The Art of ‘PIMPING’ your Firearm

Over the last decade or so, modern street ‘taal’ has slowly crept into the traditionally conservative arena of firearms. The word ‘pimp’, for instance, which once described unsavoury characters who held sway over a stable of ‘ladies of the night’, has now become a watchword of the younger generation to describe other things, such as improving the looks of their mode of transport by adding accessories like mag wheels and other unique features, to changing of the look of a hunting rifle or handgun in a similar fashion.

However, when it came to rifles, tradition dug in its heels, and ‘pimping’ only took the form of a custom wooden or laminated gunstock. But as people became more ecologically-sensitive to the decimation of the world’s forests, so the traditional wood for gunstocks became scarcer and more expensive. Manufacturers were the first to grasp the effect this had on sales and profit margins, and so polymer gunstocks began to make their appearance.

Initially, these were conventionally shaped, but aesthetic sensibilities were offended by mould lines, plastic flash on edges, and moulded checkering or stippling, and many of these were snubbed by firearm traditionalists as they aroused little emotional pride of ownership. The sometimes flimsy construction and the unpredictable way they managed to change their shape over time, especially in warmer climates, also had a bearing on their perceived universal inadequacy. This didn’t faze the manufacturers, and other materials began to appear in gunstocks, such as fibreglass-reinforced plastic and other composite materials now known collectively as polymers.

‘Tacticool’ became