Crack coverage of non-machine gun machine gun shooting in Baltimore

Two men were hospitalized Sunday and three faced charges after a birthday party in a downtown Baltimore hotel ended violently, with one partygoer shot with a semiautomatic pistol and the suspect allegedly disarmed and badly beaten by others in the crowd.

The Washington Post corrected their earlier article calling the weapon an "Uzi submachine gun;" FOX News didn't. One news site calls it a "TEC-9 Uzi submachine gun." Awesome reporting. The weapon turned out to be a semi-auto TEC-9.

There's not much to say about the shooting itself other than that this type of behavior is par for the course in Baltimore. There was a fist fight before the shooting started, but then things got ugly when the armed scumbag - on parole I might add - started shooting. The hotel allegedly was sending their finest security guards - unarmed no doubt - up to break up the fight before shots were fired.

There are some pretty retarded things said in this article at The Baltimore Sun.

At first, police thought the weapon was an Uzi submachine gun, which caused news of the shooting to spread widely online. The gun was later identified as a TEC-9, also known as a DC-9 - a semi-automatic "assault pistol" that can be converted by owners into an automatic weapon. It looks like a miniature submachine gun, and police described it Sunday as about a foot-and-a-half long. It is not on the legal handgun roster maintained by the Maryland State Police.

Would a 19 year old gang member have a gun on the handgun roster? Does he even know if such a silly roster exists? If he does, does anyone in the MSP honestly think he cares? Also, the weapon is not "easily converted . . .into an automatic weapon;" that's a lie. Wanna bet that if it was, the scumbag that owned it would have converted it? Why do you think that he didn't? Because it's illegal? The hilarity of these notions provide me with much entertainment, and are the reason I started this blog.

Next up, we have a glimmer of something resembling accurate information, but then it quickly gets mixed up with stupidity:

"They're out there, but they're not common," said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. "How does someone who's 19 years old end up with a semi-automatic pistol?"

Do Baltimore Police ponder at length about how scumbags get guns? Does officer Guglielmi think that because handgun ownership in Baltimore is practically illegal that it provides those with no care for the law some sort of barrier from buying a gun from a fellow scumbag? I do agree with him though that TEC-9s are not common, much to the surprise of the idiots who write TV shows. Why would anyone want to carry a heavy, inaccurate, clumsy weapon with crap ergonomics anyways? I mean, does anyone even make a holster for it? The shooter probably thought that this gun was cool because he saw it on an episode of CSI, or while playing Grand Theft Auto, or maybe because he read about how easily it is converted into an automatic weapon by some clueless reporter at The Baltimore Sun.

The part of the article that had me shaking my head was when Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. . .

". . railed in frustration against "idiots and morons" with guns they're ready to use in a fight. He declared that the police are doing what they can but said authorities need everyone in the city to "help us remove this scourge."

While I would initially side with him on the idiots and morons part, I can't help but point out that a scumbag on the streets of Baltimore would have to be an idiot or a moron to not be armed. Their profession, as misguided and immoral as it is, demands that they have capable weapons. The problem here is that there is an overwhelming population of scumbags in Baltimore, and disarming everyone else hasn't done anything to remedy that. How exactly is "everyone in the city" supposed to "help remove this scourge" when the bad guys have firearms and Baltimore residents do not? I thought the police had guns so that everyone else doesn't need them? So by your own admission, the police are doing "what they can", which isn't enough to stop a teenager from shooting up a birthday party. Remind me again why the citizens there continue to be disarmed by the BPD.

This last bit though crossed the line:

"This was not a random act of violence," Fowler said. "The incident says nothing about downtown. It says more about gun culture in our country and the need to lock people like this up."

There is no "gun culture" in Baltimore, and blaming this shooting on the tens of millions of non-violent firearms owners is offensive. That's just a pathetic excuse. What we are talking about here is the scumbag culture, which necessarily needs to be armed to survive, and much of the blame for this "scourge" lies with the failure of your department to catch them. A bonifide "gun culture" exists in my corner of this country, which is very close to yours, and there are not shootouts at birthday parties, and the crime rate is not seven times the national average. You can't throw a rock in a Wal-Mart here without hitting an armed citizen, and it's not at all unheard of to not have a single murder in this county in a years time. That you consider this type of violence the opposite of "random" is a problem of itself, and confirms why I do my best to avoid visiting any attractions in your city.

I'll take my gun culture over yours any day.

The worst part about this story is that two of the people at the birthday party took down the shooter, took away his weapon, and beat his face in with it - and guess who the BPD charges with attempted murder? There may be more to that story, and I'd like to hear it, but exactly what do you expect unarmed people to do to stop "the scourge" except take the gun away and beat the scumbag with it? Let him go again like you did? That didn't work out so well. Dare I excoriate these two on this blog for failing have their rat-tailed combs at the ready?

Landscaping becoming a dangerous career in North West DC

Nothing like the prospect of having your kids dig up a bottle of Lewisite in the back yard to drive property values up. If you're the kind of person who won't be digging around planting petunias in your backyard, I hear Spring Valley offers some lovely property!

Ahh, the sweet aroma of mustard. Just another reminder of all those days in the trenches in France. You can enjoy the privacy of 24/7 access to the conveniently located drop box at the investigation office trailer where you can anonymously drop off those old chemical mortar rounds that you hit with the lawnmower before heading off to work.

And personally, I prefer arsenic added to my drinking water to give it a bit of spiciness. Studies show that it helps with child development too! Perfect!

Seriously though, I understand that this massive government screwup happened like seventy something years ago, but I am stunned to believe that even back then people were so stupid as to randomly bury ordnance.

Dr. Vern - "Hey Bill, what the hell do we do with all these chemical warfare munitions? There's thousands of them!"

Agent Bill - "Man, I don't know. . . .that shit is super deadly. I don't want to touch em. Didga see what that stuff did to Bob? Melted his skin right to the bone!"

Dr. Vern - "I reckon the safe and responsible thing to do with them then is to go ahead and bury them in dozens of shallow unmarked pits."

Agent Bill - "Right! I'll cover them up with the ledgers as an added layer of protection; the American public shouldn't have to loose any sleep by knowing how much of this stuff we safely buried."

Dr. Vern - "Go ahead and throw in all those fragile glass beakers too! Might as well make those safe while we're at it!"

Agent Bill - "You're a genious Vern! Someday, many years from now, citizens of this city will thank us for our unbending commitment to providing safe government service by not gaffing off the disposal of all these deadly blister agent bombs! You can count on that!"

This sort of thinking seems to be rampant around the nation's capitol.

