Get a workout

A morning laugh:



(H/T Loyd)

Woooooeeey!!! She shore is PUUURDY PAWWW!!!

Oh yes.

Remember that beautifully sculpted chunk of anodized aluminum that I picked up almost a year ago to the day? The one that I had to fill out a background check for because it's such a dangerous piece of metal?

Well she's all grown up now, and guess what? She has daddy issues.
This qualifies as my BAG day gun.

I never anticipated how this project would come together under such dire circumstances. Originally, I was going to take more time to buy the parts that I needed and spend about another year putting it together, but with the gun buying madness that happened, and will continue well into the future, I had to amp up my parts acquisition to make sure I got it done. Even with that, many of the parts on this rifle were limited to what I could find, as almost everyone is out of stock.

I literally ordered this thing piece by oh-so-sweet piece. The upper and lower are the DPMS LR-308. The stock and lower parts were bought from everywhere and assembled as I got them over the last year. The trigger is a Jard single stage 2# which was the ONLY trigger that I could find after searching for about two months. I bought the bolt and Titan 20" barrel from Fulton Armory at the beginning of December, and I had to sell a rifle to have the funds necessary to get them. I was going to buy a Noveske 21", but they were out of stock on every barrel just like everyone else, and that pushed my decision to ramp everything up.

Most of the upper parts were picked up at gunshows, with some of them being bought online. Last week I went to buy a PRI Gen III tube, but found out that they were sold out everywhere. I remembered that Troy Industries had said awhile ago that they were coming out with a railed tube for the LR-308 uppers which require a new size barrel nut, and after a quick call I had one on the way which arrived last night. I had already ordered a gas block with 1913 rail that would have worked out perfectly with the PRI upper, but the Troy tube is 13.5 " long which made me have to order a PRI low profile gas block.

For a scope I went with a Horus Vision Hawk 3-12x50mm with the HH-425 hunting reticule. This was by far the most careful and well thought out buy of this whole deal. I wanted a scope that would get me to 800-1,000 yards with the .308 Winchester, but I didn't have the money to for a Nightforce, US Optics, or other such high end scope. There aren't many mid range quality scopes out there, and I found that I would spend more buying a decent $350 scope because I would also have to buy a $150 20 MOA base, plus rings and shipping. Overall I just wanted a very rugged scope with decent glass that would give me the range, and the HV scope does that. The one piece tube feels tough, the glass is clear all the way out to the edges, and the reticule is perfect for hunting. The manual says it will get me to 830 yards with 175 grain Sierra Match Kings without touching the knobs, and every forum I have read says that the HV reticule is fast for transitioning from multiple targets. . . . .like helpless groundhogs. The rings are the Burris XTreme Tactical extra-high, and they are the perfect height.

Now all that's left to do is shoot the beast.

The night before last I was resizing .308 brass when I broke the de-capping pin on my die. When I pulled the die apart to drop in a new pin, I noticed that the neck sizer was bent. I immediately ordered a new die set from MidwayUSA, and it should be at my door by Saturday, or Friday if I'm lucky. Until then I cannot shoot it because I am not going to pay $45 at Gander Mountain for a 20 round box of shitty ammo. Seriously, that place has the absolute highest prices on everything except powder. A month ago I payed a horrible price for two boxes of 155 grain Nosler Custom Competition bullets, and every bag of brass that they sell is twice the going price everywhere else.

Hopefully I will get into load development this weekend, and I'll post a range report when I get to shoot this thing.

Background checks for gun rentals

The man's death — coming three weeks after an Altamonte Springs woman killed herson and then herself at the same gun range — prompted Shoot Straight to stop renting guns to most customers.

A lawyer for the business said there needs to be a state law allowing gun dealers to run the same background check on people who rent firearms as is required for those who buy them.

How the hell is a background check going to stop someone from committing suicide?

The rest of the article isn't that bad, but they do try to sell the reader on background checks for gun rentals. "See! It only costs $5!!" Again, no mention that background checks are to make sure that a felon is not buying a gun, not to make sure that the buyer won't shoot themselves with it. There's no way to test for that.

Even if you stop renting out firearms, people will still find other ways. There is talk about putting up a barrier on a bridge close to where I live to stop people from jumping off of it to their death. The author thinks it's a great idea because she cites one bridge in another state where they put up a barrier and not only did people not jump off of it anymore, but they didn't go to another near by bridge. No mention of how many people shot themselves or swallowed a bottle of pills instead.

