Gone Fission

Gone Fishin'

I'm going to be out of pocket for a while.  You know how it is.  RoMERO refresher training and whatnot.  So my access to internet will be limited for security reasons.  Last time I did this I posted enigma codes in morse.  Readers didn't appreciate that.  So this time I'm thinking short videos and links of stuff that interests me.  It won't always be gun related, but it should be more interesting than morse for most. 

Try not to change much in the world in the meantime.

I shall return.

Chiappa Veto

Well, crap.  Now I can never buy a Chiappa.  Not because they put an RFID chip in their pistol. I can get that out myself.  Not because they are blissfully ignorant in their PR office about what an RFID chip can or can't do...

But because a PR office belittles its customer's concerns.  Insulting.  I also don't buy cars or radios or groceries from people that say things like, "Wow, YOU are ugly?  You want that?  Gimme your money and get out of here.  Hey is that a picture of you and your family?  Wow your wife sure is ugly.  And you kids look retarded!"

Ok. The Chiappa rep actually said: "For those still concerned you can simply remove the grip and remove the hot glued RFID from the frame in the grip area when (over a year from now) these begin to appear. Others may prefer to wrap the revolver and their head in aluminum foil, curl in a ball and watch reruns of Mel Gibson's 1997 film, Conspiracy Theory. Well, that's a plan too!"

Hey Chiappa, how bout I wrap my credit care in aluminum foil before the swipe when purchasing one of your products?  Oh?  You say then you won't be able to make the transaction and there will be no sale?  That, good sirs, is now the point. 

Snark has it's place (Hi, Tam!)  that place is not in product sales or related evolutions.  How astoundingly rude.  I dismiss them from my thoughts. 

Oh Chiappa can fire this northbound end of a southbound horse, but the fact they hired him in the first place makes me question their judgment.  It'd take a lot more to placate my concerns and regain my trust.

It's a shame too.  I kinda wanted a back-up spare snubbie.

Shottie Loadout

For thos of you that use a shotgun as a primary defense, do you vary your load out?  I know some people at least entertain the idea.  I am leery of the wisdom of doing so.

For instance "I load rock salt first in case I wanna firing a warning shot, then I have a magnesium loaded shell to blind the home invaders like a flash band grenade.  I close my eyes for this one.  The next 2 are 00 buckshot for the bad guys, and then a slug round, if I have to crash through a locked door but it will work on a bad guy too.  The last 2 are 000 buck cuz I figure they are already pretty messed up and no need for overkill..."

Ok that was a bit of Mall Ninja fantasy, and not serious.  But there are valid argument for varying.  Like shot-slug-shot-slug.  Does anyone actually do that? 

I'd use 00 buckshot for everything.  Keeping track of what is next in thetube is more than my adrenalin addled brain can probably keep track of.  I know others would go all slug.  Still others would have birdshot in the first one, but only because they use the shottie to take out rattlesnakes in the yard.  For social purposes they might not count on #9 size shotgun pellets, but snakes would be in a bad way with that. 

Further

Further signs of inroads at the Metrocon Fortnightly as a 2nd A ally there takes the plunge at the range.

Caps

You know what you don't see anymore?  Caps for cap guns.  I know that cap guns fell out of fashion in the 80s, and then went really downhill during the anti gun hysteria of the 90s.  Now they've been replaced in the hearts of young boys by Airsoft guns.

But I was an adult when you could still buy caps in the toy section of the local grocery.  Good luck finding anything gun related there now.  At least near me in suburban Maryland.

I guess they are relegated to eBay and specialty websites these days.  No wait... Amazon isn't so obscure!  Hmph.  They'd probably still be at the toy aisle of my supermarket if my area wasn't so namby pamby hoplophobic.

MetroCons, looking better n' better

Yes another writer at the Metrocon Fortnightly espouses on the correct side of civil rights and the 2nd.  Did National Review go all gun nuttie after David Frum left?  I'm sure there are still some urban urbane conservative writers there that are all for gun control, but they stay quiet now.  If they do that pemanent like then there is no problem, no?

Beretta M9 redux

I got a work buddy.  I've detailed his exploits before.  The Contrarian is his handle.

He is in the Air Force reserve, and got out of active duty a couple years ago. 

According to the Air Force, he is qualified on the Beretta.  He's never shot one.  Never TOUCHED one.  But he does his web-based training for it every year, as required. 

He has shot them in many videogames, he admits, so he figures he's ahead of the curve.

Now, it's not like he's an MP or a Parajumper or a flight crew member.  He works with computer systems, programming.  Not exactly near the sharp end of the spear, and was never deployed overseas.  But STILL.

