Undead ahead

Zombie sighting in Hampton, Virginia.

Thinking about buying a 1911?

Head over to Mike's Spot for some very helpful commentary on your choices. Did I mention that there's pictures?!!

A gun buy-back program actually worked!

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.

Taiwan police women choose Colt

Well, at one time they did by the looks of these lovely ladies masterfully handling Colt Troopers. Who knows what they use nowadays.

Back to work gun p0rn

Navy SEAL edition.

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.

Gun bills in Virginia

The VCDL's blog, The Sentinel, has the latest on gun legislation in the Commonwealth.

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.

Not a good example of gun control

Letting a small furry critter that you just wounded get ahold of ol' betsy and put a round in you is not the ideal way to assert yourself as being at the top of the food chain.

How do you screw up putting an animal down that you just shot?

Ammo restrictions

I never thought of it this way.

Tam:

"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!

Wading into the current gun control debate with expert commentary

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.

This, and all of the media lies that circulate regarding guns, makes it notable that for once gun owners aren't the ones that will have to bear the blame for some psychopath's rampage.

"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!

So a guy walks into a doctors office. . . . .

. . . . 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.

Don't feed the critters

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."

Yup!

Found in discussion at AR15.com

Home defense in Prince George's county

Marking the 12th person killed in the county in as many days, it's refreshing to hear that it wasn't some poor sap who got it by the hand of a scumbag.

What do the French think about the Beretta ARX160?

I dunno, you have to ask them. I hope you speak speak French.

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".

Ring around the Ruger

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?

Prince George's county is lawless

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.

I didn't know that

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.

Of course he is; if his peeps whom he's charged with protecting under arms also have guns, then he wouldn't be so very special, now would he? And how am I just finding out that the Senate has a Sergeant-at-Arms?

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.

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.