>This week in Gun of the Week: a gun I couldn't have made myself, but I
>know at least one person who could've.

As a matter of fact, my father owns a .410 break-action gun that was hand-made by his great uncle. This weapon is beautiful to look at, beautiful to shoot, but also a great argument as to why firearms should be purchased from factories specializing in the construction of firearms.

>Notice the bit sticking out from the barrel. That's the extractor;
>when the shotgun hinges open, that comes out

. . . and goes flying over your shoulder, due to the fact that Great Uncle Dale didn't have access to the right kind of steel when he was making his gun. After this tragic occurrence, the gun was cleaned and returned to the gun case, never repaired, because when are we ever going to seriously need a break-action .410 shotgun?

At which point, a surfeit* of rabid skunks turned up and started nosing around the edge of the property. However, this didn't seem to be too big a problem, as we had Men With Guns on hand. We would have benefited from a closer inspection of the situation though, as it turns out we had the following items in our inventory:
-Three (3) Homo Sapiens Redneckus;
-Two (2) SKS semi-automatic rifles;
-One (1) 5-round SKS stripper clip**;
-One (1) adolescent who was about to earn a lifelong loathing of the operation of stripper clips.

So off the adults went, firing away with great enthusiasm while I tried in vain to fill the clip fast enough to keep two rifles loaded. Fortunately, I was relieved of my duties in short order . . . but only because Dad hadn't gotten around to buying ammo for the SKS yet, and so we had been shooting through the "snack-sized" packet of 7.62 that the gun store included with the purchase.

With no other option readily available, Dad went back and grabbed the poor old .410 and the box of shells and went to work on the skunk problem, and this time, he got results- most likely because the tedium of having to get out his pocket knife and pry the shell loose after each shot forced him to actually aim this time. However, this success didn't last long- since the .410 was broken, there hadn't been a need to buy more shells, and so all we had left were the leftovers from the day the extractor broke, a total of 3.

Now completely out of ammo, the adults did the the only reasonable*** thing; declared a "tactical victory" and went back in the house. The next day, Dad went and bought a cheap 12-gauge and an ample supply of ammo, and naturally there hasn't been a single encroachment by unfriendly wildlife since, Murphy's Laws being what they are.

*apparently "surfeit" is the official collective noun for skunks, which seems entirely reasonable.

**for those of you playing at home, this is a greater than 1-to-1 ratio of guns to clips. The second SKS belonged to one of Dad's buddies, who had mistaken the clip that came with his gun for something unnecessary and discarded it. Buddy and gun were present that day so he could use Dad's clip to load the gun and try it out. IIRC, the company importing these guns was selling them for some unreasonably low price, but only included one clip per gun, and sold extras for $20+ per.

***I suggested that they should deploy their SKS' folding bayonets and charge the enemy, but that was purely out of spite since the ammunition ran out before I got a turn at shooting.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."