There's no date on my notes, oddly enough, but I do recall it being hot and humid, as you can see:
I used my 16" barrelled DPMS AR15, and my buddy shot his 16" barrelled Ruger Mini-14 just to make sure that we were getting good data. The velocities I did record are posted, and I took pictures of the shot holes where either the bullet was keyholing or breaking apart; I generally passed on taking pictures of the 1st wall because I expected the bullets to be passing through it point first. I'm only going to link to the pictures instead of posting every one of them because there's like sixty or seventy pictures here:
Keep in mind with the velocities that they were recorded as a single shot, and not averaged over a large sample. After we finished shooting the drywall, we put some wet phonebooks behind the first wall to see if the bullets would still expand after penetrating the drywall. We didn't do this with all of them; some of the bullets we knew we would not be using for a home defense situation, like the 55 grain handloads for example.
Also, here is what happens when you are hunched over trying to make an off hand shot on a one inch dot with iron sights and as you're shooting close to the screens on your chronograph you fail to take into consideration the sight-offset:
In the end, the Barnes Varmint Grenade got our nod as the best home defense ammo, with Black Hills Blue Box 55 grain hollowpoints coming in second. You can see in shots 3 and 4, on the 3rd wall, all the little pieces of the bullets that didn't even fully penetrate. It's comforting knowing that a bullet fired from your rifle will break up into pieces when it hits a couple of walls.
This is not my carry piece, but I can tote it whenever I wish; it's my wife's Kahr PM9. This miniature blaster is the bee's knees for pocket carry. The last time I shot it, I was astonished at how well it grouped. Stuff this puppy in a DeSantis Super Fly holster and stick it in your pocket and you're good to go.
The Super Fly is the best pocket holster I have ever encountered, and I have tried many. I think the covering of it is more sticky than the Nemesis, and the removable and reversible flap is perfect for breaking up the outline of the gun while still allowing a quick firing grip. I have several of these holsters and they have never let me down.
You can also see my replacement for the crappy Suunto Vector that failed me recently; it's a Seiko Black Monster. I went with a dive watch specifically because the ISO standards that dive watches have to undergo in order to get their "Divers" rating include three magnet challenges where the watch doesn't lose more than 30 seconds or so. Since everything electronic goes apeshit when I'm around, I figured I would try to mitigate it as much as possible. It's also made of steel, which is a hell of a lot stronger than plastic.
Lastly, there's a Microtech Scarab Executive with tanto blade that is my most spendy knife acquisition to date. It's a neat knife, very ninja, and I have carried it in the past, although I don't recommend it for EDC. It's manufactured very precise, and has moving parts like springs and such, and no matter how well it's made it is prone to failure. The lockup on it is amazing, and it works well at slicing things, and I would imagine it working well at piercing stuff, however, if you put a lot of force on it I'm sure it would break. It's just too delicate. At one point the tungsten glass breaker on the end of it stripped out the aluminum handle, and I had to fix it with a helicoil to make it well again. Microtech collectors are probably cringing right now, but it works. The blade is D2 tool steel, which is excellent steel, but rusts easily if you don't take good care of it. Having wiped your edge down with motor oil, you may not want to be cutting tomatoes with it.
The tactical pen craze now includes Kydex sheaths, for when you've hit the ground after doing a terrain sketch from your chute at 10,000 feet and need to do a quick draw to take out that sentry.
TOPS makes some quality hard use knives; I would expect that their tactical pen would be good to go. The price point is above me at the moment though.
"A woman in a jungle region of northern Malaysia rescued her husband from a tiger attack by clubbing the beast on its head with a large wooden soup ladle and chasing it away, police said Monday."
The real moral of the story is that if you're a Malaysian man, you might want to think twice about coming home late with alcohol on your breath; the wimmins in them parts I hear are deadly with kitchen utensils.
Last night was awful. I very rarely get seriously sick; I get a cold once a year or so, but I get the flu like once every five years. I picked up the flu sometime last week, and it set in full force Saturday night, with last night being the worst. The shivering sweats with high fever I could do without, and now I know how my kids feel when I put them into a cold bath to bring the fever down. The bright side is I called into work so as to not share my gift with my colleagues, so I should be able to get some blogging done if I can appease CTone the youngest and get him off my ankles.
I uploaded the rest of the photos from the drywall shoot to my Photobucket account. I need to dig up the master list that shows which rounds were fired and in what order; once I have it I'll write up a full version that tells the whole tale.
This morning the news was brimming with the developing story of three people dead and three wounded during two separate attacks in Manassas, Virginia. It appears that two families were gunned down in cold blood.
As sad as that may be, it is noted that this is the first murder in Manassas this year, and is also a rarity for multiple victims. For that I am thankful.
It's quite clear to me now that the single most profound instrument in preventing crime around here is the Potomac River; twenty miles East of Manassas it separates Prince George's county, which if you recall had fourteen murders in the first two weeks of this year, and DC, which has had ten murders this year already. Of the three locales, guess which one doesn't impede an American's right to protect themselves with a firearm?
While that may not be what makes mass violence rare on this side of the Potomac, it certainly doesn't make it common.
Why not just start stacking them on top of each other? That seems the only logical choice these days considering the sheer amount of homes built in the county over the last decade. So this is exactly what a county plagued with insufficient amount of schools, water, roads, and power needs: more frickin' houses to be filled with more frickin' morons with more frickin' cars.
I've got news for you retards: there ain't many more trees around here to knock over to build your Sim City. It would be wise for you to take your pipe dreams and shove them up your ass.
When unrestrained growth is allowed, you end up with a ton of people in an area that cannot support it ("ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag" - thanks dad!), and when the economy tanks, you end up with tens of thousands of people who want to work but can't. Here we have county politicos suggesting that the fix for this mess is to have more unrestricted growth to get all of the morons working again.
UDAs [Urban Development Areas] are required by state law to accommodate at least 10 years worth of population growth. Eliminating UDAs in Brooke and Widewater left Stafford’s plan with six UDAs—and 4,000 housing units short of its 14,661 requirement. The committee was tasked with finding a place for those units.
