If...

If 20% of black voters sympathized with legal self defense, instead of the current 10%...

If 20% of Jewish voters sympathized with legal self-defense, instead of the current 10%...

The whole nation would be Constitutional Vermont-style carry.  And all of Bloomberg's and Soros' astroturfs would gain little traction in the Democrat party.  They'd have to change their tactics.  Go for the Metrocons, maybe? 

I don't know if it is currently a 10% sympathy.  It might be 5?  It's not zero.  And Trump is doing a decent job attracting these new non-traditional potential GOP voters.  I wonder if the conservatives that run after Trump will be savvy enough to hold to that message?  It's hard, what with the nigh entirety of the Democrat controlled media has managed to convince the world that the Republicans are the party of the Klan, somehow. 

Well Duh

It's always been obvious to me, since the 80s, that all this eco stuff from the left started as a solution looking for a problem.

The solution:  Socialism! (Communism, Jacobinism, National Socialism, Fabian Socialism, Keynesianism, whatever you wanna call it.  The people 'in charge' are the boss of you.  Rather than a servants of yours.)

So they had a solution and looked around for problems for it to solve.  They created many.  But one persistent one was to break off Conservation and make it their raisin de-enter.  Hmmm?  Yes, raison d'etre.  That's what I said.

So this is old news.

Efforts to rein in global warming by eating less meat, driving electric cars, or subsidizing solar energy are completely ineffective, writes a professor at the Copenhagen Business School, and constitute nothing other than 'pointless virtue signaling.'

No, your SUV isn't killing the Koala bears.  CO2 is not a pollutant.  The only reason your solar panel save you money is you got me to pay for parts of it.  And I am eating steak in my dotage, not bugs.  Unless you mean lobster.  But no roaches or ants or grubs or locusts.  Doing that stuff won't save the planet.  The planet doesn't need saving.  The planet is just fine.  It's just a way to put you in thrall of some sort of tin pot dictator that thinks he can run your life.  He can't even run his own life, I'll be damned if he'll run mine, sunshine.

"Why are you against clean air and water, T-bolt?"

Who said I was?  We HAVE clean air and water.

"At least their heart is in the right place, T-Bolt?"

I don't care where your heart is if it installs a tyrant.  And if you were really and truly serious about the subject you'd be violently mobbing your own side to get them to support nuclear power.

But it has always been about politics, never science.  'Science' is a Potemkin veneer to what is 100% politics.

When you corner them, and when they are honest about, they even admit that all these things they want you to do to change your life to save the planet won't even move the needle in positive effects.  They tell you the house is on fire, fully engulfed, then suggest you use a 16 ounce water bottle to put it out.  Pathetic.

It's a Christmas Miracle

In North Africa!

I'm in a quittin mood

It will pass.  I am pretty sure.

Sometimes blog post go below interesting to me and become 'Duty.'  After that they are a chore. 

If a they are a chore too long they become an albatross.  When that happens I hang up the spurs. 

But not today.

You know...

WWII shows from the 1960s were much better before I learned how to identify vehicles.  When I was ignorant, paint a Wehrmacht cross on the side of the tank, and I'd believe it was the bad guys.  Totally absorbed in the narrative.

Not now.  Not when I recognize that Panzer as an M7 Priest, which is a very effective light, mobile, allied artillery.  But not a Mk 3 even if you squint.

Maryland

So, Virginia has been sporty with the gun issue.

Don't forget next door Maryland.  We have monstrosities coming down on us this session.

Here is our bill tracker.

My former delegate, now state senator, Jeff Waldstreicher has a bill up!  (He took Raskin's seat when Raskin got promoted to Van Hollen's seat, and Van Hollen took the retiring Senator Mikulski's seat.  What a rogues gallery of villains.)  Anyway.  It's kinda lame.  Jeff's bill.  We have a list of verboten assault weapons in this state and he wants to add to the list.  Just 2 more.  These:  "ANDERSON MANUFACTURING .223 CALIBER AM–15 AND 7 .300 CALIBER AM–15."

Never heard of Anderson, but companies sometime try to circumvent Maryland letter of the law by renaming.  'This isn't an AR, it's an AM!'  I don't know if that was what Anderson was trying to do but that bulldog Waldstreicher is onto them if they are.

There are good bills in the pile too.  You need to get permission to buy a gun in Maryland since 2013.  Part of that is to get fingerprinted.  Their intention was you had to do that whenever you renew your handgun purchase permit.  SB43 says you just need to pay for fingerprints the first time.  Good.

