Mosin Nagant #4
I know people on a few online boards do this, and a very good friend of mine who is also a Mosin owner does this with me: Talking about Mosin Nagants means you slip into a fake, horrible Russian accent and talk about the glory of the U.S.S.R. (now defunct). It’s all silliness. The Soviets were huge on propaganda, and everything was FOR THE GLORIOUS MOTHERLAND. It’s fun to talk about your rifle in a Yakov Smirnoff accent and give voice to various cold war stereotypes. And type in all caps. Like you’re shouting.
SO IS SAYING THAT MOSIN RIFLE IS BEST RIFLE. IS BEST RIFLE FOR WORKER’S PROLETARIAT, AS KOMRADE MARX DISCUSSED. IS RUGGED AND NOT EASILY BROKEN – LIKE SOVIET WORKER. MOSIN RIFLE IS TOOL OF WORKER, TO HUNT FOOD AND CAPITALIST PIG DOGS. IS FOR THE PEOPLE. IS FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF SOVIET MOTHERLAND. ENEMY WHO INVADES CCCP TERRITORY WILL FIND WORKERS WAITING IN MOCKBA, TO DESTROY INVASION AND TREAD UPON INVADER’S SKULLS. RIFLE IS BEST.
I’ll stop now.
See, some of my readers don’t remember the Soviet Union. I feel fucking OLD about this, even when describing it to them. The Cold War is about as current to today’s 21 year olds as Vietnam was to my generation. Hell, even I grew up at the tail end of it all – my mother’s generation REALLY remember a time when the USSR was a big bogeyman, ready to doom the world into nuclear mutually-assured destruction. I remember Gorbechov – they remember Kruschev. Once upon a time, the USSR was our biggest enemy. Then they kinda imploded, when I was in my teens, and now they’re lucky if they can manufacture a decent wristwatch. Now the big enemy is Al Qaeda, or the Taliban, or the TERRISTS, and it lacks the glory of a proper enemy of old. Dammit, as a kid, it was kind of romanticized that the Russians were our enemy. Somewhere out there, on the other side of the planet, was a giant military-industrial nation that wore fur hats and wool overcoats, made potatoes into booze, and liked to yell “NA ZDROVYE” while dancing on hot coals in Siberia or some shit. I miss that, in a way. Our enemies today apparently can’t afford shoes half the time, are illiterate, and live in caves. Or so I’m told by the modern American media.
Here’s how it used to be – because Chicago was such a target for the Soviets, and helicopters were SERIOUS SHIT YO, heh.
You are slowly driving me toward the acquisition of a Mosin.
Comrade,
It is question why you do not have symbol of the Glorious Russian victory over fascism already. Are you not proud of simplistic design? A rifle that can be cleaned, maintained, dis-assembled and re-assembled by glorious farm worker who only knows the horse and plow? Are you not a fan of a robust, magnificent rifle that can also double as a pole vault or boat oar when needed?
Perhaps you do not like a rifle that can bayonet a capitalist pig dog on the other side of a river without leaving the comfort of your foxhole? Or perhaps it’s the finish, comprised of shellac, cosmoline and Olga’s Toenails, strong and durable just like the beet, robust just like the glorious workforce of the motherland?
Joking aside, they’re worth it, just a fun, cheap gun that shoots cheaper ammo that’s usually dug out of a field in the Ukraine. I’ve got two, one’s a hex receiver, the others a sniper variant with PU Scope. Sniper variant with surplus ammo will hold consistently in the X and 10 rings at 200 yards as long as I do my part.
http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk277/Teutonic_Knight_Funnay/AV2T111_zpsc4917f7b.jpg
I tell everyone to get one though simply because it’s too good a deal to pass up. but if you want accuracy and collectibility I’d suggest holding out and trying to track down a Finnish Capture Mosin. They re-worked the triggers, bedded the action and barrels and are usually considered a supremely accurate variant.
It really is a “Why not?” sort of thing. I walked out of a store with one plus all the standard issue goodies for $130 after taxes and fees. Last AR15 lower receiver I bought cost more then that for the stripped reciever.
There is also nothing quite like pulling one out at the range… and then everyone else also pulls their Mosins out. One moment you have the usual mix of tacticool ARs/AKs, deer guns, and bench rest monster then suddenly Stalingrad.
Chicago was a a huge target, 2nd after Cheyenne Mountain. In the northern suburbs is the optics company that made the cameras for the survellance aircraft for the USAF. Father-in-law is a retired full bird who worked for them after he got out.
