether and the other simply hating the idea of a kit gun. I tried to impress upon them that the entire point of the endeavor is “cool” and “fun” but they are retailers. They are about the sale and not so much the fun.

I may, however, allow them to sell me a gun. I could trade them my Garand and a 12ga coach gun sitting unused in the closet and, for that, get a budget, used, stock AR-15 and maybe an optic within my budget. They won’t have to know I will (save up my money) then buy the bullpup kit online.

Plastic model building. D&D. Rolemaster. Axis and Allies. Metal casting. Klingon cosplay. Hiking. Long distance bicycle riding. Geocaching. Kerbal Space Program. These are all hobbies I have done and some I still do from time to time, though with perhaps less intensity and dedication than before. I have been doing a lot of Steampunk for the past 20 years of so but I also read and TTRPGd steampunk in the 90s and have read steampunk-ish science fiction back into the 70s. It is still a hobby that I have an investment in, even though I may be drifting more into the shooting sports. There, I will continue to steampunk with Brutality CQB competitions using my period guns, while, at the same time, also dipping my toe back into cyberpunk, again something I was into back in the 90s.

Hobbies change. The point is to have fun and, as the situations change, so to should the types of fun.

And, of course, be safe.

Welp, that's some shite. Playstation has dumped Genshin Impact from the PS4. My console of preference. Sigh.

Not completely bad. I still have a shit ton of the game to play. I've barely worked on the Inuzuma main questline, for frame of reference. And despite being able to jump into a lot of main quest storylines for Natlan, I'm choosing to do them when I "unlock" them chronologically. So yeah, tbat's a lot of game still. This is what happens when you get carried away with side-quests.

I'm gonna miss the random requests for people to join my world. I always denied them, but I'm gonna miss them, lol.

At least until I start playing Genshin on my xbox one. Gotta do some rearranging before then and since that involves new furniture, that might take a bit.

**

In non-Genshin talk, I need to get back to writing. It's been a long while and having a laptop again has inspired me again. I've been toying on a book idea, believe it or not. Actually, I've had several book ideas that I've been poking at over the past few years. Three of them serious - an urban fantasy YA story, a fantasy YA, and an urban fantasy crime series based on fairy tale characters (the first story has to do with Peter Pan). I'm especially enthusiastic about the last one, but I've actually put a bit of work into the other two.

As for fanfic, well, I'm finally consuming fanfic worthy media, lol. (Well, not "finally", just more of it.) Been playing Pokemon Sword and just got Sun. Made me miss my interests in writing/reading Pokemon crossover fics with Silent Hill or some kind of post-apocalyptic series. I'm glad as well to have new characters for my ongoing Pokemon/Hunger Games crossover fic (rather unfortunate for them, actually).

I'm looking forward to the new Harry Potter series, which is a fandom oldie fave. I will NOT be watching it on HBO when it comes out. I'm going to sail the seven seas for it and I recommend you all do the same.

**

Also, been watching a lot of horror movies this year and I gotta say, it's been a hell of a good year for them. I can't say I have definitive horror movie fave of the year but the recent Weapons and Together had some great horror scenes in recent movies, imo. Ok, and I loved every moment of 28 Years Later, but that's completely biased as I'm a huge 28 Days/Weeks Later fan (and a huge fan of Alex Garland overall, tbh).

I'm rambling now. Feels good. =)

A Series of Unfortunate Accidents	Potatoes	Coercion	Feudal Ties / Master and Servant	Domestic bliss
Everyone thinks we're doing it	Dreams and Nightmares	Daily Rituals (Morning Routines / Nightly Prayers / Meal Times)	Alternative Professions	Simply Irresistible: Sex God (or Goddess)
Warning Signs	Season of Mists (Autumn Colours, Sensations, Activities and Festivals)	Wild Card	Closets, caves and other tight spaces	Hopelessly Devoted
Love	Explorer	Trapped!	Unrequited Love	Rescue me: Damsels (and others) in distress
Warm Blooded / Cold Blooded	Use of Textures	Identity Crisis	Water Spirits	Hard and Soft

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October 2011

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