Retro-Spect

I had that big long weekend and STILL couldn’t come up with blog fodder.

Well, everyone everywhere is doing the end of year retrospective. The News is doing the year in news, Hollywood is doing the year in Hollywood, NPR is doing the year in Communist propaganda and infiltration (DAMN PINKOS!) I might as well do one myself for the blog.

Only one new gun, the SIG. I had gone too big in the gunnie department in 2008, so I applied some self-discipline to 2009, much to the disappointment of my gunstore. I might get 2 in 2010. We’ll see.

I went back and forth in my head over a carbine to get. I’d probably already have the Camp Carbine by now, and be done with the whole topic, if Marlin had made the little rifle a little nice. Or still. And regardless on whether the M1 Carbine stays in the running, I think I will join the Garand Collectors association. If I get a M1, then being a member will help with the Civilian Marksmanship Program purchase process.

I didn’t do any instructor-lead training this year, despite flapping my gums about it. I guess that is TWO new years resolutions in 2 paragraphs…

I got a range membership this time last year, and I’ve renewed it. Definitely worth the price if you go at least once a month. And I do.

Got my first deer. That was a thrill. Another resolution…. Make more chili. Mmmm, venison.

What else? Despite the shortage of ammo, I’ve managed to keep my stocks up even with the relatively normal burn rate. I took a few n00bies to the range, and the Trollop bought a HUGE Fohty-Fo. So I did SOME inspiration of others

You Gun Nuts are Crazy

You Gun Nuts are crazy and no one should listen to a word you say. You keep saying Obama is coming after your guns. But Obama said he wasn’t gonna come after your guns, and hasn’t done anything to come after your guns. So shut up.

At least that’s what many hoplophobes have said time and again since Barry got elected.

We gun enthusiasts are a bit leery of this sentiment. What with Obama being a major muckity-muck for the Joyce Foundation. It says it right there on his resume, 1994-2002. And Joyce is major funder of anti-rights causes.

Right now, the biggest political mover of the anti-gun cause is Mayors Against Illegal Guns or MAIG. (The Brady Campaign is but a shell of its former self.) It is so active because Mayor Bloomberg of NYC is the active pusher of MAIG, and presumably has a bit of the President’s ear.

Well Bloomberg sent up some suggestions on restricting gun rights that Obama can do without having to get Congress to DO anything.

So I guess that whole “Obama isn’t gonna come after your guns” is a lie. Well, IF the president has his ATF come down on the gun culture with both feet it’s a lie.

~~

As an aside, what’s so unreasonably heinous about Mayor Bloomberg’s MAIG recommendations? He even brings up that nigh everyone wants to enforce the laws already on the books, and these suggestions would just go towards that, so?

Good question…

Well, a ban on non-sporting firearms and ammo is a recommendation ATF could do, suggested my MAIG, just for an example. But most all imports are used for sporting purposes. People SHOOT imported Mosins or SKSs or Glocks in a target competitions. It’s not the big events like those held at Camp Perry, but it is still a sport. And that’s if we ignore the Heller decision that said restrictions on the grounds of ONLY sporting purposes utility are unconstitutional. An imported firearm and ammo has a possible use under the other protected purposes of firearm ownership… militia use, and, most importantly, SELF DEFENSE. How is a restriction of 60 year old bolt action rifles and the most popular police sidearm reasonable?

Most importantly, this one restriction is a BAN by administrative fiat, instigated by MAIG (who claimed to never want to BAN guns), associated with an administration whose followers insist that the President would NEVER EVER want to BAN any guns.

The other 40 recommendations are geared to nibbling away at the periphery, making gun ownership and operation more expensive and more of an administrative hassle and more invasive of lawful gun owner’s privacy. It erodes the gun culture. And once eroded more ambitious rights infringing statutes can be emplaced. None of the recommendations seem to seek to reduce illegal gun activity like murder and assault and robbery except for marginally. It's interesting that the 40 suggestions were purposely picked to be the most inconvenient for lawful gun owners and the least inconvenient for what should be the true target of the sentiment "enforce the laws we already have." The actual criminals. [What if 40 suggestions were made by the NRA to a pro-gun President and an overwhelmingly conservative Congress to have ATF enforce the laws it already has on the books? Could the NRA offer up the same suggestions? Maybe. So why the worry? It's a matter of trust and the wiggle room written in to the rules. Plus there are easily 40 BETTER recommendation out there than these that target legal owners as well as actual criminals.]

Here’s a reform that MAIG didn’t recommend. How about, when someone is convicted of unlawfully shooting someone they don’t let that person out of prison after a couple years so they can unlawfully shoot someone again?

~~

Here’s another issue. MAIG wouldn’t disclose that report. Why keep it secret? The Washington Post got a copy back in September and reported on it, but failed to report the actual details. Why? It is only after Calguns put in a FOIA request did this information get promulgated. Why does the Executive branch of the US Government have to have a veil of secrecy over this issue? It’s not National Security related. Why can’t THIS policy wrangle be exposed to the sanitizing light of day? Thank goodness for FOIA.

Anyway, like I said, you Gun Nuts are crazy thinking the President is contemplating some secret plan to ban your guns. You all need to calm down. Here. Have some Kool Aid. It’s delish.





[and, full disclosure, the President does have to institute these recommendations. he hasn't yet, and might not. let's give poor, struggling Obama the benefit of the doubt, shall we?...]















[AND... you know, as the day wore on yesterday and I composed this blog, EVERYTHING I said was said by someone else...]

Ooo! Thought experiement! What 40 recommendations to enforce the existing laws would we gun bloggers recommend to the President to direct his ATF?

NY Gun Permit

When was the last time you heard Sean Hannity talk about Gun Control? The only time I hear from him is when I am exasperated with the drive home NPR station and switch over. Which is frequent enough to know that he doesn’t talk about guns much. (My radio listening is a constant flipping to stations that don’t annoy me. When NPR goes over the top with leftism, when a call in show’s professional announcers relinquish their show to amateurs by going to the phones, when a commercial comes on… that sort of thing)

Anyway… Sean Hannity… Doesn’t mention the right to keep and bear arms very often if at all. At least not enough for my taste, certainly. Another metrocon, I guess. Nothing wrong with being a metrocon, make no mistake. Better a metrocon that at least understands the purpose of the Constitution to those that take their tyranny ala carte.

The point is, he HAS a pistol permit for carrying in New York.

I’ll grant, he’s a celebrity and the Leftists in this country can be dangerously violent and he needs to protect himself and his family from very real threats… But what about other folks in New York? Don’t their families need protection at times? I appreciate his exercising his 2nd Amendment rights because he has the wealth and fame to overcome New York’s arbitrary and unjust and unconstitutional gun regulations, but how about a shout out to help his fellow citizens in his state and country? He’s not THAT special. Even he, Hannity, will admit that over and over in his radio show.