The more you know!
What a coincidence. My gramps was a half bird in the opposing Air Force, who went to work at a top-secret television-related research institute after mustering out.
May I be excused if I affect that cheesy Russian accent when handling my AK and other Warsaw Pact firearms? Don’t have a M-N, tho I shot a friend’s once, not an experience I’d care to repeat right away! I don’t play too often at being a good Soviet worker, but when I do, it’s at The Peoples’ Cube.
Kinda related; many moons ago I was driving around listening to a radio station out of Houston, when an ad for a jewelers comes on, inviting me to see their selection of “fine Swiss watches.” I yell at the radio, “I don’t want a fine Swiss watch, I want a sturdy Russian one!” The then-wife got a thoughtful look on her face as she processed that idea.
Da. Tovarish Grantinski tells pravda! MN rifle finest example of reconstructionist engineering. When last AR has seized due to lack of $500.00 a bottle lubricant made from tears of saints, MN will coughing out 7.62 x 54R death in glorious 5 round intervals.
Seriously – ammo is the cheapest out there – is still being made and imported in large quantities. Have a few friends who are belt-fed shooters and 7.62 x 54R is a common conversion from 8mm/.308/.303/30.06 as it *is* available where in the most part low cost surplus for other calibers has dried up.
Sealed tins of new manufacture, non-corrosive primer ammo run anywhere from 70 to 100 a tin off around 400 rounds *may vary based on maker*, and will easily outlast you. Make the grandkids happy – buy a few and set aside along with a cosmoline encrusted example of former USSR and it will be shooting when its a 150 years old, most likely. I have a 1917 enfield sporter that is still taken down tot he range, and my 1930’s MN and Mausers still shoot as good as when they were made. These old warriors date back to when gunsmiths were *serious* about quality, and they have and will continue to stand the test of time as long as used and cared for properly.
Abbie
I am predicting that, like other “dirt cheap, dead common” surplus rifles of the past, that unaltered factory-issue Mosins will eventually be rare, expensive and sought-after…purely because they ARE so cheap, common and surplus that people think nothing of bubba-izing the hell out of them right, left and center. Isn’t that what happened to so many makes in the past?
Note that when I say “eventually”, I’m thinking maybe the year 2150 or thereabouts. Which is probably about the time the supply of spam cans will dry up.
I went to the USAF Armaments Museum as a holiday and nice 900 mile motorcycle ride for my birthday in July.
One of the cool things they have is a huge hall of weapons that have been fired by USAF personnel on duty, starting with the huge 20mm GAU-8 cannon off the A-10, to a M1918 Vickers machine gun that Colt modified to fire 11mm French incendiary rounds.
They’ve got a “Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle” in there, and unfortunately the plaque in my pic is too damn illegible to make out anything other than it’s Hungarian made.
For the record, this arc could not have possibly come at a better time for me. I have a sniper in the novel I’m writing, and this gives me one handy place, already bookmarked, to check up on some rifle facts. It has to be believable, not 100% accurate, so this saves me a lot of unspecific googling. Since the story is set in Siberia, a Mosin will be perfect.
Also, I genuinely love the comic. As a Wyoming native living in Ohio, I occasionally run into some severe culture shock, most of which has to do with open space and guns. And wind. Can’t forget the wind.
If you have $100 to blow in research, go get you a Mosin. Owning and firing one will do wonders for your ability to write with confidence about the weapon.
…And then go clean the Mosin. Take a whole weekend to do it right. Get cosmo in your clothes & fingernails that wont come out for weeks. Then take it to the range and fire away. Don’t forget to wear a thin shirt so you can have that nice “U” shaped bruise tattooed on your shoulder.
Have fun! One of us, one of us, one of us
And also don’t forget a rubber mallet to work the action when you arm is too sore to work it manually. There’s a reason why there’s one in my range bag when I take ol’ Red out to the range… 🙂
In 1991, not long before the USSR fell, I was a tourist in Stockholm. For lodgings, I had a bunk on the AF Chapman, an early 20th century naval vessel that had been turned into a youth hostel. And in the bunk across from me: a tourist from Russia. He thought the fact that he was rooming with an American was the greatest thing, and I swear he talked with that exact same fake, horrible Russian accent.
“HELLO AMERICAN!! IS WERY FUNNY YOU AND ME IN SAME ROOM!!”