Looking for a chronograph? Here's some helpful tips:

Buy a cheap one.

Having started out with a Shooting Chrony F1 model, and then stepping up to a Competition Electronics ProChrono Digital, and now to a Competitive Edge Dynamics M2, I can tell you that you most definitely DO NOT get what you pay for. In fact, from the research that I have recently done, it seems that chronographs are all basically built from the same cheaply made bargain bin parts and sensors, and that spending more money on one may give you more flashy features, but not reliability.

I was duped into buying the CED M2 because of the manufacturer claims of being more reliable than the rest, and less prone to errors due to light issues, but I see now that I ended up with the least reliable chronograph on the market. Looking back, the Shooting Chrony gave me about the same level of errors as the M2, maybe a little less, but in that I knew nothing of the limitations of these devices, so one could say that errors would be expected. It was only when I bought the CE ProChrono that I read up on the fact that light makes them very fickle; to operate reliably, they need bright sunlight.

If you are having problems getting your chrono to read, make sure you set it up where it will have either full sunlight or full shade or, in the case of the CED M2, don't bother setting it up at all because it won't work regardless. Make sure that there are no shadows across the sensors, and if there are, put up something to completely shade them. If you are shooting rifles, set your chrono up at 12 to 15 feet from the muzzle, and maintain that distance for each shooting session.

If you have the CED M2 chrono, and don't feel like heeding my warning about not bothering with it, make sure to place the display device on a separate table several feet away from the gun or you will get crazy errors. I found out this weekend that you can shake the display on the M2 and get a reading from it despite the fact that the sensors were 15' away. On previous shooting sessions with the M2, I often got two readings for one shot, on an interval of about 1 in 10 shots. Very frustrating. If there are others shooting near you, make 20 feet or more of space in between the chrono and them, as well as the display or the M2 will read their shots too. Also, you will get readings when the wind gusts, so keep that in mind as the display will make all kinds of cool calculations for you, which don't mean squat when you have six velocity readings of 112 fps from the wind queering your shot string. Something else of note is that when I failed to get a reading from my third shot yesterday, I picked up the display and the numbers on it faded in and out, prompting me to install a brand new battery, with the same results. Not what you would expect from a $200 device advertised as being super fancy pants reliable and better than the competition.

I hope this information helps somebody. I was hugely let down this weekend as I had new loads for the 308 from my recently acquired IMR 8208 XBR powder that I believe will end my temperature and consistency problems, and the M2 chrono decided it didn't feel like working that day. Having a working chronograph for load development is a must, and I expected more from the M2 than I got. I din't get a single reading from it, so instead of ruining my test by continuing to fire the rounds, I called it a day.

That's not exactly true; I threw a great big fit about it and hurled the M2 display into the woods at a shown 324 feet per second, but at least I didn't shoot it. For some background, the Shooting Chrony met it's fate on the edge of darkness two years ago when it was not recording shots from my AR15 while shooting offhand. I started shooting closer and closer to the sensors in order to get a reading as the sun was going down until I was shooting a half inch above the unit, and the inevitable happened when I put a 55 grain round right through the display. That was an accident though. The exact same thing happened to my CE ProChrono a couple of months ago when I skipped a round off the top of the display, ruining my OCW test, which prompted me to immediately toss a C-Products magazine in the general direction of the chrono that - as fate would have it - smashed in the display screen with a perfect shot. I had no other choice at that point but to finish it off humanely with a magazine of 100 grain hardcast rounds from my Kel-Tec.

Doesn't someone out there make a chronograph that doesn't suck? I mean, damn, we can send people to the moon; we can replace a human being's heart; we can split atoms and use that technology in a bomb to end the world, and yet there's no one out there that has mastered building a device that can clock the speed of a bullet. Really?

Sheesh!

Now comes my dilemma. CED makes an infra red light kit for the fancy pants M2 that is reported to end the problem of light sensitivity. Thinking about it though, the M2 is reported to end the light sensitivity problems without the IR kit, so I have my doubts, and there's also the issue of the display fading in and out, so their overall quality is in question. I could shell out the $90 on the IR kit and maybe have a working chrono, or I could spend the same amount on another Shooting Chrono F1 and have one that at least works some of the time, which would also allow me to take my M2 and set it on fire in the yard and dance around it in a loin cloth while screaming profane gibberish. I really like that idea. For what it's worth, when my F1 chrony took a round to the face, it still worked, except to say that the bullet hit both sensors and ruined them. So it's at least tough.

I think a nasty letter to the manufacturer is in order, and I have already left a review on the Sinclair International website where I bought the CED M2, which as of this morning hasn't posted yet. I'll keep checking that though.

If you come across this post, which I'm going to go ahead and call a Competitive Edge Dynamics M2 Chronograph review, my advice to you is Caveat Emptor. Don't bother wasting your dollar on "advanced software and digital circuitry" that was put together from Radio Shack seconds and packaged in a cool looking plastic package. Buy the cheapest chronograph you can find as they are all made from the same 1950's technology, and maybe the recent breakthroughs in IR technology will bear some fruit and make these things not suck.

*Update* I found this post on Sniper's Hide about folks building their own IR light source as the kit from CED doesn't sound all that reliable.

Thought provoking images

I found this thread at AR15.com. ****Warning. Some graphic images in here****

There are several pictures in there that literally took my breath away. The picture of the brother hugging his brother in uniform and then later kissing his brother's casket - it took everything I had to not loose it when I saw that one. You don't even know.

Not all of them are sad, but the ones that are will get you.

Great balls of fire!!!

This weekend I came into a Mosin-Nagant M38 carbine in fantastic shape with a properly pitted bore from many years of shooting corrosive commie ammo. The previous owner is a friend of mine who needed the extra bucks to go in on a Remington M700 chambered in 25-06, and knew of my want for a short and light Mosin-Nagant. As an added bonus, my Fairy god ninja delivered to me an 8 lb. jug of IMR 8208 XBR, so I am committing to that powder my 308 which will hopefully end the temerature sensitivity woes.

Last evening I had the ten minute opportunity to shoot the beast with one of my brothers, and with a cardboard box set at 100 yards I proceeded to miss the thing entirely with five rounds. No worries though; I have no idea what grain the ammo is that I'm shooting, nor do I know if the sights are set up for it, so we moved up to 25 yards and fired off some more rounds with success.

Shooting a short barreled Mosin with horrible ammo on the edge of darkness is a wonderful experience; if this were on a battlefield somewhere I am sure I would invite a volley of hot metal from anyone within a one mile radius:



That's no KABOOM!!; the rifle is supposed to do that. It reminds me of another gun that I used to have that produced amazing fireballs.

You can see the white edge of the box on the left there in the first picture. Being proper Hicks, we stapled a blaze orange hunting license sleeve on the middle of the box as an aiming point and shot off hand. The ammo was grouping nicely at the upper left of the box, so there was no way we were going to get hits at 100 yards. It also didn't help that I had the rear sight set to 200 yards, or that the front sight post was painted with dull orange fingernail polish.

My plan is to shoot the hell out of this gun when I get some brass cased ammo for it that won't eat away any more of the bore. For some odd reason considering the economical availability of these rifles, the market for 7.62x54R is awash in the shittiest possible loadings, as nobody seems to give enough of a damn to make non-corrosive cartridges that may have the potential of being accurate.

Just about every major ammo manufacturer has a budget line of cartridges that have perfectly acceptable accuracy, so why don't they make any of this stuff? The only casings that you can buy for it is made by Norma, and it must be stamped from metal retrieved from some alien temple on Neptune as it costs a fortune. I really don't even think that Norma produces as much as they just advertise it to see if anyone is stupid enough to try and order it.

Hopefully the boxer primed ammo that I'm looking at buying will hold decent groups. This rifle is going to get some use.

Facsimile Free Zone

“To think that they can carry any kind of facsimile weapon to school is absurd, but they see it on TV and they want to show off that they’ve got something similar. It’s an uphill battle for us and it’s good when the students help us out.”

Hey, at least they haven't kicked him out of school for the rest of the year. Or so we hope.

Pellet gun fun in slow-motion

I love YouTube!



Also, if firing makeshift projectiles at random stuff is your idea of fun, take a look at this slow-mo video of an air cannon firing 4 foot long flourescent light bulbs at mannequin heads!


The internets rule!

Help us lock up felons and anyone else

That's what I'm getting from this proposal from Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

"Baltimore can be a safer city, and with the help of the Maryland General Assembly, we can pass tougher penalties on illegal gun possession and we can continue to reducing gun violence to historic lows," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

And who wouldn't want to reduce illegal gun possession, right? Wait though, what exactly is her definition of illegal gun possession?