Others tweak and tighten transfer rules between people.  Already pretty tight and easy to run afoul of without knowing.  It's purpose is to get black people in Baltimore in more trouble.

Another is to Lo-Jack all firearms.  To look at the feasibility for same, at least.

Finally there is a proposal sop that you can add money to the state's gun buy back program.  Check a box and you pay an additional $5 to that.  "You wanna pay more taxes?  Check this box."  What a load of hogwash that is.

Not TOO much damage contemplated this session.     

It's not really...

It's not really a Christmas song.  It's a Boxing Day song.  The king is hiding out to help out a subject on the bottom rung of his kingdom's social ladder.

Still, jolly ol' King Wencey might have been a toff, his heart appeared to be in the right place.

The origing of Boxing Day are unknown, though personal conjecture makes me believe the story of Wenceslas couldn't have hurt any in the tradition's formation.  I mean, St Stephen himself has the feast day, but his proto-martyrdom wasn't about bring forth blessings to the poor and lowly.

When he lived, in the 900s AD, he was only a Christian once removed.  That part of Bohemia was still quite pagan.  He died because of worldly political intrigue, and with a hint of ecclesiastical struggle with them selfsame Pagans.  His brother was the bad egg that did him in with Treachery.  Red Wedding style.

Merry Christmas

Bro

My bro asked me what gun to get.  Huh.  He isn't the gun-getting sort.  He's stationed in California and worried about major unrest.

I said don't worry.  You can't solve your neighborhood uprising problems in California anyway.  Cuz you can't get a gun in California.  Or ammo.  So, no sweat.

Oh, I know he can.  But what a PITA.

Might not be all bad.  Say you cannot transfer without a certificate, but less about already-owning.  Same with magazines.  (he lives in California, but his license plate is Pennsylvanian, so he has that advantage.)

Single Stack

YEARS ago, I lamented there aren't enough single stack 9mm pistols out there.  Like nine years or so?  That I'd love to have one.  There were some available but not enough.

Well, now you can't swing a dead cat without hitting another model of 9mm single stacks.  And that's great.

But here I am, sitting on my hands.  Not spending money.  Oh, fickle gun customers like me must be the bane of the factories.

But I am not the shooter I was.

I have a single stack I shoot well, now, and it is a pair of custome 1911s in .45.  I am more likely to make a custome single stack 9mm 1911.

If I were in a shopping mood, a black plastic 9mm would be up there on the list I guess.  But it would be #5 or 6 on this list of 4.

Is there a middle place between J-Frame and IWB 1911 that a 9mm single stack could fill for T-Bolt in a more permissive CCW environment?  I dunno.  I used to think the .40 was a good compromise between 9 and 45, too.  Less so, now.

Train Derailment, Harper's Ferry

No injuries, no toxic waste.



Growing up in the DC suburbs, Harper's Ferry is a tourist draw for field trips and such.  It's a neat little historical tourist trap.

And it is right by the C&O Canal, a popular hiking trail I really appreciated as a boy scout. 

You see, a canal towpath is level.  Much preferred for backpacking than the Appalachian trail. 

And that reminded me of my first 50 mile hike.  We started in Cumberland and went south on the C&O.  Five day in April.  We got there late and the first spot we camped was Spring Gap.

Just a few miles by the light of the moon.   The train track, I could swore, was on our side of the river.  Apparently not.  But it was close, as you see here.

And  in the mid 80s, those freights never ceased.  All night long and into the morning.  Constant.  Did not sleep well the first night.  None of us. 

Anyway, the Harper's Ferry derailment took me back to then.  No benzene.

Spares Box

This reminds me.

I should get some more spare recoil springs.   And with every spare recoil spring change, change the firing pin spring on your 1911.  I only have a couple spares.

What's that?  When do you need to change them?   What round count?  Well, it's not so much round count as it is when you need em.   And you don't know your round count, really, unless you record your range sessions.

A gov't can go 6000 round tho.  An officer?  Some say 500.

Speaking of weather

It's 75 years ago and you and your buddies are in a hole in Belgian soil facing the Siegfried line trying to keep warm.  You are in charge of a tripod mounter M1919, and the holes on either side are pretty far away.  But so is the war.   It's a quiet sector.  Until it isn't.

You go to hose down some Germans emerging from the fog but nothing happens when you pull the trigger.