Carrying a concealed weapon can be a pain in the ass

This is just too funny to make up! Such a just life for a prison scumbag.

Be my bodyguard

So this My FOX DC piece on the uptick in female bodyguards seems pretty cool - I have no doubts that women bring some unique skill sets to the field - but for a good laugh, check out the video at the top.

I have no idea what school that is, or what their instructors smoke before getting started for a day of teaching, but there's some seriously silly stuff in there. My fav is the judo roll while in tiger stripe ghettoflage complete with tactical vest with empty pockets. I mean, when you "want protection without the obvious looming tall, hulking man standing next to them," there's nothing that says covert quite like a tactical vest and BDUs that came out of a bargain bin.

Who are they training to protect that would require highly trained stealth ninja operators? Swartzkoff? He had some real badasses, and even they didn't wear stupid vests with BDUs.

And how about that tactical assault balancing beam? Never know when you may have to shoot it out with the tangos while escorting Brittany across a treacherous log spanning a fast moving creek! It's like something out of Dora the Explorer.

Well hell, I might as well bury my plans on going to Gunsite since they don't offer balancing beams, ninja stuff, how to fight while climbing around in the rafters, big-guy-armed-with-m16-take-downs, and best of all - new and exciting ways to hold your chromed Beretta close to your face for that precision shot! I bet the Gunsite instructors would even laugh at my tiger stripe cammies or my use of a stripper pseudonym.

I see a pattern here

Everyone has heard about the scumbag who murdered four cops in Washington state, right? Well it seems that he was pardoned of a ton of crimes by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Way to go.

The thing that strikes me the most is that this guy has a past that is pockmarked with extreme violence, insanity, and sickness. At one point, the guy was serving almost fifty years while facing about one hundred and fifty more, but got paroled after only eleven. Why?

I understand that our justice system is designed to err on the side of caution, but dammit when you've got the right violent, delusional, kiddie raping degenerate in cuffs then fry his ass, or put him away for eternity if you don't have the stomach for it. Stop letting these people go so they can widow some poor cop's wife.

You would think this is common sense.

Sunday range report

I got to do some shooting at 350 yards today, and have pics to show for it.

My friend Aaron gave me a call last night asking for help finding a deer that he shot right before last light and couldn't find. He wanted to get at it when it got light out, and since I had been to this particular spot before and knew that there was about three hundred yards or so where we could shoot, I was more than happy to help.

Aaron is new to deer hunting with a rifle, but is an exceptional marksman. He said that the deer was at about three hundred yards judging with his well trained eye, about ten yards past an old telephone pole, and that he placed the crosshairs of the 12 power Leupold scope about an inch below the top of the deer's back and carefully pressed the trigger. We went to his exact spot and I lazed the telephone pole. . . 287 yards. Good eye.

He saw the deer bow up and disappear behind a hill before emerging about thirty seconds later and heading toward a tree line by the reservoir about four hundred yards to the right. There was a massive amount of blood where the deer was hit. Since blood tracking is hard in a grass field, we headed to the tree line to look for the deer's body, but did not find it after about two and a half hours. We headed back to the scene of the crime to try and track the blood, and ended up finding the deer about thirty yards from where it was hit. Unfortunately the deer had been eaten by a coyote, but we both felt relieved that we at least found it in the first place. Leaving a deer down in the woods somewhere is no good. The deer that Aaron saw running for the tree line was one that he hadn't seen and didn't know was there.

Anyways, after that we set up to shoot some cardboard that I had stapled to one inch pickets. We set one up at a hundred yards so I could verify my zero as I am using the Horus Hawk scope with a range compensating reticle; Aaron wanted to see how high his two hundred yard zero shot at one hundred. We also drove out to 350 yards and placed another target.

If you look close, you can see the long range target as a speck of cardboard on the hill to the right. The wind started to pick up from the South West, and we had a steady 5 mph wind with lots of gusts of up to 20 mph. Here's Aaron getting some work done with a Remington 700 Sendero in .270 Winchester on the one hundred yard target:

I also got some more through the reticle pics with the Horus H-425 ranging reticle:

The last one is more of what I see when I'm looking through it, as far as the size of the crosshairs. The clarity of the scope is way better than what you see here; the crappy Canon camera that I'm using can't focus correctly.

My groups ran about MOA at this range, with the horizontal spread much more than the vertical, which isn't terrible considering the wind. Aaron's rifle did better than mine once he stopped using no name handloads. The 130 grain Winchester Supremes shot into MOA or less with three shot groups. Neither one of us were pursuing bughole groups today, but were trying to get data points for shooting critters at distance. From the start, I ran into the bipod bouncing issue, so I took them off. The rest of the time we shot off of sandbags from the inside of the bed of a truck, which worked well. The bipods jacked up a perfectly good group from the 175 grain Federal Gold Medal Match rounds, stretching the group out vertically to .916 with the horizontal spread at .270. I will duplicate those rounds soon with some handloads.

Overall we both had a blast. Shooting at range is fun, and I can't wait until we get to stretch the range out to over five hundred yards or more.

Vetting The Military Channel

I just got done watching Ultimate Weapons on The Military Channel, and I have to say that this show was worse than most of their other ones. I love watching the channel, really, but so do millions of other people, most of whom are not military, and the amount of errors that this channel racks up is just ridiculous.

The first thing that I noticed was the suppressor noise from the rifle that made number ten, ***spoiler alert*** the M110 SASS. They had to do it, just had to add that "pfft" noise over the normal sound of the rifle. Not only that, they sometimes switched to the James Bond type "fweeep" noise instead of the "pfft" noise, and then sometimes they forgot to add it in altogether. Why go out of your way to be retarded? Why not just let the viewers hear what a suppressor really sounds like? Leave the fake special effects to Hollywood.

Also, they note that the M110 was developed by Eugene Stoner because the military needed a "7.62" round - which is captioned by the 7.62x39mm Russian round - so he up sized the M16. Eugene Stoner did not design the M110, because he was dead like ten years before it was designed. What they meant to say was that he designed the "7.62" AR-10 before he designed the AR-15 which fires the 5.56 NATO. Also, it's humorous that they distinguish Stoner as designing the M110 when they interview Reed Knight about the weapon.

Next, they highlight the Marine Corps M40A3 sniper rifle, but say it shoots the 6.5x47mm Lapua cartridge, and show it as having the Accuracy International folding stock.

Lastly, I'd like to poke fun at their rating system. The Accuracy International AS50 gets a full five points for being portable because it can be broken down in order for its tremendous size to be carried, and weighs 31 lbs according to the show, but a 16 lb bolt gun only gets three points despite it not needing to be carried in several pieces on the battlefield.

