Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Trollop The Gun Nut II
On a hunch we went to Bass Pro. She needs a gun rug for the pistol, and some splatter targets, and we'd LOOK for ammo.
There was no gun rug big enough. We'll look elsewhere. I don't get it. Bass Pro has gargantuan .50 Smiffs for sale in the case, but you'd need to buy a rifle case to tote it out.
Ammo was sparse, as expected. They had .25 and .32 only. Oh, and .44 Magnum. Hooray! She did the ammo etiquette and only took 3 of the 7 boxes on the shelf. And the cost less than $32 each. Not bad. Cheaper than the .45 I bought recently. Whoda thunk that the .44 would be the budget shooter?
The only other ammo they had was Remington .223. So no sign of the ammo shortage alleviating, at least evidenced by shelf space.
Future acquisition for the Trollop .44 is nice wood grips.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Carbon Fiber M1A stocks

So a super light stock, but see? They added too much metal up front. I'd consider maybe going this route if there were half as many rails there.
The more and more I think about it the more I think I will just go with a scout type fore-rail. And that's it. Mount an EOTech on that, and be done with it. You can get a red dot scope and a flashlight on that way, and what else would I really need? I'm probably not going to be shooting nuisance pigs in the dark, like some people do in farm country.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Disarming Yourself
Ok, for you regular CCW people. You are carrying in your preferred method, and during the course of the day you go to a school to get your kid, or a court house to submit a building permit, or a church to eat some pot luck, or something. You have to go there, but you can't be strapped. Most every state as SOME prohibited place where you can't carry. And while most Conceal Carry gunnies avoid those places on principle as Victim Disarmament zones, nevertheless sometime you have to go there.
What do you do with the gun?
I ask because I was in Pennsylvania a weekend ago. I can CCW there, but I have to exit, and later re-enter, Maryland. And so there is a transition.
If you carry in a Man Purse or a Fanny Pack, it's easy. Take off said geek bag and leave it in the car hidden someplace. For you Don Johnson types with your ankle holster, it's also easy to take off the holster and leave it in the car, all without anyone seeing or knowing what you are doing.
But some holsters are more involved. You have to go into contortions to remove the whole IWB holster, unbuckling your belt and pants and twisting about. At least for some. The holsters with snaps are probably easier than the clippy kind. And forget about getting the Serpa Paddles off without some serious yanking.
If you have a snubbie revolver in your front pocket, your contortions are almost as bad, from sitting in the driver's seat of your Miata.
If you un-ass from your car, you are out in public taking your gun off, and even more easily 'made' by the general public.
So what is the procedure? YOU are sitting in the courthouse parking lot and gotta leave your hog leg in the car, but would consider it a 'bad idea' for all those 5-0's to see your gat. What do you do? How do you get the thing off? Where do you secure it in the car? How do you make it so you don't attract attention? In high school, hormone enhanced boys just carried their books in such a way to hide... things... How do you hide disarming?
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Ammo Prices
The good news is, he stocked up very well before the rush. He had over a dozen of anything I wanted on the shelf.
The bad news? Holy MOLY, the prices. $40 for .380 (that's actually kinda cheap, lately). $35 for .45. Wow. Even his budget bin was getting expensive. I was tempted by the grab bag of 100 .45s for $40, but some of them had 1941 an 43 datestamps. WWII American surplus. Cool, but those are corrosive primed, prolly.
I only bought a couple. Because I only could. I had so much in the budget for ammo. The difference between 3 boxes and 6 boxes in less than a year is where my money takes me.
His gun sales have slacked since December, they said. But, ironically and ruefully, one of the salesmen noted that if that looney-tunes socialist Israel hater had used an AR type rifle instead of a .22 to shoot up the Holocaust Museum, he'd sell out of guns again with the worry that the there would be another assault weapons ban in the wake of that abominable crime. Leave it to the anti-gun types to be the best salesmen for the gun retailers.
Friday, June 12, 2009
rain
Indiana isn't the only place with an excess of meteorology. In Maryland, not a day has gone by, it seems, where is hasn't rained, cats, dogs, and sticks to beat them death with. Windshield wipers haven't been able to go fast enough. And it's played hell with the tractor trailers on my commute on I95. Apprently, rain gets the trucks randy, because it appears they try to mate. This leads to very bad outcomes for all concerned, but mostly for the driver of the 'female' semi.
TSA
Shhhh. If this trick get's too widespread the TSA will get wise and put a stop to it.
The trick is one highlighted by people recently on their trip to Phoenix, but I had read it before in other blogs. I might have first read it in Smallest Minority, but Breda and Snowflakes in Hell touched on it this past month. If you check your gun and ammo in your baggage you get to actually LOCK your hard-sided suitcase, and the baggage handlers don't get to go all sticky finger through your stuff. Some guys at work want a cheap revolver to check in their luggage when they fly. No ammo. They never want to shoot that revolver. They aren't gunnies at all. Guns are icky. But they want TSA to mind their own business. So they are willing to own a Model 10 revolver and feel ok about that by never buying bullets for it. I don't think that's much of a 'win' for our side, but...
Like I said, if this becomes a trend, look to Uncle Sam to reconsider the rule and restrict it up.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
June Range



