Fake utility workers rob homes

Be careful of who you let into your house.

I don't let anyone in unless they are family, friends, or a business that I have personally called and scheduled an appointment with. If someone just "shows up" to work on my telephone or what not than they get a swift "piss off."

So sorry.

Don't bring a banana....

...to a knife fight.

DC vs Heller today

Tune in here at SCOTUS Blog.

Movie Review

On the movie Pale Rider over at Hell in a Handbasket. It is not one of Clint Eastwood's better movies, and I didn't know it was a remake of the movie Shane. Some interesting questions are raised on authenticity, as well as a little bit of WTF were they thinking, which can be seen in the screen shots.

Go take a look.

Great piece on open carry

At A Guy With Guns, via SaysUncle.

This is why I don't pull over for unmarked police cars

Fake cop pulls over real cop. Ooops!

If an unmarked police car blue lights me, you can bet I will get into the right lane, maintain the speed limit, and wait for a marked car. I mean no disrespect, but it is what it is. Years ago I had a friend who was pulled over twice by fake cops in two separate incidences. The second guy got caught and my friend went to court to testify against him.

More non-gun murders in Japan

Man kills (allegedly) his entire family with a hammer. A feeble 77 year old man at that. Guns, knives, hammers, crossbows....there is no difference because weapons do not kill; people do. Simple.

2 years...

That's all this scumbag received for selling guns to high school students at Albert Einstein High School in Maryland. This would be the same incident where a student who was a potential buyer fired a round into the bathroom wall.

Is this what is meant by getting "tough on crime?" Any bets as to how long it will take this guy to get back into the criminal life when he's paroled in 13 months? 2 years is a drop in the bucket.

Shot by the Sheriff

When a gunman took hostages at a government building in Minnesota, the hostages called the cops who promptly killed the man. Good.

What gives me the giggles is: how do you explain to your wife with a straight face that you were held at gunpoint by a man who runs a store called Lookin' Fine Smut and Porno, and who has been convicted for promoting and profiting from prostitution? Stuff like that seldom happens in a lifetime, and when it does you just have to have a sense of humor.

Anbar to be turned over to the Iraqis

Blackfive has the skinny. He points out that the media could care less, which if you have read the news this morning you can see that this is true.

This is a huge deal. I was in Anbar in 2006, and it was a mess. Lately the Marines ran a marathon through the city.

I wish that for once the fruits of our Warfighter's labor would get its due airtime on the news.

Primitive weapons making a comeback

More crossbow craziness. There's been a couple of these recently, but this time no one was killed.

What bothers me is the charge of "making terroristic threats." What the hell does that mean? It seems to me that every year there are more crimes invented with newer and more sensational terms to make them stick in the public's mind.

Spray and pray not very effective

Three thugs shoot up a house with a bunch of rounds and kill the homeowner. Why it took "100 rounds of ammo" instead of one is anybody's guess.

A great post...

...over at Armed Canadian on the regulation, or lack thereof, of cap-and-ball firearms, flintlocks, and even older guns that were used by our founding fathers. It's well known that the anti-gun agenda is about control, not safety, and this has become painfully obvious as several states have tried to regulate these weapons.

Read and be educated.

Monday morning roundup

The 2007 Crime Report from Virginia is out. Crime is slightly down, but was that 411 people were killed by murder/nonnegligent manslaughter last year within a population of 7,078,515 for a murder rate of 5.33. DC on the other hand, for 2006 had 169 murder/nonnegligent manslaughters amongst a population of 581.530 for a murder rate of 29.06. Weird.

DC Mayor Fenty is letting the DC taxpayers foot the bill for his security detail.

Somehow people keep getting shot and killed in "Gun Free DC." Impossible, right?

Virginia's prison system is jacked up because of leasing cells to other states.

Fairfax police make a false arrest on a North Carolina gun owner who was open carrying in VA, and then harass him, drop his gun in the road, and then harass him when he went to get his gun back. Via VCDL.

Philip Miles to be released from Russian prison tomorrow. If you don't remember, he was sentenced to 3 years for trying to bring a box of rifle cartridges to a friend he was visiting.

Warning: contents under too much pressure

Yesterday my brother Seth I got to do a little shooting to test out some new loads that I cranked out for my DPMS AP4. I had about 500 various prepped and primed .223 Remington cases that I wanted to fill with some bargain bin Remington 55 grain FMJ rounds that I had ordered from Cabela's. I consulted with my trusty Sierra V edition, 2nd printing reloading manual and my Lyman 48th edition manual to find out what would be a good all-around load for target or Armageddon.

