Mach 1 Skyray

ANOTHER F-4? What is that, four different airframes?

Hmph.

I wish the Navy had a model designation system that was a little more sensibe?



You can sorta see a bit of the near future A-6 Intruder in this one, tho that's a totally different manufacturer.

Well, now you know how to take off in a Skyray, and you can go supersonic.

Wish it was this cold

How come it took so long to realize the utility of a hip belt on a backpack?

Good extra survival instruction tho, with some interesting equipment.

Navy Instruction

They never showed this to us when I was in the Navy.



Well, or COURSE the Academy pukes needed extra help with stuff like this.

I never beleived the hype about them Annapolis grads being snooty, but then I got to the fleet. Oh my goodness! They really DID act like Lovey or Thurston Howell III.

Log Splittin'

Watch your thumbs!

Reason #298,003

I don't watch The Walking Dead.

Someone is notching dead Zed, I guess, Fred.

For realz, yo?

Get whatever gun you want.  But I'm still judging that choice.  And if you are using a shotgun as your primary zombie defense weapon...

Gonna be outta pocket

Blogging will be light, with stuff that interests me that I will share, like usual.

Stipple

Stippling.

If I bought a new plastic gun I'd have to fight the urge to do stuff to it. Can't I leave something stock for once? Can't it come out of the box good enough? A Glock needs new sights, a S&W needs a new trigger, lots of them can use a new grip texture, etc. Hell, if you gave me a custom $8,000 1911 I'd prolly get new grips...

Can't something be sold that I can leave well enough alone?  Prolly not.

Wrenn case

Yeah, this is a kind of a big deal, but it's early to get your hopes up.

It's the "Shall Issue Washington DC" case everyone is talking about that the court ruled the District is in the wrong. 

Good.

But there are a few more levels of judges it's gotta fight through before the possible Boss Battle at the Supreme level.

But if it succeeds, well, if DC is Shall Issue, everything will be.

"Nuh uh, T-Bolt, it just gets rid of that one part of the CCW permitting process where you need a good reason to get the permit.  Like a personal threat, or you carry lots of diamond in a briefcase for work"

Duh.  That's what May Issue is.  The authorities decide if you are threatened enough.  They make a subjective decision.  Get rid of that requirement and they Shall Issue a permit if you jump through objective hoops like have a good record, and submit a picture and prints, and get training, and pay a fee, and....

Now there are other shenanigans they could do.  Make the fee $100,000.  Insist on training course that only the District does and then not offer any slots to sign up to take said training.  But because those are more objective they are even harder for the bastard to get away with.

But again we find ourselves in a place where it might be possible for me to carry legally in DC before I can carry legally in Maryland.  Which is weird.

Still a ways off.  Breath not held. 

Short Legs

Folks have been complaining about the short legs of the F/A-18 since I was a boy scout in a troop full of Viet Nam veteran fathers.

Compounded by the fact that the air wing is ALL F-18s now.  Practically.  I disliked Cheney back before it was cool because he doomed the A-12.

The F-35 is not that much better.

It's like we aren't serious anymore.

I can't spare him.

Trump fights. He's like Grant. Grant had a reputation of being a sloppy drunk, a failure in normal life, maybe a bit of a boor. At least Trump is a success in normal life.

#NeverTrump conservatives are like McClellan for President supporters. McClellan was a good general in many ways. Played the politics game. A decent man. Loyal to his country. Not a decent fighter. He can lose with propriety and collegiality and decorum. Good at organizing a huge army, but got spanked by Democrats regularly. Even when you tried to hand him a victory, he'd screw it up. 2012 was the Conservative Antietam. Would have surrendered if he was elected president in 1864.

I don't like Trump, but I can't spare him. He fights. And embarrasses Dems. And they are embarrassed. Same same.

But I have low expectations.

Local News Anchor

And mega-celebrity of the 80s, if you only count the 60 mile radius, Jim Vance, has died.

A fixture of my local programming youth.  But he has ALWAYS been on TV.  For my entire life. 

Here he is entertained by a fashion model who was given poor footwear.