Very clever. Stafford county (my county is guilty of this too) completely ignores that "10 year accommodation" part in favor of just rapidly putting up houses and filling them with people, because it's not like they're going to stop the funding stream for one moment. Pockets are being lined, and we can't have reality stand in the way. Notice that three UDAs were eliminated, probably because there couldn't be justification to keep adding to them, and now it's recommended that there be three new one's added, conveniently.
And now there's a recommendation to add a "downtown" area? Where the hell are you going to put it? I don't suppose you are planning on building it in space and then crashing it into the dirt on top of nine subdivisions?
Here's an idea, how about taking the tens of millions of dollars in imaginary funds that you don't have and plan on fixing the nightmare of a roadway and infrastructure problem before you go about making any other plans!
The committee also approved the addition of a 600-unit UDA in Boswell’s Corner. That area had been considered for a UDA last year, but was rejected because Marine Corps Base Quantico officials were concerned that more residents in that area could adversely affect the operations of the base.
Ya think! Completely absent from this article is that 2,700 more Marines and Servicemen - complete with their families, SUVs, and need for shit like power, water, and roads to drive to work on - will be moving into Stafford county this July. I guess that their basic needs take a back seat to other more pressing needs like fresh new architecture to look at "downtown", and maybe a few more Starbucks stores and another Target to buy CDs at.
Snellings also questioned whether the Brooke area could sustain a UDA, as it has a limited road network and no access to public water and sewer.
This jackassery of fueling the overcrowded fire with more bodies is a symptom of being a Virginia politician, I wager. These idiots that the local morons elected will need to hire craftsman skilled at building skyscrapers if they intend to keep up this pace. I'm seeing that the larger picture here is not to turn what used to be a cozy hick town into a bustling place of commerce, or to settle with maintaining it's current status as a suburb of DC, but to turn it into DC.
Fantastic. Lets just hope that somewhere in this madness someone suggests building a Cabelas.
I think this illustrates perfectly that full-auto personal weapons are not good for "mowing down" people. They are useful for putting several rounds onto one target quickly, but still have to be transitioned skillfully from one target to the next, and not while the trigger is held down. Also, they run out of ammo fast.
Of all the stores to rob, this dude holds up a GNC. Whey protein is pretty spendy, but I believe that one would find an ABC store to hold more booty. I have been known to be a patron at both from time to time, and it's clear to me which vice brings in more income.
Only motivated people buy health food, and there aren't many of them these days.
I have found that saving various empty boxes makes for utility later on down the road. The best ones in my opinion are plastic bullet boxes, as I have found use for them for holding small reloading parts like comparators or gauges:
One for my bullet puller inserts; another for bump gauges that are used to set up dies; one for the FAT Wrench attachments, and one for my comparator inserts for measuring bullet seating depth. The green boxes used to hold .224 caliber Sierra Match King bullets, and the red cardboard box is from Hornady. As you gain further addiction to reloading, you will acquire all sorts of tools and measuring devices that need an orderly place to stay. These boxes fit the bill perfectly, cost nothing, and will last a lifetime.
I also recommend saving cartridge boxes. Sometimes I will load up some obscure loading and don't have any MTM plastic boxes lying around, so I'll stick them in a Remington Core-Lokt box and place a mailing label over the ends and remark them with a Sharpie. Also, the used cardboard boxes are easier to carry in the field and don't make noise like the hard plastic boxes. There has never been a time when I've complained about having too many, and all of the 308 boxes in this picture have been recently re-filled and then emptied on the range:
All of the .45 ACP and .380 boxes are filled, and there aren't many 9mm boxes left in there. I really do use them all the time, and keep every factory ammo box that I empty.
By this surprisingly non-hostile article at the Washington Post, since DC's handgun ban was ruled unconstitutional over 1,400 guns have been registered in the district. Take into account though that there is only one place for DC residents to claim ownership of their purchased firearm due to DC not having any gun stores. In order for a US citizen to lawfully purchase a firearm, they have to buy it in their state of residence; DC is no different even though it's not a state, and the one fellow who is licensed to make transfers of guns in the district charges $125.
The gist of the article is that only the more affluent residents are buying guns, and when you consider that a Glock handgun - not expensive as far as handguns go - is between $550 and $650, and on top of that you have to pay for the $125 transfer fee, you can see why it's something that only the more well off can afford.
Someone needs to tell the guy in the caption on the article to keep his finger off the trigger. Just sayin. And Alan Gura gets quoted a few times in the article, showing in one part that he's a realist:
Police said they could provide no data on registered guns being stolen, misused or used in self-defense, nor could they cite any specific incidents.
"Oh, I'm sure there's been some misuse," said lawyer Alan Gura, who successfully argued against the ban before the Supreme Court. "People steal and misuse stuff every day, whether it's guns or cars or kitchen knives. It's no surprise that people steal stuff and do bad things. That's the ordinary course of life."
This post at Snowflakes in Hell reminded me of a test that a friend and I did a couple of years ago shooting drywall with rifles, which I will get to in a minute. The article is about fake gun experts, and is spot on. The expert in question drops this little gem:
Our instructor further advised that shotguns are the weapon of choice for home defense. Unlike a heavy-caliber handgun, a shotgun will put an intruder out of business without a bullet passing through a wall and killing a sleeping child.
I have found this to be a common belief amongst folks at the gun counter at the local Ganderous Mountainous, and it's not even close to being true. With AR type rifles becoming so popular, I had one loaded up in my home in case the Boogey Man came, and thought that the idea that rifles were overpenetrative in a home defense scenario was bunk. A good buddy helped me find out.
I never did publish the results of the shooting test as we did not complete it; we shot five walls with rifles using various loads, and intended to do the same with handguns and shotguns. While we had the walls set up we did fire one round of Winchester Super X 00 buckshot and a few rounds from handguns just for our own edification.