I know the military will send deploying folks for refresher training with real guns and real field training exercise.  My brother, the Supply Officer, got to do this before hitting Iraq in 2006.  Maybe the Contrarian would have gotten this before going off to Afghanistan or whatnot.  But he reports that lots of folks in his various units DID deploy without shooting the service pistol.

The Contrarian did have AF training and shooting time on the M-16.  Once.  In Basic Training.  Never got a range slot after that, though he tried.  I think you passed if you didn't kill anyone accidentally and most of the bullet you actually fire went, generally, downrange.  No sighting in was done.

The Sailor I work with did a little better in her basic training.  M9 pistol and shotgun training in Basic. 

The Marines and Army guys I talked to here get actual training-training.  So the DoD hasn't gone completely insane.

Jeff Cooper is spinning in his grave.

Why should I bother familiarizing myself with the Beretta 92?  The military doesn't bother.

92

I've never shot the current issue handgun of the US Military.  I need to remedy that.  Or at least familiarize myself with it's feature and how to field strip it.  That can be done with some research.

When I was in the Navy, the issue handgun was the Beretta 92 (aka M9, aka a lot of other variants of same...), but the Navy wasn't on the top of the list for the new pistol so we made do with M1911A1s.  That's what I qualified on.  I am pretty familiar with the 1911 at this point.

It looks simple enough.  DA/SA, safety-decocker looks ambidestrous.  The slide release and takedown lever thingy look ordinary and straight forward.  15 round magazines

Magazine safety?  Can it fire with a round in the chamber but no magazine present?  Dunno.

Field stripping... well, I can't figure that out unless I have one.  But it looks easy.  I'd just have to pay attention when taking it down to be sure I'd put stuff back in facing the correct direction.  Look like 4 parts aside from the frame.  Barrel, slide, guiderod, and spring.  Easy enough.

Am I a Zombie?

I dunno...  ARE you?

Survival Food

Mmmm, canned corned beef.  Bully Beef.  Ernest Hemingway would go camping and eat corned beef and onion sandwiches

A few months ago these went missing on store shelves.  There was Spam, there was tuna fish, but no corned beef.  I wondered what economic circumstance made them come up in a shortage.

I like that you still have to open it with a little key.  No other food, except maybe blue crabs, has injured my fingers getting at the meaty goodness than canned corned beef. 

Williams and Woolard

I said I'd have more on the Williams case.  Not much more to say.  It's been submitted/filed with SCOTUS. Recap, Williams is a guy that was carrying his gun home from his girlfriends house.  The cops saw him acting squirrelly, his method of carry was not in keeping with Maryland's strict rules, and since there is no way he'd be given a CCW Williams hadn't bothered to try.  This got him arrested.  This case hopes to clear up where Heller stopped:  "Yes we have a right to keep and bear at home, but what about outside the home?"

The OTHER Maryland case is Woollard.  This is the SAF case with Alan Gura.  There's been some movement on this, as well.  It's another CCW case, trying to determine what level of scrutiny the legal system should use when seeking to deny someone his 2nd Amendment rights.  A member of our local gun rights forum was AT the 4th Circuit hearing, taking notes. 

His impression is that the Judge seems to be leaning in that the state can't essentially deny the right to CCW with their may issue (you need a Good & Substantial reason to get a permit here) restrictions, but the state may be able to cordon off broad swaths of densely populated areas in the interest of public safety.  Or until another case settles that.  Further impression... the State's attourney is in trouble, and won't like the conclusion.  So that could be good news. 

This population density thing concerns me, knowing my legislators.  Ravens stadium during a rock concert is crowded.  Normal tourist day around the Inner Harbor, Baltimore is crowded.  A townhouse development in the suburbs is crowded.  Heck, even a company softball game with 50 folks playing or watching is crowded in some lights.  I wonder where the judge is going with this.

And what will population density do to the folks that already have a CCW but happen to live or work and got threatened in densely populated areas? 

The Next 3 Days

So there is this Russell Crowe quasi revenge movie, prison break for a frame job thing called The Next 3 Days.  You are planning a prison break, you might need to be armed.  You need a gun.  He goes to a gunstore and says:

"Show me where the bullets go..." And buys a gun.  Or has it already.  Looks Glockish.

Then he is an expert shot.  A college professor.  A College professor.

As for n00bie training...  There is SOME familiarization needed when buying a new pistol.  I knew, from the movies, that the magazine goes there before I ever laid a hand on a pistol.  I'd have figured out the Operating System of most pistols, even that inexperienced, give time and fiddling.  But I am mechanically inclined.  That said, I never did figure out how that SPAS shotgun worked, but I wasn't really trying.  Same with the technique of loading individual rounds into a mag.  I could figure that out, but it was nice to flatten that learning curve by being shown some ways to do it.

And I usually ask for the field strip technique at the gun store before taking a gun home.  See the weird way a Colt Pocket Hammerless needs to be disassembled.