And a younger version from the mid 80s, with a gun control story at 2:50, where we get to buy rifles in another state. Police unions order their members to cancel their NRA memberships. Wow. Time capsule.


So why do YOU care? Jim Vance himself was a gun nut!  Not many people knew that. 

He came into my gun store to pick up two revolvers one time when I was there.  The owner said he was huge into cowboy action stuff, and they were nice single action Ruger types.

"But T-Bolt!  DC banned guns!  Did he use his local fame to be above the law?"

Naw, he prolly lived in a nice house in Potomac Maryland and commuted to the channel 4 studio.  NBC is in the north east west section of the city, near the border.  Just a guess.  But his commute might have been only 5 miles or less.

Oh wait, he lived near me!  Maybe Kensington?  Nice area.  Makes sense why he'd go to that gunstore.

Another guess, he was more of a Fudd tho.  His cowboy guns and bird hunting shotguns were fine but he wanted to release the crime scene photos of Newtown to the public expressly to whip up emotions.  Who needs an AR, anyway?

Separated at Birth

John Hodiak and Martin Landau

Oh, I think I figured out what Trump is doing

Sessions had potential, on paper, to be a good AG.  I don't like him anymore because he is over emphasizing hunting down the reefer smokers and seizing assets of anyone they want to without a conviction.

Trump might not like that either, but he has bigger fish to fry.

Mueller quickly turned into a standard Independent Prosecutor.  He won't stop til he finds something to trump up on Trump, even if it is a mattress tag Trump ripped off back in 1978.  It's the way the job works.  And a colossal waste of resources no matter who the target is. 

And is a thorn in Trump's ass he wants to be rid of.

How?  Sessions can't/won't sh!t-can him.  But a NEW AG would have fewer qualms...   Just gotta clear the decks of Attorney General Chris Christie after Sessions resigns.

Rudy Guiliani?

Anyway, that's the angle I see. 

AND it helps Sessions.  Wouldn't it suck for him if Mueller's fish expedition can't find enough on Trump but finds plenty of stuff on Sessions' perjury?  Mueller gone after Sessions 'resigns' and he is off the hook too. 

I grew up with Stephen King

I read his stuff but it never blew my skirt up.  It always seemed he wrote 3/4 of a book and phoned in and rushed that last 1/4.  He never finished a book.

Knowing what I know now the 75% mark is prolly when he ran out of money for blow, or something.

But his gun movie half intrigues.  

Watch Out for Snakes!

The two legged kind.

So I was downtown, DC, near Union Station.  Meeting my mom for German food at Cafe Berlin.  I drove down and parked easily.  Much better than stepping foot in that expensive death trap that the subway has become.

I'm early, as is my wont, so I park myself on a park bench at a nearby... uh... park.

The neighborhood is nicer there than my own.  It's Capitol Hill.  It's been fully gentrified.  It's all white people with strollers, now.  So little reason to be braced for action.  But you never know.

Still, practice being alert.  Code yellow.  Which mother or toddler look like they might push you to orange alert.  Not that I have a gun, because, DC.

Silliness aside, I noticed one thing.  You are scanning one way and a bike will just appear at your blind side.  Not there, BAM, right on top of you.

Bad guys on bikes are less of a problem in the daylight in public.  Not a good method for a mugger.  But a great method for a snatcher.  I don't have anything to snatch, no purse, no smart phone, so if it was a bad guy I am not part of his victim selection process.

The thing I am on guard for is how easy it was for them to get that close that fast.  A new wrinkle to be on guard for.   

Romero

Been dwelling on his work mainly because he has left us to deal with the undead without him.  I have heard many sendups about him on the radio and elsewhere.

You know he is dead because I posted it Sunday and EVERYONE on Facebook did too.

His zombies movie were a new thing.  Not just racist or slave times allegory.  Magical hedge-magic in remote Caribbean islands or the swamps of Louisiana.   Voodoo zombies.  No.

His zombies were your neighbors.  Anyone.  Everyone.