The five walls were to residential spec; 1/2" drywall screwed front and back to 2x4 studs. The longest span in either one of our modest homes measured 30', so we did the shooting at 15' with the walls spaced out over 15'. We used an AR15 and a Ruger Mini-14 both chambered in .223 Remington for the test, and we shot many different types of loads from factory ammo to some handloads. The results told us both without a doubt that that cartridge is way less penetrative than buckshot or handguns.
Here is the impact on the 2nd and 3rd wall made by a Black Hills 52 grain jacketed hollow point fired from the Mini-14's 16" barrel:
Click to make bigger.
As you can see, the bullet was sideways when it hit the second wall, and was in pieces when it hit the third. This was pretty typical for most of the rounds fired, but this was the most notable example of the round breaking up so quickly. Those little pieces of the bullet may still have been lethal, but then again, they may have not. That particular round didn't make it through the fourth wall, leading me to believe that it didn't have much energy left when it hit the third wall. Also, the bullet fragments would lose velocity and energy very rapidly given a little more distance, and when applied to a home defense scenario means that if a round fired from your rifle misses the bad guy and goes through an exterior wall of your home, it will not be nearly as likely to enter your neighbor's house and harm someone.
The one round of buckshot told a completely different story. Fired into the first wall at a distance of 15' from an improved cylendar choke showed that you still have to aim:
The orange dots are one inch, making the spread from the buckshot about six inches. That busts the myth about only needing to aim in the general direction of an attacker with a shotgun. It does show why they will effectively put down a scumbag with one well placed shot; the trauma of twenty five .30 caliber holes concentrated over the vitals gives you a high probability that you won't need to shoot twice.
Here is the face of the 5th wall, and if you look closely you can see 18 shot holes marked with arrows:
That leaves seven pellets unaccounted for. Some of them may have stopped in the fourth wall, or may have gone off the 5th wall and into the woods. The bad part about launching so many projectiles with one shot is that you cannot account for each and every one of them, as they go off on their own program if given some distance. With a rifle, you are only firing one round at a time, so you have much more control.
For fun, we also shot a .38 Special MagTec frangible round, a .357 magnum Glaser Safety Slug, and a Black Hills 124 grain +P 9mm at the walls, and all of them went straight through the five walls and into the woods. High velocity small mass bullets hitting something hard like drywall makes them break up and slow down, and low velocity high mass bullets just keep going.
The left wing political groups tried their hand at sensible gun laws in Switzerland and failed. Reading some of the arguments in the article shows that the crazy lefties in Switzerland think just like the crazy lefties in America.
And 300 deaths a year? As armed as that country is - 1.7 million issued military weapons - and they have 300 deaths from firearms annually, which tells me that it's not the blasted guns. I bet they would be better served taking away bleach, or swimming pools.
Who's idea was it to have the Superbowl on a Sunday night? It makes no sense to me to hold a major festive event that is known for mass consumption of alcohol and hot wings the night before the workweek starts.
The company, Jaworski Jagdreisen, which organizes hunting expeditions, insists there are elephants in the area of Zimbabwe it sent the hunter, identified only as Waldemar I, the Rzeczpospolita daily newspaper said.
"From what I know, (the hunter) should have seen elephant excrement there," it quoted the company owner as saying.
There's not much more to this story, but it gave me a chuckle. I gather that going on a safari hunt costs big bucks, as well as time spent going there, so I'd be pissed too if I went on a hunt where the animal I was seeking didn't even exist.
"Wha? You didn't see any poo mate?"
I don't think I'd be game for an elephant hunt, but shooting a lion or some other dangerous critter would be cool. Or even better, go after a big cat with a spear or a knife! I'd have to be clad in kevlar to pull that off, but not too long ago there were dudes who were crazy enough to do it while basically naked and holding a shield made of grass. That's either really brave or really stupid. I'm probably more towards the latter.
**Oh, and do read the comments.
"Are the elephants armed too?" Ughhh, yeah, I'd say without a doubt that elephants are pretty well armed. You don't think Hannibal took elephants over the Alps and into Italy because he like scratching their ears and feeding them, do you? And the arguments about eating elephant are pretty stupid too; I think Americans in general don't understand that just because an animal is on another continent and doesn't have a white tail doesn't mean that it's shot and left to rot in the sun.
So this last weekend I decided not to blow a gasket when my Competitive Edge Dynamics Millennium 2 chronograph once again gave me absolutely nothing of worth. This was my 5th range trip using it without a reading at all, or at least an accurate one. When I got my third reading of 85osomething fps from my 308, I tried my 1911 with handloads and got 600 something, so I went ahead and did myself a great big favor and calmly dismantled the device with accurate fire from my pistol.
If they weren't so expensive, I would probably buy a dozen more for this purpose as it worked pretty spectacular as a target; at least, way better than it does as a chronograph. As I had said before, from all of my research on chronographs, the sensor/screen technology is very primitive, and when you chose one brand of chronograph over another, you're not buying better electronics so much as you're buying features. The sensors are going to be the same.
Checking out this post on LongRangeHunting.com forums told me what to expect from CED's customer service, which appears to be lacking. I wasn't interested in a $72 refund check for my troubles, and I also decided that I wasn't getting duped for another $90 for the IR screens only to have to build a "black box" to make a supposed reliable piece of equipment perform as it was intended to without it. In my experience, Competitive Edge Dynamics builds their chronographs out of the finest snake oil, and perhaps I should have seen it coming. From their website:
Expanded digital chip design now gives the CED M2 the ability of reading velocities at much lower light levels. On clear days, this means the ability to chronograph from early morning till almost sunset.
Close to sunset is when my Shooting Chrony Beta and Competition Electronics ProChrono would start to give errors, so this is the line that sold me for the most part. The M2 gave me errors the first time I ever took it out, which was in the late afternoon, so the above line is bullshit.