Not what I wanted to read about first thing this morning

Nearly 12 years ago, a federal report told Marines and their families that adults faced little or no increased cancer risk from drinking and bathing in chemical-tainted water at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune. That report — long challenged by skeptical veterans — no longer stands.

Do you have any idea how many hundreds, if not thousands of gallons of that water I drank while I was stationed there?

I can't say for certain, but it's a lot. And these douchebags that fumbled this whole thing shouldn't be "working to improve on any shortcomings," they should be fired for being stupid at the very least, and be facing criminal charges for the lives that they screwed up.

But notice that dickhead William Cibulas, director of health assessment for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, is not only still getting a federally funded paycheck, but blames the Marines for not providing enough information to his incapable agency:

Cibulas also noted the report underestimated the extent of the contamination in base housing areas. The mistake, due to inadequate information from the Marines, was reported by The Associated Press in a 2007 investigation of the toxic water.

Nice, huh? It's all our fault.

But wait! Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., who is supposed to protect the public from stuff like this through super tough investigation and oversight, is now full of hope that ATSDR is ready to move past the Marine Corps inadequacies and make things right:

". . the leadership of ATSDR is now willing to acknowledge their past mistakes and to take measures to protect the public's health in the future."

So now they're ready to protect the Marines? Sorry we fucked you guys, but we're good to go now? Thanks for the strong support congressman.

Ass.

That's why I get so pissed off at people who cheerlead the effort for more of the public's tax dollars to go to standing up another worthless government agency that has no accountability, that provides no effective service to anyone, and that makes glaring mistakes that hurt people. At the end of the day, no one is any more safe, and when the agency or some one in it makes a phenomenal error they blame the very people who they are supposed to be serving, make a bunch of excuses of why they screwed up, never serve a day in prison, and on top of it all get a huge injection of even more public tax dollars in a vain attempt to make the agency function properly.

It's all about protecting kids and shit, or something like that, but nothing good ever comes out of it.

Assault weapon

ORLANDO, Fla. -- An Orlando man was struck and killed by a sheriff's deputy's cruiser outside the Orange County Jail minutes after he was released from the facility.

The car came out of nowhere, no doubt. What was the vehicle doing out on the streets without proper supervision, anyhow?

Notice that it's not the deputy's fault; it's the car's.

To be fair, I would have pointed out how absurd that statement is even if it was a dirty civilian driving the car, but I suspect that it would have been written differently. And make no mistake, this is not a casual error on the part of the author, but carefully written wordsmithing.

I see too much of this in the news these days.

Terry Nichols all butthurt

No, seriously.

In his complaint, Nichols complained of "chronic constipation, bleeding and hemorrhoids" as a result of being denied insoluble fiber, The Smoking Gun website reported.

It seems the prison food isn't doing him so well, but let's hope the inmates are.

Armed Israelis shoot back at pirates

And the pirates turned tail and ran.

Armed defense works? Who would have thought?

Notice that the pirates had automatic weapons and the Israelis had pistols, and that no one on board the Italian ship was harmed.

(H/T Ace)

Mayor Bloomberg needs to keep his psychos in NYC

Maybe Virginia should set up a sting operation to catch these crazies before they get into our state and start shooting people.

Fortunately, the shooter was a piss poor shot, so there were no fatalities, but bask in the comfort of knowing that the University president was on the scene mere minutes after the shooting. It is not known if he would have been able to stop the shooter before he shot himself:

Hampton President William R. Harvey, who said he arrived within 15 minutes of the shooting, told a news conference the campus shooting could have been much worse.

"I think we are very, very fortunate. This could have been another — you fill in the blank," Harvey said.

Indeed. So what are you doing about it that would make the students on campus safe?

Hopefully it's not putting up more signs.

Update: It looks as though we have another campus wide text message fail. This report of the shooting at CNN puts the shooter as entering the building "shortly before 1 a.m.," but the first article I linked to said the messages went out at 2 a.m. with some students claiming they didn't get the message until 2:30 a.m.

It took around an hour and a half for students to get the alert. During that substantial period of time, what kind of device could any one of those students have that would protect them from such a madman, if such devices weren't prohibited on campus?