And his stories were about the people dealing with a phenomena massive and out of their control.  Like an earthquake movie is people dealing with shaking and fires and rubble.  Or a shark tornado movie is people trying to be sucked up like Dorothy and then eaten like that little Kitner boy.  Or like the audience trying to deal with an Uwe Boll movie and not lose their sanity.

The people.  Not the bad thing.  (In Romero's case, dead people walking around eating live people is the bad thing.  The natural disaster.)   The story is how the people react to what is outside their control.  Some react well, some make very bad decisions, but it is all entertaining to watch on the screen.     

Tweet Fail

Now folks gave this lady a lot of guff for this tweet:

But I am not so judgy.  April did notice a beach that looked like that with a sky that looked like that and saw soldiers on it and no palm trees and immediately associated it with D-Day which would occur 4 years later and pretty near there, relatively speaking.  This is in her consciousness because she was alive when the History channel was still WWII heavy and because she has seen movies like Saving Private Ryan.

This is not so bad, to retain that information and have it in the forefront of her mind for a throwaway tweet.  You know the school didn't put that information in her head, the state of that these days.  I don't think MY public school said Dunkirk out loud, and if they did it was maybe once, and that was mumbley three years ago.  I don't retain much from my band class back then.  So thank Hollywood for a little something spread about our collective history through cultural history.

And if she read the responses, she knows a little more now, not just on when the Dunkirk evacuation happened but why the racial makeup might not have been so diverse at that time, there, compared to now.  She didn't delete the tweet immediately so either she doesn't care she got it wrong or isn't embarrassed about it.  Whatever.  There is even a chance she leaves the tweet up because of integrity and taking responsibility for her missteps and is unwilling to slink away as a coward.

Well it's possible.

I had a funny feeling about this

story...

Something seemed fishy.  I couldn't quite place it.  My fault though.  My eyes kept skipping over an important detail I will now highlight so I won't forget it.

Mohamed Noor, who joined the department in March 2015, reached over and shot Justine Damond, 40, multiple times from the passenger seat of his squad car while she spoke to his colleague on the drivers side in a back alley.

I figured one shot and an AD/ND.

Now I know why I had a sense of disquiet.

WTF?

Tin Anniversary

This blog is 10 years old today.  Tin or Aluminum.  Perfect!  I'll just pick up some foil.

I'm not shopping for another gun...

But say a meteor hit my house while I was at work!  Oh noes!  All my pictures!  All my artwork!  All my antiques!  ALL MY GUNS!

After the dust settled and my life was re-established in a non-crater-like area...  Eventually I'd get some replacement firearms.  Including a pistol.

What get?

Well, might as well do it right this time.  The pistol then would be the next pistol I might get in the future now.  Just a plain Jane boring black plastic something.  I lean S&W M&P 9 or that P320.  But it could just as easily be a Glock 17 or 19.  Prolly 19.  And a spare.

Then a simple AR.  And a spare.

Single or double shottie.  And a spare.  Lower priority.

.22s.  But those aren't gun-guns.

Maybe a pocket pistol of some flavor.  And a spare.  That's it.

But I'd be shopping for that pistol, first.  Which is ostensibly what I'd be shopping for NOW..

Now S&W has come out with a new generation.  And the P320 is...  newish?  Well not really.  What I am saying is I can drag my feet a bit and see if some flaw that needs fixing comes to the surface, which happens.  Let that get fixed before getting it myself and having a hassle later.  But really, is that something to worry that much about?

What other tiny prejudices do I have to overcome?

I never like the stock S&W trigger, but really?  If it bothers you that much there are plenty of aftermarket replacements that are very nice.  It doesn't bother Jerry Miculek, why should it bother anyone else?

Sig has disappointed me in the past.  This 320 is different enough you'll get over what that bad Double Action Kellerman taste in your mouth, it left you with.

Oh, just flip a coin.

Well, Darn

George Romero died.

Trigger Discipline

"Sometimes that trigger finger gets away from you."

Tell me about it.