One would think that the show could fix these errors before viewing, especially since they have people like Ronnie Barret talk over several of his guns which made the show.

Hey Military Channel, how about a little accuracy?

What are the troops up to?

There's not a whole lot of stuff to blog about in the news today, so I encourage you to head on over to MilitaryPhotos.net to see what our Marines and Soldiers did for Thanksgiving.

Chicagoans gave robbers what they wanted

. . .and it didn't turn out so well for them. Fortunately, all the victims are going to be alright.

Cabbie discrimination

I saw this on FOX5 Washington DC last night, and decided to pick it up this morning.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - When you stick your hand out, you expect the cab to stop. But there’s a certain type of guy out there who feels like he’s always getting passed by.

So DC cabbies are biased; that's the gist of the story. Not surprisingly, black DC residents are pissed:

“I get upset when they don’t stop, but then, it’s hard to take a taxi when you’re black,” says Craig Brown from Southeast Washington.

Says the man from one of the most violent places in the country. More on that in a minute.

“It’s too hard to get a cab in D.C. because D.C. is biased,” says Man Thomas from Northeast D.C.

A growing number of black men in the District say an age-old problem is getting worse.

"You'll flag down and they go past you,” Brown says. “Then they'll stop down the street for a white person."

Now that we have the meat and potatoes out there, I wanted to point out something. FOX News sent two of their folk - one black guy and one white dude - out into the streets of Washington to find out if it's true. And what did they find? That cabbies do indeed pass the black guy in favor of the white guy.

To this I have to say. . . .Duh!!

Now, I'm no bigot, but I have to call foul here. FOX did allow this one teensy weensy little thing in there when they asked the cabbies why they favor white fares:

Price is the Chairman of the D.C. Professional Taxicab Drivers Association. He says many taxi drivers do discriminate because they’ve told him they’re afraid of being robbed.

If FOX News was really fair and balanced, they would not have ignored the elephant in the room. What do black men have to do with cabbies being afraid of getting robbed? Why are they making that sort of connection? The fact is that there are almost twice as many violent black felons than violent white felons, and there are a bonafide twice as many black murderers as white murderers in the US prison system, judging from data from 1990 - 2002. A group of people who make up 13 percent of the population committed 41 percent of the violent crime in that period, and 54 percent of the robberies.

So cabbies find that driving past a "certain type of guy" in the 54 percent category to pick up a white guy in the 17 percent category means better odds of not getting robbed? Simple math says that their odds of living through the day improve with this behavior, as horrible as that may sound.

Why has this not been addressed, and why is this not something that is being fixed?

It's a shame that cabbies are discriminating, and I'm not saying it's right, but I am saying that they shouldn't be getting the brunt of the anger when nobody has addressed the real problem: why is the violent crime rate so high amongst young, black males, and how can this be changed?

There has been pressure to make cabbies not discriminate with training, sting operations and the like - but it's not hard to point out that that could cause unintended consequences.

Cabbies don't wake up in the morning and decide "Gee, I feel like a racist today. I think I'll piss off the black folk because I'm such a hater." They also don't wake up one day and realize that what they do can get them hurt or killed. Maybe they have developed this dirty habit because they have been perpetually robbed by "a certain type of guy" who fits into a certain type of demographic that nobody wants to address because it's too hard. Perhaps someone at FOX News should survey cabbies to find out the demographics of the perpetrators who have robbed cab drivers. Perhaps someone at FOX News should cast a light on a root problem that is causing cab drivers to racially discriminate. That will add some weight to the other side of this story.

I would be buying metal things too, but doors would not be one of them

Burglars go to the front door and boldly announce the crime. It's happened three times in the city in the last week-- twice just doors away from Nathan Humphrey and his family's home.

"When they don't get a response, they kick in the door. They went upstairs and yelled, 'Burglary alert!'" said Nathan Humphrey as he explained one incident.

And why shouldn't they be bold? These homes are soft targets, and there is little to no resistance inside.

So tell me something: if society is so sophisticated that we allow good citizens in a city to be almost completely disarmed, than why do we still have violent scumbags effortlessly taking property away from citizens using boxcutters? I thought we had learned our lesson after 9/11. And why do children have to shoulder the burden of this stupidity? I guess America is not as enlightened as once thought, huh?

I again emphasize that merely having the means will not prevent attacks like this. There has to be a mindset, and unfortunately the victim mentality has been well planned and executed in DC:

"It's very bold. It's just bold. I want to know that something is being done about it. There is obviously an uptick in crime and I want to see a stop to it," said Tran, a resident in Takoma D.C

****

"To be violated in your community is awful thing. To be violated in your home where you should be more safe, there is no way to describe it," said Tran.

Tran sounds like a good person, but I doubt she will take any responsibility for providing protection for herself and her family. Despite police patrolling and "aggressively identifying," the threat continues; and a metal door will only means the scumbag will have to kick it twice before it folds.

Gun control in Chicago

Steve Chapman at Reason.com casts a light on the hypocrisy of Chicago politicians and their insistence of disarming everyone but themselves.

An enlightening and quick read.

Thank goodness nobody was armed

NEW YORK — A subway passenger was stabbed to death in front of horrified riders in a dispute with another man over a seat in the car early Saturday morning in midtown Manhattan, police said.

So by all accounts, the many citizens on the train just stood there while one of their own was brutally and systematically murdered. No resistance? Nothing? Some would draw the conclusion that all of those New Yorkers did not have the most effective means to resist; indeed I came to that same conclusion myself, but this shouldn't distract from the simple fact that those people probably wouldn't have tried to help regardless of whether they had the means.

These days, I am under the firm belief that large metropolitan cities emasculate the population as a general course of business. An intimidated and meek population is needed to live in such areas. Some of you that live in large cities that chance upon this blog will probably roll your eyes and shake your head in disagreement, but of all the large, densely populated rural areas that I have been to, including the one I live in now, virtually all of them share one thing in common: the citizens are largely self sufficient and independent. By that I don't mean that people live with some sort of isolationist attitude, sitting in their houses with their double barrel shotgun and talking about country boys and trot lines; I'm talking about people who take providing for and protecting their communities seriously.

In living in coastal California some years back, I got the impression that people there think that providing for their community meant paying taxes for emergency type services; that protecting their neighbors meant putting a "I support xxxxx sheriff's office" sticker on their bumper, and that volunteering to work for the day at a soup kitchen every few years was all that was needed to show support for their fellow man. Around here, folks take community protection as a personal responsibility, as they always have. I have no doubts that the general Wal-Mart population here wouldn't stand by while some scumbag murders a fellow citizen. There may not be a good guy with a gun, although that is likely, but you can bet that those who are physically able to will dogpile the degenerate in question, if not forcefully dismember him with a pocket knife. And that is why I believe that violent crime here is remarkably rare, while violent crime in large cities is accepted.

