I Hurt

I went for some live fire training with Sam on the 11th.  My C5-C6 or what-have-you disk in my spine is acting up.  My right arm has tremors, and pain, and feels weaker right now.  Plus the neck pain.  I can almost get the gun up to my sight line without issue.

The first few rounds were ok.  Smooth and in the bullseye, but the fatigue set in very very fast, so we quit rather than train through pain and failure.  32 rounds, 147 gr AE.  1 round FTF because it nosed down, mag #2, bears watching.  Didn't bother saving the target.

I need to go back to the doc again, methinks.  Thursday.  Now I need pie.

I treat it with Aleve, and heating pads, and booze, but that's not good.  The doc, last time, in 2013, gave out fancier NSAIDs and steroids.  And I got an MRI that no one but me has seen the DVD of, so now we have something to compare. 

The good news I got my holsters made and my gun back! The bottom holster the gun is in is IWB, the other is of OWB and can accomadate the light.

Bad Guy #2

"Axe-Wielding Maniac Goes On a Rampage In the Dusseldorf Train Station. Possible Accomplice Still On the Loose."

Current event from last week.

But you get that a lot in the initial reports from some act of carnage.  Where the police are looking for a second shooter or second suspect.  It's common.  Also common is for this second person to be a phantom, and the original criminal acted alone.  Seems it's that way more often than not.

It's like a real life Trope at this point, played out on the news instead of my major network sitcom.

"SWAT combs neighboring parking garage looking for a second shooter"

"Police advise people to avoid the area and to shelter in place as they search for the second perpetrator that shot up the Discovery Building"

Now I don't blame the police for chasing after ghosts.  They are doing it out of an abundance of caution.  All they have to go on is what excited witnesses on the confused scene tell them.  "I heard shots from over there (where victims and maybe the suicided body of the murderer is) but I also think I heard shot from over THERE (maybe an echo or even the brain playing adrenaline tricks on them)"  And off the cops go looking for #2...  Or is it #1?  It's confusing.  But that reporter nearby that over heard the action on the scanner reported what happened as it happened, mebbe

In the rare occasion there is a second dirt bag, if the cops DIDN'T go after rumors of one and look, and that second guy caused more mayhem, the cops would be raked over the coals for it.

But going off on wild goose chases in a high pressure situation because of the tricks the brain plays on unreliable witnesses is just a condition of being human

4 years ago

This May, I quit smoking.  For the last time. Most quitters quit lots of times. It's the second easiest thing for a smoker to do.

Apparently I was done smoking then, and that helped. Surprisingly, I am not even tempted anymore. I figured I would be.

But if I found 1951 Camels, Luckys, or Chesterfields, I'd be sore tempted to smoke them ALL.

Spring Forward

Paint it

"What's expected in return?"

"That's right. I like to know what crops I'm planting."

"When l get dead drunk, fall in a muddy street, I expect you to come get me, Cos l don't want to die muddy drunk. If I owe a man money, stand good for me. And if I get melancholy, which can happen, I expect you to be my companion and solace me.”

Don't Go Back to Rockville

  I remember seeing this new store opening in nearby Rockville Maryland and might have even blogged about needing to check it out, but... Haven't been to that store.  And now it's been robbed.

Most store I know of around here either have vault doors to the gun room or take the guns out of the display case and put them in a vault.  Multiple layers of security for the shooting irons.  So a quick smash and grab after hours isn't practical.  Slow down the thieves while the alarm systems summons the constabulary.

I have no idea of this new place's set up but it doesn't sound robust.

I haven't visited it because I have another store for any transfer I might need and I really haven't bought anything for years and years.  Well, except a hunting rifle.  And some 1911 frames for the gunsmithing.  And that 9mm.  Practically nothing

7 MAR 17 Range

Well, that didn't work as well as I'd hoped.

The 1, 2, 3  is more of a Ooooooooooooooone... twothree.  Squeeeeeeeeze... reset-prep.  Which I like.  But didn't magically give me tight groups doing it.  Until the last target on the lower right.  The best target was the final target, just like last time.

Nuh uh.  I can't leave, again, thinking I am better than ever on the last target, so I drew the extra black dots to shoot at.

So, now the only good ones are #4 and #8, and #10 is...  marginally better.

Hmph.

But when I am doing better than the '1' in the cadence count is done extra careful, extra zen.  Not necessarily extra slow.  Just extra zen. Gonna get some training Saturday.

108 rounds shot, and logged..

Run Forrest, run

Yes, we properly condemn him.  The man was a slave trade auctioneer, 'founded' the Klan, and fought on the wrong side of the second American revolution.  Thrice damned.

