Your dad must have been in the navy with my stepdad. He said exactly the same thing to me when he gave me a single shot 12 gauge for Christmas. I was hoping for a Remington 780, but expecting nothing so I wasn’t completely disappointed. A couple years later, he “let” me buy a Remington 514 from his uncle who tried to give it to me. He insisted I pay for it., and his uncle wouldn’t take any more than $5 from me. He told my stepdad that I gave him $20. At the time, the Remington Nylon 66 was the hottest thing going in the .22 caliber market. All my friends had one, some converted to fully automatic apparently, and I wanted one worse than Ralphie wanted the Red Rider BB gun. Mind you, by the time I was 13, I cleaned and maintained two Brownings, 3 Model 12 pumps, a .30 caliber carbine, a bolt action 30-06(converted/sporterized Japanese rifle) and a matched pair of winchester .22 pump rifles (one LR, the other Magnum) that were exclusively his weapons not to be touched (except for cleaning) by anyone but him. Oh yeah, I forgot about the S&W 32-20 and a little 9-shot .22 revolvers.
But somehow, his words just seem a little hypocritical now, despite his skill and talent. If one shot is enough, then why didn’t he carry a single shot? They’re a heck of a lot easier to clean Oh yeah, that was my job.
Not a 514 then. It cocks the bolt when the bolt is closed. The safety is a knob on the back end of the bolt that locks the trigger. The 514 was introduced in the late 50’s by Remington. About the same time I was introduced to the world. It’s super light and I like shooting it, albeit it does get a little bothersome loading each round.
Edit:
I stand corrected. The 514 was manufactured from 1948 to 1971. So it’s possible that it’s 10 years older than me. Still a baby though.
I have a Gewer 88 made in 1890. That thing is a beast. Shooting it is like deciding you really don’t care if Mike Tyson punches you. It’s as long as a fence rail and weighs as much as some late model cars. I took it to a nearby gun range where everyone goes to spray with their 5.56 AR’s and AR lookalikes. When I blew one of the hanging targets off the chain they made me leave. I only got to shoot 1 round that day. The game warden came running up to see what had exploded. He just about wet himself laughing when he saw my antique and everyone was looking at me with their mouth open. He told I couldn’t play on the playground while the little children were there. Turns out he had one too, and met me at the range another day and together we destroyed most of the steel targets. I helped him put new ones back up as well as any that were still functional. That was a fun day. But now it costs nearly $6/round to shoot the beast. 8mm Mauser aint cheap. Or wasn’t the last time I shopped for any.
