I am pleased

That it got this far.  HR 38

Amazing!

50 state CCW reciprocity?  Yes please.

My favorite part is the love to me, personally:

"In particular, it would allow residents of repressive states to get non-resident permits and thereby circumvent local anti-gun officials. "

Sweet!

Now this like step 3 in a process with 22 steps.  My hopes aren't that high for quick success.  Or success with this run at the prize.  But I never thought I'd see something this good get this far.

Look for the Speaker to squash it or it to pass the house then languish in committee in the Senate or it requiring extra votes past 52 to overcome a filibuster there or some squish like an Arizona short timer might show his true colors and vote it down to spite us stinking lowlife common voters. 

Feral

Divide and Conquer

So, let me get this straight.

This 'hunter' notes that you don't need a high capacity magazine and a military style rifle to hunt, and suicide is the biggest death toll in the country, so hunters should calve off from other firearm enthusiasts and get on board with gun bans because... just because.

How many rounds in a magazine do you need to commit suicide, genius?

He discourages his dad from carrying a sidearm in grizzly country because he doesn't think a pistol can protect dad better than spray.  You know what, hippy?  There are other dangerouns things in grizzly country besides bears.

He calls the NRA blood soaked, and wants to change the NRA but clearly he doesn't want to do that from inside the organization.  Too icky.  So, he just harangues.  Misrepresents some statistics and cites debunked studies, and lies about funding of gun rights groups.

Hippies.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

For 8 years, we never worried once about Americans getting nuked to death by North Korea or any other country. Then Trump happened. Now, every single day, Americans live in constant fear of instant death - this is bad for our health and bad for the economy.

— Millennial Democrats (@Millennial_Dems) November 28, 2017

On the Road Again

That's Jam Handy.

Maryland Supreme

Well crap.

I guess the SCOTUS still really does NOT want to deal with any assault weapons type bans.

 Don't think they are reticent because of recent events.  They have eschewed similar cases since Heller.  It's just the way it is until RBG dies and Sotomayor resigns in disgrace, or something, while Trump is still Preznit, and if he hasn't changed his mind on his current stable of noms.

Magazine Size Restriction

So I bought another 20 round magazine for my Caspian from Brownells.  I didn't buy it in Maryland, because of the law.  I bought it and received it in Virginia. 

This is the bag it came it, listing all the places you can't buy it.

The usual suspects.  It's the OTHER ones that are interesting.  Cleveland Ohio and one of its surrounds, Shaker Heights being of interest to me.  Big cities in Ohio except Columbus and one liberal Cleveland enclave.  Oh and Dublin. 

Vail Colorado?

I guess pre-emption hasn't hit those states yet.  

 

Poverty

If you want to escape poverty and enter the middle class and stay there....

This has been going around awhile, promulgated by many many sources, but I think it was started by the Brookings Institution.

1. Graduate High School
2. Get a full time job
3. Get married before having children

In that order.

Statistically speaking, if you do those three thing you won't be poor.  And it can be "just squeak by" and "40 hour flipping burgers" as long as you don't get in a family way before you put a ring on it.

Ok, I can see that.

Seems common sensical, right?

The middle class already does those three things, for the most part.  Ideally you want people that are now poor to in the future do the 3 things so they will stop being poor. 

How do we as a society encourage young people to do those three things?  Note I don't say 'government'.  I say 'society'.

(Government can do things.  Like stop incentivizing the inverse.  Gov't, for example, under Obamacare, incentivizes NOT employing someone full time.  Don't do that.   Lots of other examples where gov't sticks its big nose in and messes things up royal.)

Society already shouts encouragement.  Read to your kids.  Stay together for your kids.  Eat a meal together as a family.  Don't get payday loans.  Etc.  Copybook Heading style instructions.  Plus the three things above.  It doesn't mean folks listen.

There is not 3 steps to do in order to make those 3 steps above come about, are there? 

Boys in Company C

Notice anything funny with the .50 ammo?

Starting a 1:30

Drat, should be embedded video here...

Real Ma Deuce, real ammo, just kinda blankie. Plus some foley work and that don't sound real accurate.

Golly, it's been ages since I saw this movie. 35 years? Maybe.

Who taught this guy...

