Offset Sights

Offset sights are kinda neat.  In battle, what if your optics break and are suddenly opaque?  What if the optics are set up for long range and trouble starts close at hand?  What if your AR is a race gun is set up for long range and you want to cut the transition time to close stuff?

Cant the rifle 45 degrees and use the offset backup iron sights.

But why so 'tall'?  Off the shelf AR sights are like that for good readon.  It where the sights have to be when you have a cheek weld on the straight stock of an AR.  So, all off the shelf after market BUIS sights are gonna be like that, too.  But if you hang the sights off the side of the rifle, then maybe they don't have to be so tall.  I wonder if some supplier is thinking of a more streamlined shorter offering.  I bet so.

Oh, and congrats

To Larry Hogan.  Maryland has a Republican governor again.  Which means a goodly number of Maryland Democrats crossed the aisle.  The state is 66% Dem.  And Larry won decisively, in a state that cheats at the polls for Dems.  It wasn't a squeaker.  9 points!  I guess Marylanders of a liberal persuasion have noticed all the big taxes that have come down on our wallets.

This is only the second GOP governor of my state elected in my lifetime.

Michelle Obama, Martin O'Malley, Brack Obama, NONE of them campaigning for the hand picked successor to O'Malley could not move the needle their way.

We were promised by the Democrats that the state would be wall to wall ARs if Hogan is elected.  Meh.  Wish it was a firearm I liked better.  But I'll take it. 

I'm just glad that the hemorrhage will be slightly staunched for a few more years.  It's been a while since someone I voted for in Maryland actually won....  Feels ok.

The biggest obstacle to gun rights in the Maryland Senate, Brian Frosh, is gone.  That's the good news.  The bad news is is that he is now Attorney General.  

It's a Wash

Washington State...

This was the one that would have been the best thing to have gone our way yesterday, but didn't.  Washington State's universal background check ballot initiative.  Sad.

No jumped up, rich, bigotted hoplophobes think they can throw their money at new Gun Crow laws like this registration-prior-to-confiscation thingy and win.  That's the takeaway.  Not that gun control parties lost in Maryland even with Michelle Obama helping, not with West Virginia showing gun traitor Joe Manchin the light there, no.   And Bloomy recruited some DEEP pockets out there in Redmund.

Library

Are all these in your library?  Survivor Library.  Ebola Zombies come, you are gonna wish you had it in your Kindle.  All in the public domain.  It's only 100 or so gigs.  You might be able to pare some out.  I mean, you don't need ALL 50 books about the card game Whist.

Yo Vote

Here's the scam.  No one asks you if you are an American citizen when you get your Maryland Driver's license.  And motor-voter registration is practically compulsory.  So now, you are on the voter rolls.  And can drive legally.

So you can vote.   You are registered here.  Of course, this is a crime

When your jury duty comes up, who wants to do THAT?  Just tell them you aren't a citizen and you get out of it.  Of course if you ARE a citizen and claim not to be, that is a crime.  Too.

So, they are finding people that do both.  Claim not to be citizen AND are registered to vote.  It's a matter of public record.  One crime was committed. 

It doesn't matter if you voted or not, but... 

Anyway, lawyers are noticing this and taking these circumstances through the Maryland and Federal legal system.

 

Gerry?

Is that you?

A Map of Maryland Congressional districts.  I'm in 8, with Van Hollen.  But my favorites are the 2nd 3rd and 4th districts for their shapes.

Well, non citizens will be voting all around me today, diluting my own legal vote.  That's if the voting machine doesn't switch my votes from GOP to Dem.  The Dems I vote for?  The machines NEVER switch those over.  And I've had to put in provisional ballots in the past because the polls are sure I requested an absentee ballot so I could vote from my dorm in North Carolina.   Wish they'd cut that out.  It's like my state is systematically trying to disenfranchise me. 

But that's just here.  I'm sure YOUR state is perfectly legit and above board. 

Range II

Lot's of usual suspects there.  And some new faces. 

"Old NFO, JayG, Nancy and her adorably precocious daughter, Murphy, Keads, Aaron, Maureen, David, Larry the Historian, MBtAGE, Glen and his son Brendan from New York, Hayden and his wife Cara, Bubblehead Les, Stretch, John, Bruce, Joby, and Cindy."

One unusual one was Hayden.  He's British, you see.   Wore his Squirrel Report t-shirt and everything. 

The only thing better than shooting a .50 and a Machine Gun is helping facilitate a former resident of the UK shooting a .50 and a Machine Gun.  I was correct in my assumption that he wouldn't have brought spare 7.62x51 with him, so he got a donation from the battle packs MBtGE and I brought along just for this purpose.   And we were happy to do it.  Freedom!  And all that. 

And hey, I learned a valuable skill.  How to link up ammo for the belts.  So I got THAT going for me.

