Good TeeVee

Folks are saying that Breaking Bad is the best TV series/show in the History of television.  Is it?  I will admit it is a pretty strong show and may very well be number one.  (But I get all my BB opinion on hearsay.  I am looking to get all the DVDs at once and watch it in a big marathon.)

Is it better than The Wire?  (This show is, in my opinion, number one, but I haven't seen enough Breaking Bad to make proper conclusions)

Sopranos?  (A groundbreaker, and made The Wire and Breaking Bad possible.) Firefly?  (I, like many, still lament that this show wasn't given a chance)

MST3K?  (Simply brilliant concept that still entertains.  And it is still going, in a different form.  They Riffed Starship Troopers recently.  No puppets, now, but the commentary is as good as ever.)

Venture Brothers?  (Another of my favorites, and remarkably strong writing.  There is a whole Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead theme going through this series.  Pairs.  Another theme:  Failure.)

I dunno, what do YOU think?

22

Will someone give me a holler when .22lr gets back down to somewhere close to $20 for 500 rounds again?  $80 is just too much for mere Thunderbolt. 

I need to shoot through all the non-coated .22 if this price plateau becomes a thing and replace it with coated/plated, better, ammo.  

I was searching for 12g 00 that I couldn't find and ended up doing an inventory of what I could find.  I have more .40 and .22 than I thought.  More ammo than I thought.  Good.  Now if I can just find the 12g...

5:3

Five to Three

That is the ratio.

The ration of defensive gun uses to offensive gun uses.  According to the most conservative accounting of firearm usage, via surveys. 

This is from the notoriously anti-gun Center for Disease Control.  So, popularly speaking, case closed.

MetroKrauthammerCon

I like Charles Krauthammer. I agree with him about 85% of the time. And he is smart and interesting to watch about 100% of the time.

What I don't agree with is his view on guns 17 years ago.

"It is simply crazy for a country as modern, industrial, advanced and now crowded as the United States to carry on its frontier infatuation with guns... Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed in sister democracies like Canada and Britain"

That's the worst of it, but if you RTWT he 'gets' it about the silliness of modern incremental gun-banny schemes, at least

I wonder if he still holds to "no civilized society should be armed" today? I believe he has gotten beyond that.  But.  Has he because his 'team' leans that way, or it is a true come-to-Jesus conversion?

It's also funny because he is relegated to a wheelchair after a diving accident long ago. About the only way he can defend himself is with a pistol. Not that he is allowed to, his habitat is NYC and DC, mostly.

h/t Joe Huffman

Oct 1 Comin

Thank goodness I am not a glock guy.

With the new regime in Maryland, I'd be pretty bummed unless I had a handful of em already.

While it is not illegal to OWN a 11+ round magazine, and you can traipse to Virginia or Pennsylvania and stock up on mags all day long, there will be an issue with actually PURCHASING a pistol that holds 11+ rounds, normally. Gun stores will have to yank the mags out of the case if the manufacturere/wholesaler doesn't provide their models with gimped magazines. Which they can and will do, as they did back in the AWB days.

I expect to see M1As for sale, but with short little mags in the box. The price is way up on those. Like double what I paid in 2008, pre-election.

Ooo, I saw a KRISS carbine for sale at the gunstore. It was cash and carry, as tho it was an orginary bolt action rifle. Maryland doesn't think it an assault weapon, yet. Maybe after Oct 1.

What if

What if.

I've gone on and on about the state of mental health treatment policy in this country and that a lot of the mass murders (and countless one-off single murders that don't make the news...) can be laid (layed?  PAH!) at the feet of the de-institutionalization.

But what if.  What if Kennedy era reforms that eventually emptied the insance asylums had been different?  What if the hospitals were reformed and made less abusive but still in place today and full? 

That's a big if.  Expecting gov't run concerns to be effective, competently run, and compassionate when they service a subset of the population with almost no political influence and pull...  But let's just say...