Dunno if I would try this drill with a tuned up 1911.  The gunsmith would wince about the action falling on an empty chamber shaking up the lock work.  A magazine with a round to stip up gentles up this jarring, and there is less wear and tear on that mating surface of the hammer hooks and sear.

But this drill is a reason to get another gun....  Well, any reason is a good reason to get another gun.

If

If this doesn't convince you that you need to be getting all your news from Infowars I don't know what can.

Yeah, pretty much

The new army pistol?  Tam's right.  One major brand plastic service pistol is as good as another.  And those are all better than the pistols of yesteryear.  Get a good deal on the one you do choose is all.

If you are good at shooting pistols for realz agin bad guys, well, you can get up to speed pretty fast with any single one of those.  If you aren't any good at shooting pistols you will be about the same with all those and so what?  It's just a pistol.  Where's your rifle, Jarhead?  Did you lose your rifle again? 

At one time, when I was really bad at shooting pistols, I might have had an opinion.  Only because I did shoot one type better than another type.  Now that I am only sorta bad at shooting pistols that advantage between models has disappeared.

Interesting

Make my nerves stronger...  By lifting bruh.  Get swole.

So, I'd fix my neck issue making my grime 30% of what it once was by doing max weight dead lifts?   I dunno.....  I mean I like the idea of lifting, ok.  I'm never doing cardio because I wasted enough of my life at that.  But I don't know if it'd be safe to lift, bruh.

That Bullet Train didn't help...

NRA

Yes, I, too, am disappointed with the lack of statement from the NRA on the Castile shooting.  Except to hawk a sale.  And it is pretty much too late now.  Timing has passed them by. 

I totally understand not wanting to alienate hard fought-for allies in the law enforcement community.  The only ones there, these days, against us are the police chiefs.  But would it have really alienated them?  They brother officer is off the hook AND off the force.  They protected their own and purged the weak from their ranks.  They could have accepted a word about this issue now. 

The NRA didn't have to say something like "hang the cop up by his thumbs!"  The NRA can say they were disappointed and imply more training is needed to prevent senseless tragedies in the future and that everyone regrets the whole thing, all round.  Something sensible and non committal like that. 

Because the dues paying NRA members are people with CCW permits like Castile had.

What kind of statement will NRA release if an actual totally squeaky clean NRA member gets shot by a nervous cop in a mirror type situation next week?  Nothing?  And if that NRA member is white and they do say something, the racism charges will fly and it will certainly be bad optics at a minimum.  Would the NRA have lost that many members by being somewhat sympathetic to a black dude that was shot for no good reason?  A black dude pretty much an ideal ally of ours?  I dunno.  I don't know how they calculate stuff like this downtown.

And if the NRA is more of a GOP organization now instead of a firearm owner's right organization how does not saying anything help the GOP, too? 

I think Fairfax dropped the ball on this. If Loesch had just waited til the SECOND statement of hers to push the insurance she is a spokesperson for, maybe.  LaPierre would have been better. 

It's not helping me sway black co-workers that were leaning toward supporting 'our' side.

I'm not pissed, I just wish things had turned out different and figure this is a lost opportunity

Range 11 July

Ok, that was much better.  And I feel better, too.  I'd call it recoil therapy, but it was .22. 

CCI, 50 shots, 2 malfs, failure to eject on the second target in the middle of the string and the last round's case also didn't full eject on the fifty target.

In case you can't read the notes.  Started ok on target one, but flinched on the non-existent 11th round, favoring right on two so noted I needed to I reposition my finger.  Then they were centered and pretty darn good for target four and five.  Always one round out of position.  Can NEVER be perfect, no...

Blog Posts

There was a time I would've latched onto every little detail about the Alexandria Congressman shooting thing, to mine it for blog fodder.

Or that guy that gave himself a racing stripe up in Gettysburg.

Or go on and on how Pew claims that 14 million Americans claim to be members of the 5 million strong NRA.  Are the other 9 million friends or foes?  Dunno. 

Or the new M&P mod 2 and how that intrigues me. 

But my posting meandering don't go that direction so much anymore.  Already been down those roads a few time and looking for different paths.  