So it'd be nice if he through his a bone to a conservative issue. Him being a conservative and all. I'm just saying, I'm not raking the man over the coals or calling him a traitor to our great cause. Some commenter will think I am so let me put the kibosh on that right now.

Or maybe he does come out for the 2nd, and I've just missed it. I'd be glad to hear about that.

~~~~~~~~

Update:

and Rush.

Another What If

JayG has a starting-over post that is pretty similar to most gunnies' ‘Lists’ if placed in a similar situation. Of course everyone personal taste preferences will make the lists look widely varied, but the bones of the lists will be the same ‘ol same ‘ol.

(And we gunnies love these types of what-if lists...)

I always say, if you have to start over or start from scratch you get one of each and a spare. So that’s a Shotgun, a Rifle, a Full Size Handgun, and a .22, and maybe a smaller Medium Caliber CCW Handgun. And then a backup for each. That’s 10.

But turn that around. Saying you are getting old and infirm and need to pare down. Say the Collectivist Libs win everything they ever wanted and manage to turn this country into a Socialist Paradise, but just never managed to get any political traction in the gun control department and so you have to move to your tiny Soviet style concrete apartment to live a life of servitude and drudgery. Say the zombies or an asteroid came and you are in a safe pocket where it is crowded and you are displaced and unemployed. Say you have to get on the World’s Collide Colony ship and take to the stars but where you end up will be an Earth like place and you’ll be in some fishing village there…

At any rate, the deal is, you look at your gun vault full of firearms and can only pick one because of space and money and portability reasons. And there is no prospect of acquiring more firearms ever again. Your life is the same as it is now pretty much, except you are a bit more impoverished and dislocated, but, you know, life goes on. You still gotta eat work sleep socialize, just out of a space smaller than a Hong Kong dormitory apartment.

Which, of all of your guns do you pick.

Everyone’s personal favorite will be different, naturally.

Some of you will choose a shotgun. It can do anything. You can hunt deer size critters or pigeon size critters with it, and you can defend your home with it very well.

Others will choose their favorite pistol so they can have it on their hip every waking moment, and under their pillow when they sleep.

Others will take the big rifle. When you need a rifle, nothing else will do, and to be without, then, could be a tremendous hardship.

A .22 is almost as versatile as the shotgun, and it can be more portable. The ammo CERTAINLY is.

And finally, others will take something that might not be the most practical but has great sentimental value.

What would I take? I dunno. I’m vapor locked on my choices. The Model 11 is a good shotgun, I’d love to hold onto the .45 or .357, and I LOVE the Garand. But I guess I lean toward the M1A the most. Soliders carried a rifle like that around with them all the time, so, with the sling, it’s got the “with me” thing in this conjectured disjointed world. It certainly works on everything, though it would be tricky harvesting squirrels, or navigating INSIDE my house in the event of a break in.

~~


The point of this thought excercise is not to prompt readers to post comments of their choice, though feel free to. It's to reinforce my understanding that there is no ideal firearm. They are role specific. The ones that try to go for a please-everybody generalist model find they can't do any one job well. Well enough. Can you imagine going through life with nothing but an M1 Carbine? I mean, it's certainly better than nothing, and cool in it's own right, but...

There is no one gun. There is no one caliber. The closest thing is a shotty 12 gauge, maybe. Or a .22, maybe. But that's not satisfying. And it all hinges on circumstance. "I live in the suburbs and there are bad guys around that rob people, I want a decent pistol" is different from, "I live in a developing country and there are bands of soldier like bandits roaming around spreading depradation, I want a decent rifle. And lots of friends." is different from, "I live in the middle of nowhere, I'm not a vegetarian, and there are few people about but quite varied types of game, from waterfowl to elk to everything in between, please hand me that shot gun and a variety of shells." is different from "I live in a lighthouse and need to shoo the zombie horde away from my front door by shooting them from the balcony, a .22 will do best."

Shorpy

If you are interested in History, photography, high quality scans, and Washington DC, and you don't know about Shorpy, then you are really missing out.

Even had gun content:

"Old Reliable, 1942. Infantryman with halftrack. A young soldier sights his Garand rifle like an old-timer. He likes the piece for its fine firing qualities and its rugged, dependable mechanism"

Deer

Since the snow, I've seen LOTS more deer about for this time of year. Pairs of does in wooded areas near the roads. Not even half spooked. Healthy looking. Big. Fattish.

Except for trudging through the icy whitestuff, tracking one would be SO easy nowadays.



I wonder if I am just noticing more deer lately or if there are more. Probably a bit of both.



Their coats seemed darker than earlier in the season. More brown. I guess that could be a survival coloration for winter. They match the tree trunk color better and darker means more absorption of the sun's radiation in the cold winter months.

Loot

What did I get for gunnie related Xmas loot?

Bupkis.

But that's ok. Last year I got the 1950's book about guns of the year. A compendium of magazine articles. And they LOOKED for stuff like that again for this year and just didn't find any. It's great to know they are looking.

Ooo! I haven't plugged the 50 year old electronic reprints of Guns Magazine lately. I love reading those. I forgot to check on November, so I better head over there and look at it now before January comes and bumps it off the list. Article for 1959... "Guns and Gear for IndoChina." I wonder what is happening in IndoChina? Something with the French. Shouldn't concern the US, much, I figure...

25th II

Oi!

HAPPY Christmas for my British readers.

25th

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

So, what you get? Any ammo? No one ever gives me ammo for Christmas...

So Hard

So hard to come up with blog fodder. Running on fumes. I have the rifle sling post I've been staring at for over a year. I have the carry rigs for a rifle that looks like it will turn Sisyphusian like the rifle sling post.

Keep rolling that rock up hill.

Hmm, I can take my humble Christmas bonus, apply to it my Xmas shopping consumer debt, break even, and be that much more confident to buy off the Master List...

Yeah, that'll be nice. January is almost here. I'm half tempted to bag the snubbie, and go with a spare 1908 Pocket Hammerless or a Sig P238. It wasn't THAT long ago I was thinking of trading in the Colt I have. But you know, that's the best size I've handled for a .380 so far. And it would be my pocket carry for summer. Cocked and locked 100 year old pistol? I dunno.

Well I could still bag the snubbie and jump right to the .22 revolver...

Registration Leads To Confiscation

Someone needs to start a list to keep track of those incidents. Incidents where a registered gun became a wrong confiscated gun. Some intrepid blogger needs to track down credible reports of incidents where an innocently registered firearm was then wrongly confiscated by the authorities. Either en masse or individually. I’d say that blogger should be me, but you all know how lazy I am.