I'm still pacing the shots a bit fast. It's not that I'm impatient. It's just that I get the sight picture and know it's not going to get much better that right then, I might as well start to do the squeeze. It's not good for shooting a cigarette out of someone's hand, but I'm never going to want to do that anyway. I might be good at bowling pins, but I may never be good at shooting empty shotgun shells off a fence post like MBtGE sometimes does. Not with the .45.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Sheep
And here is the money quote, speaking of a conversation with a hoplophobe:
It was because the beliefs the ignoramus was spouting were only surface structure; refuting them one-by-one could do no good without directly confronting the substructure, the emotional underpinnings that made ignoramus unable to consider or evaluate counter-evidence.
The need, here, was to undermine that substructure. And I saw the way to do it. This is what I said:
“You speak, but I hear only the bleating of a sheep. Your fear gives power to your enemies.”
Ignoramus typed another sentence of historical ignorance. My reply was “Baa! Baa! Baaaaa!”
And another. My reply was more sheep noises, more deliberate mockery. And you know what? A few rounds of this actually worked. Ignoramus protested that he wasn’t a sheep. At which point I asked him “Then why are you disarmed?”
I likey. It is a bit harsh, but very effective, and the author admits as much. We walk around in a wondrous time. For thousands of years interacting with other people was much more dangerous. The world is more civilized in many places now, and has been for a while. But 'more' doesn't mane 'completely' or 'permanently' or 'at all times.' And you can't go around ignoring the exceptions just because you want to, or have gotten away with it for so long. People are people. It is good they are less barbaric for the most part, but you can't escape the margins forever.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
D-Day Remembrance

Monday, June 8, 2009
exhausted
And low on ideas for posts. I did a post on the odd looking WWII submachine gun. Here is a tidbit for a odd looking and rarish light machine gun, the M1941 Johnson.

Look at the magazine. It looks single stack! .30-06. And HUGE.
Not to be confused with the M1941 Johnson. A similar looking semi-auto rifle that competed for selection with the Garand. (I had no idea there were 2 Johnsons in 1941.) Same designer, commonality of some parts, but one was to take the place of the BAR, the other the rifle role. But look at that hump on top of the stock.