She doesn't enlighten us on that, but her proposal gives you an indication:

The bills the mayor will push are for up to 15 years in prison for felons in possession of a gun and a mandatory 18 months in prison for anyone carrying an illegal and loaded weapon.

Let's break it down: Felons in possession of a gun. The Mayor starts off right out of the gate about repeat gun offenders who are dangerous bad guys, and that is what she would lead you to believe she is after, but she is not suggesting 15 years for a violent gun offense; she is saying that possession of a gun contrary to written code is grounds for 15 years off your life, regardless of intent. If an individual served a two year sentence forty years ago for possession of marijuana, that individual can get a 15 year sentence if they live in a residence with someone who owns a Marlin .22 rifle. Same individual in a car pool van that gets pulled over, and one of the passengers has a legal .25 auto in their pocket: does that count as a "felon in possession of a gun?" I would bet that it does.

Now, to the issue of anyone carrying an illegal and loaded weapon: carrying an unloaded weapon is useless unless you are carrying it to the range, and again, I've never seen that qualified. Usually laws are written in an attempt to cover the person who sticks their unloaded gun in the trunk of the car and goes to the shooting range, but even that gets hemmed up as in the case of Brian Aitken. And if you make guns as illegal as possible for anyone to own, you end up with a handy tool to make anyone a criminal. So really the law is aimed at anyone who has a gun and ammunition on or about their person, and there's a lot of grey in their for the legal minions to work with.

But what about the dangerous criminals who repeatedly get caught using a gun in the commission of a violent felony? How do we ensure that they go to prison for a long long time? If you have to ask that question to somebody, you're a retard. I mean that.

Fisking this tired mantra about strengthening gun laws as a means to put criminals behind bars is getting old. It has nothing at all to do with the criminals and everything to do with control of the general population, as they are the ones who are most likely to get hung up in this mess, and there are money making ventures in that.

If a violent scumbag repeatedly gets caught hurting people, then you already have the Nature and Cause to lock them up for eternity. A gun law is an inappropriate and unnecessary tool to that end. If there are gangbangers who won't stop shooting up the streets of Baltimore, than the next time you catch them committing a violent act, that is your chance to keep them out of society by using the laws against hurting people that have existed since Exodus. It ain't any harder than that.

So this whole "we can't stop them unless you pass this law" is a bunch of bullshit that needs to be called out.

Stun gun violence

If you believe hollywood, a stun gun will knock you unconscious so that your attacker can conveniently rob you of your goodies. In the really real world, using a stun gun on your victim will probably just piss off your attacker, who may then be inclined to use a more proven weapon platform to ventilate your abdomen and send you running away with piss soaked pants.

One of the men opened the driver’s side door and hit the victim with a stun gun several times while demanding money, Perok said.

The victim, a Woodbridge man, then pulled out a handgun and fired towards the men, he told police.

The clerk, a concealed weapons permit holder, said the men were no more than a foot away from him when he shot at them.

“I’m sure I hit one with at least one shot,” he said a few days later.

He did better than that! I am glad that he survived the attack with minimal injury, and that he doesn't have the burden of killing someone on his conscience or reputation. A win win in my book.

December in Afghanistan

A photo essay from Boston.com of some pictures of Afghanistan. There's some heart wrenching photos in there, so be forewarned.

Also, pic number fourteen shows a Taliban fighter with a loaded FN M240B machine gun. I would love to hear the backstory on how he got that.

Found at MilitaryPhotos.net.

DC murders down

According to the Washington Times, there were 131 homicides in the District in 2010, down nine percent from last year. It’s the lowest number of slayings since 1963.

While I'm reluctant to give quarter to DC's Police Chief or her insane crime lowering ideas, her reasoning on the tip line and community intel seem logical. Until there's some bona fide evidence that gunshot detectors do anything but cost a fortune, I'll dismiss the technology part on its face, and note that Chief Lanier made no mention of the hard work and long hours that DC cops put in to lower that homicide number. Shame on her.

The Times reports that it is the second straight year that homicides have declined in the city and the seventh time in 10 years that the nation’s capital has recorded fewer than 200 homicides.

Hold the phones!! Did that just say the second straight year? As if homicides have declined in two years instead of jumping up? I could have sworn I heard predictions about all the shootings, blood in the streets, and mass chaos that would surely stem from the Heller decision.

Who would have known that ordinary human beings could behave themselves?

Well, maybe not these guys; but it seems that the general population doesn't strike the notion to go out on a killing spree that day just because they have a Mossberg in the closet.

Musketeers and carrying a big stick

Two bizarre robberies of note caught on video.

The first one has a lunatic swinging a tree trunk at a store owner in a successful robbery attempt. The store owner tried to get the bandit hammered unsuccessfully. What would you do if you were armed with a firearm and this guy came in and tried to rob you? The cops consider it armed robbery, but I might have tried to take that stick away from the guy if it happened to me.

The second one happened in Canada where some wonderfully misunderstood youths were trying to get charity money from a motel using a musket. They didn't get the funds. In this particular incident, I would see good cause to justify deadly force, as a musket is still up to the task of killing someone as any other firearm. What would you do?

Model gun control

"To gain entry to the store, which is on a secure military base, customers must present valid identification, pass through a metal detector, yield to the security wand and surrender cellphones and cameras.

To buy a gun, clients must submit references and prove that their income is honestly earned, that their record is free of criminal charges and that their military obligations, if any, have been fulfilled with honor. They are fingerprinted and photographed. Finally, if judged worthy of owning a small-caliber weapon to protect home and hearth, they are allowed to buy just one. And a box of bullets."

This is to get into the only gun store in Mexico and buy a gun.

There are lots of things to be critical about in this article, the first of which is the claim by the author William Booth that Mexico's ridiculous gun laws are "a matter of pride" for Mexican citizens. How the hell does he know that? Did he do a survey? How can he say that with any authority when he claims later that legal gun sales are declining, but the black market is booming? Sounds to me like the proud Mexican citizens are doing an end run around the shenanigans and getting guns however they want.

The very last paragraph says that if you want a gun, just ask a Mexican police officer to provide you with an illegal one, the easiest way:

"The cop will bring it to your house and show you how to load it," Islas said. "Of course, it is technically illegal."

Well, no shit! There's about the only truth you will find in this whole article. Do notice the use of the word "technically," as in it's not really illegal despite being, you know, illegal. Kinda like 'rape-rape:' the police officer is friendly and providing you with a weapon that's not on Mexico's only gun store's precise list, so it's "technically" totally OK and stuff, and not at all a bad thing; and if you have sex with a girl that's under the age of consent, who's too drugged up to consent even if she legally could, and it like happened a long time ago and stuff, and you're popular, than it's OK too.

I'm starting to get the hang of the leftist ideology that breaking the law is cool as long as it's done properly.

As an afterthought, I wonder how many of those weapons handled in "strict military fashion" are handed to the ordinary citizens by friendly police officers -- who are only breaking the law out of the sheer goodness of their hearts -- and don't make it onto the list of extreme precision. You know the ones I'm talking about:

"Police Sales Only," is filled with weapons that ordinary citizens cannot legally buy - the heavy stuff, such as Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifles and Israeli Galil machine guns, plus gas and concussion grenades, as well as bulletproof vests and helmets.

Rest assured that those friendly police officers do not sell them illegally to the bad men who are flooding the US with narcotics. Nooosirrrreeeebob! It's odd though that I've actually seen pictures somewhere of weapons taken from Mexican drug cartel members' cold dead hands. Come to think of it, I've seen all of that stuff exactly as Booth has stated here, taken from criminals, and a lot of those weapons look just like the hardware that the Mexican military and police forces use.

Hmmmm. I'm thinkin that this gun store may keep precise records of firearms sold over the counter, but isn't keeping the most meticulous count of what gets sold under it. Must be easy to keep track when you're running the only store in an entire nation.

Strange foreplay

"Sedille told investigators that, during sex play the night of Dec. 21, he took a handgun he thought was unloaded from a shelf beside the bed and racked the slide back, cocking the weapon. According to the affidavit, he told police he placed the gun to her head and it fired."

Uh-huh. "It fired" all on its own. Savagely violating the first three rules of gun safety had nothing at all to do with it.

Bringing sexy back

When I was a kid, raising the question in school of what was the most awesome fighter plane ever would have brought about heated discussion between the powerful F-14 Tomcat, the nimble F-16 Falcon, or the fast F-15 Eagle, with perhaps the delusional foreign exchange student from Krasnoyarsk whimpering something about a 'Megg thayerty whon' before being told to shut his commie face. Mentioning the Supermarine Spitfire at the time would have probably invited a punch to the nuts, unless one of the beasty boys had ever layed eyes on one of these British beauties.

If you throw sexy into the criteria of awesomeness, the Spitfire would rise to the top of the stack. Damn, that plane is gorgeous.

