A Wiki Wander is Great

You know how you look up something in wikipedia, then you click on a link that looks interesting, then click on something on that next page, and on and on, learning stuff as you go.

We used to do something like that before the internet.  And I say 'we' because I have run into other people that did the same.  Pick a random edition of World Book 1974 and just turn the pages, cover to cover.  Looking at the pictures, reading the interesting sections.

Later in life I looked at 1911 era Encycloepedia Brittanicas and 1940 editions of Colliers.  Less pictures, but you get a different perspective of the world because Events are about to get kinda interesting after those publishing dates.

11 Years Ago

Major Lawrence Caudill USMC ret. invented a gun-term.

"Carry your gun - it's a lighter burden than regret."

It wasn't that long after he had gone on and on about why the gun is civilization.

Those fake Marines really get around.    Though, I thought only sailors were named Lawrence?

Happy Thanksgiving

This is concerning

According to this guy:

People with Read Coats are coming for my guns. 

I am picturing the wardrobes of these dastardly rights deniers. (writes deniers?)

Oh dear, oh dear

I thought I had something for this space...

---

Need to get my oil change done soon.  My new-fangled 21st Century car tells me now.  Instead of 30k miles, then 35, then 40...  The car keeps track.  I got 8,000 out of this last one.

If i had to guess

If I had to guess, the DGU guy from Kingston might not be a perfect angel...  But so what?  Sounds like he defended himself legit, and even non-angels get that.  Good on ya, fella.

Also, it shouldn't matter your financial means in whether or you can exercise self-defense.  This man is far from wealthy, but he has the same rights as anyone.

That old dream comes back

Variations of this dream are recurring, throughout my life.

I am at my grandparent house that was on the Chesapeake bay, south of the Patuxent River mouth, north of the Potomac's, with a great big wide horizon.  In the 70's you couldn't see the far shore, so nothing but water to the East.  I was sleeping on the porch, and it was winter.  I must have woke up around 6 because the sun was just peaking up.  Then the moon zipped up past it, incredibly fast and impossibly full.  The bay was full of ice.  Not the usual ice, but like Great Lakes floes.  Then a hull came right at the house out of the northeast.   No mast or upper works.  It had a stylized figurehead emblem.  Not a person but like a capital letter B.  It beached and drove up, but shy of the house.  There were Roman soldiers on board.  I had to get an English to Latin dictionary of the grandfathers to communicate with them.

It's a good dream.  Rarely do the random ships land.

Inspirations that triggered this dream:

• cold weather camping
• commuting at sunrise
• thought of Lake Erie
• playing World of Warships
• thinking of my grandparents
• listening to the History of Rome podcast

Break In

I could be convinced otherwise

But, for me, a firearm 'break-in period' where you shoot it a bunch to round over any sharp corners and condition it or 'shoot it loose' is bushwa.  If a gun left the factory 'too tight' and they expect YOU to make it a functioning piece through use?  That's not right.

That said, pobodys nerfect.  Sometime a gun fails, when new, and that does not necessarily mean it is a lemon.  It might need a adjustment that the factory failed to make.  The gun assembler isn't as expert as they used to be.

Example:  My Hudson.  Glad I didn't send it back.  All it needed was an adjustment to the extractor and it runs fine now, and I was lucky enough to have the expertise to toubleshoot that myself.  If you mailed yours back and the company went bankrupt?  Well, sucks to be you.

What a 'break in period' does do, for me, is determine a baseline reliability of your new firearm.  I have learned, through my gunsmith training, it is a good idea to see if your new gun can do 250 rounds of the ammo you intend to shoot through it without failure.

If it fails on round 240 for your Federal HST, well, make you adjustment, and start this expensive test over.  If you buy a custom gun you should expect this sort of test to be done for you before they slap on a $5000 price tag.

If you believed you had to do the break in period to loosen up you custom gun, well, YOU are doing the build testing, not the reliability testing.  A gunsmith worth anything (or lucky) should aim to make a gun that WORKS when it leaves the assembly bench and heads to the range. 

(I was the lucky kind, I must admit.  Twice.)

Now let me read that Shooting Illustrated article past the headline....

Yup, condition your new pistol is a scam and a cover for non-existent QC.


And since you can count on a LOT of $600 or less guns to work through 250 rounds flawlessly right out of the box, you'd think the $6000 one would work AND be pretty.