Some possible examples, JayG had this from Philly. And, Caleb mentioned the famous Canadian list that is hopefully falling apart now.



The problem with it is it is a rare news event when registration leads to en masse confiscation. The last major event was Katrina, sort of. Before that Canada, Australia, and England. A future one might be Switzerland or somesuch. But if that happens you won’t need me to inform you. It’ll be on the news. And on EVERY other gun blog. And if confiscation happens individually, 8 times out of 10 it is because the gun owner became a brand new indicted or convicted felon. It’s the 2 times out of 10 on the individual level that we care about. When an innocent’s registered guns are confiscated unjustly.

There are other listable gun related items. JayG keeps a list of justifiable shootings. It’s not complete, and others also maintain such lists.

Maybe need another category of “I’m a gun owner, but…” where they are just a shill for Brady. Lots of those show up in letters to the editor. You know how they go. They start with “I’m a hunter, and a gun owner and a firm believer in the second amendment, but… this recent shooting incident where a drug dealer shot somebody shows that we should all have to store our firearm at the police station and then have to get permission from the authorities to retrieve them for sporting purposes.” Sometime the letters to the editor don’t go that far, but you get the drift.

There is already an “Only One” trope, well documented. David has a bajillion of them. Rarely a day goes by without him posting a new one. Only One, for those that aren’t familiar with the term refers to an unfortunate incident a Law Enforcement Officer had with a Glock 20 (he called it a Glock 40 because it shot .40) who, in front of a class of 3rd graders and right after informing them that he was the ‘only one’ qualified enough to handle said pistol, promptly shot himself in the leg. Unintentionally, naturally, but still negligents. The “Only One” attitude is not uncommon attitude among some police and public that the Po-po are somehow special, being agents of the government, and deserve special treatment. Better treatment. Better than treatment offered to ordinary citizens. This attitude rankles many American citizens, as you’d expect. You know, with us being citizens and all, rather than subjects.

Short

THIS covers my carbine requirements of 'short rifle that shoots pistol size ammo and preferrably takes magazines of a pistol I already own.'

And it's pretty, in it's way.


By Hera Arms

It's just a pain in the arse what with the necessity of getting a $200 tax stamp if you want to actually USE it as a rifle, with a shoulder stock.

Snowpocalypse

All this snow has me exhausted. But it puts me to mind of the gunnie-related winter battles of the recent past. I'm glad I don't have to fight in this. And this storm is balmy compared to some of the nastier battles. The sun is out now, it's only 2 feet of wet snow, the wind is less than 15 knots. It's practically the tropics here. Compared to:

The Bulge
Chosin
Stalingrad
or the poorly equipped encampment at Valley Forge if you want to go further back.

And the brave Finns that fought off those commie bastards in the early 40s'. What would I be fighting with if I was a Finnish soldier? A Mosin "Lotta"?



How about a water cooled machine gun.

I hope they have enough ammo to keep the water from freezing... It would suck if the ice cracked the water jacket.

Fear

Caleb did a post on Fear.

Read the whole thing, WRT how hoplophobes live in fear. Not just of guns, but with most everything.

But then read this entry by JayG, FEAR and road rage.


Jay is afraid too. But a different kind of fear. His is more, “oh please, otherwise normal nice innocent person, don’t snap and force me to have to defend myself.” Jay also has a fear of, “oh please, dirtbag criminal, don’t think I’m a potential victim and put me in the position where I defend myself and fill you full of holes.”

No one with a CCW WANTS to go out and shoot someone. Or find themselves in a place they went consciously or unconsciously or accidentally where they have to shoot someone. At least no one that has a CCW should want to, and if they are in it for the chance to air out another human being, no matter how justified the shoot, maybe they shouldn’t get the conceal carry permit. (It goes back to my whole Don’t Be a Vigilante theme)

It’s ok to be afraid the way Jay is afraid. In fact it should be required.

But when it goes beyond that, and you DO find yourself in the place you feared you’d be, and despite your best efforts to avoid it, that fear should turn to anger. Cooper said it, “How DARE this person endanger me” and the warrior side flips on. The FIGHT part of Fight-Or-Flight should kick in. And it should do that because that maximizes your chances of a desireable-to-you end to the confrontation. Jay even has a story for that, from his pre-armed days, when threatened by a knife wielding punk. Jay, internally, was incandescent with rage, at very high Code Orange, and just a hair away from going Code Red and ripping out the guys spine via his rectum* no matter how many times Jay got stuck with the switchblade.

Jay was justifiably scared (as I would have been) then he was justifiably enraged, as I hoped I would be. The only thing that kept the flag from coming down on that fight was the decision making of the punk when a part him detected that bubbling cauldron coming up. It was out of Jay’s hands at that point.


[ * rectum? damn near KILLED him... old joke. sorry.]

Life Magazine

I’ve always liked this picture. Growing up, my parents had a coffee table book of famous photographs from Life magazine. This was one. It’s just so iconic WWII.

Without looking it up…

This dogface has been in combat a while, based on the beard. It’s an awful thin beard at that. I don’t think it’s because he’s young, though, I think in 30 years his beard would be that thin, too.

Dogface? Are you sure he’s a dogface? Dogface implies Army, to me, and that helmet looks camouflaged. The Marines in the Pacific wore camouflage while Army guys in Europe did not. I am given to understand that because the Germans wore camouflage, the Army didn’t want to adopt the same sort of mottled pattern for fear an ally might confuse soldier for wehrmacht. That wasn’t an issue in the Pacific, as the Japanese wore khaki.

That’s an M1 Carbine, from the looks of it. So this COULD be Korean war as well as WWII, but I am still thinking WWII.

Unfiltered cigarette in his mouth. I doubt it’s a Lucky Strike or Camel. Why? Luckys and Camels were the good cigarette, and guys on the front line had to settle for lesser known to us now, less-desireable brands a lot of the time. Why? The REMFs (that acronym stands for Rear Echelon Mother Hubbard, or something…) at the supply depots took the Lucky Strikes for themselves.

He sure does look determined and business-like, doesn’t he?

Now let me look it up…

Ok.

The photo was taken by W. Eugene Smith. And the subject is Angelo Spiro Klonis, Greek immigrant and army solider.

So I was wrong about the Marine thing. The Marines apparently, wouldn’t take a non-citizen. The Army wasn’t as picky. But he was 20 when war broke out so his beard is like that because of his genes, not because he has the thin chin whiskers of a bald face boy.

He served in the Pacific theater, however. So my camoflauge theory might still hold up.

I should probably hunt down more Life Magazine compendiums, of WWII and others. It's a good representative of the gold age of still photography, that Life stuff.

[And... I just got back from my Dad's house and found the copy of Best of Life Magazine he had back in the early 70s that I poured over. Mr. Klonis is NOT in that. I must have hallucinated the memory and picked up the picture in my memory banks from some other source. Who knows when...]