I also did research on gun forums to find out what the general consensus was, but apparently didn't look hard enough. I also could have scrolled down on CED's information page to find an extensive list of reasons why their shit chronograph won't function. Caveat Emptor - buyer beware: if you have to do a "flashlight test" on a product that costs twice as much as the competition just to see if the fucking thing is even working, you have been shammed. I offer you evidence now about this piece of equipment with the hopes that somebody looking into chronographs will know what to expect. If my words aren't enough, take a look at what you can expect at 3 o'clock in the afternoon while out testing loads on the range:
This could be you , sports fans! See all those "e" marked down? Those are errors. Also, actually shooting these loads that I tested at range showed the velocities to be over 200 fps faster than what the chrony was reading; gravity doesn't lie. Now you know and can make your choice. For me, I'm going to buy another $80 Shooting Chrony Beta model to put in my range bag, and later buy an Oehler 35 when I have the fundage. And for the time being, I'm on a jihad to expose all the pathetic pieces of gear out there with reviews and posts like this one.
All religions have their little nuances and strange pet peeves, but reading about Muslims in Russia getting their panties in a wad over alcohol makes me shake my head. Having spent a little time around Muslims from all over the Middle East, I always thought it was odd to be told that I was wrong to partake in the devil's brew by a group of men who each smoked a golf ball sized portion of opium three times a day, right after they all got done humping a thirteen year old boy in the back of a trailer. It's like Charles Manson going door to door in my neighborhood speaking against gang violence.
A "resurging" community in DC discovers that it's not so resurgent, with two shootings in two weeks, and residents fearing for their safety. Understandably, something needs to be done. Action must be taken.
So what's the proposed answer? Lighting. More lighting is needed to thwart the "spasm of violence" that rips at the soft underbelly of this community. Oh, and abandoned houses; something needs to be done about them too.
Great job Mayor Grey! Way to step it up there and take the bull by the horns!
When DC leaders respond to crisis like this, you know what it reminds me of? Madlibs.
DC officials are concerned about (adjective) ________ violence in a South East DC community. Just last (time)_______ twelve people were (past-tense verb) _________ while on their way to (utopian place)________. DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier is considering (majestic verb)__________ with (type of people, plural)______________ in an effort to stop them from (verb)___________. DC officials have also considered installing (plural noun)_______________ and (noun)___________ to prevent (adjective)__________ (type of people, plural)______________ from destroying the very fabric of the community.
Go ahead and have some fun with that one.
I bet you a shiny new nickel that there's some government employee that works for the mayor's office who's sole job in life is to dream up words to fill in those blanks, and when the media comes hunting for some BS story, that's the dude they look for.
As for solutions to the violence problem, you know where I stand on such matters.
Now, you tell me if you would pick up a job working as a US government employee in that torn up country and not carry at least a pistol. That place learns pin the noose on the American in elementary school, so they're no doubt experts at it by the time they've made it to adults. I pray for the best for Mr. Davis.
I would have wanted to be anywhere but there at that moment. It puts it into perspective when you consider standing on a static range shooting at paper, and you are putting round after round into the target with great accuracy. From what I can see here in this video, the whole daggone ballgame changes when your paper target comes and finds you at your desk and starts blasting away with a shotgun.
As a rather large and intense Drill Instructor once told me, "when you're being shot at, I promise you that you will be so low to the dirt that your helmet will plow a trench into the earth!"
Twas a beautiful day on the range yesterday. I got some work done too, some bittersweet. I have poured a lot of time into perfecting handloads using IMR 8208 XBR with 155 grain Nosler J4s, and yesterday I proved that those loads shoot accurately, but sadly were too hot. This was confirmed when the ballistics of these rounds at range did not match the speeds advertised by my CED M2 chronograph a month before, and in fact was waaaaaay off.
The CED M2 did not accompany me home in the same condition it was when we arrived, which is no great loss considering it had only given me one realistic reading in five trips to the range. I'm fighting intent to send the remainder of the device back to Competitive Edge Dynamics with a smart ass letter. It's amazing the devastation that seventeen rounds of 230 grain lead round nose will do to shitty plastic.
On to happier things, I had loaded up some Reloder-17 rounds with 175 grain Nosler J4s for a ladder test, as I only had fourteen of those bullets left and I wanted to put them to the best use. At 570 yards I got a perfect reading on where the two nodes were, which confirmed my suspicions almost exactly.
A disclaimer: work up your own rounds for your own gun, and do not rely on what you see on the internet for a starting load. If you do not know what you are doing, get help from someone who does or you may wind up destroying your gun and your face. Reloading is fun and safe when done right, and can be disastrous when done wrong.
With that said, I have already done a great deal of shooting with this combination, and know where I need to be. I started out with two sighters of 47.6 grain charges: one for 100 yards, and one for longer range, which both of them printed where I wanted. You can see the second sighter in the below picture just above and to the left of the 8" bull. For the charged loads of the test, I dropped down 2 MOA from my sighter, and had marked the bullets with colored sharpies to make the impacts readable. The bottom three shot holes are 47.6, 47.8, and 48 grains of Reloder-17 under the 175 grain bullet, grouping nicely on the same horizontal plane. I anticipated the top of the lower node at 48.1 grains, so this is good data to me. After that, the 48.2 and 48.4 grain loads walked up the target, and then the 48.6, 48.8, and 49 grain charges grouped well. At the 570 yards I was shooting, I had 12 1/2 MOA of elevation dialed in on my scope. The top three charges could stand to come down 1/4 of a MOA, which would put my velocity at 2,710 fps. That's awesome from a 20" barrel, and defies the 2,560 - 2,600 fps readings that I got from that shitty CED M2 chrono.
