Open carry righteousness

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

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

That's common sense violence prevention!

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

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

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

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

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

New gun owners in Chicago

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

Shootout with store owner

In Ohio.

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

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

GUARDIAN angel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kalashnikov has regrets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This last bit has me thinking:

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

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

Found at Hot Air.

Oh, is that what it is?

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

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

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

Objective:

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

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

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

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

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

Found via Drudge.

Delicious self defense

Gunblogger style!

(H/T SayUncle)

Range Report

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

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

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

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

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



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




The yellow chair caught my ejected brass.

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



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

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



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

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

Reloading tip of the day

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

Primitive Pete is your friend.

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

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



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

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

Now go forth and make some ammo!

Illuminating the problem

A few days ago I posted about a high school student who was suspended for having a 1 1/2 inch knife in his glovebox, and that some Americans - and educators especially - can't seem to differentiate between a simple object that is harmless, and someone who would use a simple object to do harm.

The parents of the student, who is now a Soldier in the US Army, are appealing the school board's ridiculous decision to maintain the suspension; and now we are getting into the weeds on what kind of thought goes into making zero tolerance policies:

But the school's rule book brands possession of a knife to be "violent" conduct, and leaves it to the discretion of the superintendent to determine the proper punishment.

And there you have it folks. It's about the Thing, and not the person. The Thing, the Object, is the monster to loose the hounds of policy on; and you better not be the one in possession of The Thing, or you will be punished. Gun owners see this object focus mentality all the time. Clueless people assume that a firearm is in itself capable of evil, or is evil, and if you are in possession of one then you are a part of that evil. They see no distinction between the person and The Thing.

Humans are born with some inherent mental programming that may be partially to blame, but an adult should have a rational mind that can determine between one or another. When rational people see thuggish looking teens wearing colors, bandannas, chains, and throwing dice behind the mall, they don't go asking them for directions. While the teens may not be dangerous, there is no way to determine that at a glance. The rational person is actually focusing on the teens behaviour, or at least they should be, as they are the ones capable of evil. If those same teens have their dice, colors, bandannas, baggy clothes, and whatever visibly on the top of their car, would that be something to give a rational person alarm? Would a man walking into WaWa with a pistol visibly holstered on his belt cause a rational person to be alarmed? It shouldn't. He is in possession of a Thing. The Thing is not what the rational person should be looking at. If the man walks into the WaWa with the pistol in his hand, then a rational person should be sensing that he is evil; not because of The Thing, but by his actions.

Those examples are simple. What this student is going through is a no brainer; but the school superintendent is so far into hippy land that he can't tell The Thing from the man. The superintendent has discretion, but he has decided that mere possession of The Thing makes a man evil.

Oh noes! I need to register my SKS!!

Apparently they are machine guns:

The drama began unfolding about 3:30 p.m. on Powder Mill Road near Evans Trail. A Dunbar armored car guard called police after a man in a car first followed the armored vehicle, and then cut it off.

Armed with an SKS automatic rifle, the gunman began firing into the armored car. Just then, a lone police officer arrived, and there is a shootout.

Damn! He must not have bought the compliance kit.

This trash brought to you by FOX DC associate, Roz Plater.

Good on the responding officer for taking on the guy; although I would have credited him with saving the lives of Maryland citizens, and not so much the guards in the armored car. Unless the gunman had his fully automatic SKS death machine loaded to the max with hundreds of armor piercing anti-material rounds. Then they might have been in danger.

In the nick of time

What a close call!

Intolerance

SPRINGFIELD, Va. - A Springfield, Virginia man is facing an indecent exposure charge after a passerby spotted the man naked in his kitchen and reported it to police.

If I were the responding officer, I would have been putting the cuffs on the caller, and asking just what was she doing looking into the man's window.

Is this what things have come down to? Really? People looking into your window get to have you arrested because they take offense at the sight of your junk?

Had it been the cops at my door, I would have gone all Matthew McConaughey, and made them take me in stark strip naked. Then I would sue the department for making such an absurd arrest, as well as the peeping woman.

Airman march for their fallen

HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. (AFNS) -- After walking over 800 miles through five states, 12 special tactics Airmen arrived here Oct. 16, officially completing a memorial march for their fallen comrades.

The marchers, made up of several combat controllers and pararescuemen and one combat weatherman, split up into six two-man teams and walked day and night to honor 12 special tactics Airmen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

****

"This walk shows that with Air Force special operations, you are never forgotten," said Master Sgt. Ken Huhman, one of the event's coordinators and a marcher from the 342nd Training Squadron at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas.

On the news this morning was the mother of a fallen Airman special operator who's son's name is on one of the batons. She was very thankful for these guys taking the time to honor him.

The Air Force special operations community is very small. Good on these warriors for completing such a march.

It's always the good ones

This one is too close to home.

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - The Stafford County Sheriff's Office is investigating the murder of a shop keeper found dead Thursday morning. The victim is a well-known businessman and respected father and husband, 66-year-old Jimmy LeRose.

Murders around here are very rare, but they do happen from time to time.

YYYUUUUUUUUUUTTT!!!

A super bad-ass Marine Corps photo thread at MilitaryPhotos.net.

Range Report

Better late than never. I was able to snap a couple of pics this morning, and here is some evidence of my efforts to find some loads for my 308 AR:


Click to enlarge.

For a blow by blow recount of each shot on these targets, head on over to my thread on Practical Riflery Forums. For a recap, just keep reading.

I started out this spring to try and develop two loads for this rifle: one for slaying dog sized Virginia deer, and one for general purpose shooting on targets and small critters like groundhogs. For the deer load I chose 165 grain Sierra Game Kings; and for the target load I got duped into buying 155 grain Nosler Custom Competition bullets. Not that there's anything wrong with the Noslers, it's just that Gander Mountain had them marked at twice what they are worth. But hey, I bought them.