Funny thing is that Hampton University Police Chief Leroy Crosby believes "that each individual is ultimately responsible for his or her own personal safety, by learning and practicing basic safety and security precautions that we emphasize here at the University." I can't seem to find such life saving precautions on their website, other than pure luck, that would have helped the two people who the gunman shot.

It looks to me like the precautions that he has emphasized are not that effective.

Update: Over at The Sentinel, SailorCurt has a post on the shooting that mocks the absurd idea that the "no weapons allowed" rules actually gives a gunman a moments pause before he starts shooting. Go check it out.

Movie Guns XXXVI

I'm way late this time, but it's not completely my fault. I would blame Verizon, Toshiba, and then me, in that order.

Oh well, you're here now, so you might as well take a few minutes to give it a read.

Before I get going, I'd like to say that I have some cleaning up to do in about half of my Movie Guns posts as I have received so many comments. GM45 from IMFDB picks out many of my errors, and I just haven't gotten around to fixing everything. Sorry about that. On top of these posts I try to run the blog as well, and since I have two little kids at home my time just isn't what it used to be. Things are getting better though, and I will try to get down to addressing your corrections this week. I appreciate the scrutiny though, and I hope it keeps up.

This Movie Guns is a request from awhile ago, and I'm just getting around to it because I couldn't find the movie until recently. The film is called Narc, and it stars Ray Liotta as Detroit police detective Henry Oak, and Jason Patric as detective Nick Tellis.

The movie starts out with Tellis chasing a crack head through a rural area, and during chase the crackhead stabs a guy in the neck with a syringe:


Tellis pulls a Beretta Inox out from his front pocket for some strange reason:


What I found odd was that Tellis fired four rounds at the guy, and then kept chasing him, but you can see here in the background that there is a playground full of kids and nobody seems to notice. Well, it is Detroit.


Then the crack head takes a little child hostage, and Tellis takes several dangerous running shots which kills the guy, but also causes collateral damage on woman which I will refrain from talking about:


Notice that he isn't using the sights at all, but he is screaming. Not exactly what a cop should be doing under the circumstances.

Now, a year later Tellis is off the force, and he gets an offer to get his shield back if he looks into a case where a cop named Fredericks got killed. Fredericks real name was Calvess, and he was Henry Oak's partner.

Tellis goes to the range to sharpen his edge, and is seen here with a good solid grip on his Inox:


For some reason, he can't hit the target, but the camera pans to Oak firing his Smith & Wesson Model 686 left handed:


Oak carries the revolver in a nylon shoulder hoslter, but I find the speedloader pouch that he uses to look like a magazine pouch. Tell me I'm wrong:



Tellis and Oak become temporary partners as they re-investigate the shooting death of officer Calvess. While they were following up on a lead, they find a dead guy who was in possesion of a Mossberg 500 Cruiser:

Allegedly, the guy who had it had stuck some pot on the breach for a smoke, and when he closed the slide the burning pot set the round off which killed the guy. That's pretty far fetched, but it could be true.

Next, Tellis and Oak go to a crack head's house to ask him some questions. Tellis finds a stash of mouse guns in plastic baggies, as well as what looks like a pistol gripped shotgun and a police badge:



While both cops are not paying the crack head any attention, he pulls this Beretta Jetfire 950 from a shirt hung on the wall and shoots Tellis with the deadly ganster grip:



Oak takes his life with a few close range shots from his 686:


I have a few cop friends who assure me that if you shoot someone in the line of duty, that you can count on being suspended for a few months while an investigation is launched. This means that you won't be re-holstering your pistol and carrying on with your day.

Getting to the end, and leaving out a few big chunks of movie where there are no guns, we get to Telis and Oak getting ready to enter a large building that looks like an auto chop shop. Oak loads his trusty Remington 870 shotgun, and Tellis does a chamber check with his Inox:



They enter the structure and, for some reason, split up. Oak makes contact pretty fast with a scumbag, and fires first, but the guy fires some sort of explosive rounds from the looks of things. You be the judge:



The bullet blows out a big ass chunk of the wall!!

I want some of those rounds! Who needs full auto when you could take out half a herd of whitetails with one of these nasty things!!