Frozen!

It doesn't work and you were too green to know to watch for that.

Ok, what froze?

I honestly don't know what would freeze in the mechanism.

I am thinking condensation, and morning frost and breath vapor would accumulate and permeates and infiltrates the weapon, getting into the firing pin channel, or summat, and staying there as a small block of ice.

Also, the lubricants would thicken a bit in the cold.  Maybe not stopping it up, but slowing it.

But those are just guesses.

This guy knows.




That gun probably sat on that 'parapet' for days.  Unfired.  So the cold and any freeze/thaw cycles have had their way with it.


Once a few rounds go off, the gun warms itself. 

Feeling under the weather...

My head is like an endless fountain.  Starting to get a cough.  Uvular got all swoled up...

HEY!  I got the shingles vaccine a week ago!  MAYBE THE VACCINE CAUSED THIS!

Naw, I don't really think that.  For one thing, there has been a similar cold going around the office.  Cold, not flu. It's on the mild side for a cold. I'd expect more aches if I was really having a reaction to the vaccine.  I went to the doctors for that vaccine, you know what else you can get at the doctor's office?  Other sick people's colds.

Also, if it definitely was a reaction to the vaccine, that's fine.  Shingles is no joke.  I'll take the runny nose and dry throat.

But it has impacted my blog posting enthusiasm, so sorry about that.

I had a dream

It was about a giant grizzly bear in my neighborhood.  Almost certainly because the day before I had seen this article posted in Facebook.

The bear in the dream was much larger.

Before bedding down and also because of article, I was thinking of Bella Twin and that Grizzly she killed with a .22.

The grizzly in my dream was that size.

There had been lots of grizzly sighting and takings but one bear was at large, in my dream, here in the inner suburbs of Washington DC.  And there was some gizmo that was tracking them, in real time, by my front door, when I saw that the bear was only a few houses away.

Dammit.

I never liked the idea of bears, when a boy scout.  A little too apex in the food chain.  I didn't want to get drawn into the circle of life.  Not that way.

So I had trepidation.  But I had to DO something.  It was a dangerous animal that everyone wanted put down before it hurt more people.  Maryland was weapons free on this guy.  Yes, Maryland.

So I stepped outside with a Kar98.

Now I don't own a Kar98, nor have any desire to, but it was to hand, and not too shabby of a bear rifle.  Better than a .22.  And there was bear.  So fat it was almost round.  Must have been almost a ton of bear.  Now, I was thinking shot placement was important.  I aimed for the thoracic are and...  boom.  No effect on the bear.  I am pretty sure I hit ok, I must not have gotten anything important, or penetrated far enough.  Plus:  dream logic.  The rifle jammed, too.  The bolt couldn't be worked.  So I dropped it and started running.

I am thinking running from an angry grizzly bear is sub optimal.  In my best shape it is still 3 times as fast as me.  And I am not in that shape.

People make fun of the M1A/M14 but I sure wish I had had one to hand at this point in the narrative.  But whoda thunk a bolt action gun would give ya trouble.  Jamming is not the Kar98's reputation.

What I DID have, and remembered, in a shoulder holster was a .44 magnum revolver.  So, running ceased and shooting began again when I remembered that.  It took two more shots.   One with no effect, and the other must have hit the head.  So, yay?  Close call.  Dead bear.  I felt kinda bad.  Which is better than feeling nothing after a bear killed me, I guess.

Cooking

This Newfoundland lady has a channel where she makes real stick-to-the-ribs dishes. 

The one I want to try is the corned beef cakes.  Potatoes, flour, egg, and the bully beef, of course.



I used to make tuna cake and crab cakes (the tuna is the poor man's crab cake) because, Maryland.  Mayo, bread crumbs, flaky seafood, and Old Bay.

Shout out to Rx.  I know she like to play with corned beef in the kitchen.

I did not know this about HMS Glowworm

BZ

Hillary

This is what Hillary was.

She looks fine.  Decent for her age.  Dignified.  Appropriate.  I could respect the look.

Now she has had some work done.  And this is what she wants you to see:

Botox, wrinkle free.  But my eyes don't focus on that freak show.  I am drawn to this.

Old and wrinkly and too much a contrast.  She looks like a freak with them together.  Fail.  Just awful.

Ugh

I hate the holidays.  Short days, long nights, crazy traffic, family drama, general hassle.