Here is my 100 yard target which I used to zero the 8208 XBR loads. The bottom right shot hole was my first round which jammed the gun. With the DPMS/SR-25 style bolt, the cam pin can be inserted either way through the bolt carrier, and if you dont pay attention during assembly, you will have your brass cases ejecting into the left side of the receiver instead of out the ejection port. The M16 bolt can only be assembled the correct way, so I guess old habits die hard. After that I had a little zeroing and shooting position adjusting to do, evident by the bottom middle target, with the bottom left being a solid five shot group from my rifle, and what I expect from it accuracy wise. At 400 yards I was printing 3" five shot groups, but I had ejector swipe marks on all the case heads and slightly flattened primers, meaning that these loads were too hot. Also, earlier OCW testing over the shitty CED M2 chrono had given me velocities of 2,783 fps with these loads, but actual testing gave me velocities nearing 3,000 fps!!!! Waaaaay too hot!! I may back down to the other load in the near future, but for now I'm going to do some seating depth testing with the Reloder-17 loads. Also, check out the top left group from my little DPMS AR. Not bad for a 7 power scope!
The Mosin Nagant carbine that I picked up awhile ago loves PRVI ammo in the 150 grain loads, but produces some fierce recoil! It certainly beats the corrosive Russian ammo I had been shooting. Here is a three shot group at 100 yards off sandbags:
Here is a three shot 10" group at 400 yards off sandbags, shooting between the visible 3" orange dot on the right and another just outside of the picture on the left. With open sights and a short barrel, I'll take that group any day.
Other than that, I did a little shooting with the old 1911 at 100 yards for fun with my wheel weight handloads. Good stuff. Now I've got some more loading to do to reach my goal of having perfect handloads. Do you think I'll ever get there?
This week in Washington, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey introduced three very modest gun regulation bills, including one making it more difficult to sell guns to people on the terror watch list.
Jeez, I would hate to see what you consider a radical proposal. Oh yeah, this:
Meanwhile, in Salt Lake City, the State Legislature is considering a bill to honor the Browning M1911 pistol by making it the official state firearm.
Gail Collins considers a law that impacts no one in any substantive way at all an absurd idea, yet thinks that a law that would impact Americans for years to come is modest. Pretty backwards if you ask me, but then again, I'm talking about a woman who is confused about the meaning of the word "terror:"
The terror of the National Rifle Association is so pervasive that President Obama did not want to poison the mood of his State of the Union address by suggesting that when somebody on the terror watch list tries to buy a gun, maybe we should do an extra check.
So a group of people who advocate the peaceable ownership of arms are terror[ists]? That puts a qualifier on exactly who she believes should be on a secret government list, no? I guess this prophetic understanding that she has in that branding non-violent people with a dark label and forever restricting or taking away their rights is "extremely mild," while ensuring a dead man who designed a bad-ass nine shot pistol is honored in his state is radical somehow leads us to want to send her nice comments on her shit article telling her about how smart she is.
The rest of the article is disgusting, and one can see right away how partisan she is.
Also, the Albanian Special Forces are killing bad guys in Afghanistan with them right now; scroll down for a pic. I don't know how I would feel about wearing a maroon beret in combat, but oh well. I wouldn't mine having the ARX as an issued weapon though. That thing is light and feels good in your hands.
I really dig the exchangeable barrel system, as well as the magazine release options. Can't wait for it to enter civilian sales, because I want to pick one up. After handling it, as well as the SCAR and ACR, I have to give the Beretta the hat tip. It doesn't weigh a metric ton, and it's really well thought out. Let's hope it doesn't cost a bazillion dollars like the ACR though.
An American consular employee shot and killed two gunman in Pakistan in blatant self defense, and yet he may still be charged with murder just for the hell of it apparently. The Beretta pistol that he used is alleged to be illegally kept, as Pakistan does not really bless the idea of non Pakistani government types carrying weapons, and that's the only thing I can see him getting hung up on. The question I have is whether or not he would be executed for murder if he's convicted.
Time will tell if the Obama administration will come to his aid in all of this; the SOTU address might not have pandered to the unarmed victim crowd, but it's a safe bet to say that publicly supporting the actions of the consular employee in the shooting would be bad press.
Interesting to me is that the only non-scumbag to be killed/manslaughtered in the incident lost his or her life to the grill of a car. Also, the local savages are beating their poop-smeared war drums and protesting over an American who dared to "violate their sovereignty" (snicker) by carrying a pistol in that violent country, and discard entirely that he carried it in the first place because he was concerned that violent militants may just pull up next to his car on a motorcycle and point rifles at him. It's not like Pakistan is known to be a refuge of peace for Americans or anything, and the article even covers two other attacks on Americans in Pakistan.
I guess Pakistan's economy is doing well enough that we can keep the millions of dollars in monies that we've been pouring into that hellhole, and maybe spend it somewhere where it will be more useful.
The Firearm Blog has a video of a man shooting foster style slugs at 230 yards from a smooth bore shotgun offhand using the standard blade sight and compensating by guess. In the video you can see the trace of the slug as it arcs towards the target. You can't tell from the first part of the video, but the second part from the camera at the target shows that he's minute-of-scumbag for sure.
I recently fired some Brenneke slugs from a Mossberg 835 at 100 yards without as much luck, and the experience has piqued my interest. I never knew that slugs were worthy out past 100 yards; now I'll have to give it a shot (pun intended).
MP.net has a thread on it that's pretty good, with more digital camo! Lots and lots of pictures of military belt fed goodlyness.
Crenelated bezel on a suppressor? I guess some people want to make tangos comply quietly. I like the offset iron sights that clip onto the rails of your rifle.
And what is it about multicam that makes people so damn crazy? I have some for predator hunting, and it works great, but apparently all you need to complete your cool operator ensemble these days is a pair of boots with multicam soles, and of course you have to have a brace of petite beauties with big bewbies clad in multicam swimwear on your arm. Weird.
Unlike a number of suburban police departments, Detroit precincts do not have metal detectors and the front desks are not fitted with Plexiglass-type shields. They do have security cameras.
What is it with you media people having to pin some sort of explanation or qualifier on everything, no matter how stupid? About the only thing that would have stopped this attack before it happened is if the gunman was hit by a bus crossing the street towards the precinct. Thankfully, this attack punctuated the argument that hard targets are better at stopping violence once it starts, as the idea of a lone gunman throwing down against multiple armed and armored folk ending in favor of the more numerous is generally thought to be sound.