It's not the guns, it's the attitude. The guns are just tools of the citizen.

Assault style excavators

Shouldn't there be some sort of registry or something to prevent excavator terrorism? Who would say that this isn't just plain ol' common sense?

Whore d'oeuvres

The ideological insanity that is the climate change argument has long since gone off the tracks, but I found this to be just hilarious:

The effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines into dangerous work, and sometimes even the flesh trade, a United Nations official said.

The "flesh trade?" That's where you're going with this? This UN guy sounds pretty creepy; definitely the guy that sits in the cubicle down the hall that everyone thinks is a pedophile.

This whole article is chock full of contradictions and wild speculation. My intent of pointing out this article, which I found on Drudge, is that the climate change people have gone absolutely out of their minds with this stuff, and have resorted to just saying random-assed crazy things to get people to buy into it. If I were trying to convince a group of people that my brand of Koolaid is the brand to buy, I sure wouldn't be telling them about how the recipe was delivered to me by piebald alien gnomes it while wearing a lampshade on my head because everyone would think I was nuts.

"Aside from their household chores and participation in fishing activity, they have to find additional sources of income like working as domestic helpers in affluent families," she said.

So if I'm reading this right, climate change -- the earth heating, cooling, or not at all, whatever it's not important -- is impacting the harvest of coastal resources, so in turn women are going to the coast in droves to help collect shellfish that are no longer there so their family can make a living, and, not finding these shellfish, or just giving up because collecting these non-existent shellfish is so exhausting, instead resort to humping HIV riddled "transient seafarers" that live on cargo ships and come from affluent families. Gotcha. It's so obvious now.

So why are we not doing our part to stop prostitution? Disregard the part about brothels popping up along the coast as a normal part of the economic equation in the Philippines, as poorer countries are not at all known for this sort of thing. We're talking about HIV, women forced, FORCED into the "flesh trade" by global warming/cooling, and human rights. Something must be done. Just check out their list of stuff that you can do! Here's an example:

Prioritize research and date collection to improve the understanding of gender and population dynamics in climate change mitigation and adaptation;

What does that even mean? Date collection is the responsibility of all of us? OK then! Do your part!

Rule number four applies to poachers too

What a tragedy.

I have always wondered how someone could mistake a human for a deer. Seems to me that if your sense of perception is that skewed, than you have a responsibility to pick something different to do with your time.

I've been in the woods hunting before and seen kids, teens, dogs, and what not flash by, but never did I think about shooting at them. When it comes to the whitetailed deer, hunters are usually keen to pick up on the subtle white flashes of their tail, or the white insides of their ears. A child or such running through brush with a white T-shirt, or a biology student with a white hat slowly looking for frogs will no doubt attract the attention of a hunter for a moment, but you have to be sure of your target and what is beyond it. People look totally different than animals, so there is no excuse for this guy.

Now before the animal activists start throwing rocks at hunters, be advised that there are tens of thousands of hunters in the woods in those parts, and accidents and deaths are rare. One moron doesn't represent the millions of responsible hunters that are in the woods right now.

Dude, you might just want to change your name

Both arrests referred to in the lawsuit occurred when police were really looking for Rodney Lee Morton, a local man with a long criminal record.

Rodney Maurice Morton works for a national security agency of the federal government, has a security clearance and no criminal record, court records state.

On Dec. 4, 2007, Morton was arrested in Fredericksburg on an assault charge.

Read the rest.

It's pretty unfortunate that all the screwups have led to this much damage to this guy's life. While I'm not defending the problems within the various counties that have cause havoc to this man, if I were him I would seriously consider a name change or something. At this point it has to be better than to be perpetually arrested because various locales can't get their shit together and catch a lowlife scumbag.

This has to suck.

A case for suppressor ownership

It was not these private individuals but rather law enforcement groups--sometimes using automatic weapons--that concerned neighbors.

A shooting range built for youth to be able to shoot skeet is getting bad press because cops are firing automatic weapons. That's about the gist of the article. I would be willing to bet that the machine gun fire is rare, but the neighbors' real complaint lies with all the .223 Remington madness that gets fired from AR type semi-auto rifles. Fair enough.

How about a push for taking suppressors out of the NFA? That would settle the problem pretty quickly, don't you think? It would also prevent hearing loss.

Safety first, I always say.

Gun Ownership Reform

So if health insurance is supposedly required of every American, why not firearms ownership?

A responsibility to be healthy and a responsibility to be able to protect yourself. I dig it!

Armed defense against machinegun toting pirates?

Blasphemy you say?

Try again.

Light those bastards up!!!

No more Microsoft for me, thanks

So this is the first time in over a week that I've been able to log into my blogger account. My last running PC at home wouldn't let me log into anything anymore: yahoo, blogger, my bank account - and so I finally lost my temper.

That computer, as well as an older PC that used to run Windows before it started having problems, got Space Maced.



Click on it to see the whole thing.

Feel my wrath bitches!!!

The last piece of electronic garbage that got the Space Mace treatment was an X-Box that I had years ago. Yet another one of Microsoft's shit products. Too bad the Space Mace didn't make it through this one, but I doubt I will ever need it again. There are no more Microsoft purchases in my future considering that I've been through like five computers in the last three years. Not good investments.

I have spent the week backing up my work computer so that I could recover the damn thing yesterday in what was the last attempt to get rid of malware. Not really sure why we bother paying for Norton. It worked, but I've got a ways to go before I will be up to speed, and even as I write this I'm having problems posting images from Photobucket on this post (notice I can't re-size the picture), as well as getting the Windows pop-ups telling me to restart my computer. I just fired the thing up ten minutes ago. I mean, the thing is basically factory new and I'm already fighting with it.

I am now looking for a computer that will last me a minimum of five years with minimal maintenance, that will let me websurf, blog, do Movie Guns posts, check my bank account, save pictures, and print up range cards. That's all I'm going to ask of it, and Windows shit is obviously not fucking capable of fulfilling my requirements. You guys working there should be ashamed.

When I was in the construction biz, I prided myself on building stuff that would last lifetimes, and I never got called back to fix what I had done. I built it right from the start because I'm not a douchebag. I had a two year old Gateway running Vista and I had to fight the thing to check my Yahoo account. The servers at work are running Windows and it's everything anyone can do to print something or receive an email. Microsoft people build shit products that don't last, and you guys suck for using your clever marketing to basically paint the entire market into a corner and give consumers the option of only buying your stuff and live a life of frustrating hell.

