She is right

It is just ASTOUNDING how quickly we went from 1 "Vermont" style CCW to 24 or so.  Like the blink of an eye, politically.  As fast as Prohibition became unpopular and repealed.   

And here I sit.  In Maryland.  Yeah, I know.  If the rest of the country keeps this up, I may luck out and my state will be forced to comply as a fait accompli.  It will have to be dragged kicking and screaming, but dragged it may well be.  

(That last sentence feels grammatically correct and grammatically awful at the same time.)

---

In other news, gas prices plummeted here, overnight.  Funny how some gas stations dropped the price by 36 cents while other did not, dropped in not as much.  And don't go "IUt's just he big brand gas station stealing extra profits!" Because the Exxon next to the independent are both the same in their sub 36 price drops.  I think they figure local traffic will bear that.  The commie here at work thinks it's all Big Oil trying to screw him personally, and he doesn't understand how futures markets work or that you aren't paying for what is in the ground at the station, but for the NEXT tank worth will cost.  That's why gas prices can drop precipitously in Novemember when Hillary loses even before the inauguration.  Assumption of a less punitive regime.  

Tam has a good batting average

 But this ball got hit to the center field upper deck.

Because nobody can pronounce "The Protocols of the Elders of Lllwgyddywwglch". https://t.co/9glTzHwOdU

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) January 16, 2022

Recommendations

When shopping for various items I have noticed Tam pipe up with a recommendation right when I needed.

You know how you search on the Googles for a single Viking Cruise detail and you get a BAJILLION ads for cruises?  Or even say "I need a new HDTV" out loud near a Siri enabled device and Shazam, Youtube adverrtises Samsung stuff out the wazzoo.  They hadn't done that for years it seemed, but you suspect the mic on your device.  Or you even think really hard about a used F150 and now you get emails from Ford.  How did you find me?

Tam is like that.  But without the privacy violations.  

For example...  I needed a soft sided carry on luggage solution.  Tam posts about Maxpedition Fliegerduffels.  This was in the way back, maybe even before this 2010 post.  And it is.  A good bag.  I have gotten tremendous use out of it.  Three times on airplanes, and lots of times just as an overnight or weekend AWOL bag.  

I thought of this because I have been enjoying Fever Tree Tonic with my Gins.  I happened to be thinking "I could use a gin and tonic..." and that day she broaches the subject of Fever Tree.  (It was a post previous to this one somehow.) Now, I had seen it on the shelf before she focused my attention, but it was her mention that got it from the shelf to my cart and I never thanked her for it.  Thanks.  Good stuff, that.  

Olden Timey Gonnes

I love it when Tam goes on a tear on her blog with the antique-y guns.  There is less money in writing about those for the slicks, so the blog receives the labor of love.  

I get to reap the rewards.  I get a tight little blurb presented on a multi-topic (guns stuff, history stuff, blog stuff, interesting trivia stuff) piece that I truly enjoy.  In quick succession she put up Hand Ejectors, Savages, an H&R+Webley's guts.  All this after a couple closer-to-mid-century revolvers.

The only way I'd know more about Savages now is if I took up collecting them and the resources about the, myself.  I don't feel like starting a Savage collection, so this blog post will more than tide me over. 

Blog aren't what they were, but they are still valuable.  

Since I started this blog

The word back then was kydex holsters are shite, get a good leather holster.

Now it's eschew most leather holsters and get a good kydex holster.

Took 10 years.

But back then the kydex holsters were fragile and the best one on the market was the Serpa.  You get made fun of if you have an old school Serpa one now, for all their inherent flaws.

But yeah, there are a lotta crappy holsters out there.  Easy to spot early on in a gunnie journey.  The harder part is figuring out which middle-tier-and-price holsters are good and which ones are unnacceptable.  That's harder.   Like, I'd like to know which holster is doing this on the regular.  I bet it isn't low end, but middle.

Now Tam isn't really kicking me out of the cool kid's club for having a leather holster.  It's a Milt Sparks, those are on the high end side, and she likes em her own self.  It's not a floppy Turkish import making the rounds a year ago.  And it's not the only holster I own.  Yes, I have kydex too.  Hard to find really good positive, mutli-layer, retention features in leather holsters, after all.  And the good one cost about as much and the good leather ones.  What Tam in trying to get across, methinks, and I agree, is don't cheap out on holsters.  Decent holster selection is as important as decent weapon selection.  Hope I am not putting too many words in her mouth.

Oh, I was enamored with paddle holsters way back in the day.  I am less so now.  But not a full convert to strictly belt loop holsters.  I think the belt loops hold up better in a tussle for control, if it comes to that, and paddles aren't really that much more convenient and heck may be damaging to your pantaloons. 

