RF and I had big plans: we were each going to get a Marlin .357 Magnum lever-action carbine and trick it out in dramatically different ways. He was going to build a 21st-Century Cowboy Assault Rifle: 10 quick and handy rounds of manually operated California-legal thunder, all wrapped in a weatherproof polymer stock and sporting the latest in tactical lights, lasers and red-dot optics. As I opined before, John Wayne might have carried RF’s project gun into movie stardom if “The Searchers” had been written by Tom Clancy and directed by Tony Scott . . .