Clicky the linky here to see an audio slideshow about some wonderful British folk who restore the Spitfire so that rich yahoos can either fly them, or pay someone else to. The price tag on a restored plane will set you back $2 - $3 Million big ones, which is a drop in the bucket next to the going rate of a F-18 Hornet these days.

If I were a wealthy entrepreneur, I would buy one of these in a heartbeat and learn to fly. I might even pick up eight Browning 1919 machine guns for like $30 bucks from my local gun show to bring the plane up to its full authenticity, which would serve to keep the icky guns out of the hands of the local Mexican drug cartels who buy them up with impunity.

Flying sexy fighters and saving the children is what it's all about!

Sheer mental tenacity

You may have seen the bright orange hand written letter that a US Navy SEAL posted outside his hospital door advising all who enter that they better go elsewhere if they feel sorry for him.

Whether you've seen it or not, here is the letter as well as a little insight on that SEAL, and an indication of the level of tenacity he was talking about.

That's the spirit!

Some Christmas weekend photos

Gettin' some on Christmas morning! Is that wrong of me to say? Do note the removal of the trigger guard on the M249 SAW, as well as the one Soldier yelling while not using his sights. Also, Magpul magazines are pretty standard now.

Hamas choses Colt. Looks like a CAR-15 with 4X Colt optic. Those yahoos seem to have good trigger discipline, which is well enough cos' we wouldn't want violent terroristic militias running around without the proper level of gun safety.

More violence in Israel. Third pic down shows an Israeli cop using a tactical throat restraint. I hear chicken wire gives the same effect.

Fun with words

"Armed man at Mormon temple killed in Utah shootout"

That's how the title reads, and from what little information there is in the story, it sounds like a good shoot by the police. The problem here is the use of the word "shootout."

Let's consult Dictionary.com:
shoot-out
[shoot-out]
–noun
1. a gunfight that must end in defeat for one side or the other, as between gunfighters in the Old West, criminal groups, or law-enforcement officers and criminals.

Discarding the rest about military skirmishes, hockey, and soccer, I note the requisite word "gunfight." Let's look at that:
gun-fight
[guhn-fahyt]
–noun
a battle between two or more people or groups armed with guns, esp. a confrontation between two gunfighters using revolvers in the frontier days of the American West.

So there has to be more than one person, and the parties involved battle with one another using arms of some sort, especially revolvers, and there has to be defeat by at least one party.

Reading through the story, I find no battle between two or more parties using firearms. Everybody involved were armed, one guy got shot by another guy, so I guess that constitutes defeat, but there was no shootout. I guess "somebody got shot" isn't an exciting enough headline for a worthless article. For your edification, this tragic story is about a real gunfight.

There's not really a lot going on out there in the news world, so I thought I would hammer on some no-name journalist at a small time news page over something petty. Good morning to you too.

Nice package

This is pretty good advice: don't leave your empty big screen TV and entertainment system boxes by the trash can where the heathens can see it and get ideas; but then again, perhaps leaving your OD green Mossberg JIC tube leaning against the wall outside of your door may give potential thieves an understanding of how your Christmas went, and they may pick another door to kick in.

XM25 in Afghannystan

Check out the brass in the air! I hope it does everything it was hyped up to do.

Internet Survival Commandos

Sadly, this is probably closer to the mark for 99% of so called survivalists. I laughed my ass off to this one, and there's more here. ****NSFW - Severe language warning**** Also, do not have a mouth full of liquid when you watch it:

Parenting success

Some creepy older man in a red truck pulled up next to my 12 year old nephew at the bus stop yesterday morning and explained to him that there was a two-hour school delay, and that my nephew should get into his truck where it was warm. This was in a remote location on a far out of town country road, not in a subdivision, and there was no such school delay. There was no other conversation, no monologuing about strangers and such, no questions asked; my nephew just turned on his heels and ran back into the house.

That's how to do it.

Turns out that a creepy older man in a red truck pulled the same type of stunt in an adjacent county the week before with similar results. Maybe there is hope for the next generation after all.

Still, my family is fresh out of emotion these days with all the hospital drama, so something like this tends to attract raw anger. My sister's advice to me this morning as we were watching for nephew's bus to come from the big bay window was that I could shoot through that window if I had to if creepy guy pulled up and tried to steal our flesh and blood. She had mentioned that it was getting close to the time when nephew had to walk outside and that she had to retrieve her pistol while we waited by the window. I told her not to bother as I had one for each of us at that moment in time.

Gotta love my family.

How to not rob a jewelry store

Turns out that the store owner is a Marine and Vietnam veteran. Before you impulsively try to shoot a man with a Bryco and steal his shit, you may want to find out if the guy had previously made the choice of hunting down and killing people as a means to earn an income, and later wrote a book about it that features a front page picture of him holding a real human skull. That information would come in handy.

Also, it's best to assume that a buisiness man/woman whos wares are valuable and durable goods will probably be armed. Just a thought.

Worst weekend ever

The sickness attacked my household with full furious force this weekend, and I didn't get anything done. My wife took the most of it and was basically totally incapacitated. As I have a fantastic immune system, I was in the best shape, and had to keep the kids from burning the joint down for three days; they've been stuck inside for quite some time and are anxious to do something fun.

Feeling like you've been punched in the guts and beaten across the back with a bat makes you not want to take two toddlers and a baby for a stroll in the mall, which come to think of it is probably where we picked up this sickness to begin with. Pretty much happens every time we go there.

I did finally slip out of the house for an hour during nap time to test fire a few loads that I made up for the 308. Without that hour, I was going to detonate from stress.

It was cold, and the wind was very gusty. I tried to pin down exactly where an accuracy node was for a load using RL-15 that I've been playing with for awhile, but it didn't work out. I did however get wonderful results from my attempts to clone Federal Gold Medal Match; still with 42.5 grains of RL-15 under a 175 grain Sierra Match King in a FGMM case, but this time loaded .010" shorter. It made all the difference, with one group putting five into just over an inch with the wind spreading it horizontally, and the other five shot group going into .700" when I fired it during a lull in the wind.

It took me a few shots to get the Super Sniper scope sighted in, with one of my sighters maliciously aimed at small animated wildlife that ended up missing its mark, but perforating a pitchfork handle an inch to the right. I like being able to adjust the parallax. Good stuff.

Right now I am still suffering from the sickness, and will probably not be very prolific with blogging. Time will tell.

Morons

There was one in every ditch on every curve yesterday in the two and a half hours it took me to drive the 20 miles home. In years past, snow was quite common in Virginia, and my fellow Virginians could be counted on to keep their bumpers to themselves while maintaining an orderly fashion on their way home. Not so anymore, as there are so many dipshits that freak out with the first dusting of snow, careening around corners and smashing into shit that it makes my head spin.

I literally pulled every get-home trick from my native backroad knowhow book, and at every turn had to turn around as there was a moron in the ditch in two-wheel-spinning-four-wheel-drive. There were also a great deal of Civics and Frontiers tore up too.

It amazes me these days the false confidence that some morons get in the snow just because they're driving a massive 4X4 SUV. I have it on good authority that most SUVs of this generation are built from bona fide suck-ass, and can't climb their way out of a frost covered field, so the idea that they would help incompetent drivers make their way down a slippery road while texting on their cellphones is a stretch.

My parents used to purposly take me out in the snow just to teach me how to drive in it, so that one day I wouldn't be one of the afore meantioned dipshits stuck on the side of the highway.

It worked.

I guess there is something to be said about the huge influx of people to my area, as the general population went up a genuine five fold over twenty years. I did not fail to notice yesterday the amount of out of state license plates from the likes of Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, and such, which brings back horror stories of every time driving on Maryland roads. Sorry Marylanders, but I have to call y'all out as being, by far, the worst drivers in the union. It's not even a contest. Missouri drivers I would say come in second, although they did alright earlier this week in the winter wonderland which was St. Louis. And before you say it, I obviously don't rank Virginians as being very high on the list anymore.

Since I had the kids in the car this morning, I gave an extra three quarters of an hour for the jackassery and mayhem to die down before venturing about on the highways. Worked like a charm. I can't wait for the next snow, as the XTerra is pretty fun to drive in the mess.

Rifle Pr0n for today

At Sniper's Hide, eighteen pages of beautiful black boomsticks. There's some money in some of those rifles, like the Knight's with night vision and suppressor that probably crests $8,000 or more.

There's also some M14 goodness over there as well, if that's your fancy. Makes me want to run out and smoke my debit card at the gun store!

School Board shootout

Here's the video footage taken from the room where it went down.