---
Fobus!  The name finally came to me.

Huh.

So THAT is why she 'Likes' my occasional comments.  She doesn't really like them.  She just doesn't dislike them.  Genius.

Hey, Look at That!

I put off the Monday Bupkis of blog fodder drought til Tuesday.  Good for me.

I'm thinking I'll break up my range time.  Take something else to the range.  Revolver or 9mm.  Just for giggles.  Change things up  Even though I am 5 mags away from reaching 1000.  Those five mags will come soon enough.

Someone posted a video about how hand fitted 1911s are worse than factory guns.  I can't even link it.  Even if it would stretch a post.  I think I first saw Tam link it, tho.  It's cringe inducing.  The nicest things people said about him is he didn't know what he didn't know.  Hoofa.  If you HAVE to see it despite my warning, youtube search "Why a hand fitted 1911 is a bad idea" and remember I warned ya.

Ever misplace your wallet with a bit of cash in it?  And you think to yourself "ya know they could HAVE all them 20s and I'd double the thief's money as well just to have all the other parts back.   DL,  CCW,  Handgun buying license. Credit Cards, health insurance cards..."

Carrying

Tam has a point.  Even people with a hard earned CCW permit often don't carry.

But, if I lived in Viriginia instead of Maryland, I'd carry.  Even to church.  Or so I'd like to think.

Work pants are thin.  Lots of printing.

And I haven't trained myself like Tam has.  Carrying.

She has pants on?  I bet there is a gun in it.  The pants.  She has done that day in and day out for probably decades?  So the full size, or darn near close to full size, gun on her belt... She is used to it.  I remember when I switched from a walking around job on a cement floor, to a carpet job with a padded swivel chair and a CRT screen. It took MONTHS for my eyes to not hurt from looking at the screen.  My feet were happy.  So was my liver.  The cement floor was in the brewery I ran. 

If I strapped a 1911 in a IWB holster on?  "Oh, my back.  And that side is the sciatica side.  Have I put on a few pounds?  Great, the pants are too tight..."  Then I default back to the less optimal J-Frame in a front pocket.

Unless I am wearing those thin work pants.  Then even the J-Frame is a problem.

I'd probably work through the problem, like I did with the computer screen.  It'll just take a while.

But not everyone is as gun-centric as you and me.

But yeah, even with churches getting targeted I bet more than half the churches in Virginia won't have a gun anywhere inside this Sunday.  And it is legal in Virginia at the discression of the yadda yadda.  A few have a blanket no gun policy, but lots politely say nothing and it's a Don't Ask Don't Tell situation.  I find.  There.  In Maryland, maybe if a cop goes to your church?  Or you hired a guard. 

---

As an aside, I wrote all this in Maryland.  I am home tho.  And I have a J-Frame in my pocket and a Hudson in the nightstand a room away.  (The Hudson has a light, see?)  Why?  Because I live in a dangerous area.  Maryland.  And it is now solicitor season.  Lots of doorbell ringing.  During daylight I still open the door.  During night I might just check the air lock.  I am lucky to have a porch, so my front door opens onto the porch and the porch door is locked.  A hammer can bust down the porch door, but it can bust down the front door too.  But no one can quickly snatch at me without taking the time to foil the door. 

Tam's Got an Article

In Shooting Illustrated about the 2000 round challenge. 

She's gone over this before, online.  With links and everything to where the idea came from.  The concept is neato, and I like reading about it.

She even did the test with personally owned bespoke custom 1911.

Hey, I own my very own bespoke custom 1911!  And I keep a shooter log on that very gun, among others.  I could...

No, hold it right there.  Tam her ownself might counsel against that.  Her experience was as the 1911 shed all the oil it had in its rails it slowed down noticeably, and shy of 2000 rounds.  It was doing great then got cranky when dry, failing to go into battery after a while.  It was after hundreds of rounds, but the gun could have made it and passed with flying colors if the challenged allowed two drops of oil every 500.

And she said why get your expensive gun all gritty, possibly loosening it up with unnecessary wear, running it dry, anyway?  She had to, but she's a professional gun writer.

So, I am of two minds.  I want to see if my gun handle it, but I don't want to age it more than I have to.  A rebuild is time consuming and expensive.  Why be forced to do one at 4000 rounds when I can push that date up to 7000 rounds or more?

But it has been about 500 rounds since I last put a drop of lube on the gun.  I had the gun open at round 150 or so and that meant oil then.  I'm at 839 now.  Wait, now.  I last lubed it at round number 257, according to the log... so that is...  582 rounds into the 2000 round challenge.  IF I were to do it.  I am leaning toward no.  I probably won't detail strip it til 2000ish.  But two or three oil drops will almost surely happen before 2000ish.

