Is there ever a light at the end of the tunnel?

Can you get them all? Guns that is. Will you ever be totally satisfied with what you have? Personally, at best, I'm hoping for an uneasy state of equilibrium where the desire to own more guns is matched by financial outlay and practicality. The thing is, all it takes is one discussion, one picture or piece of news footage, and there it is again, a whole new branch of your collection is shooting off at a divergent angle to everything you already have.



At first, it was simple. I had one gun and I needed a side arm, so I had a dodgy little AEP to go with my Jing Gong BAR10. I had acknowledged getting some kind of assault rifle type thing, but that was in the future. Right now I was complete. Then one day, it was suggested, for reasons lost to time, that a more effective side-arm should be acquired, one that would allow for stand-alone use, should the situation require and before long, an MP5K was picked up.

I don't think I'd even used the little H&K in anger by the time I came to handle the Tokyo Marui Desert Eagle I later swapped it for. As soon as I laid my hand on it, I knew it had to become mine. And so it did. In a straight swap, the MP5K was passed on and I had entered the world of the gas blow back pistol, thus relegating the pathetic little AEP to complete redundancy, eventual dismantling and a subsequent life of rattling around in my stuff box in component pieces.

The Desert Eagle paved the way and sparked the impractical idea of wielding a brace of them at pistol games, a pipe dream that never materialised, partly due to lack of a usable dual holstering systems and partly for other reasons that I don't even fully understand, even though both guns were actually in my possession for a long period.

Aside from slowly tinkering with and upgrading the Jing Gong BAR10, a quiet period of gun gaining was entered. At best this lasted around a month. A generous benefactor bestowed the second Desert Eagle upon me at this point, and much gesturing and waving was done. It was decided that the Desert Eagle, despite all it's downsides, was actually awesome.

At this juncture, my recollection of the family tree of my arsenal becomes a little hazy. I have a definite recollection of being instilled with a strong desire to own an AK after that same benefactor that supplied the second Desert Eagle allowed use of his Tokyo Marui AK74MN. This resulted in a bargain purchase of an Inokatsu RPK with Tokyo Marui internals, it wasn't an AK but it was pretty close. As well as being the most high end gun I currently owned, the RPK was special as it was the first gun I ever saw the insides of. Not that I had the balls to go it alone.

Peering over the shoulder of a friend and lending a hand to hold a lightly greased cylinder in place was a special experience, a bit like in war films, where to grubby soldiers attempt to patch up a stricken comrade as arterial blood rushes out of a wound. However, instead of our patient fading away in a splutter of phlegmy blood, the RPK rose again and barked out a confidence inspiring stream of BBs. This healthy gusto didn't last long though, but the whole ordeal did equip me with the knowledge that the internals of an AEG are not the mysterious and frightening place they are often depicted as. It's just cogs, springs and a cylinder.

Around the same time as acquiring the RPK, I broke yet more new ground. Until this point I had only ever purchased second hand guns and I had decided it was time to pop my cherry and get my own. As a long term fan of Black Hawk Down, I decided the M733 was the only way to go, but now before pondering so many other options (for the sake of breviary, I'll spare the decision making process for another day) . It had that stripped down, no nonsense thing going on. I didn't want lasers, magpul this and RIS that, yet...

The choice was made, in as much that I knew that I wanted an M733, but I still had to pick the right one. On a cold, rainy payday, I blagged the afternoon off and visited FireSupport to browse the goods. The choice was between the proven reliability of the Tokyo Marui offering and the external sturdiness and accuracy accuracy of the G&P. After much back and forth, I went home clutching the G&P like a doll, it was like Christmas day, I had a giant box full of my new favourite possession, it was raining and I didn't have batteries to put in the thing.



My room was staring to look like a Somalian warlord's basement, and I began to feel like a legitimate airsofter. I didn't really have anywhere in particular to store all these guns, but they looked cool laying around. I bought excessive amounts of magazines, mostly just leave strewn around, and for about a week, everything was fantastic. I was content. I think it was at this point, some sudden and unforseen desire to own a shotgun fully enveloped me.

That was it, I needed it, the Tokyo Marui SPAS 12, but for some reason, it took some time to acquire. I was put off by naysayers, dismissive of it's ABS construction and price and attempted to quench my thirst by purchasing a cheap stop gap. It was very cheap at £12, but it was like methadone to a heroin addict, there was no real satisfaction, despite reasonable performance.

To the amusement of many bystanders, the cheap shotgun met a grisly end shortly after the RPK motor clapped out on me at a skirmish. I drew the shotgun in a fit of range, intending to cause carnage. Instead, I slipped on a sheep poo and stabbed the thing into the ground, snapping it clean in half. And that's how the equilibrium is so easily disturbed. In the heat of a skirmish I had wiped out 2 guns within 30 seconds. The prospect of having just 2 usable weapons frightened me and it was decided that I needed more.

Although the RPK had done a good job in stemming the flow of desire for an AK, the steady trickle that it let through had pooled into a pond of discontentment... I really needed that an AK. Well, I didn't, until one came up for sale from a friend... I snapped it up.

I've marked this point as the top of the hill... I reached the summit and now I'm in freefall, tumbling down the hill, with my collection of guns building and growing, like a giant snowball... Occasionally, pieces break of and the collection shrinks marginally, but by and large, the numbers are growing. Sometimes, the snowball stalls on a ledge, hanging over a sheer drop, and it only takes one war film, one picture or one conversation to push the whole lot down the chasm and once again growing.

See, the collection is an organic thing... In a years time, you'll be somewhere totally different to where you thought you'd be but you'll certainly be surrounded by guns.