I don't know how long my phone's voicemail has been broken, but I do know that is tech support asks me my info, tries to fix it, and fails, then transfers me to another tech, they will transfer me to five different ones before I give up on them and start looking for old skool answering machines.

I guess you save a lot of money if you hire incompetents. Good job, Verizon.

---

I am encouraged with what is happening on the 2A front in Virginia.  I wish this sort of political will had been more prevalent BEFORE the election so as not to flip the state commie gun grabber, but...

I wonder if it will translate into actual results at the State House, making the legislature back down?  I doubt it, but, you never know.

Of COURSE Governor Northam is for gun control.  We already know he hates black people, and gun control is mainly about disarming black people.

This wasn't always my favorite Christmas song

But it is now.

Star 80

When I was last in the gun shop the owner told me a story.

The ATF called and wanted ALL his sales records for the past 8 years.

Whoa whoa whoa!  What is this about?

Someone in Baltimore had shot another someone with a gun that never had a serial number.

The ATF wanted to know where that gun came from.

Long phone conversation followed.

The gun was a 'Polymer80' pistol.  Essentially an 80% lower Glock that you make 100% in your basement.

The gunshop owner told the ATF he'd never let one of those inside his store, for just this reason.  To avoid sketchy folks or calls from the Feds.

But if he did, he'd never keep a record of it.  And he is sure that people that did deal with them would not keep a record of who they sold it to.  You don't have to.  That's the point.  It's not required.  The point is you buy one online or you buy one for cash at a gun show or summat.  If you have nefarious goals or just want to be under the radar.  Either way.

So calling up gun stores to get sales records and maybe a lead on the perp was really an exercise in futility.  An angelic FFL doesn't sell them or risk his license, and a demonic FFL doesn't keep a record of it.

The ATF person on the phone saw his point.  ATF people that I have dealt with (The A part for me) have always seemed kinda reasonable.  At that ended the event.

Anti-Vax

That's me.

I go to my new doctor.  "Have you gotten your flu shot this year?"

Oh hell no, Doc.  Never never.  All that hassle and mild symptom reaction to the a damn this that is what?  5% effective?  No thank you.  Call me when it gets multi-spectrum.

"How bout a shingles vaccine?"

Please!  Yes!  Hurry hurry hurry!  I'm not CRAZY.  Gimme that shot!

My arm is sore right now.  Good.  Get the second one in March.  Grandma had shingles and she really suffered with it, the poor thing.

But I think it is still rational to avoid flu shots at this time.  And hope for an improvement or breakthrough.  Or when I get to be a little more frail as I age.  When that 5% makes more sense. 

The side effects are standard.  I get what feels like a punch-in-the-arm-bruise pain at the shot sight, and I always get the mildest of flu like symptoms.  Nothing going to bed early doesn't fix up in a trice.  And nothing bad enough to scare me away from getting a shot, unless that shot is useless, like flu.

Euro Deep State

Well the Euro Deep State wanted a redo on the Brexit vote, figuring if they do it enough, eventually it will go their way.

Not this time.  It seems.

Nice.

The polls said it was a coin toss.  Exit polls are a little different, lets see if THOSE hold.

Easy Peazy

S&W have upped their M&P Shield EZ to offer a 9mm to go with the .380.

Intrigued, I am.  I've heard good things about the .380 version, and I'd get it to have something to introduce new shooters with, especially if they are older new shooters. 

I mean, I like the idea of the single stack Shield already.  I'm not in love with the concept, but it also doesn't drive me away. 

Plus, you never know when my own age will catch up to me.  Having this already in hand would be a help, in Maryland.  Neurological issues or arthritis could rear its ugly head.   

Huh, it's not a striker fired gun, apparently.  Internal hammer. 

The review make is sound a little snappy in the recoil department.

Yeah, Alan is mistaken

I hang around with a few O-6s.  It's my age cohort.  Colonels and Captains.  Some of them Colonels are now Brigadiers.  Some of them infantry veterans.

It's an O-6 that commands Naval Air Schools Command at Pensacola Naval Air Station.

The O-6 I know, that would be in charge of maybe relaxing the rules?  "What do you think of allowing people on base to carry a sidearm around base in CONUS, Colonel?"

"Oh HELL no!"

They've SEEN men in the their 20's walking around with a weapon all the time.  And they don't trust them to do it unsupervised.  Now if they were with a 30 something senior NCO all the time?  They still wouldn't trust em to carry a weapon.