When Epstein Died

It was reported that the video cameras were malfunctioning. Plural cameras.

So, that was baloney, fake news?  Now the cameras work fine that the guy on the top of the heap says so?  Is someone independent of all this looking at the hours footage, if there is any?  There is plenty of erroneous news reports out there, though, and we in the gun community know that. 

If Barr had indicted Hillary for her top secret email server in her bathroom, or a Biden or Kerry relative of taking payoffs from foreign governments, or something like where an unexpected person high up in the food chain of the establishment gets at least some comeuppance...  that I might now believe the AG's word on this.

You understand why I am a little dubious?

Flight Gloves

A commenter asks:  "Where do you buy them?  No one seems to sell them."

You mean, besides Amazon?  'Flight Gloves' in the search bar returns tons of various prices.

The .mil style Milsurp catalogs I bet carry them.  Like Cheaper Than Dirt.  Online or physical paper catalog.

But say you want a physical store and have no access to Post Exchange on a military base?  I'd try the dwinding number of brick and mortar Military Surplus stores.  Then gun shows.   

What to take on Safari

What do you take on Safari?

I can tell you what not to take.  Selfies.

That Jimmy Johns guy gets's PETA up his arse for going hunting in Africa.  Thing is, he gave it up 15 years ago.  But every few years PETA posts an old photo of him standing next to dead charismatic mega fauna and now erryone has to donate to kitty murderers at PETA and eat Subway?

And it's always someone new.  Like this lady.

The lesson here, maybe don't take pictures of your hunting trips.  If you do, maybe don't smile.  Or pose with the game you harvested.  Even hunting ethically will get the anti-hunting zealots up your posterior if they see a propaganda value in your images.

Or take all the smiling pictures posing near nude next game you fell, but be careful not to leak them somewhere they can get on social media and come back to you.

I mean, still do it.  The hunt stuff you enjoy, I mean. Still hunt.  And enjoy it.  That's one of the Hater's biggest goals.  To make you miserable enough that it's no fun anymore and you quit.  And take a n00b with you.  Get them to have fun.  Cook up that meat in the smoker after wrapping it in bacon, server that backstrap with taters.  Nom.  Just be mindful about giving ammunition to the enemy

That High School Shooting in Cali?

They are claiming the kid got an 80% lower and made the 1911 himself.

There were reports it jammed once during his spree.

Having made a couple 1911, I am impressed he was able to do that on his own, as a teenager, and get a pistol out of it that only jammed once with one magazine.  It is non-trivial to accomplish even that level of 'success.'

To maximize his chances of getting something that works even that much (presuming the kid built it and not his dead father 3 years ago) he must have eschewed oversized parts that require lots of fiddling and fitting.  And lubricate the crap out of it.  But it's hard to pick up for book and instructional videos the, say, proper tension of an extractor, and to know to avoid significant pitfalls in the build process with only 16 years of life under your belt.  If he was lucky with his parts pile he'd have a rattly 1911 that would work.

"But T-Bolt, facotry workers in 40s threw these together by the millions with minimal futzing!"

Yes, they did, but there was a guy around that trained the final assemblers and helped the final assemblers when they ran into problems.  A secretive murderous 16 year old has nothing to fall back on besides the internet, and the internet is fat least three quarters BS.  If the kid made the pistol he had to have been kinda clever at least.  It can be easy, but not THAT easy.

Kid's still an asshole, tho.  And what a gawd-awful waste.  If you insist, and were gonna off yourself, what is wrong with chugging a bottle of Lye, huh, punk?

(All this presumes the media and California aren't just lying to us about it all.  And they probably are.)

How did we get through?

How did we get through the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s without a LOT more gun control?

I mean, they go full court press of any shooting, today, with two or more victims that isn't standard gang land.

And with that they are getting more and more traction toward passing restrictions.  But they are fighting a trend that doesn't help them.  Murders are down, and have been for decades.

Not true in the old days.  Murders were trending UP, those decades.  Awfully.  Plus high profile assassinations.  How did we escape with ONLY the 1968 GCA and the 1994 AWB?  If the bad guys coming after our rights couldn't make a total ban out of those trendlines then what hope do they have now?

Well, they always have a chance, but the upstream swim for them is an advantage for the good guys.

I am too sedentary

I need to move more.