It was apparent that the shooter was not using live ammunition. Also, he fired the gun once or twice towards the ground accidentally. An armed man in the building killed him dead, which is odd considering the video says that the gunman took his own life. If you go to this link, there's the same footage from another angle, but towards the end the video feed locks up and you can only hear what's going on. I count a total of fifteen shots fired.

There's a lady that tries to fight back by hitting the gunman with a purse. I think her efforts would have been more effective if she had pulled a J-frame from that purse and put a 125 grain hollowpoint right through his twisted mind.

I have heard that the scumbag had a lengthy criminal record, as we already anticipate these days.

AK Kaboom

Wait. . . .what? I thought AKs never jammed or stopped running? Nothing can stop them!!



I don't know the back story, but this sucker was definitely firing just fine, and then blew to pieces. Couldn't happen to a better person though!!

"I fought"

This testimony flies right into the face of those who say to give your attacker exactly what they want, and do not resist. I remember vividly the time when a the deadly serial killer she's referring to was afoot in my AO, the second of three, and everyone was terrified. This girl, at 15 years old, fought for her life and won, and it's certain that she would be dead and in the ground if she had not.

If it moves, salute it. . . .

The rest of that saying is: "If it doesn't move, pick it up. If you can't pick it up, paint it."

I laughed out loud at this cartoon at Terminal Lance, ****NSFW, Language**** which has become a daily read for me. I remember one time saluting a Corporal in the PX parking lot at Camp Lejeune because his chevrons were unsat. I felt like an ass until I realized how much of an ass he must be feeling right now as he just got saluted because he didn't bother to keep up with his uniform.

Life comes at you fast

Been with a family member in the hospital for the past few days. Everything's good to go, but everyone was bracing for the worst there for awhile. This on top of other obligations: financial, travel, other family; you know how it is.

Man, the holidays can be harsh!

I'll get it together here shortly.

Entry level tacticool scope: Weaver Grand Slam 3-10X40mm

This was a contender for a spot on my LR308; the task fell to the Super Sniper in the end though. It's on sale right now at MidwayUSA for $300 big ones!

Here's an excellent video review over at Sniper's Hide. Good stuff.

Larue OBR 5.56

Wow! Apparently those suckers can shoot!

I first layed my mitts on one at this year's Modern Day Marine Convension, and noted how nice it felt. It's good to know that some things are built well!

Technologically challenged

I took one look at the Edit Template page on Blogger and knew that it was too far over my head. I used one of their given templates, which still means that I'm uncool, but I wanted an updated look. That, and the way my old page was set up made it hard to read.

I'm really dumb when it comes to this sort of stuff. I only recently figured out how to "Follow" other blogs, or what it even means. And I still have no idea what the RSS feed thingy does. It's just there.

One day I will figure out how to make this blog look cool, but until then, I hope it's easier to read.

Equipment Change Proposal: Cameras, cell phones, and other electronic junk

This post is rage against the electronic machine, and it probably ain't gonna be pretty.

My bane in life is that nothing electronic lasts around me, and that shit is for real. I'm waiting for the CIA to knock on my door with a one-way ticket to China for a new job sitting in an office across the street from the servers for their intelligence agency. If you want connectivity problems in a building, around office computers, or around people with cell phones, just sit my happy ass twelve feet away and it will happen. Mrs. CTone has commented that I have a magnet in my head.

Now that that is out of the way, whomever designs cameras, cell phones, and other electronic doodads can go blow a goat. Tonight the fam and I were decorating the ol' Christmas tree, you know, something that only happens once a year, and the only working camera in the house ironically was the one in my brand new but barely functioning cell phone; my seventh in two years. OK, technically my sixth as one of them - a BlackBerry - was slain dead by a 33" tire on my XTerra due to the shitty engineering of the bastards at Maxpedition.

Why yes, bitterness IS my middle name. How did you know?

Flashback to yesterday: I picked up the not-quite-two-year-old Sony A300 DSLR camera to take some pictures of the little ones, and when I turned the thing on it made this "Brrrrrraaaaaaaaappppppp" sound that emanated from the lens. Did the same thing when I turned it off. I went to reach for it tonight as it was a picture taking moment, with the kids hanging ornaments on the tree and all, and remembered that the Sony happened to not be capable of doing its designed duty due to suckage. My old standby is my shitty Canon PowerShit SD750 that had to be sent back to the factory brand new, right out of the package. . . . . .twice. Well, that camera sucks too! Turning it on gave me a white screen. It still makes a flash, and you can zoom in and out, but no picture takey takey.

My relationship with the PowerShit is not a nice one; the first time I used it was on a trip to Germany, and out of almost a thousand pictures taken, about a hundred of them you could make out what they were.

Mr. Goat, I am pleased to introduce you to the folks at Canon.

My new cell phone is a Samsung Captivate with Android operating system, and it randomly gets so hot sitting idle on my desk at work that it warns me to turn it off or it will burn up. Also, it turns itself off about once a week for no reason at all that I can establish. WTF?

I don't know much about low voltage electronics other than they are unreliable as hell. Laptops are a perfect example; anything with Windows in it only lasts about three months for me. That's not a lie. The only reason -- Only. Reason. -- that I no longer do Movie Guns anymore is because out of the three laptops that I own, and two desktops that I did own, none of them stay functioning long enough for me to do a post. Either the CD/DVD drive burns the fuck up the first time I use it, or Windows Media Player shits the bed (every time; I was burning the second CD I ever attempted in my new work laptop the day before yesterday and WMP took an unrecoverable dive. It does not work anymore), or the operating system crashes (often), or an update installs a driver that doesn't work and the computer won't boot.

I can't tell you how much moolah I would drop down for some tickets to watch a pride of syphilis afflicted lions tear apart the whole Microsoft staff in one horrific bloody massacre. I'd even spend the ten bucks for some stale popcorn.

I may need a custom made tinfoil hat to shield my magnet from my electronics, or the folks making em' need to figure this shit out and make them not suck. It's true that I may be a mutant - I have DVD players that don't work, cell phones that don't work; I've seen every register at my local Wal-Mart reboot simultaneously at the very moment I swiped my bank card . . . .twice (once while the Mrs. and I were dating and, no shit, I was right then telling her about how I have some sort of issue around electronics).

The chances though that it's really me are slim, while the chances of mankind making mother boards and microchips so small that the copper running through them grow from the heat and short out are startlingly high. It speaks volumes though, to me anyways, that there are so many things that we humans use day-to-day that are just not built to last. If they were, then I wouldn't have so much to bitch about, now would I? What has to be done or not done for some people to build useful stuff that doesn't fail when you need it? Why is it that products used nowadays that has low amounts of voltage running through it barely seem to make it through the year? Is it because technology is advancing at such a rapid pace that it's better to just buy a new phone every year than update it?

I will make it my Christmas wish to have one electronic gizmo last the full 2011 year, or the fuckers that build the stuff will again hear my wrath!

Bad mamba jamba

Just how badass was Lieutenant General A.P. Hill?

So badass that even over 150 years after his death, he's still in the midst of battle.

Dude just causes conflict wherever he goes!

Future Weapons: Railguns

I get a little hot and winded reading American Handgunner, so to read about the US Navy's sweet foray into the world of railguns got me going this morning:

The Navy would like to have a fully functional 64-megajoule system aboard a ship by 2025.

A shot of that power could reach a target 100 nautical miles away in a matter of minutes. The projectile would travel so fast that no warhead is needed; kinetic energy is sufficient to destroy its target.

Killing baddies with the shear awesomeness of fast moving metal! RIGHTEOUS, RIGHTEOUS!!!!

Now, the Navy wants to have this weapon adorning their poop deck by 2025, which isn't all that far away. My hopes are to be toting one of these beasties with a walnut stock in the backwoods of the Old Dominion no later than 2050 or so. Think it's possible?

Once I vaporize a few hundred groghounds and a dozen elk with very fast metal, I envision writing an article on the matter about how 10 megajoules is not humane enough to drop an entire herd of whitetails with one round, so it's best to stick with .22 caliber railguns or higher and leave the pussy .17 caliber rounds for the plinkers.

Rule violator

It is being reported that some immoral piece of scum has done gone out and violated the good intentioned rules of the University of Mary Washington by bringing a handgun on campus. When will these people learn to not break the rules!

Oh, and none of this is confirmed, and it's a day old, but it's still at the top of the page on Fredericksburg.com.

Strong language

I note yet again that all it takes to get cash to pay the bills is to walk into a bank and demand money.

That banks will just hand it over without question based on the presumption of force, without seeing any sort of weapon, begs the question of why banks need vaults and tellers to begin with? Why not just have a wall of ATMs inside so that would-be robbers don't have anyone to rob? If Federal Reserve Notes are so valuable that they need armed guards to store them in massive steel vaults, why is it that it's so easy to just demand it at the counter with some tough talk?