Worst Blizzard in HISTORY

Is coming to the DC area. At least according to the weather folks on TeeVEE. They are LOVING this.

Blizzard like conditions. Something like 10-15 or 10-128 inches of snow. 400 mile per hour winds with gusts up to 2000. Negative eighty degree temps. And that's Celsius.

All I'm saying is it is lots easier to track a zombie through fresh snow.

MHI Review

So I’m almost done reading Monster Hunter International. When I got the book and asked readers here how it was I got a few responses.

They were right.

It’s no Melville, it’s not literature. But it’s a good read.

I never would have guessed it was a FIRST novel. I was also worried it would have TOO much gun content. You know what I mean. You can pack a lot of details about firearms into a story, and there is in this book, but you can also OVERpack it. I like some, but it can be over done and distract from the narrative by excessive gun minutiae. (Odd. isn’t it? A gun enthusiast not wanting gun details in a story? Well yeah. I like beer but I don’t want to brush my teeth in beer instead of water, or to bathe in it…)

Anyway, it didn’t. Overpack the gun detail, that is.

As regards to the storyline, rip-roaring, action-packed.

But we all know there are no such things as vampires. Or secret elite groups that combat them and have for decades. Sort of like how Men In Black did for aliens, these groups do for Monsters like wights, Lovecraftian Old Ones, and gargoyles. The idea is silly on its face.

Now zombies… THOSE are real. And thank all that is holy we have RoMERO to protect us from the horde.

Zombie Pigs

This is how it starts.

And the purpose of the ZOMBIE Pigs is to eventually make Zombie-Soldiers? Have they gone mad? This is Resident Evil style stuff.

Though I wouldn't mind hangin' out with Mila Jovovich.

blog links

I think I need to change my blog format. It’s sometime too hard to see URL hyperlinks, the green color is too close to the black regular font text color. Also, making the linked area larger might help. Instead of a single short word like ‘Tam’ I should highlight and link most of the sentence, like: “according to the world’s foremost authority on the subject of antebellum French bayonets, Tamara Prudence Keel III…”

Yeah. That’ll go over well.

Stock Adapter Link

Weeks ago I followed a link to a gun blog sight that had an ad for a stock adapter for a Glock. I immediately lost it until Uncle re-linked him recently.

Plus, it was a link to a Ruger Mini-14 target troubleshooter, and I sorta have a thought for a Mini-14 for my endless carbine thoughts and re-thoughts.

Here is the Mini-14 love. Or non love, if you will. The Mini-14 has a reputation for less than stellar accuracy. Especially compared to what you can achieve with the same round on a modern AR platform. For a carbine that shoots .223, what do you need accuracy out past 100 yards for? Now if you are a Varminting... with the same ammo, then yes... way out past 100... So I can understand how you'd want a short light rifle that can do that since you CAN have a short light rifle that can do that.

Oh and the stock adapter is here. Kinda cool turning your Glock into a shoulder fired rifle by just clipping on a piece of plastic with an AR stock attached, but check into the legalities. I don't know much about stock adapter law other than you can end up afoul of the NFA in some circumstances if you add a stock or take off a stock or something something something. Gun laws are not the easiest to follow. I try to only keep the relevant-to-me laws in my head at any one time and know when I am contemplating getting close to another and need to add it to my mental inventory. Anyway, in the site's FAQ: "Anyone can buy it [the stock adapter], but if you plan on adding a [AR style] stock to it [the apapter] and connecting it to your handgun you should be filing a Form 1 with the ATF because you are turning your handgun into a Short Barreled Rifle (SBR)."

See? Was that so hard? Now to personally data dump that info until I need it again...

There.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, Mini-14s! All that searching for the perfect Carbine for ME, through Kel Tec, Marlin Camp, CX4, M1, Mini... I'll problably end up getting an AR. Some day. If I do, the neato one Tam featured would be the one I'd want because of the MGI takedown capabilities. Well, for the upper. Why have a miniature rifle you can't easily stow? But that road is an expensive detour... With a steep learning curve. Remember the data dump and how I don't crowd my head with too much minutia not relevant to what I have and do? Yeah, I got next to nothing on AR's up there in the wetware. I pride myself on a very broad knowledge, and I can answer a question about any topic. As long as there are no followup questions and you don't know more than me. Yeah, I'm a mile wide, but an inch deep.

Stick with the M1A, T-Bolt.

Why is that Reasonable

I'm sure other people have better reasons than I do about these.

The professional hoplophobes have been losing the debate for a while. They can't pass the sweeping gun control they'd like. Well they never really could get exactly what they'd like. They had to settle for a watered down 'assault weapon ban' 20 years ago, when they wanted total band of every firearm. They've always relied on incrementalism to achieve their goals. To get a ban by nibbling away

They are still nibbling, but they have to take even smaller bites these days. The new tactic is to try to get these incremental steps to a gun ban is to insist that all they desire is a few small reasonable gun laws. Motivations toward an eventual ban aside, let's go over how these requests are really unreasonable, contrary to what someone that isn't a partisan of either camp might think.

[All this discussion would be more effective, I think, if I or someone could distill the points down to a short, catchy slogan.]

Lost or Stolen Laws.
Sounds reasonable, right? A requirement to make legal gun owners report when one of their guns is stolen in a certain short amount of time. Failure to do so results in criminal penalties to the person that kept mum.

What's the purpose of this type of law? A straw purchaser that has a clean record legally purchases a weapon (legal except for the criminal intent that follows) and then turns around and commits a crime with that firearm by selling it to a prohibited person. When the prohibited (worse criminal than a straw purchaser) person commits a crime with that gun the police will use the serial number to track it back to straw purchaser (which the cops can freely do thanks to the Tiahart Amendment). To stay out of trouble, that purchaser will claim the gun was stolen (or lost) from him months ago, and they just hadn't reported the crime way back then. If this law is passed, then the cops have something they can pin on the straw purchaser and get him in trouble.

Ok, it still sound reasonable.

Only, what if one of your guns or one of your relatives guns was lost of stolen, and you or they had no idea it was missing? Or you were on vacation for 2 weeks when your house was burglarized so you failed to report a stolen gun for 13 days after it was missing, but the law says you have to report in 7 days or less? An otherwise innocent and law abiding person is now guilty of a serious crime.

It seems passing this law would be a greater burden on the law abiding and criminals would ignore it for the most part and not be hampered by it. So only regular, innocent, folks would be in trouble with this law's passage. To escape jeapardy a gun owner might just get rid of his guns in order ensure compliance. One less legitimate gun owner, which is fine for the anti-gun advocates. Are their targets legitimate gun owners? They SAY they are against illegitimate firearm use and possession, but they sure to catch a wide, arbitrary, and capricious net. And that is unreasonable. And arbitrary may be unconstitutional since Heller....


