Sunday, May 20, 2012

Tab Clearing...

  • MAPQVEST. Okay, that's cool.

  • When you're dealing with the vague, deeply-internalized self-loathing engendered by a lifetime of  "everybody gets a gold star" meaningless self-esteem, scoreless soccer, and special snowflakedom, it manifests in funny external ways. I mean, you can't openly hate yourself without everybody thinking you're some kind of emo dork, but you can use your parents' credit card at Kinko's to print out flyers denouncing capitalism, or you can have, say, white guilt, or you could just hate the whole human race in general,

  • Since we've had the annual hashing out of the pink gun question, what I want to know is this: What is a man's favorite color for a gun?

61 comments:

  1. This man's favorite color is, "Whatever color it is and still goes bang."

    But I like stainless.

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  2. I'll second ZerCool without the stainless qualification. I honestly don't care as long as it goes boom.

    But the existence of pink guns makes it fun to twit my gun-averse wife. :)

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  3. Interesting question, and one that I had not thought about before.

    I just noted that all of my pistols are black, and all of my revolvers are stainless.

    When looking at my long guns, they are all black... But come to think of it I've only seen a few "non-black" long guns for sale and the majority of those are shot guns. I do have a preference for wooden hardware when I can get it apparently.

    Gah! I'll be thinking about this all day! At least you didn't bring up something like "think about your tongue." If you had done that I'd be going bonkers by lunch.

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  4. blue steel and walnut. i'm a sucker for the classics.

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  5. TJ wins

    Off to local gun show. I was going to say all kinds of things, then I got to T's comment. QED

    Terry T
    Florida

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  6. Judging from the evidence, mine would appear to be black.

    But I'd totally carry a pink G20. Especially if I'd put the "Goodbye Kitty" logo I engraved on the barrel nut of my Mossberg 500 and my motorcycle transmission sidecover on it.

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  7. Mil-Spec parkerized and walnut.

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  8. Green. There are plenty of black, FDE (aka brown), and stainless guns in the world; I like to have something different

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  9. Remember, guys only have 8 colors to choose from.

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  10. A couple of cans of Krylon and Presto! All my ARs are green like God meant for them to be.

    If I upgrade my M1A to a SCAR-17, it will be FDE.

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  11. Polished Blue steel. My carry 1911 has (fake) Ivory grips. In long guns I do like blue and walnut.

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  12. Old style S&W blue, nickel, or
    stainless are what I really like.

    I have a lot of guns that aren't any
    of those colors.

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  13. I've been beat to both my answers: blue steel and walnut, or parkerized steel and walnut.

    Although curly maple, can be bloody awesome

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  14. Polished S/S or bright nickel if I had by druthers, with Ivory grip or a facsimile thereof. I like Shiny for some reason.

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  15. Glossy red. With a white cotton lanyard.

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  16. A pretty blue and walnut for target and plinking, and Parkerized for carry. Maybe even quenched in hot cosmoline to get that neat WWII greenish tint, just because.

    Stainless is totally practical and I support anybody who wants it. I suspect they probably have their heads screwed on tighter than I do.

    But I like the dull, low reflective finish on a parkerized gun. If bad things happened, it's less observable color/shape just might win me the extra few milliseconds that could keep me a first place winner in the game of life.

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  17. I'm weird, I'll admit. I wouldn't mind having one in candy apple red metallic, the 70's purple they call "Plum Crazy", or even one with a flame job.

    Might have something to do with having grown up with muscle cars and a family that rebuilds old cars. I got used to the idea that something didn't have to be black to be 'cool'.

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  18. "What is a man's favorite color for a gun?"

    BLUE!

    The color of Liberty!

    *shakes bowcaster*

    Shootin' Buddy

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  19. I tend to the utilitarian side, but I do love old-style engraved, high-polish blue and well figured wood or aged ivory, especally on a wheel-gun. Elmer Keith is one of my heros, what can I say? His 4in. .44s were beautiful, holster wear and all... JohninMd(help?)

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  20. Pink guns make my wife angry.

    As for me, my favorite color for a gun depends on the shape of the gun, just like a car.

    Ruger SR9Çs look fantastic in two tone. Glocks and XDs look nicer all black. I love all stainless 1911s.

    A nickel-plated. Moin-Nagant would be Wrong.

    My Makarov has a two-tone black and grey finish and I think it loos fantastic.