Sure, anyone crazy enough to suggest that they have a gun and will shoot you if you don't hand over the loot may be able to back up their claim, and tellers aren't going to wait around and get shot over some baseless paper, but my question still stands: why even have people in banks anymore to begin with?

Gun P0rn: Now I've seen it all edition

A Dutch Madsen short barrel Light Machine Gun. . . . . . . . with a forward grip (scroll down)!!! More here if you want to see how real SWAT operators fire a Madsen: with eyes closed, no cheekweld, and stock under the arm pit!

Expert badge for that one!!!!!!

There is an 80+ year span in firearms development in this one single post on this thread about the war in Brazil. There are weapons there that I don't even have time right now to identify. I get a kick out of seeing the Bushnell 3200 fixed 10X scopes used on M16s, FALs, and beat to hell, wooden stocked bolt action rifles! Awesome!

Also, seeing pepper-haired Klauseus Schteinmunfuertez with a 10" AR15 sporting a ginormous Counter Sniper scope with an EOTech tacked to the side gives me the screaming giggles. Is he wearing the MP3 player Oakleys?!?!?

Oh man! There's an AK type rifle with an upside down stock, a guy casually taking pictures of some poor fella who just got cut down by gunfire, a bare-chested balaclava'ed drug dealer totin' a SIG 551/552 hybrid, and my personal fav, the one guy on a mounted machine gun of some kind cowered down in terror while his buddy gets some with the Right Arm of the Free World!!

I can't stop giggling!

Go check this one out folks; you don't want to miss it!

Upgrade or downgrade?

Last night I replaced my Horus Hawk scope on the LR308 with a 10X Super Sniper. The Hawk has been good to me thus far, and the reticle works better than I had hoped, but it's a hunting scope, and the only thing I hunt these days are Shoot N' C targets. It was time to go to dialing in my shots for more precision.

Since Christmas time is right around the corner, I couldn't afford to drop $1,000 on a Leupold or Nightforce. The Super Sniper scopes are budget priced and have a reputation for being tough as nails. Also, the fixed 10 power with parallax adjustment makes it super simple, and I figured I might as well give Mil-dots a try. It's got MOA adjustments, which these days are old school considering the long range shooting world has realized the benefits of the Mil/Mil type scopes.

Thinking about that, how is it that it took mankind like fifty years or more to figure out that ranging in Mils and then doing complicated mathamatics to find out how to adjust the trajectory of your bullet in Minutes might be a stupid idea, especially in the heat of battle where even simple math is hard? One would think that Ludwig Von Tasco or whoever the fuck designed the first precision adjustable rifle optic would have put two and two together and just made it correct right from the start. Who knows; but now I have willingly joined this madness with the procurement of this type of scope. To my rescue is the Mil-Dot Master, which is pretty badass.

Comparing it with the Horus, the SS is significantly lighter, which makes sense as the Horus is a variable optic with a 50mm objective, while the SS is a fixed 10X with a 42mm objective. Glass is heavy, and the Horus has more of it. They are about the same size though:



I took off the Horus and added the SS upstairs on my kitchen counter so I could watch Lie to Me with my wife like a good husband should. There's only so much hiding in the man cave in the basement that she should endure. There's also a liquid attractant somewhere on that counter top that I normally reserve for when we watch Boardwalk Empire, as they somehow go together.

I continued with the learned trick of coating the inside of the Burris XTreme Tactical (matte black = tactical) rings with black silicon to give them more purchase on the scope tube. I had problems with the Horus sliding around in the rings until someone on Sniper's Hide gave me the remedy. The silicon also cleaned off of the Horus and rings really easy.



Once I had the scope mounted, I realized that the scope was too high, so I have to order some lower rings in order to get a good cheek weld. Oh well, it was a good evening regardless.



Of note is that I do not need a 20 MOA canted base to get this scope to 1,000 yards. Right out of the box, I started twisting the SS's turrets and found it to have 137 & 3/4 Minutes of total elevation, which is amazing even for a 30mm scope tube. The contenders for a spot on this gun were 1" and 30mm tubes from the likes of Burris, Bushnell, and Weaver, and none of them had more than like 60 Minutes total elevation adjustment. That means more cash for a canted base, as well as the task of figuring out what rings to buy with that base. Keep all this in mind when buying a scope. I have no idea how the glass compares with the Horus; I wasn't able to check it out last night as it was already dark.

This weekend if I get the chance to do some shooo-eeeehn done, I'll get some through-the-scope pictures at some wildlife to give an idea of the glass quality.

Reporters and guns

Guatemalan style! I like how those folks think!

And, Russian heads of state continue to be more awesome than the US, as here the Prime Minister is helping a young boy holster a gold plated Makarov. Obama plays golf and gets stitches in his lip, while Putin plays with sniper rifles, takes down tigers, and flies airplanes. I see a pattern here.

Amtrack starting to become rational

Come December 15, they will join most of the rest of mass transit and allow firearms to be in checked baggage. Now, about that carry on stuff. . . .

Also, I do note the guidelines for checked baggage says:

". . .the maximum weight of each piece (50 lb/23 kg)."

So your mortar tubes and 20mm rifles will have to be checked separately.

Actually, I took that rule entirely out of context. Forgive me?

A new type of marksmanship

Shooting long range is never a quick process. You have data books, wind meters, wristop computers, ballistics applications for laptops and phones, etc. and it takes a true marksman to put all that information together along with the fundamentals of shooting to make the projectile hit its mark.

Not any more.

The revolutionary advance involves an array of sights, sensors and lasers that reads the distance to the target, assesses elements such as air pressure, temperature, and ballistics and then sends that data to the microchip embedded in the XM25 shell before it is launched.

The round already knows how to get there before it's even fired. That's pretty cool.

"It takes out a lot of the variables that soldiers have to contemplate and even guess at," Lehner said.

****

Lehner said the XM25 was special in that it requires comparatively little training, because the high-powered technology does so much of the work.

"This system is turning soldiers with average shooting skills into those with phenomenal shooting skills," he said.

Let's not make it too easy boys!

I hope this weapon truly is a game changer. Military advancements have sometimes made old tried-and-true methods of warfare obsolete, like how artillery made fortified walls not so appealing as had been for thousands of years. Damn military/industrial complex!

"You get behind something when someone is shooting at you, and that sort of cover has protected people for thousands of years," Lehner said.

"Now we're taking that away from the enemy forever."

Awesome! So how long before I can get a XM25 on Bud's Gun Shop? I just hate when I can't get the shot on that doe-of-a-lifetime because she's selfishly feeding behind a big tree.

Dangerous jackassery

You have to be a real asshole to shoot deer well outside of your limits. Shooting animals at distance is cool if you can actually hit where you aim at, but this douchebag lobs round after round of .50 BMG at deer at a mile until he finally kills one. The reason I decided to post this here is to show my several readers that most rifle rounds actually do ricochet.



The ones ricocheting off the water near the end are perhaps the most dangerous.

Stupidity begets a Claim

The University of Mary Washington is a "Gun Free Zone;" and despite their insistence that the campus is safe, people still get hurt there.

The thing about it is, when you say that a facility is safe, and prevent folks from protecting themselves under written code, you have a contract; anything that happens contrary to that contract opens you up to a claim.

"The suit says UMW creates "an illusion of campus security." The school's literature and other advertising material "emphasize safety and note the presence of campus police."

The university assumed responsibilities for the victim's safety because she was a full-time student who lived on campus, according to the lawsuit."

Yup. This is interesting to me because the whole purpose of "Gun Free Zones" is to avoid the bloodsucking lawyers coming forward in droves to sue for some sort of negligence. It seems to me that the opposite is true.

Now the very policy that UMW took to insulate itself from littigation will probably cost $10 million. I hope that poor girl gets every penny.

It's telling though that students willingly embrace this assinine policy; in the past, UMW students have made statements to the effect that security cameras in the parking garage would have prevented the attack on the victim because the cops would be able to later identify the rapist. Read that sentence again, because I'm not making it up. That's the sort of youth that Americans are sending to these campuses.

That still doesn't take away from the fact that if a corporate type entity makes the statement that you cannot provide for your own security, as the entity will provide that for you, than when they fail at their stated duty, they can and will get their asses sued. Common Law can be a bitch.

Russian sniper rifle pr0n

The Ruskies have some interesting ranged weapons; for instance, I did not know that there was a bullpup full-auto Dragunov. Neat-oh!

While I'm sure that these guys can shoot and kick ass like other well trained snipers, I just can't get over the ridiculous spray painted 80's motorcycle helmets. Cool guns though.

Bolt action gun pr0n

How about a home brewed .458 SOCOM on a Savage action!?!?

Now that is cooooool!!