I'm not sure how good Mac stuff is, but I'm going to try it. Friends and family have mentioned that I don't want Mac products because all of the latest and greatest sexy software and games won't work with it, and I'll have problems hooking up multiple printers and stuff. Well, I've got multiple printers hooked up to my work laptop, and I can't print more times than I can. And I don't want to have to buy new software every fucking month just to maintain some sort of cool status with my friends. I might buy a program once every three years, and when I do drop $100 on it I sure as hell don't want it in obsolescence within six months to where I have to spend $120 more dollars on some service pack upgrade just to keep it working with Windows latest bi-annual OS release, or fix all the bugs just to make it run. From what I've seen of ITunes, they are suffering from the same problems. And while we're on the subject, condoning the use of this stuff because "well, everyone else is using it", or "you just have to learn to mess with it until it works" makes you complicit in this little goatrope. You should be ashamed too.

So I will be shopping for something right after the new year as right now I am committed to fixing my wife's brand new Asus laptop that I bought her in April of this year. Yes, fixing it. Shitty piece of Windows Vista shit.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Big boomers

No, not the dreaded five pound revolvers that make the Violence Policy Center pee in terror, but the really cool substances that combine to make tannerite.


To watch the videos, you're going to have to clicky the linky as Photobucket sucks pretty horribly.

http://s259.photobucket.com/albums/hh284/CTone03/Shooting/?action=view&current=MVI_0259.flv

http://s259.photobucket.com/albums/hh284/CTone03/Shooting/?action=view&current=MVI_0265.flv


Fun stuff!!

Mix it together and shoot it with a rifle. That's it. The neighbors didn't even call the po-po this time, which is odd since they call them on us for shooting all the time. This being rural Virginia, there's nothing that can be done as we are legal beagles. Private property can be a bitch.

Afterwords I fired off about fifty of my zombie rounds to see if they still sucked as bad as I remembered, and they did. Groups were about three inches at 121 yards, which will work just fine for the zombie apocalypse, and served us well being minute of tannerite jar. I do have some well made 52 grain Sierra Match King rounds that will shoot five rounds into a half an inch at 100 yards, but I didn't bring them.

I'm still having various technical difficulties with an array of shitty computers. Yesterday I tried to run a DVD on this very computer because I had a couple of hours to capture some frames on the big ass monitor, but alas, the DVD player is dead. I am trying folks, but PCs and me do not mix well. After Christmas I am going to have to get this one fixed so I can start cranking out Movie Guns posts again.

Technical difficulties

My wife's laptop is down, my laptop is down, my work laptop is down, but my home PC is running. . . barely. I did manage to get the big ass monitor fixed though, by soldering a new capacitor on the power supply. When I have time, I'll give a shout out to the guy who posted directions on the internet. Right now I'm at the Nissan dealership blogging on my blackberry because the starter on my truck let go this morning. I'm pretty tired of shit breaking all the time. Whatever happened to people building stuff that lasts?

Kinda interested to see where this is going

University spokesman Mark Owczarski says the school's president and about a dozen administrators had a teleconference with miltitary officials Friday.

He says Pentagon officials asked for guidance on how to respond to the shooting spree at the Texas military base. The discussion ranged from how to help victims' families to accommodating large numbers of news media.

Well, Virginia Tech would be the ones to ask. Unfortunately, the yahoos at the head shed in Fort Hood would have been better off calling VT a month ago and asking what sort of policies encourage this type of behaviour so that it can be fixed. Why nobody thought of asking that is the question of the day.

Now, Lt General Cone made the remark the other day that "we don't go armed around here," which I thought was not only laughable from a sheer nonsensical standpoint, but also rather dangerous. Tam at View From The Porch sums it up better than anyone can, and I'll quote this piece as it's spot on:

"I know Texans on the internets are always bragging about how it's legal for them to shoot someone stealing their hubcaps after dark, so I'm pretty sure a guy Allahu Akhbar-ing his way through a hospital waiting room gets the green light in the target selection sweepstakes. If they had been allowed to carry their damn guns, maybe somebody could have smoked Hasan before he rolled up a body count like an NCAA basketball score. Even the most ardent gun banners are always shooting off at the mouth about how "only the police and the military are qualified to carry guns" so how come they were unarmed and defenseless by edict here?"

That my friends, is perfection.

I have been on more military bases than I care to -- both on active duty and as a civilian -- and it has always grated on me that I have been deemed too untrustworthy to carry a sidearm while on a base in the US. I have been trusted to carry an automatic weapon on a post overseas, so why not here? Policies that disarm are disgusting enough, but disarming our Soldiers and Marines at home is pathetic.

People lauded the Soldiers at Fort Hood for stepping up in the face of the massacre, helping one another, passing on medical treatment in the hospital to allow a more severely injured Soldier to get treatment instead, and overall for just doing what Soldiers do. It is remarkable, but what is not being said is that this is not something they do just because something bad happens, it's what they do 24/7. These same remarkable Soldiers are also thought of as too untrustworthy to be armed if they want to?

There needs to be change.

That's some serious incompetence

Dude, how screwed up do these two lions have to be to not be able to catch a deer inside of their confinement zone?

I guess captivity has a way with animals. Funny thing is that I watched Madagascar with my kids this weekend.

Some thoughts

Everybody is talking about the tragedy on Ft Hood, and there are a few things I'd like to point out that I haven't seen mentioned.

First is that the public at large is entirely clueless as to how military bases work in regards to weapons possession. Despite what you may think, these bases are "Gun Free Zones" in every sense of the term. A news anchor asked a Senator or Congressman yesterday if all Soldiers just walked around armed, and was under the impression that that is policy. To clear things up, weapons are stored in armories that are very much secure, and ammunition is stored in fortified bunkers at a different location on the base. Personnel, which includes active duty uniformed individuals stationed on the base, are not allowed to carry any weapon -- personal or government owned -- on base in any way they please. The only time Soldiers or Marines will be wandering around with weapons is during training.

I stress though, that this policy will not stop a shooter from buying ammo at Wal-Mart, loading up their personal weapon, and bringing it on the base. To think so is fantasy.

If you live in base housing, sometimes you are allowed to register personal weapons with the base Provost Marshal's office and keep them in your residence, but I don't believe that every base allows this. If you live in the barracks, personal weapons must be stored in the armory, and cannot be carried about freely on post. There are procedures and regulations for bringing firearms onto base for shooting events or hunting, but again, the gun(s) cannot be carried around freely.