But you don't go from "show me where the bullets go" to good shot, much less GREAT shot.  Even naturally talented and motivated.



Admittedly he only uses it once.  But he does Mexican carry a Glock in the front of his pant.  Which works, I guess, until it doesn't.

Great....

This whole Gun Runner thing get's better and better.  DEA and State Department making direct sales of guns to the Los Zetas?  WTF?!  Is there any part of the executive branch not gun smuggling to murderers south of the border?  Is profit from the sales at least going into the general fund to alleviate our budget problems?

Sunrise

Sunrise in the Washington DC Metropolitan area was 85 degrees.  Usual DC humidity applies throughout the summer, so that is just shy of 99.72%.  Giving us a heat index, when it's still a little dark out, of... lessee... carry the 2... aha!  It feels like 138 degrees out.  Celsius, I believe.

I hope it's not hot where you are, and wish for cooler weather soon.  For all the good wishing will do.  I can wish in one hand and poop in the other and see which fills up first.

Future Legislation

If the Ballew incident and an out of control ATF led to the Firearm Owner Protection Act... (thanks Tam)

I wonder what legislation will come out of Fast and Furious when half of Obama's Justice Department is frog marched to prison, begging not to be extradited to Mexico?

And what the roid raging Canton Ohio bad-cop situation will do for CCW legislation and reforms to counter abuses of the out of control members of local police?

We may be living in interesting times.

Another N00bie

That blogs about guns!  Good good.  We need those.  And this one is actually YOUNG.  Not a broken down old warhorse.

Careful Jetaz.  I notice that gunnies that blog tend to gain a little extra padding around the middle.  We must be saving it up as an energy reserve for the coming Zombacalypse or something.  Funny how that works...  So, to avoid the male gunblogger spread, better think about maybe some PT.  I know I need to, I feel like Private Pyle lately (more mentally stable, natch)...

Careful some harsh language follows:

Economics is HARD

Joe Huffman is right.  The Baltimore mayoral candidate doesn't have a grasp of economics.  I should send him a copy of Dr. Sowell's Basic Economics.

Also... I'll be quite surprised to learn that there are any gunshops or ammo purveyors inside the City of Baltimore.  But I could be mistaken.  If I was a crook that needed ammunition for my illegal possessed firearm, I'd just drive my stolen car out to a big box store like Bass Pro at Arundel Mills mall and shoplift what I needed.

What?  You say shoplifting is illegal?  You don't say.  Well, that will stop him, the worry about breaking a shoplifting law.

Here's an idea...  Tax bullets $4 Trillion dollars each!  As soon as someone buys one we'll have solved our budget problems.  Think that'll work?

Bracing the Public

People ask me, "T-Bolt?  Why is the Zombie menace being kept on the QT, hush-hush, from the general public, with only a few folks like yourself on the GEOrge RoMERO teams (Ghoul Elimination Organization. Rapid Multi-Eradication Recon Ops)?  And if it is so top secret, why do you keep telling us about it?"

I'll answer the last part first.  Because:  I'm just some faceless Sumdood on the internet that writes poorly.  Who is gonna believe me? 

But that also goes toward answering the first part.  The reason the Zombie menace is kept from the majority of the world population is to avoid a panic.  Especially if we can keep it contained.  There was a lesson learned from the Cold War.  The specter of annihilation from thermonuclear war was a drag on the populace's collective morale.  Folks worried about it and the stress made them jumpy and a worse citizenry  But the RoMERO honchos know they are going to have to tell people sometime.  Not the least of reason that if a Level 4 Outbreak ever came about, folks would feel betrayed and angry that they were kept in the dark.  The thing is... they are ALREADY telling you.

Remember my post about what causes more zombie movies/book/stories to get released?  Is it a Republican administration or world upheaval in politics or economics?  Neither.  It's because we have insiders in the entertainment industry encouraging the making of more media with a zombie theme.  And they are all instructional.  Like little scenarios to get people's head in the game without knowing the threat is very real. It's quite clever, really.  Once people are more inured to the horror they can come clean.  And if a Level 4 were to happen NOW, well, there'd be some fallout about the secrecy, but it would have been worse were it not for instructional texts and books and children's lit and films.  (try not to shoot Bill Murray.)

Don't believe me?  Ye of little faith.  Want proof?  Go up to a non-gunnie non-zombie person at work.  Ask them what the way to kill a zombie?  How does a person 'catch' the zombie infection?  9 times out of 10 they'll tell you remove the head or destroy the brain and avoid getting bitten.  See?

Now if we can just spread the word about eschewing shotguns...

BB

Beastie Boys music video filmed entirely with GI Joe Action Figures.  Miniature plastic gun content.  Also contains zombies.  Nazi zombies. From their new album Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.
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