If I read this right, there is a spring in there, just like on the AR. Interesting.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Swiss
But I need to learn more about them.
My ancestors come from the land across the Bodensee from Switzerland, in Bavaria.
Of course their "every man a rifleman" and "shoot twice and go home" are legendary tropes. But they might just be tropes. And some socialist weenies have tried to enact gun control in Switzerland recently. The poisons of the welfare state even creep up the Alps, it seems.
I admire their stands against despotism, and that that attitude is a long tradition, but before WWII, my history knowledge is limited to an awareness of an awesome pole-arm equipped infantry that tended to win a lot in Renaissance and Medieval times.
Can anyone recommend a good Swiss History written in English? Somehow, getting all my further Swiss History from 2nd Amendment websites is not enough.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Gun Court Cases
In a year or so, these may be popping up for a final review. Things could go very well, or be an abject disaster, for the human rights side we are on.
I haven't gotten my knickers in a twist with the lower court ruling because they aren't permanent. The Supreme Court is a bigger nut to crack. Hope it cracks our way.
Friday, June 5, 2009
False Alarm
It turns out Obama just had regular flu, not Zombie flu. So it wasn't a Level 4 outbreak. My calls to panic were premature. But I am on a RoMERO mission this weekend. Pittsburgh. I don't need to tell YOU the significance of Pittsburgh. Wish me luck. Posting may be light.
Hopefully I'll be able to tell you about the mission after.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Magnum vs Solo
What? There is plenty of gun content there. Broomhandle Mausers and 1911s.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Reising
It's about a communcations platoon/company in the Pacific. 6th Marine Regiment. I just found it in the pile in the basement and started reading it. It's pretty good. The narrative arc is very 1953, and feels like he wrote it with Hollywood in mind. It's got a 40's movie tempo to it.
I was very pleased because my Grandfather was in the HQ company of the 7th Regiment and died on Peliliu. Now I know a little bit about what he was doing, day to day, to support the rest of the Marines around him.
But the Marine minutiae is pretty good. You can tell the author actually served in the Corps, even without reading the biographical blurb at the end of the book.
One of the gun related items was the issue weapon given to this platoon. They learned on Springfield 03's, of course, just after Pearl Harbor, but wanted to shoot Garands. For battle, this non front-line unit would have something lighter. Something the M1 Carbine would excel at. The thing is, they weren't given M1 Carbines when they landed on Guadalcanal to be be involved in the final push to rid the island of Japanese.

They were issued the Reising. And they hated it. It was a submachine gun that fired .45 ACP. It was sort of a poor mans Tommy gun. Wikipedia says the rifle jammed alot because of the complexity of the mechanism, but was accurate on semi-auto because of the closed bolt. The fictional Marines in the book hated it because it was innacurate, on full auto due to muzzle climb, and it would corrode if you looked at it funny. And corroding is no joke in a coastal environment anyway. At Guadalcanal they quickly dumped the Reising when they could steal a replacement from well stocked, but lightly guarded, USArmy arsenals.
Before their second campaign at Tarawa they were issued the M1 Carbine.
Only 100,000 Reisings were made, but I was thinking a semi-auto version of the same might suit my personal carbine requirements. But that would assume they were cheap surplus ones available, and since so many were lost, and so few were made, and they were machine guns anyway... It is unlikely I'd find one at a cheap enough price to justify living with it's flaws.
It's not the Reisings fault it was regarded so poorly. It was designed for civilian police use, not Marines in the Pacific.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Comments
Anyway, it was spam, and I allowed it, in order to have THIS blog fodder.
He was essential plugging Front Sight. It has "the biggest firearm training facility in the country."
Ok, interesting. I've considered going to one of the big training facilities. Cooper's legacy at Gunsite, Thunder Ranch, Blackwater like the bloggers did, or Rob Pincus' thing at ICE.
The problem with Front Sight is that they've been in the news lately. There has been litigation against them. Class action suit and judgments against them. Some receivership issues. Rumors of LRonHubbardian stuff in the classes. It all seems to have an off-odor hanging around any mention of the place.
I don't know enough about the details, and what is true or not, but the word around the watercooler makes me feel a little hinky about them. They may be perfectly fine and innocent, but it doesn't take much to make me feel I could look elsewhere. One way is to have all this bad press and successful big lawsuits turn up in google searches
Another way is to spam my comments with commercials!
I'd have put this in my comments area next to theirs if I could only find the post.
Now it could be just a happy customer and a big fan of Front Sight posted the promotional copy. If true, that doesn't make me any happier.
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But, my biggest criteria right now for one of these major training evolutions that I might sign up for is, 'Is it good?' and 'Is it close?' So that leaves ICE and Blackwater at the top of the list.


