Over at thefirearmblog.com, they’re starting the week with a look at “The World’s Most Expensive Rifle.” It’s actually the world most expensive rifles: a matched pair from Swedish gunmaker VO Gun & Rifle. The fact the smiling gentlemen featured on the home page are dressed in suits and wearing white gloves tells you that their rifles are not to be toyed with. Literally. A sentiment shared by one of our favorite gun bloggers: “Who in their right mind would detonate an explosive in a $800,000 metal tube? Not I. But if I were a wealthy monarch drowning in money, I would much rather buy an overpriced rifle than a equally priced gemstone.” And I would never buy a gun I wouldn’t fire. Except maybe this one: “Old” Jack Hinson’s sniper rifle, used to take out over 80 Yankee soldiers. How about you? Do you own any non-firing safe queens? Would you?
Aw, chop down the barrel and make a “hide away” with a laser and tactical light! The bad guys will never see it coming!
I would love to get my hands on that beautifully engraved Winchester 1866 that they have displayed at the Cody Firearms Museum. It would never leave the safe unless I was creepily staring at it alone at night and whispering, “my precious”
The only firearm(s) I would purchase with no intention of firing would be memorabilia and historical type pieces.
There is no firearm for which I’d pay so much that I wouldn’t then want to fire it. While I can appreciate something like the gun pictured above, I see guns primarily as tools.
You could fit out a Caterpillar backloader with a hand-rubbed, burled walnut dash, wheel and levers, finest ass-caressing leather seats (heated, of course) and have the gnomes at Rolls Royce paint it and use their magical spit and little tiny hands to finish it, but that wouldn’t make me want to park it in my garage and only rub it with a diaper on weekends. It’s meant to be used.
HAhahahaha………YES!
No, I truly do appreciate fine firearms. The thing is, they’ve already been fired, so as long as it is safe to do so, why not enjoy it like the fine instrument it is? You wouldn’t put Angelina Jolie on a shelf!
Angelina could detonate me!
My idea of fine firearm ownership tops out at a couple thou in value. When we’re talking that little amount of money then my gun won’t be valuable enough to not shoot.
So the answer for me is ‘no’.
I love going to the fancy pants Gun Library at Cabela’s to look at and appreciate those guns. But I would never own one.
“Who in their right mind would detonate an explosive in a $800,000 metal tube?”
Ooh, ah, umm, a military gunnery officer? I imagine that some of the metal tubes that they detonate propellants (note: NOT explosives. Really, TTAG should know the difference.) in are worth all of that and a whole lot more.
Yes, I agree. If you stretch the realm of rounds exploding from tube to include things such as the Stinger Short Range Air Defense Missile and such, then there is NO DOUBT $800,000 becomes a drop in the bucket.
My grandpa has two pistols. One is his father-in-laws 1911 that was carried through the trenches in WWI. The other is a Czech pistol he picked up while on peacekeeping duty after WWII. The Czech pistol has never been fired and still in pristine condition. Gramps bought the pistol off the factory line and carried it around just so he looked like big stuff and ze Czechs would bugger off thinking he was an MP or an officer. He was neither. If anything actually went down, he would swing his Garand around and shatter a jaw in hand-to-hand or shatter the back of your skull from the inside out at 50 yards.
I plan to fire both one day.
1898 LC Smith 12-gauge Damascus barrelled… I am restoring/preserving it for a friend, who will likely sell it to me anyway. I probably wont shoot it, and if I do, it will only be with a box of blackpowder loaded shotshells anyway.
At this moment, I’m inclined to say that there isn’t a firearm I’d own but never fire. Then again, I can’t afford anything worth not firing; so I suppose my opinion doesn’t really hold water. I suppose if I was wealthy enough to get into serious collecting, then I probably would own some (curio) firearms I would not fire (because they’d probably be unsafe to fire).
I own a pretty fair number of guns, and I’ll shoot most of them, regardless of their price. There are a few collectables that I won’t shoot. For example, I have a pair of consecutively numbered 1935 Brazilian Mausers, in pristine condition, complete with all matching accessories and the factory test-fire targets, but have never been shot otherwise and been in storage ever since being built. No way am I going to shoot them. On the other hand, I have a couple high-end custom built hunting rifles, which do get shot. It all depends on the particular weapon.