Would that mean there wouldn't have been any mass shootings?  No.  I can say with a certainty that fully funded insane asylums acting as custodians to dangerous schizophrenics would not have caught all the spree shooters.

Maybe the Gabby Giffords shooter would have been swept up.  And the Aurora shooter.  The Newtown shooter was getting 'home treatment' and the family might not have given him up, hoping everything would be ok.  The Virginia Tech shooter might have been institutionalized, but he was young and it's not like he couldn't function in university society.  Still, if memory serves, he was on the radar. 

The Navy Yard shooter had only relatively recently gotten onto the mental healthy radar.  So unless they clapped him in the booby hatch as soon as he told cops he heard voices...  There'd have been nothing stopping his atrocity.  No, there is other things coming out as facts come to the fore.  He had other contacts, he might have been noticed in time from more than just Rhode Island constabulary.

Charles Whitman at the Texas Tower obviously DID escape custodial care at a mental hospital.  I don't think the Columbine shooters would have been caught up yet.  THe Ft Hood shooter was a terrist. 

So, the answer would be "some of the mass murders might not have happened if we still had working asylums, but not all."  Plus all the people that ARE committed that WOULDN'T have committed any horrific act worse than urinating in public and panhandling would have their civil rights violated by indefinite involuntary incarceration when they could have funtioned after a fashion on their own relatively well.  All for the convenience of the Greater Public.

So a return to that old regime is not a panacea.  It might be something, but not everything. 

Gonna Add It Up

Universe

From this, a comment said "It's time for universal background checks, for every sale, every time." 

Why?

What would that do?  What is the purpose?  What would it accomplish?

If your answer is "It's an incremental step that we can do now that'll make it easier to confiscate guns later." then, well, at least you are honest.  And that's the reason we in the 2A aware community oppose it. 

For those that aren't lying that that is their reason for it...  Answer the questions. 

Shooting Sport

One of the criticism of practical shooting sports is people maximize their equipment as much as possible to win the event.  They use holster and magazine holder rigs and shoot-me-first vet cover garment and what not to maximize their chance of winning the contest, that they don't use what they carry in day to day CCW,

There is nothing wrong with this.  It is a sport after all.

But it would be interesting to have a "Come as you are party."  Invite a bunch of folks that CCW and do shooting sports to what is ostensibly a non shooting event.  When they arrive, SURPISE, it's a sport shooting event with a shoot house and everything.  You only have your street clothes and your carry pistol and any reloads.  You normally appendix carry an LCP with one spare mag?  Or you pocket carry a 5 shot revolver and no reloads?  Or you have an IWB holstered 1911?  Shoulder holster with a Glock 20 and 2 mags?  That's what you compete with.  Sit at a desk in shoot house and you start when you hear a shot telling you there is an active shooter in the building.  You get points for locking doors, maybe (but aren't told these score you points...), picking up the phone to summon cops, And then work your way out of the building.  Not TOO many bad guys, and maybe just one, but lots of no-shoot targets.  Again, no idea ahead of time what you are up against.

Just a thought experiment, and its not something that can be replicated too often. 

Le Ballon rouge

They played this at least 3 times a year in elementary school.

Book Report

So I am re-reading Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock.  I read it as a Dungeons and Dragons playing junior high school kid, way back, of course.  I even have the Deities and Demigods that includes the Melnibonean Mythos.

Now that I am older and, I hope, smarter... wiser even, I appreciate the language more.   The pulp magazine influence pulses through the book like the heartbeat of a long dead Robert E Howard.  I also understand more of the vocabularty.  I probably knew what a courtesan was back then, but grimoire, no doubt, flew right by me.

You can't always recapture your youth, but it can be fun to try sometimes. 

But this post has absolutely no gun content.