I also hate summertime heat.

"Well, I got good news for ya, T-Bolt!  It's cool outside.  Go for a walk."

Sounds like a good idea, I will do that.  Brisk enough to get the heart rate up a bit.   It won't make me skinny, but it might make me stay on the right side of the dirt a little longer.  T-Bolters like to die of cancers, not heart conditions.  I don't wanna be the first.

-----

Ugh, I remember why I have been reticent to wear out some shoe leather.  My spine is jacked up.  Walking a mile, even, exacerbates it.  I bet continued walking will fix it up as long as I don't overdue it.  "You are old T-Bolt, but keep at it.  Baby steps wins the race."

Hey, remember how camping on the cold hard ground DIDN'T bother your decrepit spine?  Sleep on the floor at home!

Careful in your 20s folks.  Be active, but don't abuse your body. 

We, the public

Know more about that Cali school shooting a week ago where 2 people died than we know about the Vegas shooting more than a year ago where DOZENS died.

Standard Monday

I shoulda saved my canteen post for today.

I obviously compose Monday posts on Sunday.  Or before if I have a lotta post ideas in my tank.  But Sunday's are lazy, I guess.  So I come up empty.

Tam, on Facebook, posted a nice picture of Melody Lauer doing some range instructing.  Part of that picture showed a double holster at the 6 o'clock position on the gentleman (in a red t-shirt) she was training.  Sorta like this:

You know, for dual wielding.

I don't know if I need one or want one, but I kinda like that this exists.  With this rig, a holster at 3 and 9, maybe opposing Appendix carry, both pockets, something small on both ankles, and double shoulder holsters you could be carrying...

Carry the two...

ALL the pistols.  All of them.

Boy, howdy, but don't fall in water that is over your head.

Which is it?

Do you think the gun used in this recent officer involved shooting was:

A)  After it was turned in at a gun buyback in 2004 someone then resold back into the black market, eventually ending up in the dead gang members hands 15 year later

or

B)  A bent Chicagoland cop snagged it from the pile, always intending to use it as a relatively untraceable Drop Gun. If he needed one. 

I lean B. 

Hey!

Is that a Maytag?

Water

While reading George Peto's account on the Battle of Peleliu he mentioned he had two pint canteens or summat.

The language confused me?  Did he have two 16 ounce canteens, or one, single, 1 quart canteen.  And he just preferred to so saw 2-pint instead of 1-quart.

And yesterday that came back to me and made me think.

Which is it.

I thought all canteens from WWII onward were the same shape.  Metal back in WWII, and plastic in Nam, and thinner plastic today.   But the same size and shape.  And can fit in a canteen cup.  Sorta NATO standard by now  (and maybe a 'litre').  Might have even been pretty close to today's shape in WWI.

But I could be wrong.  Maybe the Marines used a smaller version, and just carried two instead of one.  I can see advantages to that.

And I know Marines carried 2 canteens, one on each hip, in some circumstances, was practiced.  Seen many pictures of that in various theaters thoughout time.  But they never let me measure those canteens.

Singles at Guadalcanal, that look like quarts:

And I have never seen an obvious miniaturized version of that.  Gonna chalk it up to Peto just saying Two-Pint instead of Quart.  Until one of you nice people corrects me.

Maryland Shall Issue

They just sent me an email saying I have unsubscribed from their email list.  I had not.

Careful MSI!  Don't purge your email list.  Clearly a Bloomberg hacking plot. 

Quick!

Get some busybody journalist to do a colonoscopy on this Jeopardy player and find out he doesn't like Rap music, or thinks Climate Crisis is a commie scam, or once when he was 16 used an ethnic slur, so that he can then be 'cancelled' and driven from the public square for trying to fix Alex Trebek's cancer because he happens to like Trebek!

‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant Who Almost Brought Alex Trebek To Tears Announces Fundraiser For Cancer Research

Range 12 November

Been shooting striker fired... break out the 1911.

Not too bad.

Suprise break trigger much faster.  "Make trigger go good" versus "make trigger for NOW!" where you flinch with the second and have decent shot with the second?  I was squeezing the trigger almost as fast as a GO NOW, but getting the surprise break of a 5 second Go Good.  If that makes any sense. 

8 yards, 36 rounds, no malfs or stoppages.  1153 since I built the gun. 