The Sierra manual has loads that were tested on a Colt AR15A2 HBAR with 20" barrel and 1:7" twist. Looking at the 55 grain loads showed 23 grains at the low side and 26.1 grains at the high side with 3,100 fps expected from AA-2230. Works for me because I had a shiny new pound of AA-2230 sitting around for just such occasion.

The Lyman manual gave a different story, although I really didn't give it but a mandatory glance, and I should have paid more attention. The load for the 55 grain soft point was given with 25 grains of AA-2230 giving a velocity of 3,272 fps with a Colt AR15, 20" barrel, and 1:7" twist.

I wanted to load these rounds towards the hot side considering the chamber for this gun is cut for both the 5.56x45mm NATO cartridge which has more pressure, and the .223 Remington. I know, I know. I'm asking for trouble. The right thing to do is load several on the light side and then work up in powder charge until your either comfortable with the round or the ejected casings show signs of overpressure. I've been handloading for a long time, so I'm aware of the consequences, and also the rewards, of loading hot.

I went with 26 grains of AA-2230 and seated the round, after which I tried out my new Lee crimp die which gives a factory crimp. The die took about ten seconds to set up and delivered clean looking crimps on every round. I loaded 223 rounds (interesting) and then took off for my parents house for a little test and evaluation with my new Beta Chrony chronograph. I've never owned a chronograph before, and in my youth I tested my handloads by performance only. I took the reloading manual at its word, so I loaded what looked like a good performer and then checked for accuracy and pressure. It was that simple.

My goal was to shoot 23 of the rounds and then store the remaining 200 for the end of the world. My DPMS has a 16" barrel with a 1:9" twist rate, so I figured I would get about 2,800 fps out of it. I was wrong.

The first rounds clocked in at 3,278 and 3,250, and they sounded hotter than normal; like 5.56x45mm NATO judging from the muzzle blast. Looking at the first few cases (.223 and 5.56 cases - I know, I know) didn't reveal anything that would suggest that they might have too much pressure, so I let the barrel cool for awhile so I could shoot some groups. Accuracy was decent with one three shot group turning out at 7/8." Not too shabby.

Seth and I then set about shooting everything that we had on hand to find out what it was really doing. We quite literally had a blast. We fired a few different rifles: 7mm Magnums, .243 Winchester's, .22's, handguns. What a great time. Mother nature finally held out and decided not to rain on my day off, so that was a big plus.

At this point we fired off the rest of the loads for the DPMS, with Seth putting 9 rounds in the 8" Shoot-N-C targets at about 100 yards off hand, and some from a rest. Another look showed the resulting overpressure on the cases. I think the first rounds were Winchester cases which didn't seem to mind the pressure at all. The other cases were ones that I had picked up for months. Some of them were surplus, Federal, Lake City, Black Hills - you name it. The surplus cases had a crimped primer pocked which I reamed out to allow the primers to squeak by into the pocket, so it was no surprise to see that some of the primers were no longer in the case.

Other signs of over pressure were shiny or raised portions on the case head where the brass flowed into the ejector slot on the bolt face, and slightly deformed rims where the extractor had to pull hard to get he case out of the chamber. You can see this here in this picture. The case on the left is a Winchester which has been fired a few times. There's nothing wrong with it. The one in the middle is a no name case with the raised bump on the head at the 2 o'clock position, and the right case has the dent from the extractor.

I guess I'll lighten them up just a tad, and then finish loading the other 250 cases that I have sitting around.

More "I'm a gunowner...but"

Here's a garbage LTE at Fredericksburg.com about a man who doesn't know very much about guns, and wants everyone to leave their handguns at home so he can "feel safe." Sound familiar? Let's take a look:

Happiness is a warm (and fuzzy) handgun

Date published: 6/22/2008

Happiness is a warm (and fuzzy) handgun

A recent pro-gun letter ["Concealed carry could save your life," June 10] citing the "facts" (2.5 million crimes per year prevented and lower crime rates) is straight out of the NRA "Handbook of Handy Facts" and got me to wondering when was the last time I heard the National Rifle Association mention anything about rifles.

Here's some "facts" that you seem to have missed. See page 17.

It's all about handguns, carry permits, and a warm, fuzzy feeling of safety because I'm packin' heat. Or maybe the people around me are packin'.

Those who carry for their safety don't care about a "fuzzy feeling of safety" because they are safe.

Somehow the thought of more guns on the street does not make me feel safer.

Rights are not subject to your "feeling safe." I don't feel safe around 85% of the drivers on the road, but that doesn't mean that they should turn in their keys to make me feel better.

