Once again the gun-snob side of me must come forward to beat the ever-living shit out of some marketeers, for apparently the kind but slightly dim folks in Morgan, Utah plan to sell these:

Yes, that is a Browning Hi-Power, the most elegant and perfectly proportioned handgun ever made. And yes, it really is painted to look like a tree. I have two objections to this.

First, from a purely aesthetic, gun-snob point of view, there are some things you JUST. DO. NOT. DO. This is a prime example; the Hi-Power deserves to wear deep, highly polished bluing or a nicely executed hard chrome finish. It does NOT deserve the Krylon touch. You people are pissing on the graves of John Moses Browning and Dieudonne Saive. Stop it.

Second, who do you expect will buy these monstrosities? Much though it pains me to acknowledge this, there really is a segment of the market that thinks a sidearm done up to look like the wood pile behind the shed is a really nifty idea. That segment of the market is very different from the segment that buys Hi-Powers. The Hi-Power is practically a cult item among knowledgeable gunfolk, and it has particular appeal to traditionalists and gun-snobs. The people who want Hi-Powers will hate this finish, and the people who want this finish will want it on a different gun. I’m sure it’d sell like hotcakes if you put it on a Glock.

Being an eternal optimist, though, I can see the silver lining on this Mossy Oak cloud. With a bit of luck, Browning will move about three of these guns before selling the rest of the production run to CDNN for 50 cents on the dollar. Then we’ll be able to buy them up at fire-sale prices and ship them off to Virgil Tripp so a proper finish can be applied.