The bottom two were one-handed practice.  I shoot better offhand than I did with two hands, but 5 years ago. 

So, what next?  Pairs and split times?  Need some training on that. 

Wealth Tax

Remember the politicians only say they are going to apply their new wealth tax to billionaires.

You are not a billionaire, so, you don't care as much one way or another. 

Go after them fatcats savings.  They don't need 2 billion or 100.  Let them settle on 1.  And that's more than generous, right?   The government prints the money, so they gov't owns all the money.  Right?

As morally abhorrent as that concept is...  You will be shocked at how quickly it turns around and starts targeting YOUR savings.  It'll go after the thousandaires.  That little pile in the bank you were thinking of using as a car downpayment.  Your 401k you wish you had put more in over the years.  The relatively tiny windfall you got after the gov't took it's bite from the estate and you then sold off your mom's house after she passed. 

And that still won't be enough for them.  It's never enough. 

Gloves

I have mentioned this before.  I like these kind of gloves.

Nomex flight gloves.  They are thin and can easily be stashed in small internal jacket pockets and forgotten about.  In an emergency they can stretch the time from your hands getting frostbit from 1 minute to 30 on really cold days.  Not ideal, but better than near instant.  With them on, you can tied your shoes, work your belt, and your zippers.  Not ideal, but good enough.

But they excel more when pared with other gloves and become glove liners.  You can take off your thick good glove and perform those tasks above and have zero risk of flash freezing.

Not that it gets to -40 around here.

But what can't they do, and what I only discovered recently because this is my first winter with my very own, first ever, Big Boy Smart Phone....  The finger tips are remarkably dexterous, but do not work with a touch screen.  You have to take off the glove to work a smart phone.

And then... if your finger tip gets cold even bare skin no longer works.  You fingertip has to be warm.   For that I stick my my finger tip in a bodily orifice to keep it warm enough to smear the buttons on the screen.

My MOUTH, fool!  But the other orifi prolly work.

I had something for today

But today got away from me.  Maybe more this afternoon, after work?  Sorry.

Anyone else do this?

So I got a hankering for something my mom used to make back in the 80s.  I remember it as parmesian dill oyster crackers, but I bet it was more like this:

With the Hidden Valley Ranch in there, too. It's easy enough to make, ranch, dill, cheese, oil, some lemon pepper; and poof, baked homemade junkfood.

The thing I do different.  My curve ball.

It calls for a quarter cup of oil.  If I was making salad dressing I'd think olive oil.  But I still had warm liquid bacon grease right there from breakfast, and a big pat of butter quickly liquified in that.  Top off with peanut or olive oil to get to the measurement.

Why waste the oil, I'm not trying to be healthy, and I kinda like the hint of bacon flavor. 

Whatdaya think?

Happy Birthday

and thank you for you service, Marine.

Norman

Miguel posted this classic Norman Rockwell painting for Veterans Day.

Embiggenate this picture titled Homecoming

Looks like someone is home from war.

I love Rockwell immensely, but this one always bugged me.  Initially because I thought that one kid had shimied high up a utility pole and was close to the electrical service.  But no, he is just endangering himself on a regular ol' tree.  The wires about are phone lies.  So, I relax a bit.

Wait how did that guy repairing that flimsy, poorly supported, porch roof get up there, and how is he gonna get down.  Well, there is one way to get down.  When that roof collapses and we get six casualties.  And secret girlfriend will see it all.  Does soldier boy's family not approve of you, young lady? 

Lotsa blue stars on that back lot.  No gold ones, thank goodness. 

Veterans

You ever watch these

I do.  All the way through. 





Make me want to drive trains.

Got a case of the blahs

Melencholy.

It will pass.

Hmmm, I didn't go to the range this week!  Drat.  No wonder I have no fodder.

That camping trip a week ago?  We had a single shot pneumatic pellet gun and small metal spinner target to play with.  Took a few to get the measure of the trigger, but once there, hits every time.  It's always the trigger pull. Secret to life, almost.  You can get away with a whole lot wrong if you have a perfect trigger pull.  No, I'm not saying I have a perfect trigger pull.  I'm saying I'd be unstoppable if I did.

This pellet gun was a Diana.   Grip designed for a righty and danged inconvenient for a lefty gripper.

This is an example of the model.  You see the thumb notch for a righty.