We're being sold the Hollywood version of guns--a world where everyone's a dead eye dick and hits what they're aiming at. First shot, every shot.

No, you obviously can't tell the difference between the make believe that Hollywood portrays and the real world where the rest of us live.

Reality paints a very different picture. News reports and those police-video TV programs show that, during times of extreme stress, even trained professionals will simply fill the air with lead and then check on casualties. Everybody hit the dirt!

Trained professionals like these guys, huh? So I guess when some jackass starts executing people in a shopping mall my best defense is to just let myself and family get killed because I'm too incompetent to handle a simple device under stress? How ever did so many veterans like myself function in an austere environment without killing everyone in sight? It seems like your confusing reality with TV again.

Handguns are difficult to master, hard to aim, inherently inaccurate, and have a nasty habit of being stolen, borrowed by the kids, or simply going off at the wrong time.

Guns don't just "go off," nor do they have a will of their own. Automobiles are difficult to master, easy to aim, inherently dangerous, and drivers have a nasty habit of getting drunk and crashing them into other cars, often killing the occupants - and cars aren't used to save nearly as many lives every day.

Either don't buy one or please leave it at home. Speaking of home, I recommend a short-barrel 20-gauge pump-gun and a hot load of 00 buck. No aiming required; just point and click.

Just "point and click" is pretty absurd. I've got a short barrel 20 gauge and it is a fine home defense gun, but if you had the slightest clue about how they work you would know just how stupid you sound. See here for an illustrated test of shotgun penetration testing on drywall. And no, I won't leave my handgun at home and I plan on buying as many as my checkbook will allow, so with no due respect take your hot load of buck and stick it somewhere else.

Jeff Van Hartesveldt

King George

Here is the comment that I left on the letter:

"Point and click?" Have you ever fired a shotgun at close range? I already know the answer - NO! Within the 30' or less of a house your shotgun is making about a 1" pattern; hardly "point and click," not to mention that a shotgun will penetrate just as many walls as a handgun, if not more. My safety, as well as my family's are not subject to your "feeling safe," and maybe Hollywood has had a profound impact on your life, but the rest of us grownups live in the real world.

More revolvers than you can shake a stick at

At The High Road.

Movie Guns XI

Hello again, and welcome to Movie Guns XI. I usually post on Sundays, but I have the time right now, so here it is.

I went movie shopping the other day for a specific movie for this weeks post, but I found one instead that I haven't seen in years that definitely fit the bill. An excellent gun movie that features many different 1911's and Smith & Wesson revolvers, this weeks post is on the film Dead Presidents.

There are some awesome firefights to be seen, but as usual when I go frame by frame I find all kinds of things that I'm not supposed to. Some of the actors in the film show terrible gun handling skills, but there are some authentic things that lead me to believe that the directors (Albert and Allen Hughes) at least vaguely listened to their military advisor/armorer.

The first gun pictured in the film is at the beginning and has Kirby (Kieth David) taking a Stainless Steel Smith & Wesson (S&W) Model 36 from a store owners wife before he punches her in the face. He then fights with the store owner, who pulls off his prosthetic leg, where he then falls down next to the man and puts the little revolver in his face:


That man looks terrified. Kirby later lays the gun down on the seat of the getaway car where I got a couple of close ups:



Fromwhat I can see, the gun is not loaded. Next up, we are off to South East Asia.

The movie has three friends who join the Marine Corps and go to Vietnam. Anthony (Larenz Tate) and Skippy (Chris Tucker) are in a Force Recon unit that gets in big firefights while using a variety of different weapons.

The first fight shows Anthony blasting away with this Mossberg 590, which he double racks the slide at one point; ejecting a live shell:


Here is another cool shot of him racking the slide the right way:


Cleon (Bokeem Woodbine) is carrying a M3 "Grease gun" which he often fires from the hip with his eyes closed:


Here he is with the most awful chicken wing stance that I have ever seen:


Notice the M16A1 that Dugan (Jamez Woolvet) is firing. Several of these are shown in the hands of the Marines. It has the basic three-prong flash hider like the first M16, but you can see that it has a forward assist which was a feature of the M16A1. Here's a left side view of Dugan firing on semi:


The sling mount by the bayonet lug is duct taped to keep it from making noise which is common practice amongst Marines.

Next we have D'ambrosio (Michael Imperioli), who had been using one of the cross-breed M16A1's in the first firefight, now carrying a Russian PPSh-41 submachine gun:


This gun fires the little 7.62x25mm Tokarev cartridge and would probably be very useful in a small unit behind enemy lines.