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  21. Black( or very dark blue)! With apologies to Henry Ford, "you can have any color you want as long as it's black". Oh, no plastic crap either!

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  22. If they could make a charcoal bluing that doesn't wear off when you sneeze I'd have all my guns done that way.

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  23. Flat black with a pinstripe flame job.

    If it's good enough for Alton Brown's KitchenAid mixer, dammit, it's good enough for me!

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  24. This color:

    "The designer of the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. 'Make it evil,' he'd been told. 'Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sort of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with."

    -- Douglas Adams

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  25. I like the wildlife scenes that at any distance work as camo, but up close is art.

    One or two of Cooper's custom Scouts had buttstocks down that way.

    I also like NP3.

    But for cheap stainless, tennifer, or any dull protective finish.

    ~Glamdring

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  26. *done, not down joys of posting from smartphone, guess I need an ESP phone ^_^

    ~Glamdring

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  27. Re pink guns;

    Similar question comes up in my triathlon group: why does this hardcore athlete female, who can kick your butt on a 15 mile trail run or a three mile swim, choose to ride a girly pink tri bike for 113 miles? The guys' tri bikes are generally dressed up as race cars or weapons, and there are some female tri bike models in those schemes, but what is behind the pink flowery tri bike market?

    My answer: Guys, imagine there was some item that you had need of, would be tremendously useful in your life, but was heavily culturally identified with effeminate gay men. Some guys might be a bit reluctant to embrace this thing. Then imagine one manufacturer comes out with essentially the same product, stripped of its gay-ness; positively oozing testosterone. I would predict strong sales for this product.

    Sure, some guys would be secure enough in their sexual identity, or perhaps weary of macho posturing, who would just go ahead and buy the faggy version. But there are an awful lot of guys who wouldn't be caught dead with the effeminate thing, but would happily buy the same thing in a dude-ified version.

    I think that's what's going on with pink guns and pink tri bikes.

    Alath
    Carmel IN

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  28. The WWF, Whale Wars idiot and the left in general reminded me of my high school anthropology teacher. She opined one day (in 1981) about the impending population bomb. She told us we had to limit the population drastically in our future. My comment was "you first." Nicest 3 days of in school suspension I ever had.

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  29. With wooden furniture, black or dark blue.

    Without, anything I have the money for. Someone needs to make a three wolf moon gun.

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  30. Charlie Foxtrot3:13 PM, May 20, 2012

    Parkarized Steel and Tung Oil. Like my Garand!

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  31. On the mapqvest:

    "NOTE: Due to an unexpectedly high volume of traffic to the site, performance of the routing map and interactive cartogram are not what they should be and you may experience delays. "

    You crashed Stanford!

    On my favorite gun color, shiny! Stainless, nickle, chrome, I love 'em all.

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  32. It depends on the type of gun, but I think my favorite combination is a bolt gun with a tan 'spiderwebbed' stock, with black for the metal bits, like so:
    http://www.snipershide.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1318770

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  33. o Rome via "Mare Nostrum":
    While it was "quicker," that depended on the sailing season and how willing you were to cast your life to the Fates. I'd have sooner walked.

    o Colors
    Long arm - Parked/walnut
    Handgun - Blued/cocobolo

    o "Population Bombers"
    The voting demographic of gays/lesbians, "can't-bring-a-child-into-this-jacked-up-world"ers and enviro-castrati (http://www.vhemt.org/) are self-limiting. Mark Steyn rightly says "Demography is destiny." Such voting-blocs will, in the span of a few generations, "lifestyle" themselves right out of existence.

    gvi

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  34. I am as offended by the people who say "you shouldn't..." as I am by the one who say "you must..."

    Stop the hate.

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  35. Manganese Phosphate and oil finished wood. Beech, Birch, or Walnut it all looks better than plastic.

    But plastic is generally more dimensionally stable.

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  36. Ancient Woodsman6:21 PM, May 20, 2012

    The yellowy-orange of an original Henry, a tool not collected until a century later..

    That "old penny" brown of an 1853 Enfield wall-hanger.

    The georgeous combination of walnut, ebony, and the Budweiser-blue Neidner cap on a Griffin & Howe, that I could never afford.

    The Extra-vigin-olive-oil green of a five-digit 1940 Springfield M1 rifle purchased for $150.00 and sold for the then happy price of $300.00.

    The shinier-than-later-versions greenish-black on a 1964 Colt SP1 stock.