Went Camping

Last Weekend.

Just to see if I could.

I'm old.  Decrepit.  Not the spry boy scout of yore.  I didn't know if I could handle sleeping on the hard ground with my spine the way it is.

If anything, my spine was better than average.  Nice!

We camped my MBtGE sister's farm, where we often hunt deer.  Just out of the back of the truck, down by the pont, and with some luxuries like camp chairs and whatnot.  Steak.  Beer.  But I also wanted to see how much I could live with could be packed into one backpack.  Now I have a better idea.  I could do it, again, now, with just the pack.

The poncho liner is a great invention.  Especially when you have a hard frost.  With it I was downright comfortable.

Over there.

Sort of a prediction

Trump easily wins re-election.  The opposition is over-estimating the opposition to him, and who they got to oppose him are pretty milque toast.

Also, I have a feeling the GOP loses control of the Senate, and no more... ZERO... judges get confirmed for 4 years. 

This makes me a little sad for my gun rights.  In 2025, unless the current judicial makeup nails it down firm, those rights erode away for the forseeable future.  And I don't think the good guy will pass a case that will last as long as say, Roe, has.  50 years of abortions in 50 states?  It'd be nice to flip that and get 50 years of shall issue in 50 states.

2AF

Always nice to have the Second Amendment Foundation going to bat for me, personally.  Well figuratively personally.

Bottom line of the case, Maryland is May Issue on CCW.  You need a reason the state police and attorney general think is valid to tote.  And then it is often very limited like "CCW but only to and from and at your work, no stops."

The Second Amendment Foundation thinks that is contrary to civil rights and errywhere should be Shall Issue.

Of course, if forced to overturn it's regime, Mayrland will think of other ways to make it annoying.  "You need 40 hours of training and must renew every other year with a $140 application fee."  Until that then gets overturned.

But baby steps.

.44 Magnum Turned In

That's a funny looking .44 Magnum.  

The media is garbage.  They are either lying and purposely publishing things that are untrue, or are totally ignorant and publishing things that are simply wrong.

And they wonder why no one trusts them about anything.  I used to rely on them.  Now I just rely on them to be 95% BS.  And that last 5% isn't giving me a lot of confidence.  If it is true it's an accident.

  

C'mon Britain

Why not just go out, hunt them down, and summarily execute them in the streets, these folks you feel are racist and sexist.  Same thing.

pic.twitter.com/b1Gmexoxde

— III (@SNLIII) November 4, 2019

Car Clock

2019 has been an eventful year for me, tech wise.  They forced me to get a smart meter and they took away my twisted pair home phone line.  I got my first smart phone.  Got EZPass.  And I got my first car made in the 21st Century.  2015 to be exact.

It has OnStar and an antenna on top.  The car can talk to the mothership.  I'm sure it snitches on me.

But the clock hasn't changed automagically.

What a gyp.   What's the point?

So explain something to me

Democrats, and Democrats alone, lead by current office holders Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer in a #2 leadership spot, passed the Affordable Care Act.

The GOP universally said it would be awful.  It has been awful.  And now ALL the candidates for president say it is awful, except, perhaps a little bit, Joe Biden.  All want to scrap it and have a scheme for its replacement.  (The scheme varies between each flavor but it is essentially 'more' and 'harder'.)

So, the Dems screw up healthcare coverage, royally, and now they want the American people to trust them to fix the coverage they screwed up?  You irreparably damaged a slightly flawed system and made it much worse, now you want to break it more and you are counting on us to forget it is all your side's fault?

Why are folks not noticing this?  Trust you, on that track record?  Why?

If we had actual journalist instead of this lot we have now someone would ask them that question.

Ah, my mispent youth

Spent in the basement of our suburban townhouse watching these shows on a Heathkit color TV my father built.


It bring up a certain kind of nostalgia, different from other nostalgias. If there is a heaven, parts of it will be reliving 1970s television on that ugly sofa, seeing these show again for the first time.

I don't remember Flying High at all though. Not in a 9 year olds' wheelhouse. More.

So MUCH television, so little time back then. Stuff that obviously didn't survive a first season.

Florida Man

Well, I guess THIS will change the tone of future Florida Man stories, if the leftists find their funny bone.  But they Left can't Meme.

I've gone fishin'

No, for realz.  More later.  Hope gun range is at the end of it.  Might be.