Tellis makes contact with another scumbag who opens up with a submachine gun that I couldn't get a picture of. As the chase ends up on the roof, Tellis foolishly breaks cover from a very sturdy looking brick wall, and scumbag fires a long burst of ineffective fire that could have cost Tellis his life. Tellis dings the scumbag in the leg with his Inox using a pretty bad grip:


Oak and Tellis handcuff the two men together and start to search the place. Oak takes some time to shoot the scumbag's car with thermonuclear powered buckshot:

Good thing it's not night time.

Tellis finds a truck load of guns, with a AR-15, Browning High Power, a Glock, and a whole host of revolvers visible:


Oak questions the guys about the guns as he claims to have found Calvess' revolver in the trunk. The flashback scenes are the meat and potatoes of the investigation, and center around the use of Calvess' gun that was used against him in his murder. In one flashback from the beginning of the movie, the gun used on Calvess is a S&W Model 686 like Oak's:


In another scene, Calvess had a Colt Cobra:


And then we have thing weird mystery revolver that is supposed to have been Calvess', but can also be seen in place of Oaks revolver as he fires it next to the scumbags to intimidate them:


This looks like the same mystery gun used in Dawn of the Dead that I couldn't identify.

Oak goes outside to reload his 870, and Tellis starts talking to the two men to get the real story about what happened to Calvess. We can see his Inox tucked in his waistband instead of a holster:


The truth starts to come out that Oak was at the scene where Calvess was killed, and Tellis confronts Oak over the details. As you can imagine, things get tense:


Oak goes back in to force a confession out of the two scumbags, and Tellis, who is now disarmed, goes back to the cruiser to get the Colt Series 70 that is in the glove box:


Tellis has never held a 1911 in his life, as can be seen by the crossed thumbs grip:

And just check out the sparky bullets!!

Tellis shoots Oak somehow with a poor grip on the M1911 that has the hammer down because Oak is going to shoot the scumbags for not confessing:



The truth finally comes out, and we see that Calvess carried his revolver in his back pocket, and also carried a small auto pistol that I can't get a good ID on:



I can't spoil the movie for you, but if you check out the rest of the frames that I captured you can see what an exceptionally poor shot Calvess was.

That's it for tonight folks. It's well past my bed time. This is a very good but very gloomy movie that dives into the murky job that is narcotics policing. I'm not a fan of the tactic, but I'm sure that it's a dangerous job.

If you have any more requests, then by all means plant them on me.

P.S. I still haven't figured out how to make the pictures link back to my Photobucket account. Photobucket sent me an email telling me how to do it, but I'm not yet savy enough to figure out how to fix it.

Update: Thanks to Hell in a Handbasket for the link!

The press is so cavalier with the term "high powered"

A dead man found shot to death with a nail gun was hit over thirty times in the head.

No mention of how loathsome a person would have to be to commit such a crime, but there is the typical media fixation on anything that fires a projectile being "high powered," and of course the notion that somehow they are too easy to buy and use projectiles that are too long:

Detective Inspector Mark Newham said yesterday that post-mortem examination results had showed Liu was shot repeatedly in the head up to 30 times with a high-powered nail gun. "Similar types of nail guns can fire nails up to 85mm long," Insp Newham said. Detectives said the nail gun used in the murder was a standard cordless, framing, gas-charged gun, widely available for sale and hire.

I was totally in the dark about nail guns being available for hire. Now that Detective Newham mentions it, I have heard something about these deadly nail guns taking jobs that Australians don't want to do.

Something should be done about this.

This is why I don't trust any news outlet, including FOX News, who also covered this story. The morons that are referred to globally as reporters, journalists, anchors, and the like can't seem to get their head around the fact that man made objects simply cannot commit crimes, yet they are intent on blaming these objects anyways. It doesn't matter how easily one can buy or damned nail gun, or how long the nails are; people who are insane enough to murder will use any means available, and that's why he or she used a simple nail gun - it was nearby and capable of getting the job done.

Ultimately, the serpents that work in modern journalism think that any device that may be used to kill should be regulated by someone other than themselves. Regular people can't be trusted, and that's why the over all flavor of this article is about how we should make it difficult to buy construction tools with something along the lines of licensing.

The day after such a theoretical law would be passed, and the very moment the first illegal alien tries to buy one without a license and is caught, you will hear these same folks screaming about how unfair the law is.