A lame duck in denial

"There seems to be some denial about what's contributing to the crime and violence in our community. . ."

You got that right, Mrs. Bland.

Hey, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and assaults county employees for starting a meeting without master. . . . .oh, wait.

And, apparently, what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander. Hmmm.

I'm alive

Had a four day weekend with Thanksgiving and all. My wife worked two of those days, so I went full loser and maintained pajama posture while hanging out with the kids, playing video games, and not shaving. There was also a birthday party in there too, which was interesting in that cramming a dozen kids and twenty+ adults in such a small house makes for some good times.

There were no accomplishments to speak of, with perhaps the acception of the loading of 100 rounds of .380 acp, as well as some .308 to refine my RL15 loads for another test. Now I just need time to shoot them. One of the bigger problems that I have found is that when you load up some new rounds for a test, and don't shoot them immediately, you start to second guess your work. That can be bad.

Other than that, the world still turns and the Republic lives on. More to follow when I get it.

Subtle hints

I stumbled upon this this morning, and thought I'd share it. Can you tell me what's wrong with this picture?



Diabetes I'm sure doesn't sound like much fun, so why the warning about it right next to the heaping pile of butter slathered pancakes being soaked in sugery syrup? FREE PANCAKES DAY!!

I'm totally going to IHOP for lunch.

Disregarding Rule #4

Either this guy owns 5,000 acres of uninhabited land, or he's a moron. Don't fire rifles up into the air! Rule #4!!

Thinking about it, even if you owned enough land to know that your rounds wouldn't be impacting in a school yard four miles away, you simply can't guarantee where your rounds are going to land. Bad juju.

Adorable marksmanship

Starting safety and marksmanship early on makes for good habits. It's cute too!

And for the ladies, it's important that the weapon matches the outfit!

Going the distance

Yesterday was a watershed moment for me in that I maxed out my little AR15 at distance. We were shooting out at 710 yards, and my 69 grain Varget handloads were punching outstanding groups as they were de-stabilizing. My AR only has a 16" barrel like many on the market today, so my average velocity is 2,582 fps which JBM Ballistics tells me my loads will run out of gas at 700 yards. I was not zeroed for any of the loads that I shot, as I was just testing groups. The group above the bull marked "223":



I'm tickled pink with that for several reasons: for one, I know exactly what the limits are for my gun; and two, despite the 69 grain bullets starting to keyhole as they hit the target, I'm still getting 4" or less vertical dispersion, which is awesome; and three, I now know that there's no point in going for another .223 chambering for the MK11 Mod 0 build that I was planning as I would only pick up another hundred yards capability. Looks like I'll be checking out 6.5 Grendel again!

This little AR with its 2-7 Burris FFII Tactical scope and lite barrel shoots circles around my custom built, Krieger barreled 308 with 3-12X50mm scope. Weird.



The little group was fired at the black dot, and I hadn't adjusted my dope from my first group. The large group was also fired with the same dope, but into a 8mph wind while chasing the yellow balloon around. It was getting dark, and everyone was packing up, so I figured what the hell. Almost all of the shot holes are slightly elongated from the rounds not hitting square. It's really cool though because they were not hitting completely sideways yet, so they were in the process of going transonic. Some of them hit straight on too, which have to be the ones that left the barrel with a little more speed.

I brought my reloading press and all associated gear to find a Varget load for my 308, and it ended badly. I again, for reasons I can't recall, I decided to shoot off of the Harris bi-pods for an OCW test, and again found out the hard lesson that bi-pods bounce like shit on any surface, at least for me. I do think that it's shooter induced error, but I've tried every trick in the book and it still happens: putting a towel under the bi-pod feet; digging a little trench in the dirt for the feet to push into; loading the bi-pod with various tention; watched the Sniper's Hide video on how to shoot off bi-pods without bounce; none of this helped. I then did myself the greatest favor by removing those pieces of shit and slinging them down as far into the woods as I possibly could. I will never ruin another load development effort because of bi-pods again.

For fun, I brought along a box of 175 grain Federal Gold Medal Match to see how it shoots from my gun at distance. The wind was slightly breezy, between 2-5 mph, and I didn't use a wind call:



The vertical dispersion is about 2 1/2", which makes me happy. The horizontal spread I blame on the wind. Mirage was also really bad when we first started shooting. My plans at this point are to stop wasting valuable long range time by testing loads, so I'm going to have to get sorted out close to home and decide on a load. My Reloder-17 OCW test a few days ago went alright, but I didn't find a load that I wanted to use; and without any data for the powder, I'm scared to go any higher. I also didn't get the velocity I was hoping for with 175 grain bullets until I was at almost 49 grains of the stuff, which is a lot of powder.

Either way, I'm glad to have success with the AR knowing that it's minute-of-groundhog at over 700 yards. You can't ask for more of a 16" factory barrel.

Honor, Courage, Commitment

Somehow I missed these photos on Veteran's Day. Quite moving, but not as moving as the stories on this page dedicated to Marine Corps Major Megan McClung; if the picture of the running shoes with the note by her headstone doesn't suck the air out of your lungs, you're not human.

Semper Fi, Marine!

More contept for government not giving young gangsters a long enough vacation

Longest title in this blog, I know, but I found another article from the same author at the Washington Times as the one I blogged about a couple of days ago.

In this article, both the shooter and the shootee were proud "active" members of DC's Youth Rehabilitation Services, and it's apparent from the author that DYRS did not send thems two keeeiiids away to someplace exotic for a long enough period of time. If only Mr. Kearney had been sent to purgatory in Carlsbad to sip margaritas and think about how eluding and assaulting police officers is frowned upon in today's society, maybe he would not have shot another human being to death over something so petty as a bag of meth, or whatever the dispute was.

Do note that twice Kearney was sentenced for some crime amongst a stack of crimes, and that had he actually served the time he was supposed to, he could not have possibly killed Wilson as he would have been behind bars. So really, what is the failure point here? These guys were both allowed to walk the streets on their own free will as long as they reported occasionally to DYRS, instead of serving the time that they were sentenced to. Hmmmm.

It's obvious to me that the solution to young people who repetitively demonstrate dangerous criminal behavior is not to stroke their feelings and give them a pompous vacation, but to place them in a facility that separates them from the people who are not lunatics. This facility should have high walls and fences, topped with concertina wire and towers filled with men with rifles.

It's a revelation, I tell ya! You heard it here first!

A river ran through it

Almost five years ago, a good friend of mine was out canoeing in the river when the water was up pretty high from two weeks of rain. The trip ended in disaster as he and a friend almost lost their lives, destroyed the canoe, and lost all of their gear except for the cooler. Among some of the gear lost was a Ruger P9, which my friend promptly reported to the local Sheriff's office. Well, some good ol' local yokel found that pistol and turned it in to the Sheriff, who called my buddy and returned it to him.

The finish may not impress you, but it still seems to function just fine:



He hasn't fired it yet, and has said that he has no desire to, but he did give it a thorough cleaning. I didn't get a pic of the internals, but they seemed fine as well. The blued magazine was pretty rusted, but didn't look as bad as I would have thought after spending four and a half years submerged in the mud on the bottom of the Rappahanock.

I have had a good experience in the past with Ruger's customer service, so I suggested that he send it to them for some OEM TLC, and just maybe that gun might be something again. It definitely needs a new slide, but after handling it I have no doubts that if I stuck a loaded magazine in it it would fire as you see it. That's after a bunch of WD-40; nothing more.

Over all, I'd say that this was a serious torture test that speaks to the quality of Ruger. I have no dog in that fight, as I do not own any Ruger products, although I've had good luck with them in the past.

Ruger tuff!!!

The blame game

"Department puts teens at risk on D.C. mean streets"

Uuuuhm, no. That is the subtitle to this article in the Washington Times on how screwed up teens and young adults buy/sell/do drugs and murder one another. I'm sorry, but you cannot blame government for the actions of crazy people.

That agency, despite all its problems, did all that it could to show this man - 19 year old individual: man - that there was life outside of DC ghettos, and sent him to a wonderful neighborhood out of state for two frickin' years to figure himself out. I don't see the connection here on how a DC government agency is destroying lives; if you are 19 years old, you are responsible for getting a hold of yourself and making your way through life without selling crack and ambushing armed drug dealers in seedy alleys.

Yeah, government agencies countrywide are not known as being bastions of efficiency or sensibility, but it seems that this particular agency did this scumbag a solid by sending him to a lovely academy so that he could play sports without being shot at. What the author, Mr. Anderson, is suggesting is that the agency condemned this man to die because they didn't finance his vacation permanently, and instead released him "arbitrar[ily]" on his own recognizance to make adult choices and do his own thing. That his own thing consisted of selling drugs and running from the cops is nobody's fault but his own.