I'm just super pleased it has never malfunctioned, yet, and easily passes the bogus '500 round challenge.'  In a big round count class I would not be That Guy.

Dangerous Suspect

Those 50-something actresses.  Requiring SEVEN FBI agents. 

"When Felicity Huffman opened the door to her Los Angeles home at 6 a.m. Tuesday, she was met by FBI agents with their guns drawn, according a source familiar with the incident." https://t.co/Ngev5WuZpG

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) March 13, 2019

I was shocked to learned they weren't SWATted up.  That seems to be the MO lately, for some reason.

I assume the local Po Po would send 7 dudes to arrest all middle aged women in the bathrobes at dawn, too, if they had FBI sized resources to devote to it. What to you send to Tam's house to arrest her? 20? Remember you got 2 cats and a landlord you gotta deal with, too. Tam's innocent, officers! I swear to it!

Yeah, I know

I knew .38 +P was inadequate if I really wanted the fancy self defense bullet to do what a fancy self defense bullet is supposed to do (and does do more out of longer barrels) out of snubnosed J-Frames.

I guess a part of me was in denial, hoping for a suspension of the laws of physics, and a bullet would be invented, near term, that would expand reliably after poking through the first front bit of a bad guy, and still poke through to near the back part of a bad guy.   Physics wasn't suspended.

Part of it is laziness (I don't WANNA change), part of it is inertia (I already have a .38/.357, why change horses in mid stream), part of it was path of least resistance (.38s are thick on the ground, I can pick what I want, and the ammo is also readily available still).  I kidded myself that I could always load magnums in my 640s, knowing that that is punishing, slower-shooting, and unlikely. 

But those are excuses.  Only half-thought-out reasons. 

Now keep in mind, I don't think the .32 bigguns self-defense rounds expand any more reliably, either, out of a snubbie.  They might.  But that's not really the point if they are roughly the same is it?  It's 'small gun still shoots 6' that appeals more.    But Lucky Gunner promises to get that data out to us in the future.  They already did .38s a while back.

And I was aware of the hotter .32 revolvers YEARS ago as a reader of Tam's.  I groked her reasoning, even then, as an uber-noob.   Persuaded to its wisdom.  This was BEFORE I had owned my first snub nosed revolver. 

There is no good reason to be stuck in a .38 rut.  Yet I am.

It's not so bad.  .38 isn't a nerf dart.   It's just not ideal.  And I carry that more than 90% of my time when I can carry in public.

So all that to say "It's not ideal, yet I am not changing."

I'm trying hard to think what COULD make me change?  House fire that takes all my guns?  Start from scratch?  Would I even get any revolver if I started from scratch?  Yes, I would get a revolver.  And maybe that would be the push to .32 biggun.  I wouldn't relish stocking up the ammo for it...

I wish

I wish my "good accuracy day at the range" was as good as Tam's "bad accuracy day at the range."

OCvCCW

Yeah, THIS is why I prefer to CCW instead of Open Carry.

Now if I was with a dozen other gunnies all OCing, I might reconsider.  But that scenario rarely happens,  But it might deter folks like the knucklehead.

Bad Trigger

A good trigger is an absolute pleasure.  When I made my 1911 the hammer-sear engagement turned out great.  I was lucky.

The disconnector hole had a little slop in it, and you could feel that in the take up.  That little hitch would have bugged me forever if we hadn't corrected it.  The trigger is now a joy. 

But I've done a lot of training with a Glock, and a Glock trigger in various stages of it wearing out, while not bad, per se, it is no custom 1911 good, either.  I can shoot both, tho.  I can do it.  That wasn't always true.  It's a recent development. 

Tam, on the other hand, is testing a gun right now, for work, and it sounds like it is not much fun in the trigger department.  But she brings up a good point. 

I'd rather be halfway good with any any ol' gun's trigger, than be really good at shooting, but I can only do it with the best triggers, and fall out of the boat with problematic ones. 

So if you run into the cut rate shooting Djinni that can only grant you a halfway good wish regarding shooting, maybe ask for "decent with most any trigger pull" as your one request.

Online ads

Tam said there was a time she was seen riding in a Chrysler product with this kind of license plate on the front:

I googled Direct Connection to remind myself what that was.  Oh yeah. 

Now all the ads I see online are for Vedder holsters, still, but also Year One parts purveyor stuff.  That's it.  Just them two.  Errywhere.

Meh.  It could be worse.

"Adult diapers?  Why does Facebook think I need adult diapers.  I mean, I do.  Well I don't NEED them.  They are just so much more convenient.  But I don't want them in my face 24/7.  So to speak."

Shottie

A shotgun to keep bad guys from busting down my front door?  00 buck?  Even a whole handful of bad guys.

Yeah, you can't do much better than that.  And I agree.