Determined self defense in spite of the odds

Last year I posted about an article that I found at The High Road about a watch shop owner who was repeatedly robbed and shot, yet fought back every time and won.

Well, Xavier Thoughts has a video of the interview of Lance Thomas, the watch store owner.

Very good stuff from Mr. Thomas as he talks about the shootouts.

Link found at Hell in a Handbasket.

Maybe Obama should give Somali pirates a job

"It is widely recognized that ultimately, the solution to the challenge of piracy as it emanates from the shore is to address the challenges ashore that lead to these young men being inclined to take up pirate activities as opposed to having something else productive to do," Moeller says.

Like dodging Hellfire missiles from Predator drones? That would be my first option for gainfully employing pirates; that is, of course, if using the drones doesn't take away from operations else ware.

I do understand the point that Vice-Admiral Bob Moeller, deputy to the commander for military operations at the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), is trying to make. We're spread thin enough as it is to take on killing another group of people.

I still don't see how we can avoid talking about giving merchant vessels the option to up arm. And spare me the line about how other countries don't want merchant ships that arm crews with rifles to port when they could give two shits about US warships that carry missiles cruising around in their waters.

The US government could sponsor the training and provide the arms, or at the very least allow contractors or the like to protect these vessels. Last time I checked, Congress is specifically chartered with "To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas,."

What the hell else are they doing?

Battle Axe violence

What kind of person needs access to a battle axe anyways? They're just not sporting like your standard wood axe or splitting maul. It's common sense that battle axes are only meant for battle, and thus killing people, and I've even heard that they're the same types of axe that troops carried, like, a thousand years ago or something.

And how come he was able to not only purchase the axe, but was also able to buy a broad sword with such ease? And a six inch knife? Why are people allowed a whole six inches when five should be sufficient?

One medieval weapon a month laws would obviously stop such madness. Protecting our law officers from such deadliness is top priority.

Treehuggers are more news worthy than Tea Parties

If you watch the news, anyway.

Celebrating Earth Day is the awesomest, and now Veg week is super cool, but the media is still asking if the Tea Parties are sucessful.

They're very sucessful, especially if you consider that the press has done everything that it can to down play them, often saying that they are just Obama bashing events "Whipped up by conservative commentators and bloggers."

No mention of the fact that they are very much bipartisan and grass roots not at all endorsed by any party.

On the Verizon deboggle

My internet is back up. The funny thing is my wife called me at work yesterday to tell me that it had just started working, and not five minutes later a Verizon tech called me to say that it would not be up before Friday.

Talk about the right hand not talking with the left.

Just for fun, here's what I sent to the Better Business Bureau on the matter:

My complaint is with the internet service with Verizon. On 3 April, 09 I disconnected my telephone service with Verizon because I did not need it. When the line was disconnected, Verizon also disconnected the DSL to the house, which was not supposed to happen. From what I gather from the clown show which Verizon calls customer service, the telephone and DSL should never have been hooked up to where this would happen in the first place. After calling them the next day (4 April) to have the internet re-connected, we (wife and I) were told that it would take 2-3 days, and that we needed a "dry loop account." So 3 days later we called because the service was still not connected, and we were basically told that there was no record of us trying to re-connect. Considering the number of departments that you are transferred to within Verizon's ridiculous customer service, and also taking into consideration the amount of different countries that these departments are in, you can easily see how this happens. Moving on, Verizon told us that they would hook our internet back up in 2-3 days. On 12 April I called back and was told that the department that would do the re-connect was closed for Easter, and that there was no record of the last order. I called back on 13 April, only to be told that again there was no record and that they would put in the order and it would be 2-3 days. My wife called them right back (the 13th; same day)to try to figure out what the problem was, and was told that they were working on it, and to expect internet in a 7-8 days.She called again on the 15th and 16th to complain, with the same result, but this time Verizon said that they would hook our internet up on 24 April. I called back on 17 April to complain, and, you guessed it, no record of the order and it would take 7-8 days to re-connect. The Verizon representative told me that the order would be expedited, and that we would have internet on 20 April. I called on 20 April, and was told that the order was never completed, but that it was scheduled for the 24th. The lady also told me that she would finish the order to have it completed that day, if possible, and that she would personally call me at the end of the day to check the status. I don't recall her name; a mistake that I will not make again, but she sounded like the only competent person that Verizon has. About ten minutes after the callwith her, a Verizon Tech called to tell me that the order should go through today, but that we shouldn't expect to have internet before Friday (24 April) at the earliest.