... to shoot like this?


Sumdood.  He might have said his name but I missed it.

Serisouly, though.  Isoceles mostly, head hunched down, leaning forward, wrappy grip...

The kind of answer I am looking for is:

"Oh, that's the posture/method the FBI, and subsequent police trainers used from the mid 80s up to the earyl oughts, T-Bolt."

or

"I was in the Boston PD back in the 60s, T-Bolt, and that is how they taught us at the Academy.  That guy with the stache prolly learned to shoot like from his Dad of summat.  I don't think BPD does it that way anymore, but I am not sure."

or

"I just graduated from the Police Academy and they taught us a different stance, but my buddy went to another Academy and they taught this, so it is still current."

finally

"Everyone I know shoots like that, T-Bolt.  Are you doing it different?  Not one handed, are you?"


"So what are you getting on about, T-Bolt."

Well, it isn't the push me pull you bent arm Weaver. But it is a common presentation. You can't say 'Isosceles' and leave it at that can you?

Thanks

1911s are heavy

When you carry one all day.  You usually aren't shooting bad guys with it all day, you are carrying it.

I know.  Let's put it in the milling machine and cut away a lot of metal

Whoa whoa, not so fast.

Yes, you can cut out slots in the frame.  I've seen it.

Save some weight that way.  You can cut some slots on the slide

You can go more aggressive with the metal removal, too.   Those are relatively small holes.  Let's discount the troubles the infiltration of holster debris might cause you, for purposes of argument.  Go for big holes.  And you can 'rout' away metal in other areas.  Make sections of the metal thinner, but leaving critical areas where stress happens beefy.  Middle areas, where you can make a hole because you need SOME metal there.

Ok, now maybe start with all titanium parts!  Lighter than that scandium stuff.  The frame on that top gun may actually BE titanium.  "Wait, T-Bolt, you want me to use the mill to hog away metal on titanium parts?  Do you know how hard titanium is to machine?  You can't even file that stuff"  I know, I know bear with me!   Let's say it was managed.

Now what?

Well, now it will take a long time trying to get the recoil springs the right strength so it will run the slide.  But it also has to strip a round from the magazine, so maybe you have to tune the magazine springs.  And the slide needs enough OOMPH to overcome the hammer tension of the mainspring in the mainspring housing, so you may have to lighten that, as well.

All these changes...  You might push the gun out of a functional envelope.  If you lighten that magazine spring so the frame can strip off a round because the recoil spring is now a different tension maybe it can't present the next round for stripping in the first place.  And you are getting light strikes because the mainspring is out of spec. And the recoil spring isn't robust enough to get that round to slid up the breach face and under the extractor hook that is properly tensioned.

You have paid the price for tampering in God's domain.  Well, JMB was pretty religious, so change that to, "tampering in Gosh's domain."  Things on a 1911 are the way they are for a reason.  Deviating from spec is more complicated than a swap-out.

Which is why I love the 1911.  All the little intricacies I've been lucky enough to learn about.  Did it seem simple at first, maybe?  Not so simple, is it?

There, if I am LUCKY.

---

Where else can you shave off weight?  Balsa wood grip panels!  Flutes on the barrel!  Give the whole gun the melt treatment to round all the corners and edges, because that removes metal, too.  Have you gun where a track suit and sit in a sauna to sweat out a lotta excess water, dip so it spits a lot, and hit the head before weigh-in....  No, wait, that last part is wrestling.

See the flinch

All done with a .45  Not nearly as embarrassing as my 9mm flinches, so I share

But this one.  This one I like.  #5

I really got into the relaxation.  As though I were in the simulator and it's just click, laser flash, and 'BANG' sound effect.  Smooth finger work, front sight, relax.  See?  I CAN fix myself.

#3 is the flinchiest, but I was also shooting that one fast on purpose to see if that helped.  So, 50 shots added on the 16th, Springfield rebuild, no malfs.  Must log that.   

OH NOES!

Heard this in NPR Saturday,

Essentially it went "First day of guy season Wisconsin, but now there IS NO AGE LIMIT on who can go afield!  Panic!  Armed children!"  It used to be 12, last year, or summat. 