I have a rifle I have never and will never fire and a handgun I rarely fire, and I obtained both knowing this would be the case (or at least highly expecting it to be).
The rifle has a long sordid story to go along with it, which I won’t bore you with. It is an SVD (Dragunov), and was really mistreated by its former owners. To the point it is extremely unsafe to fire, and no amount of care can bring it back from its current state. I got it for a decent price expecting to use it as a wall hanger, because I love the SVD and had a working SVD and its cousin the Tiger at the time I got it. I just made one small miscalculation; I forgot to ask the wife first if we could hang one above the mantle. She protested, pointed out that it would clash significantly with the grand piano that is that rooms center piece, and declared it would scare all her piano and voice students away. Most people have a TV in their living room; I have a stinking grand piano that takes up almost the whole room. We can’t even use the gas fireplace above which I planned to hang the gun because the temperature will mess up the piano. But I digress. So it sits in the safe, never been fired, never to fire, and at this point I am hoping one of the sons will want it as a mantel piece and marry a more understanding woman.
The pistol is largely the same story; it is a Luger from WWII. Previous owners thought of it more as a historic piece than a gun and so never ever oiled it in the 40 some years they had it. Key parts are now pitted, like the extractor. So, while still shoot able, it almost always jams. So when I shoot it I only load one round into the magazine. And I barely ever feel like going through the trouble to do that. I have spent some time looking for a new extractor and have even contemplated having a new one machined for me, but never found one or been able to justify the cost.
As to not shooting for value reasons, I really want a PSG1. If I ever convince the wife that 20k for a gun is a good investment, I would think real long and hard before shooting it. My real dream is to get two, shoot one and not the other.
So what’s with the gold overrun on the falcon talon bolt handle. Pretty sloppy for .8 million. Good thing that didn’t happen to mine or I would have sent it back!
This seems to depend on the niche market. In summers I work for an importer of English side by sides and all of those guns, including the 100 year old $100k+, Damascus twist barrel Holland & Hollands are meant to be fired.
Guns are made to be fired — and the more historic the firearm, the more I would want to fire it. Maybe not weekly, or even monthly, but I’d fire it. No safe queens for me.
Jack Hinson’s One-Man War, A Confederate Sniper
http://www.namsouth.com/viewtopic.php?t=2406&highlight=hinson
(10/07/09 UPDATE: Pastor John Weaver, who attends the SCV’s Sam Davis Youth Camp each summer, has just released a new sermon entitled Jack Hinson, Confederate Sniper. BT)
Jack Hinson, Confederate Sniper
Sermon
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=105091215367
Book
http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Hinsons-One-Man-Civil-Sniper/dp/1589806409
“Jack Hinson’s neutrality was shattered the day Union patrols moved in on his land, captured two of his sons, accused them of being bushwhackers, and executed them on the roadside. The soldiers furthered the abuse by decapitating the Hinson boys and placing their heads on the gateposts of the family estate. He commissioned a special rifle, a heavy-barreled .50-caliber weapon designed for long-range accuracy. He said goodbye to his family, and he took to the wilderness seeking revenge. Hinson, nearly sixty years of age, alone, and without formal military training, soon became a deadly threat to the Union. A Confederate sniper, he made history after single-handedly bringing down an armed Union transport and serving as a scout for Nathan Bedford Forrest. A tenacious and elusive figure, Hinson likely killed more than one hundred Union soldiers, recording the confirmed deaths on the barrel of his rifle with precision.”
I personally do not have a firearm that I will not take shooting. However, I do appreciate the fact that some guns are more a piece of art and engineering, and probably should not be shot. My uncle has a large collection of rare revolvers that will never see a round.
There is one gun I know I would never shoot if I was lucky enough to own it. It’s my dream to own a Singer Sewing Machine Company m1911 pistol, which will most likely never happen, but if it does, I will build a glass case into my wall just above my bed and it will sleep there untouched.
SMLE MK 1 with 3 asterisks made in 1906. I did fire it before it was appraised. Bad trigger anyway. Beutiful rifle though