Short of seeing Verizon go bankrupt and watching their vast empire of poor service crumble into little pieces, the only thing I want is internet service at my house. My wife and I, like a great deal of Americans, bank and pay our bills online, so not having internet is a big inconvenience. If Verizon's customer service is so terrible that they can disconnect your service by accident, entirely of their own fault and probably because the service was hooked up wrong to begin with, and then be too stupid to hook it back up after repeated calls from a consumer, then I would have hoped that they would have cared to mention that fact in their brochure in the first place. It would have saved me a great deal of heartache.

The settlement that I am seeking from Verizon is for them to either hook up my internet or concede that their system is broken and they can't do it so that I can find a competent service provider.

The lady that said she would call me back for a follow up never did call back. I'm still going to look for a new provider. My wife tells me that the bundle package we have with Verizon is cheaper, but I honestly could care less. I would gladly pay $15 more a month to never have to go through this mess again.

The media reported disinformation?

Say it isn't so.

This article from CNN talks about a book that covers the myths of the Columbine shooting, and it's right in more ways than one.

Journalist and author Dave Cullen was one of the first to take on what he calls the myths of Columbine. He kept at it for a decade, challenging what the media and law enforcement officials reported.

Someone needed to. He's right in what the public perceives as having happened, but points out that the whole viewpoint is flawed:

Cullen concluded that the killers weren't part of the Trench Coat Mafia, that they weren't bullied by other students and that they didn't target popular jocks, African-Americans or any other group. A school shooting wasn't their initial intent, he said. They wanted to bomb their school in an attack they hoped would make them more infamous than Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

It takes ten years to get this information out. I'm sure Cullen had a hell of a time just getting attention drawn to his book. Why this wasn't done by reporters years ago is the question of the day.

When media coverage faded, reporters and investigators soon learned that some of the initial reports were wrong. Cullen writes about the misperceptions: "Facts rush in, the fog lifts, an accurate picture solidifies. The public accepts this, but the final portrait is the farthest from the truth."

Typical of the media these days. Funny that none of them made much of an attempt to get the facts straight.

In discussions on the Columbine shooting with many people I have noticed that no one knew that the killers had bombs, and that they tried to use them. It was only after the large bombs that they brought failed to detonate that they started shooting.

Here's the best line from the piece:

"Understanding what happened can help us try to prevent these things from happening again in the future," she said. "If you don't understand history, you are doomed to repeat it."

Sorry dear, but schools and politicians these days don't want to understand history, and have been gleefully repeating it.

So funny it hurts

Who would have thought that the latest terrorist to hit the FBI's most wanted list would be a violent, left-wing, vegan animal rights activist with tattoo's of burning buildings on his stomach.

Nice.

Verizon sucks

This marks the third week without internet in my house because Verizon sucks so bad. Their customer service is a clown show, and I have serious doubts that they will have us back in service today like they have said.

For the motivated capitalist I would recommend starting your own internet service. It would be simple to knock Verizon out of the mix considering that their system is so broken and half their people are incompetent. I don't have the time or money to start such an endeavor, but I wish I did.

As soon as I can find a new provider I will dump Verizon. Until then blogging will be light.

Sorry folks.

Anti-aircraft gun seized in Mexico

Reported by FOX News - foxnews.proteus.com/content.html?contentId=32423

I'm waiting for ABC News to pick up on it and use sockpuppet ATF Agent Bill Newell to parrot how it was bought at a US gun show. Perhaps they will even give a Virginia Tech survivor $75,000 to buy one.

Update: Michael W. from Doin' the Time Warp (on the blogroll, too) in comments points to a post at Lagniappe's Lair who notes that the super deadly "Anti-aircraft gun" is actually a .30 caliber Browning 1919A4 machine gun, not a .50 caliber, and definitely not anti-aircraft. But guess what? It was built in the US many moons ago, so it qualifies as "coming from the US."

More proof that the media is full of shit.

Special electronic keys do not make you safe

A woman was attacked in her apartment fitness room by a masked scumbag who fled after she fought back. Who would have thought? I was under the impression that she was supposed to give him everything he wanted.