Repeal the Tiahrt Amendment
Sounds reasonable, right? Allow the local police to trace crime guns like the FBI or ATF can. Repeal would also allow lawyers to go on investigative expeditions to try to link firearm manufacturers to activity that exposes them to civil suit on the grounds their products did undue harm in some areas.

No. It's not reasonable because it is not true. Police can trace any gun they pick up. Repealing the Tiahrt Amendment simply allows anti gun groups to ALSO run traces on any guns they want to. The Tiahrt Amendment prohibits the Feds from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation. Heck, the anti-gun might be able, after passing, to just do a random trace on all recent transfers and list who bought what gun, when and where you live, in some newspaper. Might as well ring the dinner bell for burglars Sounds like a farfetched invasion of privacy and subsequent dire scenario? Don't be so sure. Anti-gun folks in Virginia, Tennessee, and Indiana have publish Conceal Carry Licensees in the paper. In doing so they have often revealed where a battered spouse was now residing, where a prison guard lives, as well as police and judges home addresses. And if there is a rash of gun burglaries after, that's ok by the anti-gun folks. Fear of more criminals possessing guns will give them more 'ammo' to pass more restrictive laws. And if the hoplophobes didn't publish gun owners identification, suing the gun makers in civil court because their gun caused injury? That's the point of firearms. You don't sue auto manufacturers for making a product that moves people around, or knife and scalpel manufacturers for making items that cut skin, do you?

Repealing the Tiahrt Amendment doesn't sound reasonable to me.



Gunshow Loophole Closure
Sounds reasonable, right? A loophole is bad by definition, right? You don't even have to think about it. (I think that us part of their point, to convince us it is bad give it a bad sounding definition. It'd be like one side of the abortion debate in this country getting to make the labels for each side and have it stick and going with Pro-Life and Pro-Baby-Slaughter, or conversely, Pro-Choice and Pro-Enslavement-of-Women's-Bodies.)

Anyway. What is the beef with the Gun Show loophole? All gun dealer have to be federally licensed. A gun dealer has to run a background check on you, among other things, before selling you a gun to determine if you are in a database as a prohibited person. But you only have to be a licensed dealer if that is your livelihood. If you are just some shmoe, like me, and you want to sell one of your 3 guns because you feel like getting something new, or you just need the money, you can. You or I can't knowingly sell it to prohibited persons, but there is no need for us to have the federal database checked. If I want to sell, or give AWAY, grandpa's rifle to my nephew I just can go and do that. No big deal. But closing the gunshow loophole would put an end to that. At gunshows, yes, because a lot of private sales are made at gunshows, but also in your living room as you pass on an heirloom to the next generation

Ok, it still sounds sorta reasonable.

No wait. It doesn't. Why is it any of the government's business what I do with that rifle as long as my nephew isn't prohibited from owning it?

What other burden does it place on me if it passes? Well a background check isn't free. I would have to drag the nephew down to a gunstore or a police station and pay them to run his name through the database. That's more than $50 locally. PER GUN.

A side effect of this sort of legislation is the cooling effect it would have on the gun culture, which would be good for gun banners, as a suppressed culture will lead to fewer gun owners which will lead to a waning of political power. Fewer reasons to go to a gun show, fewer desires to bother to jump through hoops to set up the transfer to a nephew.

The thing is, if folks at gunshows are selling guns with nefarious intent to circumvent the background check, they are already breaking the law. At least one of the 2 parties is. Passing the gunshow loophole closure legislation simply makes something already illegal... illegaller? That's not reasonable.



Making people on the Terrorist Watchlist prohibited people.
Sounds reasonable, right? Who wants a dang terrorist to be able to buy a gun? If you can't trust the guy to fly on an airplane how can you trust them to be allowed to buy a firearm? Sure, a bunch of people on the Watchlist are already criminals and can't purchase a gun now, but there are plenty that are squeaky clean and just haven't been CAUGHT doing anything evil yet that would make them prohibited

Ok, it still sound reasonable.

What is unreasonable is that we are a nation of laws and can't withold a person's rights without due process. All the other prohibited persons are there after meeting a set of criteria, usually involving a judge, in the light of day. The Terrorist Watchlist is made up of people selected by faceless bureacrats, and the list itself is secret. Someone reading this is on that list and has no idea and has done nothing to deserve to be on that list. Bureaucrats make mistakes and put the wrong people on there. There is no harm to them if they put a name on there, but it they fail to put a dangerous name on there and that person does some terrist act, that bureaucrat gets into hot water, so their is that incentive to bloat the list. And there is no remedy or process to get your name OFF that list if you are mistakenly put on it. If someone is wrongfully convicted of a felony, get's the ruling overturned and declared innocent, that innocent person has a legal means to get his record expunged and his 2nd Amendment and voting rights restored wholly. Not so for the watchlist.

Surrendering a right, forever, to an anonymous, unelected, arbitrary authority is not reasonable.


So, they argue for reasonable gun laws, and the pro-gun side is not against reasonable gun laws, certainly. Pro-gun folks certainly see the banning of ownership of guns by known violent felons released from prison after their sentence is over as reasonable. The thing is, the examples of the anti-gun folks of reasonable gun laws AREN'T reasonable after more that a cursory glance at their detail.

You know what else? All the new "reasonable" gun laws the anti-gunnies propose are just laws that make something already illegal, illegaller. And we are back to the trope of, "if you enforced the laws we aleady have on the books, you'd have less gun crime." It's becoming cliched, but it's true. It's sorta unreasonable to propose any new gun laws. It's wasted legislative effort. Mere symbolism when the electorate deserves some substance.

Military Channel

SO I'm watching the Military Channel, and I see a preview for a show that started last week about snipers. It's a promotional commercial so they repeat a bunch of times and each commercial break. There is one scene that doesn't sit right with me.

They show a sniper's trigger pull. It look REALLY jerky, and the finger is in there way past the second knuckle. The scene is over quick and we don't see the target he was shooting at.

Sorry, I can't find a video of the promo.

Maybe there is some technique I don't know about, but it seems that all the long distance shooters I observed that shoot and hit distant targets are cool and still as a statue. The pad of their finger tip is what does the work, and the movement is imperceptible except for the recoil.

I'd love to hear an explanation other than the one in my head. The explanation kicking around up there is the TV people staged it for the 'action' in the preview video.

Inventory