There does seem to be little interest in widening the I-95 corridor from Fredericksburg to DC, unless of course there's a way to bilk money from people by building a special lane for hippies and 18 passenger vans. Then you can only imagine the possibilities.
I learned about cause and effect in like 6th grade, and even then I could have told you that if you build thousands of homes every year and attract tens of thousands of people and families into an area in a short amount of time, you will have a horrendous spectacle of a roadway system unless you address it first. Fucking duh!
So now we have smarty pants people who presumably come to work wearing a white labcoat with pocket protector telling us that they're pissing away public funds studying the effects of piss poor infrastructure management, and then comparing notes to see which major city sux the most.
Well, thank you very much! I can take all that information that you just gave me and do exactly nothing with it, because I've sat in NYC, LA, DC, and Houston traffic, and can tell you without a single bit of doubt that the city management fumbled the fuckin ball bigtime there, and the locals are the ones paying with their time and funds! Super job!
Now, why don't you smarty pants types do us all a favor and do a study to find out the names of the people responsible for mismanaging the roadway systems so we can write them a nasty-gram, or kick them out or kick their ass for making all of us sit in traffic for days out of our lives while they pocket the money from letting greedy developers make a sport of cutting down all of our trees to make shitty homes! I can do something with that information!
As you can read in the story, Goddard survived the gunman's attack at Virginia Tech, and the point is pushed that he carries more weight in the gun control argument because he knows first hand what it's like to be shot by an armed lunatic while at school, and the rest of us don't. There is no mention at all about why Goddard also carries weight to the argument that packing thousands of unarmed people in a small area with minimal security attracts armed lunatics of all types, and the outcome of an event like that will be the same despite whatever law gets passed to prevent it.
None of this is addressed in the article, nor is there any mention of potential unintended consequences. It seems that the sum of the story is that Goddard has an edge because he's been the unarmed victim getting bullets pumped into him while he lies defenseless on the ground, and that should be the best policy. He's also a fudd, so there's that too.
Arguments based entirely on emotion don't get much pull with me. How about putting some facts in there somewhere for the people who aren't so naive.
In case you are not aware, every once and awhile someone will request a photoshop of a picture on ARFCOM, which never ends up like it's supposed to but always entertains.
Obviously what Prince George's county needs these days is some statutes making attacks like this a felony. Maryland is under siege by angry hoodlums; there have been fourteen homicides in nineteen days, so something has to be done. Disregard what the ignorant and tone deaf anonymous commenter wrote in the second article erroneously suggesting that the populace -- not a lack of laws known to effectively regulate malicious human behavior -- is to blame for the scourge of violence. It is Mary-land after all, where everyone is perfectly happy, including disenchanted drug smoking former girlfriends of your recently paroled lover who buy up Assault Solutions (sounds like a cool name for a gun shop) with such wild abandon and use them to bend people to their will.
It's clear that Easy access to dangerouschemicals with no background checks or rectal exams means that any terrorist can get their hands on some and maim or kill. If we could ban a third of the shit that is sold at Wal-Mart, we could end this senseless violence once and for all.
Good grief, what a cesspool PG county has become. The feds have stepped in to help the local cops, who are asking the helpless community to chip in, all the while the cops are increasing their presence in a "show of force". Is that even going to help? Something tells me that knocking on doors, pulling over 1,500 cars, and handing out 100 misdemeanor citations is not going to bring the scumbags to their knees. Just like South East DC, I think it would take a biblical intervention to straighten that whole area out.
There is a way though for PG residents to find real safety from the violent people among them, and it doesn't involve massive police effort or baseless promises from a clueless mayor:
Move.
Pack your shit and move 3 miles West, across the Potomac River, and there you will find a nice place to raise your kids where your chances of getting shot, stabbed, or having your face melted off are slim to none. Be advised though, Alexandria is under a crime wave too, and the police have suggested turning your house light on at night to deal with it, so you can spend your money on good light bulbs instead of kevlar. If you happen to be one of the scumbags causing so much problems in Maryland or DC, know that unlike most of the folks in those areas, Virginia natives are perfectly capable of helping the cops quell community violence, and don't be surprised to see VCDL presence there.
If you consider that to actually "buy back" a gun, the police department dispensing the government funds would have had to successfully purchase a firearm that once belonged to them. That finally happened.
I spy a McMillan TAC-50; a suppressed AIAW in .308 Winchester; a suppressed SCAR-16 with thermal sight, ELCAN optic with Dr Optic reflex; a Sig P239; a Smith and Wesson 686, among other things.
My personal favorite is the suppressed EBR M-14 with Nightforce scope, with the reflex sight mounted behind the elevation turret making it completely useless. Either someone has a sense of humor, or perhaps there needs to be some remedial training. Also, there's a pic of a SEAL holding an H&K MP5. And how cool is that S&W!!!
OOOoooooh, ooooohh!! I also found some evidence that the 1911 is still serving the Marines, as well as a solid confirmation that Marine VBSS teams (now NMIOTC, or whatever complicated term with acronym some eccentric commander comes up with this month) are now using Steyr TMPs for ship boarding. Too friggin' cool!
More Steyr TMP and 1911 goodness, with some Glock usage in there for good measure. Seems that the Greeks are putting them up to this.
See here for the Castle Doctrine bill, a bill to make it a violent felony to get caught with a gun on school property, and another to make it OK for cops and lawyers to be under the influence while carrying.
See here for a Virginia Supreme Court gun ruling, as well as about half a dozen new gun bills.
See here for eight more bills; two of them are Castle Doctrine and one of them is for Constitutional carry (no permit needed for CCW).
See here for a local media look into these proposed laws. I got a kick out of this from the second page:
Among the bills the group opposes, Goddard finds particularly onerous a bill from Del. Bill
Carrico that would exempt any firearms manufactured in Virginia, that remain in Virginia, from federal regulations.