"Boring, T-Bolt!  Think of new and better fodder!"

I'm trying, I'm trying.

I promised pictures

Ugh.

31 shots of American Eagle 230gr.  Zero malfs of any sort. 

bad/good
4/3
1/6 
2/5 (but so ugly)
3/4
1/2

And the bad shots were 'called' in my head.  I didn't have to look for the hole to know they weren't any good.  Might be some so-called flinch creeping in, too.  Recoil anticipation.

I was too distracted about that racking-strength problem to properly concentrate at the task at hand.   But I did like the transition from the first to the second.  Before I fell off the cliff.   It was a better than usual first target then a marked improvement in the second. 

I think I will go a few sessions with the .22.  And dry fire.  Always more dry fire.  To combat that flinch.  

Democrats

Crazy, dangerous, Democrats. If you see any of these on the street, go from yellow to orange.

Maybe Vox needs to run some "how to talk to your angry resistance uncle" talking points this Thanksgiving pic.twitter.com/OWjDw8No5l

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 8, 2017

Neck Nerves

Good things about the whole neck nerves thing?

It doesn't hurt.  It doesn't keep me up at night.  I can move it mostly.   I cab tie my shoes, I can flip a light switch, I can type.  Hell, I can even shoot for the most part.  No worse than before.

I feel sorry for the poor sods in worse shape.  Remember, things can always get worse.

That's why the Doctor and I haven't already scheduled more drastic remedies like surgery.

I've known people that were in so much pain they slept on the hard floor and contemplated suicide.  Surgery fixed them right up.  I am no where near that bad off.

So that's the bright side.

The pessimist in me goes, "plenty of time for it to GET that bad..."

Update:  The meds may be working.  For brief periods throughout the day I feel stronger and less numb on that side.  Hope those feeling come more frequently.  

Whine, whine, whine

And now my tummy hurts.

Art Degree

This is Jennifer Summers

She grew up in Detroit, but by scrimping and scraping she was able to get into and graduate college in the late 70s early 80s. 

She moved to California to find work.  She waited tables briefly until she landed a position at a Beverly Hills art gallery for one of the biggest art dealers in the country.  That job paid well enough for her to get a red Mercedes convertible for herself.  Not bad.

If you major in Art or Art History there are great high paying jobs in Beverly Hills waiting for.  That's the message.  And everyone from 1984 onward wanted to be like Jenny instead of buckling down and getting an Engineering degree.  It's her fault the country is like this.  Everyone thinks if Jenny can do it then they can do it to.  And are heading for a disappointment.

Range 6 July

I don't have a picture of the target. Maybe later. I'm kind of bummed out about it. Not because my shooting was particularly poor, though it was.

 I was a little distracted by a new development.

It's becoming difficult direct the slide. If you insert a magazine and have to pull the slide back then release it that is now.... troublesome.

Have you ever heard an idiot say that his gun is safe to just leave around the house because his five-year-old son doesn't have the strength to rack the slide?   That's stupid.   Of course he has enough strength. If maybe just barely.  He just needs to adjust his technique to do it successfully.

 I never thought I would have to use those techniques. But here we are.

Instead of just gripping the slide and manipulating it, I don't have the grip strength for that.   In the arm strength isn't that good either at that angle. So now I make that motion as best I can while I also use my much stronger left hand to push the frame forward. This double action of both hands Is enough to get the job done, but only just.

 Fretting over this new development didn't help my concentration on accuracy.

I am taking some new medicine to help heal the nerves that are causing this. They haven't had enough time to really get to work but I hope it does work. This is kind of depressing.

Weird holiday week

It messed up my range schedule and I count on that for blog fodder.

N00b at work wanted to know where he could rent guns before buying.  There is a place within a mile of the office! 

But they don't rent to folks unless... you bring your own gun, you are a member already, or you bring a buddy.

Too many people have offed themselves at the range.  There were two instances that I know of.  Not gonna ask the specifics.  That is hard enough on those people. 