The Elric sagas are a handful of books written in the 70s.  Elric is an albino emperor of the decaying 10,000 year old Melnibone empire.  In a dying power struggle of that empire he get's a hold of a semi-sentient soul-stealing sword kept by the God's of Chaos that is then a curse to him for the rest of his life, now reduced to a quasi-mercenary.

(But he does use lots of exclamation points!)

He'll Want YOUR Vote for President

T-Bolt -

Earlier this week, we watched in horror as our nation suffered yet another mass shooting.

This time, it happened in the shadows of the Capitol that has consistently failed to produce legislation to keep our communities safer in the wake of Tucson, Aurora, and Newtown.

In Maryland, we passed some of the nation's toughest laws to reduce gun violence that will save lives when it goes into effect on October 1st. The legislation had three main components: gun safety, school safety, and mental health.

It's time for Congress to act on all three, as well. Sign my petition calling on the House and Senate to reconsider taking action to reduce gun violence.

http://action.martinomalley.com/squashing_civil_rights

In the coming months, I'm going to continue to fight for those who stand with us on legislation to reduce gun violence.

I hope you'll join me in that effort -- starting with your signature today.

All the best,

Martin O'Malley, Maryland Governor, and the next President of the United States

The Hell...?

And in other blog fodder, I have no idea what the hell this is, but it involves guns. 

Silly Elected Official

Some Maryland politician was crooning over the new state gun control laws and how it would have stopped the Navy Yard shooter.  What with fingerprinting pistol purchasers and all.  I didn't have the heart to tell her that shotguns are still cash and carry, same day purchase, in Maryland.  Just like the from the store in Virginia he bought em from.

Plus, she was on the radio and can't hear me no matter how hard I shout.  People on the radion aren't really talking to you, usually.  Unless they say a lot of "Breaker Breaker Good Buddy 10-4 what's yer 20, Omaha?" stuff.   I learned THAT when I was 3.

Look, gun-banny chowderheads...  How many crazy people are gonna let slip the cheese from their cracker before you realize it is how you treat the mentally ill in this country, and it's not the guns?  How many 'gun free zones' have to be lit up before that whole concept looks like a bad idea?

"We emptied the mental hospitals and filled the prisons and cemetaries."

The DC mayor is complaining that it was lax gun laws in Virginia that allowed this to happen.  Mayor, he could have just as easily bought the shotgun in the much stricter Maryland side of the river.  Or in DC once the city has a gun store, which it will, someday, and probably soon.

Like I Realized Something Was Lost

Something occurs...

Nobody will ever make a Rifle with wood furniture for a .mil issue weapon ever again.  And that, in a way, is a shame.

I like walnut so.  Not to hard, not too soft, not too heavy, not too light, and a handsome brown color. 

This has also been true for the US since before I was born.  It's kinda a shame.

Annotated 2nd Amendment

At Cornell.   Where is Cornell?  New York or sumthin?

Seems a bit dated and in need of an update. 

"In spite of extensive recent discussion and much legislative action with respect to regulation of the purchase, possession, and transportation of firearms, as well as proposals to substantially curtail ownership of firearms, there is no definitive resolution by the courts of just what right the Second Amendment protects"

Well there isn't a case cite after 1998.  I'm sure there are textbooks from 1960 that say "some day, man may walk on the moon" too.

Starbucks Sick of OC Rubbing Their Faces In It

I refuse to boycott Starbucks.  I will continue to go there.  But I won't BUY anything anymore.

Now, I just go there to poop.

Get coffee at Dunkin, maybe one of them brefass sammiches, head down the road to Starbucks, run in and drop a potatoe in the ol' crockpot, maybe take some extra napkins and straws on my way out.

Yeah, sorry about that.  I had a lotta garlic in my dinner last night.  Forgot to bring abatement measures.  (on purpose) Phew!

Why I prefer .308

Goatman.  Scourge of the Western shore.  All along the Patuxent River valley he stalks his victims.  And has for decades.

My Grandparents lived in the country and only had a single shot Montgomery Wards 20 gauge to protect themselves.  But my Paw Paw was a brave brave man.