One of my personal purposes on this trip was to zero in my M1A again.  Shooting at gongs the last range trip, I noticed my eyes aren't what they used to be.  The tiny gray target 300 yards away disappears when I look through a peep sight, and the red dot seems huge.  So I swapped the scout stope 2.5x  to the M1A, will restore my Garand to 1960 US Navy issue condtion (It's a 1944 manufacture, rebarrelled to 7.62x51) and will rely on the AR for red dot optics short range stuff.  So there.

Range Day

Knocked a few items off my bucket list at the blog shoot.

Shot a Barret



Sorry about the blaspheming.  Not me.  Some other dude.  Thank's Larry the Historian

Shot an M60



So, of machine guns I've shot there is that, shot a single shot Ma Deuce (it wasn't working well that day), an MG42, an MP40, and an M2 Carbine.   Thanks Murphy's Dad.

Shot a flintlock



I had shot a precussion cap front stuff before.   And that capped job might have had rifling.  But this is the first flintlock smoothbore I've had fun with.  Thanks Nancy!

Good question...

This is the first weekend since April that Pres. Obama hasn't fit in a round of golf. Bad optics before midterms... or too cold?

— Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) November 2, 2014

Email.

Been gettin lots of important stuff.

• The Clerk of the Court says I have a Notice of Appearance. No court knows any of my email addresses, and certainly not THAT one.
• There is a Neighborhood Child Predator Alert, please open this attachment.  I have no children.
• I can look 20 years younger in minutes
• Who's Who sent me an invitation
• Plus a Chinese Nigerian wants to buy my land.

Hmph.

Music

Music is the bane of my existence.  I hate earworms, and am susceptible to them.  And rare is the earworm you don't mind rattling around in your head.  And the good songs grow tiresome, even, if they are up there too long. 



Songs on the radio alarm clock immediately delete any memory of the previous night's dream.  Even more so than news announcers or commercials. 



I played in the school band for years.  Until 9th grade.  What a waste of time.  And the High School band instructor tried mightily to get me to continue.  No way that was going to work.  I had  done my time. 



I've never liked concerts.  Either boring or loud or both.  Hurt-my-ears loud. 
 

And night clubs?  Even louder.  And often claustrophobia inducing crowded.  Because of the volume you isolated even more because simple communication is impossible.  You are totally alone in a huge crowd of obnoxious sweaty people.



I'd ban it with my duruthers.  If I was emperor of universe.  Same with dancing.  And card playing.



---



But....



I have noticed that if you sing the jingle to the Meow Mix commercial in your head when you are shooting at the pistol range, accuracy is great improved.  Dunno why that is. 

Out of Blog

I've been scraping dope posts up off the kitchen floor just to survive...










I guess I'll be at Murph's blog shoot tomorrow...  So more then.  I need to bring a fish eye lens with me.


Waughmp Waughmp!

Captured

What rifle is that? Yugo SKS?

Everyone Rips off the Germans

Or Mauser, more like.

What for bullets, and battle rifles.

-

Or you are a Metrocon

If you refer to my home as flyover country, you're telling me you think meat comes under plastic, nature is like the zoo, and guns are scary

— J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) October 29, 2014

I don't even... uh...

Master Beta?

Metrocons Defined

Governor Cuomo didn't expect to get as much heat for this long for passing onerous rights-curtailing gun legislation.  Good.  I hope it kills his career.  But one graph buried in this Times article is telling.  It is almost a perfect definition of what a Metrocon is.  People in the city and suburbs only see firearms in two contexts.  Either in a cop's holster or in a crooks hand.  And since they are not a cop or a crook, anything that might make guns be around, even ostensibly, is fine by them.

"In a poll conducted by Siena College in March, the Safe Act drew support from 63 percent of voters statewide. But opinions varied significantly by region: 79 percent of voters in New York City and 63 percent in the city’s suburbs approved of the laws, compared with only 45 percent in upstate New York."

79 or 63 to 45.  Those number have a lot of Liberal, obviously, but there are lots of conservatives in the city and close in suburbs.  How do you make those oridinary urban people see firearms as something for them, and not just for Law Enforcement or Bad Guys? 

Dole wants Romney to go for it in 2016

Bless your heart, Senator Dole, and thank you for you service.


Mitt?  Sit down. 

Give it UP Bush

Let some fresh blood with less baggage play the game this time.

Pledge Drive

So, listening to NPR, they had a pledge drive last week.  One host talking about the sublime season we were in talked about a doe nuzzling her fawn framed by fall foliage.  She didn't know the terms 'doe' and 'fawn' but that's ok.

That didn't sound right to me.  Are does and fawns still paired up this late in the season?  Maybe one of the more experienced outdoorsfolk can answer this. 

---

Oh, I am sure you are ALL asking.  "How much did you give to NPR during this pledge drive, T-Bolt?"

I already 'give' plenty.  The bill is due April 15th every damn year.   And they do take a bite.   But some of that money goes to other things.  Like selling AKs to drug cartels and ensuring our institution in charge of curbing communicable disease are extra incompetent.