Some Firearms Are "Just Because"

A recently came across a video from Paul Harrell from about seven years ago comparing the Walther PPK/S against the Bersa Thunder .380. About 3/4 of the way through the video, as he was doing his wrap up, Paul related an incident where he had gone with a friend to a gun show to help him select a pistol. His friend was looking for a PPK (not the /S model) and specifically one in .32 ACP. Paul convinced him to purchase one in .380 because it was going to be a better choice for self defense. As he relates, this was a mistake on his part:

Now Joe did want to get a good gun that could be called upon if he needed it; but what I didn't understand, and this was a big mistake on my part, is that what he really wanted was to be able to say that he has James Bond's gun. (This would have been back just after the Roger Moore days when he still had a PPK in caliber 32 ACP). Because it was important to Joe to be able to say something like Walther PPK caliber 7.65 millimeter or however the line goes; and although that kind of thing is totally irrelevant to some of us it is very important to some people to say they have Dirty Harry's gun or as I heard somebody say once this is just like the gun they use on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or in some cases being able to say they've James Bond's gun.  

Shortly after that, following some recommended links at Massad Ayoob's blog at the Backwoods Home Magazine site, I happened across an article he had written in 2013 entitled "Just Because." In it, Ayoob started out:

    I generally recommend that people buy guns the way they’d buy power tools, or automobiles, or homes. Assess your needs, analyze your budget, correlate it all with your ability to utilize the thing you’re buying, and you’ll probably be happy with your purchase and get a lot of productive use out of it.

    It’s the logical thing. Unfortunately, we humans are not always creatures of logic. Sometimes, we are creatures of emotion, and anyone who has dealt with emotion-driven arguments that are without logic — oh, most of the “gun control” arguments, for example — know the downside of that. But emotion isn’t always a bad thing.

From there, he went on to describe certain firearms he has, and sometimes wears on his belt, because of nostalgia, sentiment, or because it was a "grail gun"--something he'd always wanted and finally had the means to get. Or, as the title put it, firearms selected and used "just because" rather than pure logic.

    I too have a few firearms that I purchased just because. I've written before that the reason I purchased a Beretta 84 was not because I researched it and decided it would make a great concealed carry gun--I had never even picked one up before I purchased one--but because one was prominently displayed on the cover of one of my favorite roleplaying games when I was a teenager: TSR's Top Secret. Because of that, it was, to me, the quintessential "spy" gun--even more so than the Walther PPK. So when surplus models started coming into the country for low prices, I snatched one up. That it turned out to be a very nice carry gun was just an added bonus.