But I have a problem.  And this is me.  Not you, necessarily.

Here in the suburbs there is a better chance of finding a place you can shoot a rifle than you can find to shoot a shotgun, sorta.  So I don't even own anything scattery of any halfway decent prowler stopping utility but antique Remingtons.  And none of those are a pump gun.   I can't operate a pump gun. Well, I have barely ever operated a pump gun.  Most of it is easy, yes, but there are little levers and switches and button and such for loading and unloading and locking this or that back...

I'd have to go far afield for familiarization, and further for training.  As my knowledge is woefully inadequate.

Total rounds I've fired in my short shooty lifetime is in the thousands.  But is is like 92% pistols, 7% rifles of all sorts, and 1% shotguns.  A tube of buckshot or a 30 round magazine of 5.56 are both almost certainly a better selection at 3AM for prowlers than a pistol.  Assuming all have a light.  But I should probably go with what I am most familiar with.

Ideally I take it upon myself to get better with a shotgun and get lots of training and practice, but I am getting old and slow. 

Pistol Sights

Pistol sights.  My preferences have changed and I have progressed and gotten better at shooting.

I am now: Black read sigh with a rounded bottom, and a front sight with a contrasting color or fiber, but now glow in the dark tritium necessary.  10-8 offers this, if you want to see or what I am talking about, but here is a pic from them:

Someone is focusing on the front sight.

My gunsmith convinced me on that.  And I get good results with that.

When I started this blog and shooting I was a 3-dot guy.  Preferably tritium.

But maybe those are too busy and distracting.  If only for a micro second.  They are fine, and I train in the simulator with a variety of sight configuration, I just now prefer the top for my own stuff.  Back in the day I imagined the tritium 3-dot would make night time repel-prowler situations in my dark house batter, but I'd prolly be better served with a flashlight for that.  My thinking has evolved

There was a time when this is the way I rolled:

XS-Sights.  With the BIG honking front sight.  Tam said something like, "you can't hit anything beyond 7 yard with that.  What if your bad guy is shooting at you from 30 yards away?  Yer F-ed!"  I was already F-ed, as I couldn't, then, hit something that far away anyhow.  So we were both right.   But I don't run XS sights now.  

I am not against glow in the dark sights now.  Just not the MONDO huge ones.  The only thing wrong with them is price and they are hard to remove if you used red loctite on them.  The torch work to break the loctite causes your gun to turn into a radioactive Superfund site in some situations.  Anyhoo, I got better.

My H9 came with a pretty big trijicon front sight, so I swapped it.  If I were Hudson I might offer a choice for that. 

LATimes, totally not fake

Saw this over at Tam's

"L.A. gangs stockpile untraceable 'ghost guns' that members make themselves"

I am SURE this L. A. Times article real and true and totally not fake or misleading or anything. 

 But, as we all know the presence of a valid serial number at the scene stops 8 out of 10 gun crimes.

Also, as we all well know, the biggest 'growth' industry in law enforcement if arresting burglary victims and gun store owners after tracing a crime gun back to them.  Must happen dozens of times a year.  Maybe scores of times.

More importantly, 'ghosts' are scary.  Youse peeps weren't as easily stampeded with the term 'assault weapon' these days, but you'll get good and panicky with ghosts.  After this... Demonically-Possessed Guns?

Tam notes that Home Depot has 80% receiver Sten Sub Machine Guns for sale right now, and no one says boo about it.

Added bonus:  Look REAL close at the lowers on that collection of AR's...  I guess you can save some money on parts that way.

  

  

I rarely get offered free swag

And it has been a long while since I had a nibble.

I don't get the clicks so no one wastes their time trying to get me to help them promote their product.  Free gun related thing to product test and review.  

Not like the big fancy famous bloggers.

The times I did get interest I'd send the shipping info and never hear back.

So, this makes me a little sad.  Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, ya know?

But wait.  I haven't checked my email in a while.  Let's look in the inbox...

Oh, HOT DAMN!

Hi,

I was checking your website http://jovianthunderbolt.blogspot.com/ and I must say I’m impressed, good job.

I work in a company that makes custom holsters and I’m writing to you because I’d like to send you a leather holster for your gun for free. I’d like to know your opinion about it and if you like the holster of course you can make a review.

Please send me the following info and your holster will be on the way:

    Firearm (caliber + capacity)

    Right hand / Left hand

    Name + Address (please no PO Box)

    Phone (for delivery)


And that’s it.

Either way, keep up the good work.

Best regards,  Luke.

I'm in the big time now!

Note, he wants my phone number.  'For delivery'.  So he can stalk and harass me like he did Tam?

NOT TODAY, ISIS!  NOT TODAY!

Tam?

What does LMGTFY mean?