Goddard called the bill "an absolutely, utterly stupid thing," and said there's no way Virginia could ensure that firearms made here don't leave the state.
And? Is there any way to ensure it right now? Has there ever been? Seems to me that if a scumbag in Virginia wanted to build a sheet metal Sten clone that's fully automatic for the sole purpose of gunning down lots of people in Nebraska, then there's no way a law or lack of one is going to make one bit of difference.
"So by saying you're in favor of magazines that hold no more than X rounds, you're publicly stating that it's only X+1 bodies that bother you. If that's not what you mean to say, then come out and state your real intentions."
Yikes! No matter how anyone tries to answer that challenge, it's not going to end well for them!
My-oh-my has this country come a long way in such a short period of time. In the wake of the Tucson shooting, all of the predictable cries by the usual suspects for more gun control have been largely met with shoulder shrugs and silence from the majority of lawmakers.
"Loughner, for one, reportedly used an extended magazine carrying 31 rounds. (Congress outlawed such magazines in 1994, but let the ban lapse in 2004.)"
Aaaahhnnnggt!! Wrong answer sport. Congress temporarily stopped the new manufacture of magazines like the one scumbag-shooty-guy from AZ used; they didn't ban them. Don't worry though, I expected y'all media types to expend yet more of your credibility (isn't it in the red these days) buhleeeet buhleeeet buhleeeting about what you know nothing of in order to push your agenda. It's what you do, and I love pointing it out and doing my small part to make you all look like jackasses.
As for bearing the blame, I'm happy to see that the bulk of its weight rests so well on such petite shoulders, despite it being a juvenile accusation. Not that I'm saying it's right, mind you; I'm just happy that it's not placed on all of us; and something also tells me that there's an unintended consequence of the Palin haters throwing this mess at her, there being no such thing as bad press and all.
Now for the fun stuff.
Back to this article, do yourself a favor and scroll down to the video and watch it. We have the National Urban League's Marc Morial saying, and I quote:
"With respect to gun control, there is no doubt. . .ah. . .that. . .ah. . .the Assault Weapon Ban and the repeal of the Assault Weapon ban was probably a mistake for the nation."
Hmmmmmm, you see. . . .about that. . . . I don't see how such a presumably smart man can say in the same sentence that it's "no doubt" that "probably" something is bad. Mr. Morial, would you also say that there's no doubt that syphilis is probably bad for tigers? Is it your position that ninjas are no doubt, probably bad news for the samurai? That's awesome! I feel the same way too! - (about the tigers, ninja, and samurai, not the Assault Thingie Ban)
I do support his position though that a knee jerk reaction by lawmakers to strip rights from an already agitated populace - who are flocking to buy firearms at the moment - in the wake of a violent shooting is probably no doubt a bad thing to do, especially considering that a great deal of the people buying the guns are doing it not so much in the interest of one day stopping a spree shooter, but because they don't trust lawmakers.
Now go to this link and scroll down to watch the video about the popularity of Glock pistols. This one, for me, defines how utterly stupid newscreatures are. Witness the raw footage of a bona fide dumb ass attack:
Chris Jansing, to guest Jose Diaz-Balart - " I know that in your years of reporting you've had alot of years of experience with all different types of weaponry."
Diaz-Balart - "Sure"
Jansing - "Help us understand the popularity of this type of gun because I think if you're not part of the gun culture for a lot of people this is a weapon that is used to kill people. . ."
Diaz-Balart - "yes"
Jansing - ". . .we've heard it's used to kill people."
Injecting myself into the discussion here, what the hell does this chic mean by "for a lot of people this is a weapon that is used to kill people"? Is that something like "tell me now Rosie, for a lot of people, mayonnaise is a product used to fatten people. . . .we've heard it's used to fatten people." Or, "tell me Chuck, for a lot of people, ninjas are weapons used to kill people. . . .we've heard they're used to kill people." Is that what she's talking about? You can see that I've used Rosie [O'Donnell] and Chuck [Norris] there as an example because they are, presumably, because of their vaguely associated credentials, known as being part of the fat and ninja culture, respectively. Rosie more so considering that she is known to be the size of a barge, so she might be a little more authoritative.
Diaz-Balart, being a journalist and all and highly trained in the art of the gun culture, is no doubt probably the best bet to be on a national news network chatting with a fellow journalist about something he knows so much about. I mean he knows two people who have Glocks - one a law enforcement officer, and another a friendly gun collector - and these two individuals know without a doubt why Glocks are probably popular, because one of them dropped theirs down some stairs and the other dropped his out the window of a car at 60 miles per hour.
That makes Diaz-Balart a fucking Glock savant!
I guess that since I dropped my Glock yesterday, that qualifies me to say that both of these retards wouldn't make a pimple on a gun owners ass (don't ask, it's not my saying), and I offer to you more evidence to support my claim:
Diaz-Balart - ". . . .there's a number of different millimeters available in weapon sizes. . ."
Looking at the handy chart on Gaston's website, I direct you to the "models" tab, and ask you if they are listed by caliber, or are they listed by millimeters? It must be a hidden language no doubt that can only probably be decoded by gun culture experts well skilled in the art:
Standard model? Lots of millimeters.
Compact model? Not so many millimeters.
Subcompact model? A few millimeters.
Competition model? Huge number of millimeters, like totally a bunch of them n' stuff.
Man though, all this talk about Glocks, heatahs, and millimeatahs makes me want to take a ride to the range and bust me some caps, after I throw my Glock 17 out the window of my truck and make myself a gun culture jedi knight, of course.
And the hits keep on comin'
Diaz-Balart - ". . .it's [Glocks] a natural pistol to get if you're not an expert on weapons."
And again, he later backs that claim up by offering his law enforcement buddy's experience tossing them down stairs and all; you can't claim to be an expert unless you drop the thing down some flights of stairs, and to be able to master this feat, you have to have Glock perfection. It's that simple. So if you've never handled a gun before, and consider yourself to not be an expert, you need to get a Glock first, and then drop it to become a master. Taking what he says literally, one can only deduct that the reason 65% of law enforcement choses Glock is because cops suck with firearms.
