Another What If

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

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

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

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

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

Which, of all of your guns do you pick.

Everyone’s personal favorite will be different, naturally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~


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

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

Shorpy

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

Even had gun content:

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

Deer

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

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



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



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

Loot

What did I get for gunnie related Xmas loot?

Bupkis.

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

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

25th II

Oi!

HAPPY Christmas for my British readers.

25th

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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

So Hard

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

Keep rolling that rock up hill.

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

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

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

Registration Leads To Confiscation

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

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



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

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

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

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

Short

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

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


By Hera Arms

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

Snowpocalypse

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

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

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



How about a water cooled machine gun.

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

Fear

Caleb did a post on Fear.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

Life Magazine

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

Without looking it up…

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

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

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

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

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

Now let me look it up…

Ok.

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

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

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

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

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

Worst Blizzard in HISTORY

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

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

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

MHI Review

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

They were right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zombie Pigs

This is how it starts.

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

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

blog links

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

Yeah. That’ll go over well.

Stock Adapter Link

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

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

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

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

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

There.

Where was I?

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

Stick with the M1A, T-Bolt.

Why is that Reasonable

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, it still sound reasonable.

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

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


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

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

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



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

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

Ok, it still sounds sorta reasonable.

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

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

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

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



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

Ok, it still sound reasonable.

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

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


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

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

Military Channel

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

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

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

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

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

Inventory

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

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

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

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

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

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

You never know.