I'm not advocating these rules, mind you. It's just the way it is. I have engaged in conversation with many people over the years who defend these rules because, it is argued, that Soldiers or Marines cannot be trusted with firearms. Firefights will break out at the drop of a hat, and there will be negligent discharges every day in the chow halls. To anyone who has spent any time in combat, these arguments are largely false.

On forward operating bases (FOBs), civilian contractors and military personnel alike are armed and in possession of ammunition at all times, and shootings --negligent or intentional -- are rare. There is a high level of stress, exhaustion, and complacency on FOBs, and while many have seen some dumbass officer fire a live round into the clearing barrel at the chow hall, NDs are not an every day occurrence. The main thing missing from a FOB that would be present on a mainside post would be alcohol, and that would no doubt cause problems. I am convinced it is an American issue. Americans are stupid when it comes to the drink, but there are other nations that do not share in our stupidity. Alcohol is a constant safety issue on bases despite the weapons policy, and our culture is to blame for it.

For those who do not understand what a readiness center is, let me fill you in. These are large buildings that usually have some sort of gymnasium or other open space in them. Soldiers, Marines, and personnel are jammed into these buildings by the hundreds in order to do all of the administrative stuff that they need to complete before heading overseas into combat, or coming back from combat. There are processing stations/booths set up for all sorts of things, like, for instance, a dental booth where a Soldier's dental records will be looked at to see if their fangs are in good enough shape to not cause any problems while they kill people in a foreign land. There will be a station where medical records will be checked and shots will be given. The chaplain station will be where a Soldier can express their concerns about Susie cheating on them in their absence, and the legal station is where your will and power of attorney will be closely monitored to make sure the stripper that you just married will be able to access every dime you make while at war. Personnel going through this hell are stacked ass to nuts in a maze of hallways while they wait for their chance to get to the open area where all the stations are. These are not nice places to be to begin with. To be gunned down in one by a scumbag wannabe hajji is the epitome of shitty.

Now you know.

For closure, if you think that the weapons policy on bases will stop a killer, just look at the news this morning. It doesn't. I am not under the belief that my fellow man cannot be trusted with a personal weapon at all times. To have been where I have been, with every swinging dick on a FOB tired, pissed off, dirty, stressed beyond all belief, and homesick after a day of being shot at; armed with automatic weapons, handguns and live ammunition; heading into a long line of people that are waiting to get into the chow hall, with nothing eventful happening day after day - tends to make me think that it's no big deal to let them keep arms on a mainside base if they want to. The alcohol thing would have to be looked into, but it could be done, and events like mass shootings would be far less painful.

The new 90%

Here again, the ATF is talking about the number of guns confiscated in Mexico from the cartels, and how many of them are traced to the US. Originally the press had touted the 90% of guns canard, until it was pointed out to them that that was not so.

Now the ATF is at least being a little more clear by emphasizing that the percentage is a result of the number of guns submitted for trace by Mexico, and not by the amount confiscated. There's a huge difference.

So the story is still "about 90%", which is just what the press is going to state over and over again anyways. My concerns are not just with the amount of guns now being stopped at the border that would have gone to the cartels -- I mean, buying up rifles and sending them south has got to be jacking up the prices here in the states; I would rather some productive citizen get one vice some dirty thug -- but also to the amount of illegal firepower being carried from Mexico into the US for nefarious purposes. I'm worried the focus of the ATF may be to only Mexico's advantage, and not enough of our own.

It's not too far of a stretch to think that if these guys are brazen enough to engage the Mexican army in an open shooting war on some idle Tuesday, that they would be just as brazen to cross into the US and shoot it out with some of our guys. Some ATF and Border Patrol agents may not mind a little action, but my concern also extends to some poor rancher or land owner who may run across some of these crazies.

So I guess my question is whether or not we're stopping any of this mess from coming North?

I would also like to point out that the picture in this article of the agent "inspect[ing] a 50(sic) caliber rifle", that he is actually inspecting an AK type weapon. And yes, I do see the buttstock of what looks like may be a .50, but still, the caption is wrong.

Don't inject me bro!!

Funny, I don't recall Dean Meyers getting to ask for a reprieve from his execution.

Perhaps James Martin, Sonny Buchanan, Premkumar Walekar, Sarah Ramos, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, Pascal Charlot, Kenneth Bridges, Linda Franklin, and Conrad Johnson should have pleaded for clemency from their executioner by any means necessary; maybe by saying that they were too mentally ill to receive a fatal bullet.

I get the anti-death sentence arguments. I really do, and I agree with them 99%. This, however, if carried out, will be righteous justice.

Using children as a shield

The 2nd Amendment Foundation, the National Rifle Association, and The Pink Pistols are getting their activism on by challenging a gun ban by the city of Seattle.

Good on them.

The city is taking the line that their ban, which is against state law, is still legal because they say it is. As for some of the reasons Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is citing for keeping the ban, we have these gems:

In June, a group of teen boys flashed a gun at several girls outside of the Alki Community Center. - In 2004, a woman was shot dead at a Red Cross shelter set up in the Miller Community Center on Capitol Hill. - Last year a man pulled out a gun at the Folklife Festival at the Seattle Center. Three people were injured when he opened fire.

Let me break this down to show you how jacked up the mayor's logic is with these examples.

In the first one, we have a group of teen boys committing a crime by first having the gun to begin with, and then by flashing or brandishing the thing. So they committed two crimes, but by the mayor's account they would be deterred by a law that says they couldn't bring the gun that they illegally possess to the Community Center to start with, and so logically they wouldn't also commit a crime by brandishing it there because it's already illegal. What they did was illegal without the gun ban in place, but Nickels wants to make it super illegal to keep kids safe. Common sense, right?

Next example has a woman murdered outside a shelter. She was presumably gunned down by some scumbag who no doubt would have just stayed at home if he knew that carrying his gun outside the shelter would be illegal. "Damn! You mean it's illegal to carry my weapon there? I guess I won't be killing anyone today! Gun Free Zone!!! Not Again!!"

And last, there's no telling what to think of this example. If the guy just pulled a gun at random and started shooting, then that's illegal without the ban. Nickels is saying that with the ban in place, the guy wouldn't have shown up to begin with. Sounds absurd to me.

Nickels is using kids as a shield for his illegal gun ban. There is no dispute in this article that the ban runs counter to state law, and the "common sense" logic that is used, as well as the examples given, noticeably lack anything that resembles sense. Gun bans don't stop killers from killing, and they don't stop scumbags from being scumbags. They do keep law abiding citizens away, which in my experience with state and national parks is really the entire goal anyways.