I'll have to ask my friends in law enforcement if they learned Glock dropping at the academy. One of them is issued a Sig, a fore-tay millimeter I hear, so he must suck - I don't think they drop test those - but I did personally witness him shoot expert with a rifle once on an Army range, so who knows.
Diaz-Balart goes on to say that the reason for 30 round "clips" (magazines) are popular for the non-gun tossing/dropping/mass murdering population is so that at the shooting range, you don't have to reload as much. That's probably an accurate statement, no doubt, but I would also add that people keep 30 round magazines for their nightstands, glove boxes, and also for competition. I'm an expert, remember, so I know. Of note though is that he says to reload the gun with regular clips, you have to take the clip out of the gun and manually load it with "bullets" using your thumb, and doesn't mention that most shooters have many of these clips, and that they can be used to charge the gun with "bullets" very rapidly. Like this guy:
Fast, huh!!
Ultimately, these two MSNBC people are trying to be honest in that they are doing their best to tell the world why Glock pistols are not the choice of crazies, but are in fact popular to cops and every one else. They would have been better served though giving this task of explaining these truths to someone of more experience than a journalist, but it no doubt would have probably been less entertaining. Admit it!
. . . . with three small sick children, snot running down their red little noses, and when the nurse opens the door and calls out his name, down came a Glock 26 wrapped in a Comp-Tac Infidel holster made of kydex, bouncing off of his thigh and clattering onto the floor of the waiting room.
True story.
Thankfully the waiting room was completely empty, and neither the nurse at the door or the one at the desk was the wiser. The problem I see is that it's possible to bump the bottom of the holster and knock the belt clip over the belt, and with the Glock 26 being so short, it tumbles right out of the waist line. Handling a three, two, and almost one year old with all the gear that's needed to sustain them, things like a pistol clipped inside the waistband are easy to get knocked around.
Well, I've always wanted to try a Summer Special!
*Edit: I can't remember who said it; I think it was Michael Bane but I'm not sure, who said that this is the same reason why he avoids using yaqui style holsters, as the muzzle of the gun can be bumped upwards and the pistol can come out. Same concept.
It's pretty bad when a 50 lb coyote thinks that a grown-ass man is dinner. Hopefully the beast hasn't gotten it through his head that stupid people like this guy might be cream filled and try to eat somebody's five year old.
Idiot:
In the states, coyotes are generally a little more wary of humans, as they are used to getting hit with flying copper when they get too close. When I used to spend a lot of time in the woods, seeing a potentially dangerous or predatory critter with sharp teeth show me that it's not afraid to approach would have made up my mind that it needs to be put down. I don't want to read about a kid killed by a feral dog in my paper and know that I somehow helped it overcome the natural tendancy to fear mankind.
From the movie Jurassic Park: Dieter: "It gives me the creeps, like it's not scared." Dr. Robert Burke: "There haven't been any visitors on this island. There's no reason for it to fear man." [Dieter touches a cattle prod to the dinosaur's head, causing it to flee] Dieter: "Now it does."
I can't understand what they're saying, but they do show what's up the ARX's skirt in detail. Notice the ambidextrous reciprocating charging handle and overall short length. To be fair though, the barrel on that thing looks to be about 10", while the AR they compare it to is a 16".
I cannot wait for Ruger to finally announce the commercial availability of the shit that they're smoking at this year's SHOT show. I want to live in their world for a spell just to see what it's like to be absolutely off your rocker crazy high on drugs.
While I do not own a single Ruger product, know that I am not bashing them. It's just that I've noticed a trend among that organization for building stuff that makes zero sense, and apparently I'm not the only one.
So my Bro-in-law has a newly acquired Horus Hawk scope given to him by some magnificent individual that he had proposed putting on a Ruger M77 in 220 Swift, and I attempted to procure the rings necessary to mount it for him. The problem I ran into is that the guys who designed the M77 receiver wanted to ensure that proper mounting of glass upon the blued carbon steel would be not only very proprietary, but complicated as well. The only picture of this phenomenon that I could glean off the internets can be seen here, if you do not know of what I speak.
The Ruger-only mount milled directly into the receiver is not at the same height, as if machining an even plane onto metal was too difficult. Either that or the engineer that thought of this idea was stoned out of his mind. It means your scope rings are two different heights to attenuate this ridiculousness, which severely limits your choices. If you don't subscribe to the belief in a mounting system that's stupid, you can always by bases from Leupold or Weaver, but you can forget getting a one piece. The only clear option is to order weird scope rings from Leupold and hope they are perfect for your application, as you will not find the rings on shelves in any store. It would be different if the Ruger mount is mechanically better or stronger than anyone elses, but it's not; it's built to be overly stupid.
What in the world grips the minds of those folks at Ruger? They must show up to work drunk, snort a line of metal shavings from the lathe, and top it off with a shot of cutting oil before fabricating their wild-assed ideas like $90 box magazines for short barrelled niche rifles with flash hiders. Why can't you folks just be normal?
One man is dead and another injured after being stabbed in Adelphi, Md., Monday evening, according to Prince George’s County Police.
That's now 10 homicides in the county in the first 10 days of the new year.
You would think that with all the stringent weapon laws in Maryland violence like this would be a thing of the past. It's like the wild West, only in the East.
Too bad that it has to be that way; with the exception of Baltimore, Annapolis, and the surrounding towns around DC, Maryland is exactly like Virginia.
WASHINGTON – The Senate's sergeant-at-arms says he's against members of Congress arming themselves to increase their safety in the wake of the shooting rampage in Arizona.
I don't see how he thinks protecting oneself would be unhelpful; he can't be there with his duty piece to thwart hooligans for every Senator and Congresscritter. Perhaps he should just keep up the good work polishing the Senate's gavel and minding the door and stuff and let the adults take care of themselves for awhile.