    The gentle rainbow Jim Morrison would love on acid that was the case colors on a Parker.

    The calming foggy grey on the engraved receiver of the Grade 6 Belgian Browning .22 Auto or BAR.

    The low purple that oozed out of the blue that was an early Ruger M77 flat-dog-leg-bolt, well stored and obviously loved.

    The deeper-than-bluing thick black that was the German K-kote on early SIGs.

    Oh, my...colors...they are all wonderful and none favorite.

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  37. Having recently gone through the mess that is gendered baby clothing, my wife is very amused that the most common answer for what color men's guns should be is "blue(d)."

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  38. Browning! (Actually, my 1911 is black k-cote. My AR is black w/OD Magpul furniture. S&W 442 is black, 625JM is stainless, and Mossberg 500 is black. Garand is parkerized with a hideous birch stock I've been meaning to ditch for, um, a decade or three... Occurs to me I have very few "blued" guns.)

    @Kevin Creighton: But what color is AB's Kimber?

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  39. Black, like Melonite or Nitron or something similar in color. Manganese Phosphate Parkerizing would be second. Bluing is nice, too.

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  40. I seem to favor dark wood and scratched Parkerized. Though I sometimes think about using a water soluble pastel paint on the AK with Hello Kitty, Daisy, or my MY Little Pony stickers on it with the bayonet mounted just to mess with minds at the range.

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  41. The first pink gun that entered my household was a Taurus TCP 738. It was picked out by my wife, not because she thought it was "cute" in a girly sort of way, but because she wanted a carry piece that wasn't black. After that pistol nearly shit the proverbial bed, she went for a black S&W. My M4 has pink and white tigerstripe camouflage, I didn't put it there, but it looks damn pimp. My G17 has a pink hogue grip cover because the guy behind the counter said he'd ordered some for the ladies to buy, but none of them were interested. I figured, why not, it's comfy, the same price as the black one, and looks damn fetching when I'm at the range.

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  42. Scarlet, Fuchsia and Cerise with Burgundy trim :)

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  43. A really deep midnight blue as found in the GunKote color chart. Classy enough to go with wood furniture, modern enough to go with plastic-fantastic stuff.

    Failing that, let's go bonkers and add tweed to "New ways to gussy up old guns."

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  44. Decisions, decisions. I am on the waiting list for a Boberg Arms XR9-S. The early pistols had a bare stainless barrel and slide on a black anodized alloy frame with black grips. Good looking, but recently they have offered two other versions of upper/lowers and two other grip colors - red and green. The two new pistol colors are a bare stainless barrel and slide on a satin nickel-chrome plated alloy frame, "Platinum", and a black PQP barrel and slide on a black anodized frame, "Onyx". All three pistol variants look good to me, but the mostly black finish is more functional for corrosion resistance and concealability - two features I value highly.
    http://www.bobergarms.com/photo

    Otherwise, I loved the deep Colt blue with checkered Walnut grips on the Diamondback revolver I once owned, which also featured a flat black/dark charcoal grey low-reflective full length ribbed top strap that made aiming even easier under bright light.

    On combat weapons, Phospating/Parkerizing (dark gray, gray, or gray-green) along with QPQ/Natron/Melonite, etc. finishes are features that enhance the usability of the weapon and boost the perceived beauty. The Flat Dark Earth (FDE) finishes on some newer long arms are more desirable than a black or dark gray finish to me. But then again, there are those who insist that fire engine red paint with white racing stripes makes any car faster.

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  45. Basic Parkerized black or stainless steel with some sweet Bubinga or Paduak wood grips.

    I like the classics.

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  46. Pink. What, you thought we were buying these things for the women who won't talk to us!?

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  47. Realtree camo. Awesome! Scary! Cool!

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  48. As to pink for ladies, "The beginner- who was wearing a PD patch, turned out to have just been hired- had a slightly unusual pistol, and I asked her about it:
    "When I joined the department, my husband gave it to me. Didn't ask what I wanted, just gave it to me."
    It was a Glock.
    Pink.
    With matching pink handcuffs.
    No, she was not overly thrilled. She was happy he'd given her a pistol, but wished she'd had some input on the matter."

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  49. Worn nearly to white.

    (Actually, I think the receiver on my Swede M96 is just in the white naturally...)

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  50. I want a glow-in-the-dark Cav-arms AR.

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  51. "what I want to know is this: What is a man's favorite color for a gun?"

    Is "shiny" a color?

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