Concealed carry madness!

I'm all about carrying concealed, but come on, who really needs to carry fourteen pythons?

Range Report

So, I got in my order from MidwayUSA containing a beautiful new Streamlight TRL-1 light for my Kimber, as well as a box of 175grain Federal Gold Medal Match.

Last week I outshot the 168gr FGMM rounds at 285 yards with my handloads, but I wanted to see if my barrel likes 175 grain rounds. I originally thought my barrel was a 1:10 inch twist, but a quick check shows it to be a 1:12, so in theory it should favor bullets in the 155 - 168 grain range. It seems to be a pretty fast barrel, so I figured what the hell.

My results were astonishing to say the least. The range was 100 yards on private property. I started out by shooting five rounds of my handloads to warm and foul the barrel, and then followed up with a 5-shot group of the 168gr FGMM after a minute or two to allow the barrel to cool. That last part is pretty pointless since it takes about twenty rounds to get the 20" Fulton Armory Titan barrel to get warm. After about five minutes, I touched off five rounds of the 175gr FGMM, and couldn't believe my eyes:


The top group is the 168 grain FGMM, which measures 1.142" center to center. The flyer in the center diamond was my last shot. Out of those five rounds, I had three blown primers, as well as some really obvious extractor wipe on the case heads. The fourth round was one that blew a primer, which caused a jam. I had to loose my cheekweld while I dealt with the jam, and I attribute my group growing from .586" CTC to the 1.142" group to that loose primer keeping the bolt from closing. Now we know why the military insists on crimped primers.

As for the bottom target, the one shot hole at 9 o'clock just outside of the orange is from a Browning BAR in .300 Winchester Magnum, and is not from my DPMS LR-308. That .331" group by the calipers is five rounds of the 175 grain FGMM that I got from MidwayUSA. It could be a fluke group, as things like that are relatively common. However, I have never had that happen on the first string. Unfortunately, I didn't get to print another group of those as I didn't have any more time. I will buy some more and give them another shot in the near future. You can count on that.

When stuff warms up in the spring, I'm gonna do my best to duplicate those 175 grain rounds. I didn't shoot them over the chronograph, but will when I get some time.

Open carry righteousness

I love open carry. I could care less about whether or not it gives up some sort of advantage over concealment; whether it scares people, or whether it is smart or not. Open carry is comfortable.

In Virginia it's pretty common, and is probably the best example of any state on how it's not a big deal. There is more to it than that, and SailorCurt runs it aground with this post on a comment that he made on the subject. It's a quick read that fleshes out precisely how I feel about the rest.

That's common sense violence prevention!

So a DC citizen is enjoying a drink at a bar, and a fight breaks out resulting in the citizen getting stabbed. Unfortunate? Yes, but how do you prevent scumbags from stabbing citizens in the future?

If you said "Shut down the bar!" then you need to either run for office in DC, or join the metro PD.

Seriously, who's side are these clueless bureaucrats on? This retarded way of "protecting the public" is so breathtakingly stupid it makes my head spin. Let's not protect DC residents by locking up violent scumbags, let's punish the bar owner.

Because banning dead end streets, bars, high school football, and pizza shops will surely do the trick this time.

There's no way that this is even legal. It can't be. Why oh why we stopped dragging morons like Lanier, Norton, and Graham out into the street for a good ol' fashioned tarring and feathering is the question of the day. It makes me wish they would do something not quite as destructive of society, like putting up crime cameras or something.

New gun owners in Chicago

I'm not sure of the legalities of Chicago gun ownership beyond the fact that it's harder to buy or own them there than in most other cities, but good on Chicago women looking for ways to protect themselves.

Shootout with store owner

In Ohio.

The video is way more clear than most security camera footage. The store owner got shot in the process, but his wound is not life threatening.

I can't see how he could have missed the scumbags at such a close range. Maybe he didn't fire. One things for sure, those two morons ran like hell when they realised that they weren't going to get the money without a fight.

GUARDIAN angel

CNN) -- An off-duty security guard Tuesday fatally shot a psychiatric patient who had stabbed a doctor at a medical building in Boston, Massachusetts, police said.

It is a good thing he was there, armed, and able to stop the threat. Still, this being Boston we're talking about, and also being in a hospital which is no doubt a victim disarmament zone, one has to wonder how much more out of hand things would have gotten if there wasn't an armed person in the building. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to have armed good guys around considering how easily a crazy person can do harm with whatever is at hand.

Oh I know, I know. He was a SECURITY GUARD, with special SECURITY GUARD skills. This SECURITY GUARD was OFF-DUTY. I'm sure he even had a badge of some type that credentials his GUARD skills and appeases the ever fearful mind of the quivering masses. A citizen can't possess the special powers needed to determine whether or not to shoot a man who just stabbed a doctor with a knife unless they have some sort of uniform or shiny thing to display to unarmed folk:

The security guard interceded, revealing a weapon and ordering the patient to drop a knife, Davis said.

"When the suspect did not comply, he shot the suspect," Davis said.

Well, that sounds difficult, doesn't it? How can you or I ever hope to make a split decision like that without the "gun going off?" If this were a case of citizen intervention, no doubt it would be publicly noted by the local police chief/appointed bureaucrat how unwise it is to attempt to stop a madman because he will simply take your gun away and use it against you.

On another note, it is believed that the SECURITY GUARD didn't manage to kill fellow citizens in road ragey madness while on the way to the hospital because he was a SECURITY GUARD. It solves the problem. Also, because he was a SECURITY GUARD, the potential victims that were no doubt saved by his actions are happy that he intervened for their defenseless asses:

"We're happy he was here," she said about the guard, who was taken to Boston police headquarters for questioning.

Who knows how pissed off these people would have been had the guy not been a SECURITY GUARD with the skills that kills and pays the bills.

The lesson to take away from this article is that if you're ever involved in a shooting, especially one that saves a ton of lives, make sure that you shout out to all the citizens around you that you're an OFF-DUTY SECURITY GUARD so that their mind is put at ease. The press will quickly show up and make it official record -- mentioning nine times on the page -- what your confessed profession is, and then all will be good.

Kalashnikov has regrets

"It is painful for me to see when criminal elements of all kinds fire from my weapon," Mikhail Kalashnikov said in a videotaped address to a conference of Russian arms traders and designers at a top-secret Soviet-era arms testing facility outside Moscow.

Hard feelings Mr. Kalashnikov? Well, the alternative is that criminal elements could go back to using edged weapons. That seems way more civilized.

