[fabsroman]

Lost,

This is my philosophy on guns, cars, and homes. I buy the nicest gun and car for the job, but I don't over indulge on it. If it is a working gun, I don't get the guns with the scroll work on them, but I buy what I think is the best one out there for the job. Same goes for my daily commuter car. I buy a decent car with all the upgrades in it, but I don't go out and buy a Lexus or Mercedes. I drive a plain old Ford Taurus every day. Now, the truck is a F-350 Lariat Crew Cab and that is my toy. Same goes for the 1989 Mustang that I have. The current house is a 7 year old townhouse that I bought 6 months ago and that I am completely remodeling. The fiance and I intend on staying here for about 7 years so I am making it as nice to live in as possible. Hopefully, in 7 years we will be in a position to have a new single family house built on a couple of acres of property. Since we will probably be living in that house the rest of our lives, or until we go to a nursing home, I intend on making it as nice as possible. The next vehicle purchase will be a Ford Expedition or Ford Five Hundred in the Eddie Bauer or SLS trims respectively. My dream clays gun is a Beretta DT-10, but my dream shotgun is a Beretta 682EELL or the new Beretta 682EL with the gold game scenes. Those would be bought just to sit in the safe. I have also seen a couple of really nice older Berettas, I think they were Jubilees with game scenes engraved on them. That is another dream gun that would sit in the safe for the most part.

What I am trying to say is that I tend to keep and use my guns, cars, and homes for a while, so I tend to spend the extra couple of dollars on them but I don't do insane stuff like hunt waterfowl with a Beretta 682 Gold E or my Beretta 391 Teknys sporting clays gun. Hunting guns are my Beretta 686 Onyx, my Beretta 3901, and my Benelli SBE. I have yet to sell a gun I bought and I have yet to buy a used gun. Same goes for cars. I have yet to buy a used car and I have yet to sell or trade in a car. When I am done with a car, it is usually done and ready for the junk yard. Currently, I have three dream cars. The 2005 Ford Mustang Cobra, the 1968 Ford Mustang Boss with a 428 in it, and a Ferrari (the exact Ferrari is unknown right now, but I would settle for a 355).

I guess you also have to look at how much you value the thing you are going to buy. Will you be using it a lot, or just a little? I buy some really nice tools if I know I will be using them quite often, but if it is something that I will only use once in a blue moon, I tend to settle for the middle of the line. I use my commuting car, guns, and house a lot, so they are what is important for me. I applied the same principal when buying my dog, but I don't use him, he uses me. Just haven't had the time to take him out hunting as much as I should have this year.

Bottom line, I probably wouldn't buy a Stoeger as my main hunting gun because it isn't made in Italy like Benelli and even though both companies are owned by Beretta, it doesn't mean that both companies are run in the same manner (e.g., quality controls might be a little more off at Stoeger). A buddy of mine bought one of those Stoeger o/u's before they were owned by Beretta and the thing shot a couple of feet high at 40 yards. That might have been good if it was a trap gun, but it was a field gun. Now, if all my hunting years were as slim as this year, the Stoeger would be my gun of choice because I wouldn't be able to justify spending the money on a Benelli to only hunt 5 times a year. Over the last 8 years, for the most part, I have killed 100+ doves, 50+ ducks, and 100+ geese a season. This year, I have 52 doves, 0 geese, and 0 ducks. This is probably my worst season ever, and I mean since I was about 12 years old.

If you are going to use the gun for hunting and don't care about the finish and will not be hunting that much, buy the Stoeger. If you get all your hunting guns in synthetic like me, then finish really doesn't matter, and the only thing that matters is functionality/reliability.


I left off that Skeet is also an okay guy, even for a retired guy.

As an aside, I now see why people hate attorneys. I have a hispanic speaking client that paid for an attorney to represent his cousin in a first degree assault charge. At the end of the day, the cousin wasn't happy with the representation, so he wanted to hire another attorney. The new attorney had my client sign a document, that the new attorney said was a release of the previous attorney from the case, but which turns out to be an attorney-client agreement wherein my client was to pay $10,000 for the representation of his cousin. My client never paid a dollar of the $10,000, but the cousin paid $7,000 of it until he ended up in jail for 4 months. After that, he stopped paying. Well, this guy is now suing my client and in reviewing the document it is so poorly drafted that even I, an attorney, cannot understand exactly what the other attorney was trying to convey with this document. He should have had my client sign a third party payment agreement advising my client that his actual client was the cousin and then crafted his attorney client agreement with the cousin to make the cousin ultimately responsible for the bill, make the cousin aware of the third party payment arrangement, and make the cousin understand that the cousin was in charge of the litigation. This should be a fun one in court, and to think that this guy makes $10,000 for something like this, he has been practicing 16 years, he probably didn't put much work into the case, and he isn't a big name attorney. I spent an entire night tossing and turning over this, and would like to knock this guy upside the head. His kid's tuition was probably coming due so he needed to find the money somewhere. Like I have told many people, I have no idea how some of the people in law school with me ever passed the bar exam, much less how they continue to acquire clients.