Are all O-6's of this kind of attitude?  I am sure not.  But a LOT of em are.  And with folks that are all for CCW and carry themselves.  They just would never allow it if their command required incident free days.  They don't trust them like that, and have seen the mischief they are capable of.  A negligent discharge looks bad on THEIR record as much as it will on Seaman Schmuckitelli's or Private Snuffy's.  Or even Petty Officer Geedunk's or Lance Corporal Bellywash's.

If you see widespread CCW or Open Carry on base, it will be a slow slow process.  In my opinion.

Alan Gottlieb is more optimistic.

Gun Citations

Gun crime is not impacted by the availability of firearms.  Not at the local, state, national or even INTERnational level.

I've posted this before, but I want to remember it.  I keep losing the reference to this very important link.  On Medium of all places

Everybody’s Lying About the Link Between Gun Ownership and Homicide

There is no clear correlation whatsoever between gun ownership rate and gun homicide rate. Not within the USA. Not regionally. Not internationally. Not among peaceful societies. Not among violent ones. Gun ownership doesn’t make us safer. It doesn’t make us less safe. A bivariate correlation simply isn’t there. It is blatantly not-there. It is so tremendously not-there that the “not-there-ness” of it alone should be a huge news story.

With instruction on how even I can figure out the data:

First, go to the Wikipedia page on firearm death rates in the United States. If you don’t like referencing Wikipedia, then instead go to this study from the journal Injury Prevention, which was widely sourced by media on both the left and right after it came out, based on a survey of 4000 respondents. Then go to this table published by the FBI, detailing overall homicide rates, as well as gun homicide rates, by state. Copy and paste the data into Excel, and plot one versus the other on a scatter diagram.

"But suicide!"  Yeah yeah.  100 years ago, a culurally similar nation had similar gun restriction as the USA at the time.  Canada.  They've gotten more restrictive over time.  But the homicide rate there tracks the same as the rate here.


---

Also, this citation, just for fun.  8 Stubborn Facts

1. Violent crime is down and has been on the decline for decades. 
2. The principal public safety concerns with respect to guns are suicides and illegally owned handguns, not mass shootings. 
3. A small number of factors significantly increase the likelihood that a person will be a victim of a gun-related homicide. 
4. Gun-related murders are carried out by a predictable pool of people. 
5. Higher rates of gun ownership are not associated with higher rates of violent crime. 
6. There is no clear relationship between strict gun control legislation and homicide or violent crime rates. 
7. Legally owned firearms are used for lawful purposes much more often than they are used to commit crimes or suicide. 
8. Concealed carry permit holders are not the problem, but they may be part of the solution.

Gonna be THAT guy

You saw that cop shoot out of the UPS truck, right?  The police manage to turn it into a goat rope when things on the road got crowded with traffic.  A sub optimal situation, to say the least.  Two innocent folks lost their lives.  Just a bad scene all around.

I'm not a big fan when cops go a bit nutso.  Other people are even less of a fan of law enforcement, and some of them made memes. 

And here is where I do the internet 'Akshully...' stuff:

Everybody in this picture is a civilian.  The bewildered commuters in their cars, the hostage, the bad guys, the cops.  I guess their is a chance one of the commuters is like an army sergeant? 

Cops aren't soldiers or sailors or airmen.  Cops are civilians, just like you and me. In war, it is as much a war crime to shoot the police officer in uniform as it is to shoot a guy like me in civilian clothes on his merry way to his office job.  Because it is a war crime to shoot civilians.   

Salt n' Pepa

I still wake up and have that shock of realization.  Donald Trump, that real estate guy from New York that I saw in all the news magazines in the 80's...  won the election.  How is that even a thing?

I am still gobsmacked.

And it broke a lot of the media.  But the media was pretty mired in minutiae already,

I remember, also, in the 80s, the news magazine being obscessed with the plant on the mantle in the Whitehouse.

Well, not they'll go on and on about the size of his massive pepper shakers.

Good article in the Federalist

In case you haven't seen it. 

Reminding Democrats and Metrocons that at the base of gun control is real racism.  Not this fake racism that's been making the rounds. 

Testosterone

Testosterone levels among men is down.  Since the 1980s.

Crime/murder rates are also down.  Since the early 90s.  Across a large part of the globe.

I wonder if their is causation with the correlation?

Maybe soybeans make us peaceful.  Generally speaking.

Need to sell another gun

Why?  No reason.  I got more than I want?