My load development quest ended up getting skewed because of the magazine issue I posted about earlier, which I have since solved. For the rest of this year, I have decided to abandon the 165 grain effort and will start again in the spring. They are putting out 5-shot groups just over an inch at 100 yards, which is nothing to scoff at, but I'm positive that I can squeeze out more. One reason for my decision is that factory 150 grain Remington Core-Lokt rounds are shooting into an inch through this gun:


The target on the left with the three 2" dots are the 165 grain loads that I made. The bottom dot with two shots in it are sighters; the dot on the left is a 5-shot group of 1.2"; and the dot on the right is a 5-shot group of .91". The target on the right that looks like it was hit with buckshot is actually an old target that I had left behind on the range, so it had shot holes already in it. They are the ones marked with an X. This target has groups of the factory Remingtons, which are the groups circled in pencil. Most of the groups on there were skewed from the rifle bouncing on the bi-pod legs on the sandbags. I have found out that bi-pods are great on the ground, but skew your groups when fired from the bench, even when you fold the legs down. As you shoot, the recoil rocks the gun back which allows the bi-pod attachment point to grab a little of the sandbag with every shot. By your 4th or 5th shot the end of the bi-pod legs are what the gun is resting on, and those are always the shots that open your groups up. Every stray round in a group on this target was the 4th or 5th shot. I took the bi-pods off the gun and shot the group on the 2nd dot from the left - the one marked as being 1.177". The 6th shot at 6 o'clock on that dot was fired a month or so before, and is not a part of that group.

A few days before, I fired one of these rounds at a different target to give myself something to aim at, and then shot six more of them into almost three quarters of and inch from sandbags:


In the end, the factory Remingtons shoot as well as my handloads, so I will stick with them and start my handloading effort next year.

My 155 grain loads are a different story.

Here I have three 5-shot groups: one - at the bottom - of the factory Remingtons fired by me prone off the bi-pods that groups around an inch and three quarters from a cold clean bore; one on the top right fired by me from a fouled lukewarm bore with a called flyer; and one on the top left fired by a friend from a warm fouled barrel with a called flyer. Without the flyers, the two top groups are a tad over a half an inch. I had noted that the Remingtons would probably have grouped better if I had fired two or three sighters to warm and foul the bore, instead of just clicking off five of them in a row. I was right:


I have yet to be able to stretch the gun out to a few hundred yards or more. Every time I try to arrange a day to shoot, something comes up. When I get the chance I'll post more. For right now, I am as happy as can be that I have a rifle capable of shooting anything I put into it into an inch or better. How cool is that?

For next year, I will not have one of the major problems that I had this year, which is availability of primers. I ended up using three different types of primers, and that is the reason why I think they did not turn out to be as good as when I started. I think I will also give the 175 grain Sierra Match Kings a try as well. The 155 grain Noslers are my baseline, and I will try to improve on them next year as well.

SWEET! I've got to get ready for BOA SEASON!!

State wildlife managers recently allowed hunters to kill invasive snakes. Legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to ban the importation of some constrictors and the Humane Society of the United States recently said it supported laws to stop the importation of and trade in large reptiles.

I've read articles about this before, warning about large constricting snakes being released into the wild by pet owners. The snakes grow and breed as they find that the environment in the US is fully capable of supporting them.

And that's really cool!

Here all this time I thought I had to go to the zoo, or South America, just to see an anaconda in real life, and here they're saying that I can go to the everglades and actually hunt them!

Sounds like I will need to do another special purpose AR build. . . .

This zero tolerance stuff is fantasic!

Whalen was suspended from Lansingburgh High School last month after administrators found the 11/2-inch key-chain knife in his glove compartment, an infraction of the district's zero-tolerance policy for weapons on school grounds. It was a gift from his grandfather, Robert Whalen, chief of the Hoosick Falls Police Department.

Thank goodness the little blade from the survival kit in his car was turned over to the proper authorities! Someone could have been hurt!

You must understand that zero tolerance policies are designed to insulate staff from any sort of blame or backlash; like a sort of strawman to hold up when parents or whomever show up to complain. "Don't blame us, blame the policy. We just enforce the policy as it's written." In effect, zero tolerance policies are a machine that's built, activated, and then allowed to wander around doing its thing while officials/employees/management can sit back confident that some ingenious lawyer has to get through the machine before it can get to them.

The error in this is that zero tolerance policies are started in what's regarded as an effort to stop or prevent some sort of crime, but the policies cannot determine whether or not a crime was committed because they are not designed to establish the elements of a crime; they are only designed to punish based on an individual violating some sort of rule or regulation.

An extreme example would be for a mental hospital to make it a violation of internal policy to be out of bed between the hours of 10pm and 5am, with a punishment of a refusal to give treatment, and then enforce the policy against a patient who was out of bed because they were on the floor thrashing around in a seizure. The policy's intent would be to keep patients from wandering the halls or getting into trouble in their rooms, but the result could very well be to punish someone for something entirely different. Sure, the patient was out of bed which violated policy, and it's unfortunate that they are going to be punished for something out of their control, but hey, don't blame me. Blame the policy. That poor guy got hung up in the machine. It's not my fault.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the guy's authoritarian grandfather who gave him the knife condones zero tolerance policies - with a blatant but reasonable exception for his grandson, of course - because he used to apply them for DUIs. And DUI laws are well known as being a fantastic policy.

Ultimately, I place the blame on lawyers since I believe that just about all of America's problems can be traced back to them, but it's high time we start holding educators responsible again, instead of allowing them to craft regulations that can ultimately destroy a child's future.