Zombies are STILL a Thing

It's just that that thing is fading.  Case in point:

Sassy Rick Grimes?  A gender bending sheriff character costume so women can fulfill the requirements of Halloween and dress like a prostitute? 

Of course as soon as you let your vigilance lapse...  THAT's when your brains get eaten.

Max Brooks is probably spinning in his grave.

Radio Static

The radio keeps reporting the Navy Yard shooter had a Texas CCW permit.

The radio also reports the shooter had a previous criminal charge for discharging a weapon in public.

Now, correct me if I am wrong...  And assuming the reports are true...  Wouldn't a class A misdemeanor charge make you a prohibited person to purchase firearms until that due process takes its course, and, more importantly, get your toters permit pulled?

And if that rises to the level of 'yank his toters permit' wouldn't saying he has a CCW be the same as saying "T-Bolt was an elementary school student"?  Sure it is true I WAS, but it's not exactly true NOW.

update:  the charge was dismissed, so no reason to pull the CCW.  Also, the radio reported for hours that the dead shooter was a white male.  I'm confused, because this is a funny looking white dude pictured.   I await more, and accurate, information to be reported, but I better wait days...

update 2:  Hey, maybe I am the racist here!  I might have heard "Shooter is a Texan with a CCW" on the radio and assumed it meant white and male.  (cuz i'm not sure WHAT I heard now...)  I shouldn't make assumptions like that.  I apologize if this is indeed the case.  Mea culpa to black and female and black female gunnies in the great state of Texas and elsewhere.  Also sorry to the radio reports I thought reported 'white dude', where they were just studiously ignoring the inconvenient melanin content of a murderer, if that is the subconscious conclusion I jumped to. 

Cop Marksmanship

I bet I am not the only one to mention this story in a blog post. NYC cops go after a crazed up hobo, miss him completely, hit 2 bystanders instead.

It's stories like this that make gunnies think they are better shooters than the average police officer.  We seem to practice more than your standard NYC police.

But that may be self-deluding.  You have to put a lotta caveats in there.  Do we practice more than a NYC SWAT member?  That cop in Wyoming that does IPSC on his days off and shoots 3000 rounds a month?  Probably not.  Not on average, no.

Do we, all of us, on average, practice more than all cops, on average?  Hard to ascertain, objectively.  If you narrow it down to "twice monthly range visits shooting enthusiasts" and "average NYC beat cops with no range to go to for 20 miles" then yes, those gunnies are probably better shooters than those cops.  And these cops that shot the bystanders on Broadway could easily fall in that group.

It's the example of these 2 ill prepared police that does tar the rest of the profession, and, I agree, that is probably unfair.  But welcome to our world.  We get painted with a broad brush.  As we all know 'civilian' shooters are inbred bible clinging mall ninjas with a Walter Mitty fantasy just waiting to spring into action, Dodge City style.

There is a prowler breaking into my house!

I know what to do, thanks Ma Bell!

Agent of Shield

Armor for your picatinny rails.

Sheesh, soon everything will be uparmored and our armies will be vanquished by peasant bowman as your valiant men fall over in a muddy French field and can't right themselves because of the weight.

I remember a bigger shield rifle mount thingy a year or two back.  Much more unwieldy than these.

But, you know... you could totally camo those shields and they might even assist a bit with countering some thermal imaging, so maybe there is something to it.  Even if it does cut down your field of vision.

Rich Lowry comments

Rich Lowry is a metrocon.   City conservative that rarely comments on shooting.  Gun are too 'country-mouse' to get on his radar much.  He's city-mouse.

Lowry is head high muckity muck grand poobah down there at the metrocon fortnightly.  And he notes how well the grassroots civil rights defenders did in Colorado against the Nanny Leviathan bottomless pockets.  Thanks National Review for noticing. 