I over paid for Series 70 Colt Commander.  I thought it was stainless, but it was nickel plated.  I dunno why I like stainless, it's really something I need to get over.  Anyway, it's nothing special, and even if it wasn't plated, which would require stripping off, there isn't enough life to the rails to do a proper rebuild. 

The previous owner has done a horrible job putting on an extended slide release.  I mean, butchery to the slide release.  So I replaced that.  Pachmayr grips came with it, and I put them back on for the next person.

It's an ok gun, but I overpaid for it during one of the Obama panics.  Prolly won't get all my money back, but, I'll get some.  A decent some.

And, this is Maryland.  So I will put it up on consignment at my favorite boomstick purveyor.  All is well.

This one.  On the right.  I'm not selling the snubbie.

Good they use units

Until recently I was using numbers of NICS checks as a sign of how healthy gun sales were.

But that's no longer reliable.  For example, Chicago cops run a NICS checks when they want to harass someone legally carry CCW.  So Illinois has more NICS checks than Texas.  I bet they don't have more gun sales than Texas.

I am not the only one to notice, and when folks report on the health of the gun selling retail industry they now also talk about units shifted, along with NICS. So, good.

Gun Control a Loser Issue

That's a nice sentiment.  The Freebeacon noticing that even super Lefty Dem primary candidates are either avoiding talking about the gun control they want to avoid scaring away voters, or are no longer running because they scared away voters.

But the true test will be how scared Dem majorities in Virginia are.  Will they pass their dream gun control measures?  Pass a watered down version?  Be stopped cold by the minority and constituent outcry which includes their Democrat constituents?

Bloomberg is a little distracted by his Prezzy run in the meantime.  He might not be as much help.

What a Booby

Tam is going on about booby traps, and she is right.  Not a good idea.  Not even after the Zombacalypse.

Dude named Cyr (what a great name.  Cyr.  such a waste.) set up a pistol to shoot when a door was opened.  Ick.  Sick bastard.  Well, maybe familiarity bred some contempt on what might be a nigh branchless family tree, but Cyr got hoisted by his own petard.  In the closest thing you will see to a petard these days.

And this got me thinking...  what would make a good booby trap?

Now don't you finish this blog post and head on down to Home Depot for supplies.  Even the best one is an awful idea.

Trap-door, that YOU trigger, so when someone breaks into the front door, so bad guy rolls down to the basement Bond-villain style?  Maybe.  Maybe bad guy breaks his neck in the fall, too.  You HAVE improved on Cyr in that you triggered the trap.   It wasn't automated by motion detector or what not.  If a bad guy needs dispatching and you can trigger the trap or blast him with a 12 gauge you are wielding, which is better?  If he tumbles to the basement and doesn't succumb to incapacitation you still have a bad guy to deal with.

But there is the whole accidental deployment, where visiting Grandma goes a tumbling down the hole.  Much more likely than your housegun getting her.

Ok, how bout this.  Less injurious.   Have a mudroom.  Outer door is normal, inner door is reinforced to slow down the 4 home invaders smashing in.  You trip the switch and pepper spray from twelve cans in the wall start spraying the invaders.  Criminals don't where breath apparatus.  A small room full of capsicum is quite a deterrent.

The cons to those pros is the accidental deployment that catches Grandma, again.  And if grandma smokes, that room full of flammable aerosol could cause some trouble for the whole neighborhood.  PHOOM!

So, yeah, don't do it.  Keep booby traps a mental exercise.  Easier to do firearm training than to deploy elaborate gadgets with hard to gauge reliability or effectiveness or high chance of tragic mishap.  I am not the A-Team or MacGuyver, after all. 

So...

So-called conservative commentator is pro-abortion and anti-Second.  Figures.

Outlawing abortion, changing the meaning of the second amendment to mean Home Bazookas are two that come to mind, but you're being slippery here: You want the courts, not the legislature or the public, to be the vessel of ideas. The same thing cons once hated about liberals.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) December 2, 2019

His interests are apparently being CENTER-right, and pro national security and maybe small gummint.  But the important bits is being pro-abortion and anti-Second, and he no longer feels the need to even make noise that he isn't.  Okay. This is what we call a metrocon. Except not so much con. Just awful.

Do you know how much them things COST?

Defending yourself and others with a Narwhal tusk can run you up in to custom 1911 moneys.  Sometimes into transferable machinegun moneys.

And I thought collecting a few guns was an expensive hobby. 