Have you noticed that gunnies and gunbloggers rarely post an inventory of what guns they have?

Obvious reason? It's a shopping list to burglars.

Also, when President Biden and VP Eric Holder finally ram through the Feinstein/Schumer Firearm Confiscation Act in 2017 we don't want the G-Men knowing everything we owned. Some we gotta bury somewhere in the North 40. Gotta keep the Federales honest and give them an excuse to exercise with a pick and shovel.

Another reason? It's none of anyone else's bidness. Sure we like bragging about our hobby items as much as the folks in the next hobby over ("LOOK at this rare #15 Wagner Cast Iron skillet from the 19th C. That handle is 18 inches long!") but we don't brag about everything.

Some of us might have a Lorcin or a Raven or two in the back of the gun vault, and be kinda embarrassed about it.

There are exceptions. Every week JayG features one of his boomsticks. And he admits to lots. But I bet we can never pin him down on an EXACT number. Tam has a parallel blog where she puts up reviews and histories of some boomsticks. Often Smith and Wesson revolvers. She sorta collects them. But no way is that a complete list, either. Tam isn't so sentimental not to sell or trade off some of her stuff. I, being new, it is pretty easy to track my inventory here in the blog. But you never know. I might have a Commie-Gun jones like my buddy Frozen. Maybe Frozen is a made up buddy, and every time I discuss his AKs, his SKS, his Mosins I was really talking about my own.

You never know.

Interview

What Bev for Zed

You’ve been hunting Zombies all weekend. The backwater area this outbreak popped up in is hot and dry. All that sweaty work really works up a thirst. Water just won’t do. Sports Drinks? Please. You need beer.

But which one?

You don’t want one that will bog you down with treacle or alcohol, but you don’t want a beer that’s like making love in a canoe (F’n close to water!) It should be good, though. You might get bitten and infected and never drink a beer again, preferring human brains. But you want something that will fortify like liquid bread, while still being refreshing. You need a bit of alcohol to take the edge off the horror, but not so much that your aim is impacted over much.

Never fear, I have some recommendations.

Right now, for me, the perfect beer to go with zombies is Victory Brewing Company’s Prima Pils. It’s refreshing and bright. Like there is a party in my mouth, and everyone’s invited. It’s brewed near Philly, so your regional suds establishment may or may not be able to get a hold of it.

In the past, favorite beers on par with Prima have been Tupper’s Hop Pocket Pils, of Ashburn VA, and Magic Hat’s Blind Faith out of Vermont.

Note: all these beers MUST be fresh. If you can’t tell what the bottling date was from the packaging, look for cloudiness of the liquid or dust on the bottle. Blind Faith was known for turning into beef broth after 3 months. It’s the nature of the microbrewed beast. No preservatives means they can go ‘bad’. Bad doesn’t mean pathogenic. It’s just the taste is off. Fresh, these beers are ambrosia. Nectar of the GODS.

If you like a bit more bitterness from your hops, go with Victory Hop Devil IPA.

Other very good beers to snatch up on the east coast, any Dogfish Head. Shelter Pale Ale is good and you can increase your hop character by working your way up the numbers of IPAs. 60 Minute, 90 Minute, 120 Minute. By now there is probably a 4 And A Half Hours IPA from Dogfish. For Zed hunting stick with 60 or 90 if you an advanced IPA drinker.

For more widely available beers, Sierra Nevada is one of the originals and still pretty good. I go with the Porter and the Pale Ale, but the Torpedo IPA is also very nice. The weather is getting colder, and the thought of a Porter appeals right now.

Few places can bottle a stout right. Pity. There are stouts in this country in little out of the way breweries that make Guinness taste like Lite Beer from Miller. Maybe not the ideal Zombie-Beer, though. Stick with Porter.

On the West Coast, I found this great little number called Racer 5. Stuff from Russian River Brewing is also good, but my exposure is limited. Anchor Steam, when fresh, can surprise you. It so hard to get it fresh out here. And they don’t date their packaging, so, sorry Mr. Maytag.

Is the beer near your house crap? Heck no. Colorado is supposed to be great for beer. The line from Cleveland to Milwaukee hits some very good small breweries. Bells in Kalamazoo, Goose Island, Great Lakes Brewing in Cleveland. But I can’t get them here.

One day there is going to be a zombie outbreak near one of the small brewpubs and you’ll be trapped there surrounded. Surrounded by brain hungry undead and surrounded by delicious beer. I’d love to be trapped at McGuires Irish Pub in Pensacola that way. They have good doors that can be barricaded, good vantage points on the roof for sharpshooting, and great beer and steaks in the restaurant. A RoMERO mission could last as long as the food held up, even if we have to herd the last shamblor around for a few weeks to keep the party going.

And what if you can’t get ANY of these? What major beers might I recommend? Well, Yeungling is ok in a pinch. Guinness, naturally, is good, and widely available. If the beer is really cold and the sun really hot, then Rolling Rock can even appeal. I’ll even drink a Budweiser. The beer is well made and natural, and if you’ve been away from it for a while you can really taste the apple ester. Avoid Miller products. Chemicals and corn. Avoid Coors, too. It’s water. Literally. Killians Irish Red is Coors with caramel coloring added. Blue Moon is a Coors product. Leininklugel is a Miller property. The Leiney may be fine, but they do have the taint of Coors and their Franken-Hops and other chemical weirdness. Clear bottles is a bad sign. Either they raped the hops to compensate for the photo sensitive bond that turned hop flavor molecules into skunk, or they are skunked. I’ll only get Samuel Smith’s beers, in the clear bottle, if I can buy them by the opaque cardboard case. In a German Beergarten, keep your clear liter mug out of the direct sun, it can skunk before you finish it.

That’s my Zed safety tip for today. Remember, shootin THEN drinkin. Not the other way round.

What authority do I have to dispense such wisdom? A heckuva lot more than my authority on shooting. Trust Breda to tell you how libraries work, trust Tam to tell you how gunstores work, trust OldNFO to tell you how P3s work, trust Roberta to tell you how starships work, trust Frank to tell you how farms work, but trust me to tell you how breweries work.

4 Rules

Yes, you have to violate the rules at times. To field strip a 1911, for instance. But when you do you should be thinking:

"Hey! I'm about to violate at least one of the 4 rules here in a moment. That's how Negligent Discharges happen. I better think really hard right now about what I am doing and triple check everything I do, and if I can avoid breaking 2 rules while breaking 1, I should do so. Or avoid breaking 3 rules when I have to break 2, etc."

Don't be a Vigilante

Part II

This is fantasy. It's not real. It's a movie. Don't be that guy. Or that one. Or that girl. You get my point.



Kick-Ass

Trailer Park | MySpace Video

Wonder Materials!

We are gun types. As a breed, pretty conservative.

It’s why it takes a while to get us to switch from what worked 100 years ago, (wood and iron) to what can work today, (plastic and scandium type wonder metals). Sure, there are valid reasons to eschew the new until it is tested, but eventually we get beyond that with proven materials.

The conservativeness is not just in material, but in methods. How you hold and how you shoot.