Libs

No Harry.  Libertarian is not synonymous with Anarchist.  Nor does Libertarian mean Libertine.  I'm sure the Tea Party would LOVE to revert back to the laws we had in 1969, and all that was AFTER the execrable LBJ Great Society stuff was in place.  No one thought us an anarchy then...  But there would be no DOE or DOE or EPA or TSA or DHS getting all up in our faces.

Garand Rifle, rare type

Pictured, the M1 and M1! Garand rifle.

I got nothing today

I have had some cutesy stuff lined up, but it didn't seem appropriate for this particular anniversary.  I'm still looking for some righteous vengeance against the forces of barbarism and that hasn't happened yet.

Just a reminder: all of this bullshit is the result of us not enforcing immigration laws on 20 expired visas in 2001.

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 9, 2013

Big Honking Snubbie

Saw an interesting revolver on the consignment shelf while out with MBtGE last weekend.

It's a snubbie.  Or 'snubbie' really.

I coulda swore I saw it in Tam's Arms Room on a Sunday-Smiff post.  I figured it was something they stopped making back in 1996 or something and Tam picked it up from a good friend at a gun show for 3 bills.  The price, used, in the case, for me was $1000.  But I couldn't find it on her site...

8 shot... it looks like a half inch barrel, but that's deceiving as it's on a largish frame.  Waitaminnit, they still sell those.  It's a 327.  And I've admired the longer barreled version in the past.

I got to handle a brand new one 2 days ago.  Nice features?  The cylinder gap is tighter that a frogs 5th point of contact and there is a little metal guard you can just make out in the picture that protects the top strap from fire cutting out of that gap.  It's very lightweight and comfortable, but it's not for pocket carry.  Too big.

With my recent issues with the 1911, sometimes an idea like this revolver makes me want to chuck it all, sell off every semi I own, and just carry a wheel gun.  I'll get over that sentiment soon.

Ah, so I do need something

Being Honorably Discharged from the Navy, I do need to get a handgun license.  I just don't have to take the required training for it.

Great.  Just what I wanted.  Another hoop.

Sir, you are being hunted...

A British video game.  

See what happens when you surrender your right to self defense, you milk-sotted toffs!  Tweed wearing gentlemen robots hunt you for sport. 




And nary a proper round of .308 to be found. Much less a Holland and Holland double. Bloody rotters, wot?

Anti-Gun Rally in Baltimore

Done by one of the worst state Senators we have, Frosh, who is running for Attorney General. 

And Mayor Bloomberg, of course.

Funny how they don't list a time and place for said rally...  Probably don't want to get swamped by pro-gun folks.

Don't believe me about Frosh?  Here, right from the horse's mouth:




In fairness, he made that statement before the Supreme Court ruled on Heller, making him look a bit less pitful.

Who Watches the Watchmen

We do.

A new Amendment that only lets the Watchmen go around armed, leaving us to their tender mercies, and to the mercy of thugs with truncheons?  No thank you. Hippie, please?  What are you smoking?

Voting in the poll is very close, but I think it leans toward freedom.

Reacher

I should called this tag book/movie review...

Saw Jack Reacher.  It was just the turn for that disk to come in the mail.

 

Never read the books, so the movie couldn't ruin them.  From what i understand, Mr. Reacher (seems like the sorta dude you should call 'Mister') is supposed to be bigger than me.  So fans of the book were worried that the 4'11" Tom Cruise couldn't pull that off.  But he seems too.  It was a good flick.

 

I wonder what it is about Cruise.  I think he is likable because while there is unsavory stuff reported about him, HE doesn't do the reporting.  He seems to protect his brand.  Unlike a guy like Clooney or Matt Damon that spout off about Leftist causes, call the former president Chimpy McBushitler, and give sensuous back massages to that ol' Red, Howard Zinn, Cruise doesn't himself try to alienate half his viewing audiences.  While I think there is a better than even chance he shares Leftist sentiments, Cruise doesn't shove it in my face.  So there isn't that to distract me when watching one of his movies.