Also, he may have been a tactical military genius.  One of the best produced.  Ever.  Put aside his evil stuff (which was also complicated') and look to what he can teach us.

Nathan Beford Forrest

Maybe the best cavalryman since Genghis Khan.  Enjoyed a lively reputation, recognized by both side. 

'"Get thar fustest with the mostest".  Is attributed to him.  Which sound like a bumpkin but distills the problem down to its essence.   My history professor translated it as "get to the battle first and with the most men."  But it's so much more than that.

Let's break it down

Get:  to move.  Maneuver.  Critical in battle.  Don't stand on the X.  You are a fighting force, not a static fortress.  And Forrest was a horse soldier.  Movement was life, and they were intimately familiar with it. 
Thar:  a place.  The place of battle.  The decisive location.  The place your maneuvering to to meet the adversary.  A focal point.  The Schwerpunkt?  Yes, I believe that's the term for it.  Not that Forrest would know the term, as it hadn't been coined by some Junker in Prussia just yet.
Fustest:  First.  Before the other guy.  A point in time, and inside the other guy's OODA loop.  You have the initiative.  Or surprise.
With:  assembled.  A coherent group. Disciplined.  All together.  Teamed.  Already trained.
The Mostest: not just the most men.  But also material.  Weapons, bullets, rations.  Logistics.  Sufficient stuff to have enough weight to overcome the adversary at the point of decision and exert your will over them.  Also Force Multipliers.  Forrest used force multipliers if he didn't know the term we used for it in the 20th C.

Crams a lot of meaning into that ignorant bumpkin sentence.  And it was instinctive.  The guy didn't study military theory like Patton or McMaster.  He didn't break down that sentence like I did.  Deep down, he was no bumpkin.  His shrewd business acumen made him quite wealthy before the war.  Perhaps he cultivated that talk to lull his adversaries, the more easy to prey upon them.

Anyway.  Example of Forrest's principles:


Stalingrad.  The Germans wanted a city and went.  Got Thar.  Soviet forces hadn't concentrated and needed more time.  Germans were Fustest with the Mostest.  Germans won the town.  The Soviets traded men's lives for time.  That part isn't very nice, and not too Forrest like.  But it did keep the German's Thar...  The Soviets gathered their Mostest, then surround the Germans cutting them off, denying the Germans their Mostest and Getting Thar With at a time of their choosing.  Moved the goalposts on the Fustest


Battle of Bulge.  Concentrating on a Thar, a schwerpunkt in the Ardennes that worked before.  Germany concetrated forces (With the Mostest).  The intention was to Get through that spot, wreak havoc behind the lines, Fustest.   Also, pick bad weather to counter Allied air power, to add to the German Mostest.  Coulda worked, too, if not for Patton's flexibility and the 101st selling their spot of Thar (inconvenient to the Germans Fustest, that crossroads...) dearly.
  

Vigilantes

The problem with vigilantism is that once the can of worms is opened it's hard to get that toothpaste back in the box.  Even if the goal is to restore Rule of Law by going against the Rule of Law.  Power corrupts, see?

Such an interesting article about the Bald Knobbers, but they touch on other flavors.  Not all Hooded Vigilantes were the execrable Klan, clearly. 

It made me think...  There aren't many instances of 'good' vigilantism that didn't descend into corruption and became the evil thing they were originally opposing.  Those kinds get a lot less press, for one. 

• Battle of Athens
• The killing of a Town Bully
• Maybe even the Guardian Angels?  Not really vigilantes, them.  
• The called Bernie Goetz the Subway Vigilante, but that was more narrative building or media laziness.  I think the details more likely point to self-defense with a gun the law said he wasn't allowed to have.  We've had THIS conversation before

1 2 3

Range Day, on the 2nd.  Should brought more ammo. 

Target #5 I was messing up and started concentrating to self-correct.  #6 is better.  Then...

Something happened on the last target.  I started counting cadence on #6 I think, and definitely on #7. 

1, 2, 3.   That's a different procedure for me.

1. One is press the trigger to pin  (the loud noise happens at this step)
2. Two is reset during recoil, because I suck.
3. Three is prep the trigger and align the sights to the target.

IN out in.  IN out in. IN out in...  Capital "IN" because of the noise.  It's the usual gentle attempt at achieving surprise. 

Seems to work for me.

Yes it's out of order.  You have to be in the middle of the string to start.  It more of a 3, 1, 2 if you start from cold.  But so what?  If this keeps working, and I get similar results, repeating, I'll fine tune after I dial it in. 

I don't know why.  Counting concentrates the mind on the trigger fundamentals?  Or does counting distract the mind so it forgets to flinch, and singing a Bee Gees tune would have done the same thing?  (Hmmm, what if the song is in 3/4 time...)