The M-16 was introduced 50 years ago, with no wooden stock. But NOW people are finally getting around to messing with stock shape to make it easier to shoot. Look at the forestock dingus on the AR on this blog entry. A different way to grip it, less intrusive that just a pole that sticks out of the bottom. Maybe a BETTER way. We shall see. And made more possible by the materials we make forestocks out of. A block of walnut would work, but this plastic thingy can be lighter and less fragile than wood. Yay, plastics. And the feature of THIS improvement is that no new instruction is needed, and the feature is taken to naturally. Well, that’s nice.

It’s not just stuff like that. What an infantry soldier carries around to help him now, routinely, is miles ahead of what someone carried 25 years ago. Camelbacks, IR illumination and scopes, eyes-open red-dot optics, GPS location. The electronics is becoming smaller and lighter and less fragile all the time, too.

And it won’t just stop there. If someone figures a better way to hold a firearm, and not just with a new grip style, but by a radical new stock shape, AND that new things works better than what we do now, eventually that new, superior method will get through the conservative sensibilities and adopted. What form will that radical shape take? How about a pistol that wraps around your wrist like a fat sweat band and holds 50 rounds? Maybe? No? How about the US Army equipped with nothing but Cooper style bolt action Scout rifles? No? I really have no idea what that new form will be. If I did I’d patent it and get rich. But it could be comin’ down the pike even now.


It’s just fascinating. Whether or not the dingus is a revolutionary new method, or whether it's just a gimmick and will fade away in a year or two. .357 or .44 Special. Wing tip votice vertical stabilizer thingummy or personal jet-pack...

Mail Drop

This book came in the mail for me. Is it any good?

SCAR-H

Hey, what kind of magazine does the new SCAR-H, or Heavy, firing 7.62x51, use? Some sources say 'proprietary.' Others say it uses a M14 mag. It could be both...

I hope it's at least the latter or both. If I ever buy a SCAR, it would be the .308 version and I already have magazines.And the SCAR interests me enough to consider putting down the serious coin.

But that is less important than a widely deployed SCAR will mean more magazine and magazine pouches available for me and my M1A. And ammo.



I dunno... the SCAR-H is the bottom one. And that mag seems to have more of an angle to the bottom of it to be an exact M14 type. It's certainly different. Dunno if that means it's incompatible with my gun, if the shape and catchy thingies and holes are all in the right place and no new doohickies get in the way of M1A stuff...

Somebody point me to a US Army Ordnance document that says the SCAR-H and M14 have to have magazine interchangeability. That would be ideal, information wise.

Blog Meet, Nova

Well, that was fun!

The DC metropolitan area had a bit of snow, but that didn't stop the intrepid from treking out to Sterling Virginia to imbibe some beer and eat some beef on Repeal Day.

Lessee... Newbius was there, of course. And Old NFO. A frequent commenter and IRC poster known as Orangeneck (search the quoted comments...). A groupie named Stretch. And Newbius's fambly, daughter-son-missus.

It's Virginia, so none of us were strapped in the restaurant, known as Sweetwater Tavern. We all DID have out spare mags on us, however, so there was that.

Turk Turon couldn't make it due to other commitments, but had he been there he would have award Orangneck for travelling the farthest to get to the meet up. He came from some mythical place known as Lawn Guylend, Noo Yawk. Apparently this place is to the north.

Funny enough... It turns out that all of us there make our living off of computer contracting for Uncle Sucker. Parasites suckling off the teat of the hapless taxpayer. What do you want? Those zombies aren't gonna kill themselves. Well, all of us are Beltway Bandits except for Stretch. He sells crystals and incense at a New Age shop. But he USED to be contractor.

And Stretch had the quote of the night: "You'd be surprised how many Libertarian witches there are..."

The snow sorta precluded any shooting out of doors ahead of time, but Old NFO is scheming up the NEXT blog meet for the spring. No dinner or nuthin. No. Just a little get together on the grass at a place called Quantico. And that could be fun. This n00b could use a little info sucked up from an older hand at this. And it'd be fun to shoot to the Breda-Bell-Ringer M24. Just to touch something someone as famous as she touched... The rifle is like a holy relic now.

I also learned that OldNFO was a Navy mustang, so my respect and appreciation for him went up another notch. He WAS able to get some participants to an indoor range. We have this rinky dink little hole in the wall for indoor shooting in that part of Virginia. Perhaps you've heard of it? It's called NRA HQ.

During dinner some wanted to extend the blog meet to other bloggers, so JayG was called on the phone and chatted to, as well as FarmGirl. That was fun. Shoot, Jay got a long blog post out of a blogmeet he only attended virtually.

To show our appreciation of having the gumption to actually organize a blogmeet, Newbius was presented with a little token for his efforts. .45 ACP. Fifty of them. I wonder if he can find a use for that... I think that might be a fine tradition. If someone scraps up a blogmeet, doing all the organizational legwork, they need to get ammo for their trouble. It'll make more blogmeets happen, and that's a good thing. And someone owes RobertaX a case of bullets, for all the Indymeets.

All in all a great time was had. Thanks in part from our Michigander waitress known as Corey. She grew up in a hunting friendly house so she was actually enthused. Whatever they are paying her it is not enough.

Infamy

Gun-Climate tie in

Holy Crap, National Review with another gun tie in. To sum up, the comparison is made by a commenter, recalling parallels between the academic fraud going on now, and the academic fraud that went on year ago wrt Bellesiles

The money quote, in toto:

"Remember Michael Bellesiles? Arming America? Bancroft Award winner. Supposedly "lost" his data to a flooded basement or some such. What do we think of his "scholarship" now? What credence is given to his data? And how unwillingly were his supporters dragged to that condemnation? Where are his defenders?"

Gunnies may recall Bellesiles as the fraud that made up data suggesting firearm were less prevalent in US History, and he was caught on it, and mostly humiliated. If you can shame a hoplophobe.

How many fish heads? FIVE!

What do you say we make apple juice, and fax it to each other?




~Burp~ smell that?

We'll put on Zeppelin and eat cheddar cheese.

[NSFW -language]

Blog Meet Reminder

It's tonite, at the Sterling Virginia Sweetwater Tavern, at 5 PM.

Be there, or, kindly be square.

Thanks again to Newbius.

Steampunk, F-n OSM!

I can hardly contain myself. WANT!

A Steampunk house to beat all Steampunk anythings.



And he's not even CLOSE to realizing his vision.

LOL Zomb-EE

Oh HAI!

Zombie Trucksters

Golly, I like these. And they should be an inspiration for JayG Vehicle Meme.

A link to the ten best post apocalyptical survival vehicles. Non-fiction, too. Well, one is fictional. See if you can guess which one!

My fave is the SUSA, and it is the closest to what we use on RoMERO ops.

Though for personal comfort, I'd probably go with the Maximog. It's got a terlet.

Don’t Be A Vigilante

It’s one of the things you should have grown out of before you turned 21 and could buy a pistol. The fantasy that you can be Batman. The fantasy that you can be some avenging angel of justice, thwarting evil at every turn.

Resist this urge. Especially if you are and adult and a gun owner.