In one firefight, they get in a tangle with a NVA unit that has a RPD machine gun:


Here is Dugan firing away in the jungle with a M1911, probably a Colt:


I have to point out that for a Force Recon unit, they sure don't act like one. There is plenty of coughing, talking, and shouting while on patrol, and at one point they are all cleaning weapons or eating, and not one of them has a functional weapon in their hand. Then there are the things that you can't see unless you slow the film down a bit, like when Cleon executes a tied up prisoner with a M1911, you can see that the slide is locked back when he puts it to the guys head and fires.

At this point, the movie moves back to New York where everyone is struggling to make a living. A mean pimp named Cutty (Clifton Powell) knocks Anthony down the stairs and pulls out a chromed 1911 oof unkown make and puts it in his face:


Notice the hammer is down, which is odd considering that he had just racked the slide to presumably chamber a round.

This is pretty much where it gets to be 1911 and S&W galore. Anthony, Kirby, Skippy, Jose (Freddy Rodriguez), and Delilah (N'Bushe Wright) are sitting at a table planning the heist of an armored car. Sitting on the table are several 1911's which I couldn't get a shot of, and this blued S&W Model 36:


What happens next is a big gunfight when the heist goes bad. Kirby starts blasting with a stainless 1911 at a random cop who wanders into the fray:



The cop takes a fighting stance and returns fire with what I believe to be a S&W Model 10:


The cop eventually takes cover behind a post office box like he's supposed to, but Skippy takes the cops life by shooting him in the back of the head with this stainless steel 1911, which somehow fired even though the hammer was clearly down:


Anthony convinces one of the cops to drop his sidearm with this cutoff, pistol gripped Remington Model 870:


The armored car guards are carrying S&W Model 10's like this one that was dropped:


The only thing odd about this gun is that the screws on the side do not match any of the S&W revolvers that I can find. I'm sure it's a Model 10, but if I'm wrong please let me know. Here is a picture of one holstered, and one on the loading dock which is stoked with lead round nose cartridges:



Jose is carrying this revolver which is the real mystery gun because I can't get a better picture of it:


Delilah pops out of a dumpster with a brace of 1911's and cuts down a guard:


When she gets killed, she hits the ground at slide lock:


I had to count and re-count the shots fired during this scene. Kirby fires 11 rounds from his 1911 without reload, and the cop fires back with 9 rounds from his revolver; of course without reload. Anthony racks the shotgun about 7 times and fires twice, and I couldn't tell how many rounds Delilah fired. I can say that she had her eyes closed the entire time that she was emptying those .45's - twice.

Overall, you can't tell these things while watching the movie, so don't think less of it. The shootouts are good-to-go, and the amount of cool hardware that they bring to the fight makes this an excellent gun movie.

Update: Commenter Ed Harris notes that the revolver that I labeled as S&W Model 10, is in fact a Colt Official Police. Great catch, and thank you for identifying it!

Licensing the Right intention

Via The Breda Fallacy - An Ohio man was stopped by cops for open carrying (OC) and recorded the whole thing. He says that the cops were very professional, with the exception of the sergeant who had this to say:

Sergeant: "Your permit allows you to carry concealed. It’s not an invitation, it’s not a permit to carry with it exposed so you can go on your self-righteous tangent about educating people about the Second Amendment. I'm all for the Second Amendment, I’m a huge supporter, NRA card carrying member, all that good shit. I’m not talking down to you as a gun grabber or anti gun piece of shit. Bottom line is you did do something wrong. We can charge you with inducing panic or disorderly conduct. It’s not the intention of the law. It’s not the intention of the right you went and got the license for."

This is yet another reason why I hate being "permitted" to carry my little pistol. I covered some of my reasons awhile ago. The Constitution doesn't protect my right to "keep and bear arms only in the possession of a valid state permit, and only concealed." It doesn't protect my right to carry "in the manner that some federal, state, or local law enforcement officer or elected official says it does."

It says I can keep and bear them. Period.

"Licensing" or "permitting" me to exercise my right is as close to having it taken away as I can possibly stand. There is also this disconnect within the gun rights community as far as "I'm a gun owner too, but...," mantra, and it seems to be the the case with this cop as well:

While Bryan is talking about the Second Amendment:

Sergeant:
"Shut up, don’t talk to me about that, I taught the goddamn class. It doesn’t allow you to walk around with it exposed."

I can't see that we're gaining any ground as long as we're condoning the outright control of our rights with these little cards that say what someone else thinks they are.

Bad idea of the quarter

This probably started out innocently enough - from Penny Arcade, via The Agitator.