A very short play in three scenes

Scene I - The SandCastle dinner table
The SandCastle crew is enjoying a dinner prepared with love by the SandCastle Queen.  The SandCastle Son pipes up with "So dad, what's the newest gun you have?"  I sheepishly look up from my plate and muse "would that include the one that is currently in transit?"  SCQueen rolls her eyes and lets out "Oh geez... what'd you buy now?"  "Oh trust me" I answer.  "You're going to like this one!"

Scene II - Flashback to Local gun range a couple weeks ago.
It's a beautiful winter Saturday at the range, recall this is the Sonoran Desert so it's sunny and temps in the low 70's.  Setting up on bench 25 I recognize another AZ blogger** The Capitalist Pig two benches down with a new rifle.  Blogger tells me about it and why he picked it up.  You see a local range hosts a fun steel pistol match on Thursday nights.  One night a month they also run a "pistol caliber carbine / shotgun" match the night prior to the pistol match.  His new acquisition was a Hi-Point carbine in 9mm.  This was his missing piece to shoot the match.  I watched his progress and it looked like entirely too much fun.  It also doesn't take much time to figure the cost savings shooting 9mm over .223.

A few days later I found my self on the site of Buds gun shop.  Buds offers several different packages in 9mm, .40 and .45 and with several sighting options.  The straight 9mm with iron sights is $257 (cash/shipped) and $281 including a Red Dot sight.  I decided to think about it more and moved on.  A few days later I was back at Buds and the rifle was now sale with only a $1 delta between the basic package and the Red Dot package.  I reread it several times looking for the catch.  $1 to add the Red Dot sight?  I weakened and pulled out the credit card.  (It also helps that a good friend is an FFL and already on their shippers list.  This makes the legal transfer entirely too easy!)

Scene III - Today at the range with the SandCastle Crew and the new carbine.
It shoots pretty nice though the trigger is a bit stiff and it's shooting a little high and right at 25 yards.  It's constructed of stamped steel and plastic.  I'll admit is has a "cheap" feel to it, but what do you expect for a coupla*** C notes?

It would have been nicer if the "Red Dot" package had included instructions on how to mount the Red Dot scope with a 3/8" mount onto the 3/4" Weaver rails on the gun.  Still nicer if either company (Buds who sold the package to me or HiPoint that presumably wholesaled the package to Buds would answer the emails asking for help.)    Stay tuned for yet another tale of customer service how-to or how-not-to.  So far no response from either inquiry.

* Posting new acquisitions to the armory would create an searchable inventory of the SandCastle Armory (as if the trail of 4473's doesn't already do this).  Still I don't want to make it easy hence the "don't post new acquisitions" rule.

** normally I would send some linky-love  to said blogger but he/she/they have not web-licly announced possession of said rifle and I don't want to spill the beans so to say.  (The "don't post new acquisitions" rule referenced above applies to others as well)

*** A "coupla" is more than one but less than a "handful".

Update: The anonymous AZ blogger has web-licly outed themselves with said rifle via a YouTube video and granted linky love permission.   I ask you, does this look like fun or what!  I need to acquire a couple more magazines but I'm there next month!