"Why not make it a 4 count?"

Hmmm, maybe.  But instinctively I want to keep it simple.  And three is less complicated than four.  Maybe I can figure out a 2-count (in out).  But first, I need to repeat the results on a subsequent range trip.  And a buncha times.      

Nananananana, Batman.

James Lileks reflects on batman movies past before going to see lego batman

"Back up for context: when the first Keaton Batman came out, the idea of Gotham in decay, crappy cars, ugliness all around - it made sense, in a thrilling sort of way. I’ve seen the future, and man it’s rough, as the Prince song heard for 1.7 seconds on the soundtrack put it. Why, at the end of the 80s, did we think this? What evidence of dystopia did we see around us? Was it the lingering effect of the ’87 crash, the feeling that feral elements great and mean, large and small, were about to swamp the deck?"

When the Keaton Batman came out, the wide world still knew batman as a campy 1960s kid show.  The more gritty batman became a thing in the 70s culminating before this movie with Frank Millers Return of the Dark Knight.

Looking back today the Keaton/Burton movie seems kinda goofy, but at the time it was light years ahead in realism compared to what we had on the big screen batman world. 

But that's not the thing.  The thing is Lileks doesn't remember why the feeling of dystopia was there in the late 1980s.  I guess the intervening years and hindsight make it hard to put himself in his own skin back then and look around.  The crime wave and decrepitude was unabated.  There was still a direct line from the squallor of all those crime movies of the 70s:  Death Wish, Warriors, Taxi Driver, The Taking of Pelham 123.  The Reagan years might have made the economy a bit better but as soon as another economic contraction happened it'd be the 1970s all over again.  But now with Crack cocaine and wilding super-predators, as all the media told us to worry about and was worse than what came before.

And the murder rate was still climbing, unabated.  People saw a person murdered daily in the Nation's Capitol.   One a day.  And they could project out into the future, "When will it be 2 a day?  3?" with parallels in every jurisdiction, nationwide.  Swamp the deck, indeed. 

It was so bad and there was no conceivable end to it.  No visible chance of a course change.  By 2017 crime and murder would be on the straight line path heading up, and the Soviet Union would be just as menacing behind the iron curtain.

But that did change.  And here we are.  Unable to remember.  Lileks gets close, but not quite there.

And after the 89 movie Batman descended into goofiness again.  Took Nolan/Bale to correct the course and do it even better. 

That's not humane!

The usual suspect on my own personal social media are sharing a story about Texas and feral hogs and poisoning same with the anticoagulant Warfarin. 

"Oh the poor things!  How is this sporting?  Inhumane!"

For those that don't know, Warfarin is prescribe to people to keep blood clots from forming in your capillaries, thus helping to head off a heart attack or stroke.  If you get cut on Warfarin it may take some time to get the bleeding controlled.  If you overdose, you get what happens to rats or feral hogs that eat baited Warfarin.  You internal organ bleed.

I include rats and hogs together because they are the same thing.  Pests to be eradicated.  This isn't hunting.  No need or call to be sporting.  That's not Wilbur from Charlotte's Web.  Rats only edge Pigs in destructiveness because Rats helped spread Plague. 

Typewriter Repair Manual

I don't remember where I saw the link.  Probably something Roberta clicked me to from something she said...

There is a book from the 40s and before called the Typewriter Repair Manual.  It got reprinted a lot.  But it is spendy.  But lulu.com has the Typewriter Repair Bible.    Looks like a print on demand job.  Spiral bound.  More reasonable price.  I decided to take a chance on it.  Whoa momma, this is the stuff.  Lots of diagrams.  Ima like this, methinks.  Just got it, maybe I'll have more later.  The bible could be better than the manual.

Python

I wanted a Colt Python stainless when I first became aware of them, mid-80s in Soldier of Fortune magazine. 

Shoulda bought one back then.

Pinning

Tam keeps hitting this point again and again.  "I wish I'd learned this in '95 or '05 instead of '15..." How pinning the trigger, then lining up the sights on target, then resetting the trigger, then going through the trigger press again...  She wished she hadn't trained that habit because now she wants to untrain it, like Ernest Langdon says.


Now, my guy is training me that way. But that's not what I am doing. Because I am a poor student and a not actually doing it with this method. I do pin it. My shots got better, more accurate when I did. But I am the impatient type. I rush things. Anyone that reads this and know how I shoot (besides poorly) knows that I cut corners already. It's a bad habit. But I am resetting long before the the gun is down after recoil and the trigger is prepped.

Is Sam gonna yell at me when he figures out that is what I am doing? Perhaps. Is that what one of his teachers does, Max Michel? I dunno. In my laziness am I by happenstance doing something better? You tell me.