Worst. German. Chancellor. EVER.

Well... second worst. 
Hard to beat that one guy.

Watch till the end. Angela Merkel says: we have to take away your freedom of speech, or else society won’t be free. pic.twitter.com/Y3qROvDQXg

— Ezra Levant 🍁 (@ezralevant) November 28, 2019

From here.

Yoda Bae

T-Bolt theory:

Baby Yoda speaks and understands various languages perfectly well.  50 years old, after all.

Baby Yoda is a female.

Baby Yoda has observed enough and can fly the Mandalorian's ship perfectly well, right now.

Baby Yoda

So I went to someones house with this Disney + thing.  To see the Mandalorian.  And the Babe Yoda thing everyone is talking about.

I didn't think I'd get a chance to see it so soon.

Best Star Wars show since 1986.  People were telling me this would save the franchise.  I couldn't believe that, it is too far gone.  But... maybe...

This show all happened after the second Death Star was blown up.  Plus five years or so?  Luke is starting a Jedi school, Han and Leia are decorating a nursery for little Ben.  But we don't see that part.  We see Apollo Creed and Werner Herzog.


And I saw the Mandalorian's blaster.  I've seen this model before.  In Star Wars and in the real world, because they usually make an unusual firearm as the base of the special effect blaster.  It looks like a Bergman.  Yup.

Shoulda remembered that from the last time I saw a Bergman as a blaster.  If your goal is to make future laser guns look exotic to make your sci fi fiction guns, you go obscure or exotic or you kluge on a buncha doohickeys.  Or do all 3.  And Star Wars practically invented that convention.  You can't use something everyone knows, it takes them out of the story.  "Hey, that's a Colt!" or "Those are obviously AKs and not even Space-AKs."  But a Bergman fits the bill, easy.

Dunno about his rifle.  I have the feeling MG42, but only because they always use MG42 for the long guns.  Could be a Remington shotgun receiver base?

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.

The Thing on the Fourble Board

And one of the scariest radio plays...

Three Skeleton Key

One of my favorite radio plays. Vincent Price, 1950.



And my favorite description of the ocean:  "And all about it, the churning water, gray-green, scum-dappled, warm as soup...."

WW

I can tell I've been busy at work.  There are a lot fewer gun blogs about, and I haven't even been able to keep up with them.  So my posting suffers.  Anyway.

I've always liked Walter Williams.  He is a constant. A rock in the river.  And just a little older than my father.

Now this article is mostly review for us already-gun-enthusiasts.  It's review for the rest of the country that pays attention to the issue, too.   We don't need to be told that AR stand for Armalite, for example.

You won't get much out of it, information wise.  You just get Walter Williams prose, reinforcement by repetition, and a great distillation of the issue.

Rome again, Rome again, giggity gig

I used to think Caligula was the worst Roman emperor and Nero second worst, but I am beginning to change my mind.  No longer so sure.

I was familiar with the antic of Little Boots and Nero, and familiarity breeds contempt.  The ones I, personally, was unfamiliar with are as bad or worse.

Tiberius, before Nero, had a lot of bad press after death.  He'd diddle little boys and kick em off a cliff into the sea when he was done with them.  But he was probably only a child rapist, not child murderer.  The histories were unkind to all the bad emperors and probaby exagerrated the negatives quite a bit.  But even if you discount a lot of the reports these are all bad.
Commodus.  Joaquin Phoenix.  Concentrated on being a gladiator and thusly ran the empire into the ground.  You know how Phoenix played him in the movie?  He actually toned it DOWN from the reality. 
Caracalla? Awful
Elagabus? Also.

They were all either:

Murderous, delusional, tryannical, perverts, or,
Murderous, psychopathic, tryannical, perverts, or,
Murderous, sociopathic, tryannical, perverts, or,
In one case, a murderous, paranoid, tryannical, pervert.

And by 'pervert', I don't mean sexual deviants your great grandma would be horrified by, or YOU would disapprove of, but perverts by their own contemporary Roman standards.  And, in many ways, Rome was much more loosey goosey the the more libertine 5% of modern society.

The usual common motif is a early 20's or younger boy was given absolute power and had noother authority that could temper his impulses.  And that power corrupted him.

So, how to you measure the WORST emperor?  Body count by genocide?  Caracalla?  Reigned the longest so had the longest time to sap an empires resources?  Commodus?  Craziest?  Caligula.

And I am only up to the mid 3rd Century.