And the world wobbled on it's axis...

I took Nicki and her son out shooting over the week-end, and I saw something happen that I never thought I'd live to see.

My Uzi would not function.
The world's most reliable submachinegun crashed, right then and there, refusing to fully chamber rounds. I was stunned. Clearly this is some sort of portent. Uzis aren't supposed to fail--not ever.

Maybe Nicki is a jinx?

I worked on it at the range, and even enlisted the help of two other machine gunners to troubleshoot it, all to no avail. We couldn't get it running again.

Fortunately they also had one which they were kind enough to loan us so that I could at least keep my promise to Nicki's son. I'd promised him some trigger time on an Uzi, and I was pissed that a malfunctioning gun was interfering. However sometimes things just work out, and in this case, as luck would have it, there were other Uzi owners on the range--Uzi owners who were kind enough to just hand one over to three total strangers for a bit once I explained my dilemma.

So the boy got to shoot up an old barbecue grill with an Uzi after all, even though my Uzi crapped out, because gun people really are some of the best people when you need help.

As for me, I've now swapped out the mainspring and bolt in my Uzi and it seems to work fine now, but I confess that my faith in it's legendary reliability is shaken. It's going to take a lot of shooting before I can trust it like I used to again.

So if you'd like to help, donated cases of 9mm ammunition are gratefully being accepted. You wouldn't want me to not trust my Uzi, would you?