Tacked onto the end they said "34 other states already have no age limit on who can hunt"

Wait, so 2/3rds of the country has no issue with it, and you never hear about packs of orange clad kindergartners going on a Remington bolt action rampage in those 34 states, so, maybe this isn't worth the hysterics?  You don't say.  Not even thousands of accidental shootings with the 3rd graders?  Huh.  Maybe your worry is overblown and parents are doing something consistently right? 

So...

The bipartisan gun control bill.  Fix NICS.

Yeah.

I dunno.  They don't like to share many details, do they?  Where the devil lies, them details.

Tighten up NICS?  Again, I guess?  

Whatever it is, roll it into reciprocity, dammit.  Don't give them anything without something in return.  And when we compromise our side should get the better deal.

We've gotten the poopy end of the stick with these way too often.

Ramshackle

You've been so long
Your blind eyes are gone
Your old bones are on their own
So take off your coat
Put a song in your throat
Let the dead-beats pound all around


We will go
Nowhere we know
We don't have to talk at all
Hand me downs
Flypaper towns
Stuck together
One and all


The bargains you drive
Buckets and bags
And all your belongings
Your train's in the sand
Ramshackle land
Let the rats watch the races


We will go
Nowhere we know
'Til we find our one and all
Hand me downs
Flypaper towns
Stuck together
One and all

Praises get spent
Your trick face is bent
Pigsties and prizes
'Cause there's no kind of wealth
You're suiting yourself
You leave yourself behind


We will go
Nowhere we know
'Til we find our one and all
Your hand me downs
Flypaper towns
Stuck together
One and all

Hey JayNola!

Stouffer legal.  They're in Towson.

Nattering Economists

On the radio the other morning.

One said that under the GOP tax plan people making less than $100,000?  For a lot of them, their tax rate is going to go up!

OH NO!

Wait.  Tax Rate?  You specifically said 'Tax Rate', not tax or taxes.  I don't care what that rate number is.  Will I write a check to the treasury for more than I pay now or not?  Rate doesn't matter, the dollar amount does.  Will I pay more or less.  Rate is meaningless. 

Phrasing it that way and not being called on it is a biased argument and against my interests.

They also talk about how the precious mortgage deduction is getting assailed.  Yes, last I checked for mortgages bigger than $500,000.  If you can afford a mortgage that high, you probably put at least $100,000 down.  So, I am not very sympathetic to someone not being able to take a mortgage deduction on that last $10,000 borrowed for a home that cost $610,000.  Enjoy your lovely home.   Gonna tax you 39% of $400 this year you wouldn't have paid last year, or something. 


----

Then Ron Wyden was heard:  "Like Yogi Bear says, It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

Yeah.  He said Yogi Bear.  Not Berra.  I'd have thought it a slip but Wyden is pretty damn dumb throughout the interview.  Like a bag of hammers, he.

Readily Available

When something goes bad you have to address with what you have to hand.

"I really should have self defense ammo in this house gun for the 3AM home invasion, instead of ball ammo."

I've been thinking on this because of the video of that guy that stopped that church shooter in Texas.  He has to get his AR out of the safe.  Hearing the volume of fire he might have felt a rifle was necessary, and I agree.  You can hear the anguish in his voice that he had to dig it out of the safe.  That was precious time.

He probably had quicker access to a pistol?  His CCL weapon?  He is an NRA instructor in Texas, I bet he has that in a holster.

He also has kids to home, as the reporting mentioned a daughter, so he is thinking safe storage for sure.

Now all this got me thinking.  What is the gun/guns I have to hand?  Two revolvers, really.  A snubbie and a full sized.  J and L.  Flashlights and reloads.

Which is one of the reasons I have been looking at higher capacity 9mm pistols for a house gun.  Something that has a light rail.

But after Texas, thinking on a way to make an AR more accessible in an emergency, too. 

I flnch more

With the heavy 9mm than the lighter .45.  Gotta test that to confirm.  Wonder why that is?  I am confident it is fixable.

I like that.  "I am confident" that I can correct my flaw.  Been years since I could pretend that.

Working out the magazine failure on the 9.   Getting the hang of it.  Definite improvement and time for some gunsmith tuning soon.

Fundamentals:  Relax, front sight, make trigger go good.