Check this out:

Older teenagers pose the most significant challenges, he added, because group homes won't take them and they cannot be forced to go to school. "They age out," he said. "It's a programming failure. If we miss the opportunity to connect with them when they are 15 or younger, it's harder to get through to them later."

Get that? They "age out," which seems to me to be the point where they are supposed to transition from being a juvenile to an adult, but is suggested here as being the point where government doesn't grab ahold of both of their hands and make them not kill people. And that transition stage of adulthood is no longer a natural stage, it's a "programming failure." Someone needs to tell the Lord to stop screwing these kids up with all these awkward stages and stuff.

To recap, Chicquelo's mother, who allegedly gave birth to him before she reached the programming failure stage, has lived in a dangerous ghetto in DC for probably her whole life, and has no responsibility whatsoever from the author's perspective in her son growing up a violent, wannabe, drug dealing gangster, and a never heard of DC agency is to blame for not financing a fantasy life for an adult with a long criminal history. I'm starting to put it all together now.

See, DC should be like one great big-ass game of The Sims, with some responsible individual constantly overseeing someone of questionable scruples. Who cares how that's gonna be paid for; we're talking about making people make better choices, like choosing to go to Lowes and apply for a job instead of shooting heroin and smoking cigarettes on the porch all day. Common sense stuff.

Think about how 24/7 oversight could have prevented this scenario:

The police affidavit states the bullet that killed Chicquelo was fired in self-defense, and the youth who fired the shot, who had charges pending against him and was under a court warning against possessing a gun, was not charged.

Maybe if the scumbag who killed Chicquelo in unlawful self defense had simply been placed in a beautiful town in Wisconsin for his prior felonious acts, for several years, he would have a scholarship to Yale instead of a ticket to prison. Let's not worry our pretty little heads over the court putting a warning out against him for being an armed scumbag instead of locking him up for being a threat to society; all of these choir boys are victims, can't you see? We can't be locking up victims!

Yikes. It's apparent that Mr. Anderson believes in glad handing scumbags, instead of placing them behind bars. I say give them one chance and one chance only to not be a heathen, and then slam them in prison for the rest of their lives if they decide to keep hurting people.

Beam me up Scotty!!

Mars is a six-month flight away, possesses surface gravity, an atmosphere, abundant water, carbon dioxide and essential minerals. They propose the missions start by sending two two-person teams, in separate ships, to Mars. More colonists and regular supply ships would follow.

Dude! If I were a single, 60-something space cowboy I would totally sign up for this! Impossible mission. . . check! Space ship. . . check! Making the history books for being seriously awesome. . . check! And can you imagine having all that frontier and different gravity to test new long range rifle ballistics?!?!

5. . .4. . .3-2-1, Blast Off! Another Rocketship Run!!!!

You 20-something whippersnappers without kids watching endless Noggin channel have no idea what in the world that's all about, but I gather one or two of my readers do! Listening to Lauri Berkner during a three and a half hour car ride is a serious upgrade from the Wiggles. Trust me.

Handy Reloading Tip

I'm not only a cheapskate, I also appreciate being able to improvise, adapt, and overcome when confronted with a problem; like being able to fit almost 49 grains of Reloder-17 in a Winchester case under a 175 grain Nolser J4. What would make this task better?

A drop tube would allow that much powder to fit, but I'm loading now, and don't have time to order from Sinclair or MidwayUSA. What to do, what to do. . . .


BIC pen tube to the rescue!!

If you recall, I've found uses for these tubes before. Just be careful to line up the bottom of the tube with the mouth of the case or you'll spill powder all over the place. Slow is better; I hold the powder pan from my scale over the funnel and tap it softly with my index finger so that the powder barely trickles out. For fun, try loading a full case without the drop tube, and then use the drop tube to see how much more room you get!

I'll give a range report soon to let you know what I've been up to.

Happy Veteran's Day!!

My thanks go out to those who are on Active Duty, still keeping us safe!

Happy Birthday Marines!!

Oooooh Rah, Semper Fidelis, and all that good stuff!!

The Organ Trail

. . .you don't want to die from Exposure on the Organ Trail, so follow these handy tips to ward off the fleshy sickness:

• Stay alert and be aware of your surroundings and don’t wear earphones.
• Walk, run, hike and bike with a partner or group.
• Let someone know when you are on the trail and when you expect to come home.
• Don’t use paths or trails when it is dark out.
• Carry a cell phone.
• Carry a .357 Magnum handgun loaded with poison-laced teflon-tipped bullets made of lead and adamantium.

Actually, the Loudon county sheriff's department left that last bullet out, but I thought it made sense, so I put it in there.

Weirdos who like to show their satchel to random joggers don't seem to me like they fear spandex clad trail wanderers with cell phones. However, broadcast a story over national news about how a trail lurking pervert got a little too hands on with a running lady and ended up with a sucking forehead wound and I bet you that they might think twice about showing their wares in public.

Road Ragers

It's stories like this that make me doubt the future of humanity.

At some point, the driver of the Lexus pulled up and threw a container of yogurt at the Toyota. That’s when the driver of the Toyota displayed a small caliber handgun.

Dude. I get mad at other drivers just like anyone else, but even though I may scream a long list of obscenities, I never get to the point where I would throw things at another moving vehicle or brandish a gun, and certainly am not stupid enough to call the state police if I did.

Interesting part is the charges associated with these two morons; misdemeanors for the handgun guy, and felonies for yogurt slinger. Oh that just sounds bad.

On Daylight Savings Time

Many moons ago, some jackasses decided to fuck with the way human beings experience their lives while having enough light to see, and now twice a year we have to endure the mild mayhem that results in this arcane retarded practice.

Either way you look at it, you're screwing somebody out of the time/daylight continuum that they need to function. This is most apparent to me right now as all of my kids are wide awake at six o'clock in the morning, and stumbling around in exhaustion at seven o'clock at night because their little bodies don't know what the hell is going on.

I swear, anyone that I hear say that daylight savings is a good idea within ear shot of me is going to get punted right in the nuts. Period.

Pick a time already, and stay with it. Or at the very least, split the difference and call it settled. Humans are creatures of habit, and tweaking the clocks twice a year so that half of the office comes in an hour late is a stupid idea. My $.02

Booooolits n' brass n' stuff

Sinclair International is loving me these days. I've been on a massive reloading kick in order to maintain my shooting habit, and I'm not above trying new things.

This weekend I tested two brand spankin' new loads; one for my 308 and the other for my darling, the-AR15-from-DPMS. I've had some consistency issues with the 308 at distance, so I boiled up some 210 grain Sierra Match Kings over the new Reloader-17 for a nice OCW test. It went well, as did my 69 grain SMK over Varget OCW for the AR15. At long range though, one of these loads went fantastically well, while the other went very bad.

Browsing the Sniper's Hide thread on using the 208 grain Hornady A-Max with RL-17 verifies the "start slow end fast" mentality of ballistics, whereas you heave a ginormous (no autocorrect, awesome) bullet with a high B.C. for some long range groundhog splattering goodness. Checking my Shooter Ballistics software shows the 210 SMK as superior to my 175 Nosler CC load in the wind deflection department, with an additional 150 yards or so of sweet supah-sonic flight time, if I can start out in the 2,360 fps range, which I achieved. Somewhere though, something didn't go right - when I chose the load that had the 2,300 fps that I needed, and appeared to be on the accuracy node , it clocked it in a the range yesterday with a velocity of 2,437. Huh? I'm going to have to find out what went wrong there, as I shot some of these at 620 yards and my groups were spreading like two feet apart.

In for the win though was the trusty and reliable 155 grain Nosler CC handloads that I've used as a baseline for a year and a half. That one shoots really well, but at 2,668 fps average it's a little slow for serious long range work. My next move is to try tweaking my 175 grain loads, and perhaps doing an OCW test with those using RL-17, as I hear good things about that combo.

As for the 69 grain SMKs in the AR15, I was hitting groups of 7" or less at 620 yards, and that was with a Burris 2-7 variable with heavy reticle that obscures the entire 8" dot that I was shooting at. I'm pretty impressed.

On the way now are some more 155 grain booooolets for the 308, as well as many 69 grain pills for the 223.

Something that I also caught this weekend which explains the wild inconsistencies that I've been getting with my loads is that RL-15 and RL-17 get hung up in the LEE Perfect Powder Measure. I couldn't figure out why several shots would hit lights out at 500+ yards, and then one or two would hit like six inches low. Apparently, the long powder kernels get hung up like a horrible game of Jenga in my powder thrower, and that would explain why velocity on some of those shots would be 100 fps or more slower. I noticed when I was throwing charges and measuring them on the scale, that some of them would be way light; I bumped my powder thrower and a bunch of powder fell out. Now I know.