But their policies about rentals seems reasonable.  You can't just casually Cobain yourself there.  And I'm all for minimizing that. 

Mag Size

I don't want to see these mag bans get any more traction.  Right now I can buy a 30 rounder tomorrow in Virginia and Maryland won't say 'boo' about it.  But retroactively making it illegal possess in the state at some point in the future is just what they are ratcheting up to, here, by increments.

Not just ban all made more before a certain date.  Ban ALL.  Much easier for the cops to enforce.  Like they have in DC and Cali.  And is on the want-list for nationally, going beyond the Clinton AWB provisions. 

If the courts slap it down in California, and it stays slapped down as law of the land, I have less to worry about here.  And you have less to worry about nationally. 
 

That's some bad hat Harry

Independence

Go blow something up for George Washington, John Adam, Benji Franklin.  All them guys.

Night of Long... Truth-Fists?

So my Democrat friends are up in arms about the Dana Loesch NRA video.


"She calling gun owners to violence!"

Well, no, that's BS.  She is saying the only response to the ACTUAL violence of Dem Brownshirts is capital T Truth.  She isn't saying to go gunning for bike lock koshers or arsonists or vandals.

"I'm afraid of the extremist NRA!"

Well, stop being violent and stop encouraging others to be violent or stop being silent when your allies go violent or call for violence.  Lie down with fascists, get up with rubber bullet bruises from the constabulary.

Then I reminded them that NRA types aren't the truly strident gun org.  In fact the other organization think the NRA too milquetoast and weak sister.   Worry about them.  But not too much, they are mostly talk, too.  The ones that aren't also have a large 'defense only,' leitmotif for the most part.

"But it's violent rhetoric!"

Dana didn't start violent rhetoric, oh member of the resistance.  The Left have been masters at that and ramped it up so much that a campaign worker for Bernie Sanders and Dick Durbin tried to assassinate enough GOP congresscritters to get Trump impeached two days after this ad came out.  Mote/Beam.

"I'm still scared"

Well maybe you should be.  Tamp it down.  Stop trying to elicit a response because your lady was so awful that even Trump could beat her. I still can't believe how that happened.

So sad when that happens

Someone put out a silver alert for Bill Kristol.  He got out of the retirement home.

"I remember when all this used to be orange trees."

The speed with which we're recapitulating the decline and fall of Rome is impressive. What took Rome centuries we're achieving in months. https://t.co/4TVXc4C5Ex

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 2, 2017

Coins

This is a dollar coin.  It's worth $1.00

This is another dollar coin.  According to Hillary, it's worth $.76

Oh, fer criminy...

America's Hat!

Oy!

But it is humid out.  Like soup.  I'm schvitzin like a puddin' at a picnic.

I opened an account at Bank of America when I moved to this neighborhood 18 years ago.  It was a bank.  It was close.  They had lots of ATMs about then.  This was American suburbia back then.

I went back for the first time today with a bucket of change, counting on them to have those coin counting machines free for account holders.  Nope.  And the place has a combination check cashing joint and motor vehicles administration offices vibe, with a hint of third world.  For instance.  There are guards now.  The carpet is gone.  The linoleum is dirty.  The queue is long.  And no coin counting machine.  Drat.

"Why do you have an account at that anti-2A joint, T-Bolt?"

Well, I like to have two accounts.  One a credit union (from my Navy days) and one a commercial bank, this.  That way if one sector has distress I can switch over and have all my paycheck go to the ok institution and it's already ready.  And it's still Bank of America because of inertia.  I pay my manual and variable online bills through them.  Gas bill. Electric.  Ones where it changes month to month I don't want to set to automatic.  What if a water bill is issued for $2788.33?  Obviously a mistake, but I don't want that shooting off without my making it so.  Fixed amount bills go through the credit loan as do big loans.  Life insurance payments, car payments, IRA payments, home mortgage, all go through the credit union.  The amounts don't vary.

It's just how I got it set up.

Now I have to think on maybe setting up something besides the moribund Bank of America. 

Boring!

EVERYTHING I do is riveting and exciting.