 

Matt Damon, on the other hand, I watch that guy and I am distracted, and Jason Bourne becomes Pinko Damon, and I am out of the movie.

 

Good parts about Jack Reacher?  My favorite rifle, the M14/M1A is practically a co-star.

 

Now, should I read the books?

I'm Sure It Isn't An Easy 'A'

University of California Irvine is offering a Zombie course (h/t Bubblehead Les).

8 week course.  So, like Boot Camp.  We just need to make it mandatory for everyone registered with Selective Service.  THEN we'd be ready for the coming Level 4 outbreak.  Then, we might have a chance.

But there is no mention of the marksmanship training and standards.  I'm sure it's just an oversight.  With luck they will stress that you never select a shotgun as your primary anti-zombie firearm. It's great for onesy twosey, but zombies travel in hordes. The reload time is onerous, and the ammo, while effective, is heavy and bulky and short ranged.

Range Notice

My indoor range, OnTarget sent out a mailer.  They are also a gunstore and they want to remind customers that the law is changing soon so get a gun now.  We still don't know what the new laws mean.  They were confusing before this most recent legislative fever seizure.  Money quote:

"This new law is so complex that NO ONE seems to be able to fully figure out how it will impact the 2nd Amendment rights of the gun buying public."

I kinda do.  Instead of buying any mag bigger than 20 at the gun show, I now have to buy any mag bigger than 10 at the gun show.  In Virginia.  Dunno what this means if I want another AR or M1A.  The assaulty looking stuff.  We will have to see.  The training reqs and fingerprinting won't apply to me.  I have a DD214 and I have already purchased a pistol in Maryland. So I can buy all the 1911's, revolvers, and Elsie Pees I want. There is a question of whether I could buy a pedestrian Glock 17, or S&W 9mm, or Beretta 92 (made in Maryland!) after Oct 1...

I got nuthin

Back into the Monday rut.  On a Tuesday.  It happens.

There is this...  How can you tell your batteries are dying in your Crimson Trace?  I don't know if it was just me, but the laser dot seemed to be faded.  I hopes it's batteries and not my eyes aging.

Yeah, I use the laser on my practice snubbie.  I have VZ grips for it like my carry snubbie, but I can't seem to locate them.  Ain't that always the way?  (I did find the Kuhnhaussen Colt .45 book...)

If only Crimson Trace could provide batteries for life or something.

I don't understand

Why are these Rat Patrol SAS guys looking so British and sporting weird looking drum fed machineguns?

Everyone knows the Rat Patrol was mostly American, had Jeeps and Brownings and were IN COLOR!



 

So now what?

yeah, I am pretty much set on making this gun not pretty but functional the way I want it to function.  Now if I can just find my copy of Kuhnhausen.

Gunsmith was a Bust

So, I went to the gunsmith.  He couldn't in good conscience do what I needed to do.  A dovetail cut on the Colt Commander would mess up the nickel plating, and all that would require a LOT of money to make it look right by replating.  Might as well buy a new gun.  Yes, even I didn't want to drop $1500 on this project.  I need a box of free Commanders to fall in my yard so I can do this right.

He didn't like the options for making a gun ambi dextrous.  Maybe in 6 months when something new was coming out.  And he refused to do it the old way.

He could DO it ugly, but he doesn't want this scenario:

"Hey, where did you get that work done?"

"Hatfields."

"Well, I know not to get it done there..."

But now I got a gun that isn't able to do what I want.  I need to find a less scrupulous, yet still skilled, gunsmith.  I don't care if the nickel fix at the sight is crappy looking, as long as it works and doesn't corrode.

Oh, and the mainspring housing I want and own isn't drop-in.  So that will require some real smithing. 

He is a fan of Colt steels, but not Colt machining.

He did have a neato Browning 85% sized 1911 that shot .22...  Cute!  Looks like a salesman's sample.