I admit, in my younger days, full of idealism, I had those thoughts. It’s one of the reasons I joined the military. I wanted to confront and overcome evil. To seek it out and triumph over it. Damn commies. It feels romantic, the idea of righteous vengeance. To put yourself in a position to be a hero. A little bit of that feeling and desire will always be there inside you. It's there in me. Don't trust it.

Just don’t. Mature beyond that urge. Be the OLDER kind of sheep dog, not the pup.

This is the second time this has happened in as many months. The other was folks in the Pacific NW getting CCWs and walking around in bad areas with the PURPOSE of possibly getting attacked so they could respond and take out a bad guy. They were… corrected… of that notion, if indeed that is what they were thinking.

The motivation is admirable, but enthusiasm can lead down dark paths, unintentionally. And the no-confidence, defeatist, Leftists are waiting for you to make that mistake, because it reinforces their defeatism and allows them to control YOU, politically. So resist the urge to be a vigilante. You don’t provoke evil so you can react against it. You don’t poke into dark corners to get evil to jump out at you so you can put it down. Evil men are not like coyotes. They aren’t a varmint or pest. They are persons, like you. Even though they might not deserve it, they do have rights. You have to be reactive, not proactive. It’s part of the deal. It’s part of the burden of carrying with you a deadly means, a weapon besides your brain that you are prepared to use when appropriate.

Know the appropriate.

‘Flushing out a bad guy’ from a park with a random LEO is not, generally, appropriate.

NICS Abuse

By the Federal Goverment...

THIS is what a backdoor nationwide gun registration looks like.

And registration leads to confiscation. People in other countries that let a registration go through and got their guns confiscated by the gov't a little bit later warn us not to let something like this happen.

We've compromised enough, letting regulations pass, that appear like common sense safety firearm laws. They have done nothing to enhance safety and HAVE been a burden to the innocent and smack of incremental tyranny. How about the hoplophobes compromise for once on this, a inalienable human right, and loosen the transgressions against that right somewhere? I'm more than willing to meet in the middle and go from there. The thing is, the middle is a mile or two in non-restricted direction.

Regret? Naw...

But if I was starting up an interest in firearms NOW, instead of 10+ years ago, and I was true to form, my first handgun purchase would be the same as back then: A .357 revolver. Back then I got a 686 that I am VERY happy with. Like I said in the header, this is not a regret.



But if I was starting out NOW, I really look hard at the new revolvers available. Particularly the 327 M&P. I got to handle one at the Fun Show last weekend. It can shoot 8! shots of .357. You can use Moon Clips with it (though I'm not sure how, with a rimmed case...) It has a tritium front sight (the one at the show had it at least), and you can hang a light on it. A revolver like this could give semi-autos a run for their money in police departments. I guess Smith and Wesson should have come up with this in 1983. Had they, I'd probably own one now instead of the 686.

I noticed something else about the Gun Show a bit over a week ago. The plastic guns are invisible to me. So are the ARs for the most part. Why? I'm not in the market for a plastic gun, so my eyes pass over them. I can't tell you if I saw a XD, Glock, S&W, of BlurfleBoomer brand pistol. But I CAN tell you if that last table had Smiths or Tauri or Rossi revolvers.

Chongo 2

And now I've tested all the .45 the same way. 1 bullet had a ding in the case rim area, so it was marginal. Good. I'm sure I'll buy from Georgia Arms again. I just won't rush to.

Uh Oh, Chongo, Range Report

[Chongo refers to a non-speaking, but annoyingly-loud character on Danger Island. Saw that on the Banana Splits.]

First the good news... I got the trigger squeeze problem I was plagued with about licked with my 1911. When I think in it right, and squeeze it right, I get inside the 8 ring. When I distract myself and yank, I know the hit is gonna be bad before I can shift focus off the front sight to check. Then I kick my metaphorical behind before the next shot, and that one squeezes off good.

So I fixed one problem.

But I got a different problem.

At the gun show, I mentioned buying a lot of ammo for range work. Decent priced stuff from Georgia Arms. I'm pretty sure it was Georgia Arms. I am double checking, but it's hard to find a table map of the gun show. They were sorta close to the corner NRA's table is in. Pretty sure it is GA Arms. Bought 2 ammo cans from them.

Georgia Arms looks to be a semi-factory ammo maker. A bit of a BIG home reload operation. They use new components or once-fired brass to make relatively cheap bulk ammo. I'm not saying anything bad about them, by any means. I just had an issue with one gun with one of their batches. This is my first experience with them.

Well, I was testing the new ammo AND the new mags. (I know. MISTAKE! Test one thing at a time, if something goes wrong suspect the ONE new thing...) In the middle of a magazine... ~click~

On close inspection, the slide is not all the way into battery. I can see brass, so there is at least a case in there. And the slide is jammed up tight. I can't budge it. My Sig is DAK, so double action only, so I can pull the trigger all day long on it, click click click. But I don't because the gun isn't in battery and that seems like a recipe for bad things to happen.

I summon the range guru. He determines it's a live round, and it isn't budging. So the softface hammer is introduced. A few light taps and it's fully seated. I ducked behind the partition as he fired it off. It worked normally, but we didn't find the ejected brass for inspection.

Maybe that was an anomalie. So I continue.

The same thing happened next mag, but I can push the slide into place. It goes off when I pull the trigger, then. The local guru may have found the brass, and it may have had a light strike on the primer before the good strike.

To be sure it isn't the mag (though they weren't suspected at this point) I loaded from a box of factory ammo known to work fine and no hiccup presented itself.

So the likely culprit is cases that are a little too fat. Or the bullet is too far out, or the chamber was dirty/gritty, or there is a burr in the chamber, or the brass was too thick. But I'm thinkin the cases were too fat. Out of spec on the dimensions. The fat ones are stripping off the mag as they should, but then sticking in the chamber and jamming up the works.

The brass is Winchester or Speer. Knowing GA Arms it is new brass or fired once.

It might work fine in someone elses gun, just not in mine. Gonna see if MBtGE wants them. His Beretta prefers round nose FMJ bullets anyway.

Before that, on the suggest of IRC user C-90_Fla from Gunblogger Conspiracy, I'm gonna take the barrel off the gun and drop in a large sample of bullets from this batch, to see if any stick part way down. That will confirm the dimensional integrity. Maybe they were shot at a cop range out of Glocks and the bottoms of the cases are bulging. I'll report back. Same with the can of .45 on the 1911 barrel, just to see. Wait right here. Won't be long.

~~~~~~

Ok. Done. Found 4 more that wouldn't fall into the chamber of the barrel and then fall our again, via gravity. So 6 out of 500 isn't bad. IF that is the last of my problems.


~~~~~~~~~~
DANGER ISLAND!





*Horrible show. Not up to today's political sensibilities, inexpert slapstick, poor Saturday-morning acting, African Leopards in the Caribbean... Yay 1960's. But it was a kid's serial.