Unfortunately, I am just finding out about the gas powered rifle that Kalashnikov built:

Designed just after World War Two to work in the harsh conditions in which Soviet troops operate, the gas-powered Kalashnikov, which is cheap to build and easy to maintain, became one of the most successful weapons ever produced.

Who knew? I bet those are collectors items which will no doubt go up in value after Cap & Trade gets passed! In other news, it seems that Russia really didn't sell off millions of AKs after the Soviet Union fell:

Anatoly Isaikin, the chief of the arms trading monopoly Rosoboronexport, said counterfeit Kalashnikovs "tarnish the brand because these weapons are sold in conflict regions."

Whew! At least none of those Russian AKs were sold across the globe to nasty countries only to be used in genocide or anything. We all know now that Russia kept it's massive weapons stockpiles under lock & key the whole time. And knowing is half the battle!

This last bit has me thinking:

"We first need to create a civilized Kalashnikov market. Only then can we boost the price," Grodetsky sighed.

I know of a very civilized country that is chock full of good hearted folks who would love to have a Kalashnikov rifle of their very own. Too bad said country has a government agency that arbitrarily blocks their import. What to do, what to do.

Found at Hot Air.

Oh, is that what it is?

I was a little confused. I thought that people like myself were turning to FOX News because they seem to be the only network actually covering stuff these days, instead of sucking up to The One's loins.

When news events are not being intensely followed, CNN executives acknowledge, viewers seem to be looking for partisan views more than objective coverage.

Objective. It seems that CNN, as well as other networks like NBC, MSNBC, ABC, interprets that word different than I do.

Objective:

5. not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: an objective opinion.

This is what I've always thought when I consider what objective means, but there is another meaning:

4. being the object or goal of one's efforts or actions.

The object or goal of these networks of course being to make The One seem majestical, and not hold him accountable for anything.

I'm not overly fond of FOX News either, as they can get their stupid on just like the rest of em', but the blatant BS being put up by other news agencies is just startling. If only they could see the forest from all the trees.

Found via Drudge.

Delicious self defense

Gunblogger style!

(H/T SayUncle)

Range Report

Today I took off to try to shoot something beyond 100 yards. A friend had invited me to shoot long range - 800+ yards - but a combination of rain, kids, and pumpkin patches cut that off. I made a hell of an effort to get all I could out of these handloads, so I headed to a friends property in BF Virginia and had a good time.

The property used to have a pond on it that I have fished from childhood, but the damned beavers destroyed it. We killed piles of them over the years to try to keep them from ruining the place, but it was in vain. I can remember years ago when I got in a nasty scrap with a family of six beavers there in that pond late one night. It was me and my trusty Mossberg 835 and Mag light. When the smoke cleared, two of them were dead outright, and two were struggling for their lives in the spatter dots that covered the pond. The other two made it out alive, and two years later breached a thirty foot hole in the dam, which drained the pond. Today it is an aspiring forest.

I had to hack away with a machete for an hour and a half to get a shooting lane, but in the end I had an honest 285 yards from the muzzle to see what my handloads could do.

To give me a bit of a bar to gauge the quality of my loads, I picked up a box of 168 grain Federal Gold Medal Match at the local funshow. If my loads could beat those, then I know that I'm in the right ballpark.

Here is a look at the mess that I had to deal with. I was ass deep in weeds and brush with my micro Gerber machete trying to make a lane. When I got done my hands were shaking. In the back you can barely make out my target:



I had to shoot off the hood of my truck, which isn't ideal. I had sandbags, but the things kept slippin' and sliddin' on my not-so-waxed hood. To top that, I had to walk to the target and back in between groups, which meant a 600 yard walk around the pond total for every five shots. Not such a great thing when you're trying to shoot tiny groups. Here's my spread:




The yellow chair caught my ejected brass.

Some may look at my evil black gun and wonder what the hell I need such an animal for, and my answer would be that I built the thing to hunt critters with. That's right, rails and all were specifically bought to make a world class hunting gun. To give a better understanding, here is a glance at today's target through the H-425 reticule of the 3-12x50mm Horus Vision Hawk scope:



That reticule was designed for hunters. The range of an animal can be accurately gauged with it, and the Mil tree can be used to shoot at distance. It's perfect!

Here is my target that explains my shooting. To answer the obvious question: I did better the Federal Gold Medal Match rounds that I bought today. I do have to add that my groups opened up noticeably with every trip down to the target, which isn't surprising. I'm not too far out of shape, but a brisk 600 yard walk gets my blood pumping, and I didn't have time to relax in between strings of shots. More shooting will have to be conducted before I can claim that my rounds are more accurate.



The horizontal spread of my groups is all me. There was no wind to speak of, and the temperature today was 63 degrees and partly cloudy. Sometimes the light was tricky, and I had problems keeping focus on the orange dots. I had a borrowed Barska 15-40x50 spotting scope that a friend lent to me, and I have to say that there's a reason he got it for free from some Cabela's order. I could make out the shot holes with my scope, but could barely make out the target with the spotting scope.

All in all, my handloads shoot into 4" or less at almost 300 yards, and I can't complain with that. If I had a solid rest and all day to shoot, I think these rounds will easily shoot under MOA if I do my part. Either way, it sure is fun!

Reloading tip of the day

I'm all about getting the most out of things like tools and equipment, and that makes me a utilitarian. Using tools for purposes that they were never designed for is what my vocational school electrical teacher affectionately called Primitive Pete.

Primitive Pete is your friend.

When you're prepping cases for reloading them, one of the steps is to clean all the soot out of the primer pockets. Sometimes the little tools and brushes that were designed for such a task do not remove that soot, and occasionally the flash holes will be blocked by a stray piece of brass that can't be removed. Also, if you're the kind of reloader that runs your deprimed brass through a tumbler, whether it's the first cleaning the cases get, or you want to re-clean them to get rid of the sizing lubricant, you've no doubt had the tumbler media get hung up in the flash hole in the primer pocket. That stuff can be a pain in the ass to get out.

Well, there is just the tool to remove all that soot, brass, and carbon:



That is a standard one inch paddle bit designed to drill holes in wood. You probably have one rusting in the bottom of that tool box that you never use, so drag that thing out and get your Primitive Pete on.

A word of caution: paddle bits are semi-hardened steel, so it can gouge brass very easily. Be gentle. If you look close, the pointy tip actually has a flat cutting edge that is great at scraping carbon from the bottom of the pocket, and you can also get the inside edge of the pocket to allow the primer to seat all the way down. It's the best tool I've found for picking out the tumbler media from the flash holes, and if you have a stray finger of brass blocking the hole than use the long cutting edges on the tip by spinning it to unblock it.

Now go forth and make some ammo!