(Finally, sucking at something works out for me in a very narrow instance...)

This is my favorite axe

I like it so much I always repair it when something breaks.  I've had to replace the handle seven times and the axe head twice.  But it is my favorite axe, regardless.

Wee Kimber

Shooting Illustrated has a lovely little cover gun and a review inside.  A Kimber wee 9mm.

From the glossy pictures the fit and finish makes the gun look better than standard run of the mill, and it's a rather handsome Officer size 1911 style, with ambi-safeties.  Look at the machining on the back of that guide rod.  I am impresses with the styling, the aesthetics.  I am a sucker for that chainlink 'checkering.'  Solid trigger body is nice.  I find skeletonized to be getting a little dated myself. 

The single coil recoil spring concerns me a little bit.  Not a lotta length to the slide operation, nor a lotta mass so these little guns ask a lot of that spring.  I've heard folks say not to expect more than 200 rounds out of one before needing to replace it.  Who knows.  I do now that if I were to get a pistol like this I'd go in knowing that that was a distinct possibility, and plan accordingly.  Maybe I'd be pleasantly surprised with the spring performance and have less to worry about.

What did pique my curiosity was this:

What is that roll pin in the frame above the trigger for?  There is another one back by the thumb safety but I have a half an idea what is does.  Interesting.

Whelp

It's a S&W M&P.  Not a 1911.

Sear modified, so maybe a similar issue, but I have no way of knowing since I know nothing of the inner working of the M&P.

Ah well.  Guessed wrong.  Probably.

But now we know if you mess with the sear geometry of a 1911, bad things can happen, and if you mess with the sear geometry of a 1911, bad things can happen.


I know 1911s.  I have spent thousands of dollars learning 1911 gunsmithing.  From a very good gunsmith.  and I barely can even SEE when a 1911 has a similar flaw.  If you handed me an unloaded 1911 with this problem to test for this there is a slight chance I could catch it.  (You take out the thumb safety and watch for the issue thought that kidney shaped window.  The trick is doing the trigger pull right.)  So be a gunsmith better than me to avoid something that happened to Ms. Eisenzimmer from happening to you.

Also, at the  Army Marksmanship Unit, they have the best 1911 gunsmiths in the world working as their armorers and the guns are very well tuned.  They tell some the best and most talent shooters in the world to never go into the gun and make alterations on their own.  They can even ORDER them to never go in and make alterations, as the shooters are soldiers with a chain of command over them.  Some AMU shooters still go in and make unauthorized alterations.  Yikes. 

Be careful out there.

Mishap

I'm about to watch this.  An amateur gunsmith made a modification to her pistol and it went off in her holster.  That's all I know as of this moment. 

But I bet I know what it is. 

My guess is, 1911, and the hammer and sear engagment.  It was done in such a way that the sear was on the hammer hook, but when pressure was taken off the trigger, it didn't go back into a 'rest' state.  On of the hardest thing to test for. And a slight jar will let it go. Bang in the holster.

Let's see, back in 10:

Qui Bono?

Everytown wonders...

.

Who benefits from the loosening of restrictions on gun silencers?

Only the companies that sell them https://t.co/R91tjZzMzL

— Everytown (@Everytown) February 27, 2017

The Suppressor Manufacturers, that's who.  That's who benefits from loosened restrictions of 'gun silencers'

I dunno, gun-banners...

It's something I want.  A little bit.  I mean, I could have jumped through the hoops and gotten one or more suppressor by now if it was really a personal priority.  It's just a hassle, not hard.  With less hassle there is a greater chance I will go ahead and get one.  So I benefit in that a desire (if a mild one) is fulfilled.

I also benefit in that I don't have to pay the expensive tax stamp.

The manufacturers will benefit for a little while as the initial rush ramps up sales, then the competition will heat up and the prices will come down, so after a while, they benefit less and we consumers benefit more as quality either goes up or the wallet load decreases.

You know who WILL benefit?  Barrel makers.  Lots of pistols will need a spare barrel retrofit to be able to fire suppressed out of your favorite 1911 or G21.

And holster makers!  I'll need some sort of weird rig to carry this thing around.

You might think the Federal Treasury won't benefit, because they will no longer get $200 from the ATF tax stamp, but if suppressor sales go up like man, the revenue gained from a plethora of 10% Pittman-Robertson excise tax revenue may overtake what is lost from the tax stamp NFA stuffs.

The question shouldn't be "who is the only one that benefits from this law we hate" the question is who DOESN'T benefit! Everyone is a winner. Not you. So I guess you. You don't win, Everytown. Good.

Gonna gave to call you on that statement of "Only the companies that sell them," Everytown. That is Fake News. Fact Check says 3 Pants on Fire.