I have good things to report about the Competitive Edge Dynamics M2 chronograph that I am now using, as my last chrono - a Competition Electronics - had a C-Products magazine and .380 acp induced malfunction from which it could not recover.

As I've mentioned before, chronographs - like geraniums - need lots and lots of sunlight to function, and when you're a busy working dad that spends half his life driving to-and-from someplace, you may not have adequate light to work with. Also, Virginia is full of all these damned trees, which make what little sunlight you have pretty useless. The CED M2 chrono is all about combating the light problem, and it worked out very well this weekend.

Much reloading to do in a short period of time, as I am hoping to have a gazillion rounds loaded for the AR15 for some marksmanship lessons with my nephew. Hell yeah!

Violent video games are the cause of this

The game doesn't go on sale until Tuesday. But some thieves in northeast Maryland got their hands on more than 100 copies of the game. On Saturday night, they staged a covert operation at the GameStop in Bel Air.
***
The men, who were armed with guns, planned the heist for closing time at the store.

See, that just proves that if video games didn't have guns and icky shooting in it, thugs wouldn't feel that they needed guns to steal copies of it.

Zombie preparedness

I just found this website called Zombie Tools which offers edged weapons custom made for zombie killin.

The Rough and Ready Bone Machete is my fav; although I don't have the dough for one at the moment. Check out their sweet lineup of zombie images!

Old school DMR rifles

The US military has drug out the M14s and used them in the DMR role, as well as fielded the dead sexy Mk12 Mods 0 and 1 based on the M16 platform, but what does the rest of the world use?

Seeing these two Spanish Army CETME Model Cs complete with beat to hell wooden furniture leads me to believe that the DMR concept was not created at the same time as XBox 360 came out, and may actually pre-date the Atari.

It is kinda sacrilegious to see one of them wearing a Leupold MK4 - which has made its bones in combat like the CETME - sitting next to another well worn CETME wearing a NC-Star. It would be less offensive to put pearl handles on General Patton's Peacemaker.

I don't know what other countries use for an interim range precision rifle, but I wouldn't want to have one of Spain's finest taking a crack at me with one of those CETMEs, NC-Star or not!

I propose a different solution

"The Commonwealth isn’t so thrilled about Washington’s plans to "relocate" some wild animals and critters pulled from homes in the District. It’s not the relocation that has Virginia officials so upset; it’s where the animals may end up: Virginia."

DC plans on trapping opposums and other vermin critters and moving them South of the Potomac for a better life. As the article states, government officials are limited on being able to kill them, so my solution is to pass out Ruger 10-22s to the populace and let them handle it. I bet it would be cheaper, too.

Commenter Bob_Ryans_Toupe for the win

"I don't know why Virginia officials are so upset about this when hundreds of thousand of vermin from Virginia travel to and from DC every workday."

That's funny right there!

To all those from free states. . . .

. . .DC is not concerned about your gun or property rights. It's a gamble just driving through on the beltway with your guns locked in a vault underneath a viscious doberman with a toothache; best leave the roscoe with your friends while you visit.

Gunfight in Mexico

There really isn't much to see, as this is a cell phone video shot at night, but the audio tells of a gun battle with full auto weapons, and not gunshow ARs and AKs. The only semi auto fire that I can tell is at the very beginning.

The back story is that the Mexican military had some drug lord cornered, and a convoy of cartel guys came to get him. I wouldn't bother watching the whole thing; it sounds the same from the first minute til almost the last. It does give you an idea though.

USMC fielding M110 SASS

Another Sniper's Hide link with a SAM stating that the M110 will replace the MK11 Mod 1 and M39 EBR.

The Knight's Armament folks have to be dancing on the table tops right now. I can see why the 308 AR platform is so popular, as it's a blast to shoot.

Pimp your M14

The M14 platform may be dated, but it still makes for one sexy weapon system! This guy built a MK14 Mod 1 from a Springfield Scout, and it has more bumps and protrusions than you can shake a stick at. Saaaahhhweeet!!

If only I had several grand layin around, I might have to build one of those babies for shooting four legged critters while clad in Multi-cam and skateboard helmet!

Boop. "Whiskey One Niner, we have an unidentified marmot digging an entrenchment at five-eight-two meters. Requesting permission to reduce the Tango."

Sksssssst

Boop "Roger that, Eco Three, your cleared hot."

Sksstckk

Boop "Solid copy, Whiskey One Niner. And don't call me Roger."

Equipment Change Proposal: Suunto edition

**Update: A picture is worth a thousand words:



Click to make bigger. The black watch is the Suunto, and you can see where the pathetic little nubbins of elastoplastofantastico broke with such ease. Also, you can see the Suunto's $40 replacement which connects the strap via big steel nubbins of stainless glory. Not gonna break there. I'm going to JB-Weld the hell out of the Suunto vice sending it back for a new plastocraptoelastomerase housing that will fall apart when exposed to pressure.

But to make my point, the engineers at Suunto managed to cram all that techno goodness into a rough and tough housing small enough to go onto your wrist, and then when it came down to the structural part that connects to the strap, they went to lunch. It's the exact same phenomenon that happened with my Maxpedition phone case. They built a hardcore case and then when it came to the belt clip they just stuck some junk on there and called it a day. No wonder we outsource so much labor to China; if it's going to suck, might as well make it cheap too!

To any engineers that may make it to this site, please take the time to do a 100% job so that stuff doesn't suck.

****

OK, so my Suunto Vector watch broke on me again this weekend, and I'm really pissed off about it. If you recall, I broke it earlier this summer after it was waaaaay out of warranty, but Suunto fixed it for $55 which made me happy. Turn around time was short as well.

So Saturday night the holes where the pin that attaches the wrist strap broke clean in the exact same way it broke before. The pin just pulled right through with little effort. At the time, I was wrestling in a life-or-death fight with a crazed killer in an alleyway sitting on my bed holding baby CTone, and as I casually placed my arm down as support so I could lean back, that's when the watch broke. Again, no effort involved; the watch had just slipped down to where my wrist bends, and when I put my weight onto my hand, I felt the watch give.

So now I'm looking at the back of the watch, right at the failure point, and it dawns on me how shitty the construction of the watch housing is. I forgot to take a picture this morning to show you, but here's a 5.11 watch that had a similar failure, and you can at least get an idea of the problem.

Now I'm no engineer, but I am a mechanically minded soul who has built a ton of shit in his time. You people out there who have also built a ton of shit take a look at that last link at that man's watch and tell me: who the hell thought that it was a great idea to construct a watch with a tough housing to hold all the cool ballistic doodads, and then just go all half assed on where the strap connects?

"Hey Earl, you reckon we aughta put some more material in there, you know, where the strap thingy that physically holds the watch to the arm attaches? Looks like there's barely enough material there to hold off a good sneeze."

"Hell no! What are you crazy? Failure points Shmearlure points!!! We're engineers for cryin' out loud!! We do shit our way, even if it sucks and makes no sense!!"

"So what, you wanna keep it that way? It would be so simple to just reinforce that area to make it stronger, and we would end up with a product that is 100% bomb proof! We could really be proud of what we built!"

"No. Just. . . .no. If anything, we should make those pin holes as thin as possible to save the company the extra money for the high tech polymer. If the damn thing breaks, that's not my problem."

So there you have it. I was browsing the comments on the Suunto website, and noticed a glaring trend where people bitch about the wrist straps breaking. I found this to be the case with the Vector, as the strap on mine basically rotted off from several years of me never taking the watch off. Ultimately it's going to happen with anything other than aluminum or steel, which brings me to my latest dilemma: do I send my shitty Vector back to Suunto for another $55 servicing, after which I will have an awesome watch that could be ripped off my wrist by any four year old kid, or do I buy a Casio G-Shock from Wal-Mart for $50, and then save up some cash for a quality watch made of steel that's not likely to fold like a cardboard box the moment it has some torque applied to it?

The thing that gets me is that no one out there that I know of makes a watch with the features of the Suunto or Casio Pathfinder in a material that doesn't suck. I'm thoroughly convinced at this point that plastic watches are basically just disposable. Suunto just happens to make really awesome disposable watches, and if I want something that will last me a lifetime and I can pass down to one of my kids, it has to be constructed from something that has stood the test of time.

What it all boils down to is that I have plenty of other things to spend money on right now, least of which is fixing something that was supposed to already be fixed. I don't have time for that.

Suunto, why don't you make us all a bad-ass watch that doesn't suck? Can you make one out of steel? And by steel, I don't mean one that has a bunch of steel held together by that worthless elastospectacularplastomer bullshit that you guys cheerlead on your website; I mean a hardcore steel housing with a steel wrist strap held on by big ole' honkin steel pins. Can you do that for me please, thanks much.