This is what I point out:

East Meadow neighbors say they're concerned because only residents with a special key can access the fitness center.

Obviously not. That stuff might help, but never think that you can be in condition white because you have the protection of electronic doo-dads.

The author notes that a creepy scumbag has been seen before:

One man said this incident comes on the heels of reports of a peeping tom lurking around the complex. He was eventually warded off by vigilant neighbors.

Notice it says 'vigilant', not 'vigilante.' The importance of the correct term cannot be overstated.

Kids do the damnedest things

They sure are getting younger, aren't they?

Technical difficulties

Due to Verizon's severe incompetance, blogging has been light. For some odd reason they cancelled our internet service when we cancelled our phone line, and my wife and I have spent more hours than we care to talking to those idiots to no avail. I will have a Movie Guns this week, probably before Thursday. we will see. Right now I am blogging from my phone, so there are no promises, but I will do my best.

Update: My laptop won't freeze frames from the movie, so I have to wait until this weekend. Sorry folks.

Define "accomplished"

The murderous scumbag that shot up the immigrant services center is being described as an "accomplished marksman."

Funny, I thought that to be accomplished at something, you had to have legitimate standing within a community of others that are also accomplished in the same subject. Applied to shooting, that would mean that the scumbag in question would had to have competed against shooters of known excellence and came out the winner.

Apparently these days, all it takes to become accomplished in something is to brag:

Wong was an "accomplished marksman" who frequented a shooting range in Binghamton, the chief said, and he bragged to others that he had fired more than 10,000 rounds.

No word on the amount of trophies or citations that he collected from beating the best shooters around. Also, it seems that New York needs to toughen its body armor laws:

Wong also was wearing body armor when he went on his spree, and since New York limits body armor purchases to law enforcement, "We're looking into that," Zikuski said.

Oh.

Cops steal teenager's belt buckle

In Miami.

The cops almost killed this guy over what turned out to be nothing. The "kidnapped girl" was the guy's girlfriend, and got into his car on her own will. Not only did the cops almost kill him, they tackled him to the ground and, I presume from what the article is saying, confiscated his belt buckle.

There is no excuse for the way the cops treated this guy. If he was an adult who was lawfully carrying a real firearm, would they have shot him then?

DC officials all pissed about guns

Not infringing on a citizens right to bear arms is too much for them to handle.

There are three articles in the Washington Post between yesterday and today on this matter, so here is a roundup:

Fear of new regs drives gun, ammo shortage: There is much yammering about the anti-gun Obama administration; you have to get to the very end of the article to get the rest of the reason why gun and ammo sales are brisk.

DC attorney general decries gun amendment: Just check out the opening sentence! Yes, DC AG Peter Nickles actually thinks that DC's infringing gun laws actually stop terrorists, and that because the terrorists used box cutters to hijack commercial airliners and crash them into buildings that DC needs to have a ban on semi-automatic rifles. That's some logic!!

D.C. Gun Exception Alarms Md. Officials: Disingenuous. Maryland lawmakers aren't "alarmed" over safety issues, they're concerned about who's going to pay the salary for the cops who have to do the background checks, and the costs of implementing a system. Hey guys, how about you just sell DC residents guns without a background check! That solves the problem! What, it's not like scumbags in DC have any problem getting their hands on a firearm anyways, so why bother with making it a giant pain in the ass for law abiding citizens?

The whole gnashing of teeth over gun laws is kind of hilarious. DC wants to be recognized just like any other state, but they don't want to honor the rights of their citizens. Sorry, you can't have it both ways. Really, they can't have it their way at all considering the Constitutional issues at stake, and the real problem is that they don't give a damn about their citizens in the first place.

Outsourcing strength

It seems to be the thing to do these days. People believe that they are somehow not qualified to protect themselves or their property because they are not "highly trained." Constantly being told that "experts agree" that they "will do more harm than good" if they resist, the _________(s) will just take away your ________(s) and kill you with it or hurt you more for resisting.

So the almost daily occurrence of piracy is not at all surprising considering that we have so many unarmed vessels floating around just waiting to be harvested by goons with rusty weapons.

But CTone, they're Highly Trained madmen!!! How do you expect anyone to repel such an onslaught of half starved men who barely know how to use their weapons?

I'm not against outsourcing violence on others behalf - military and police come to mind - as long as the people charging them with their protection are capable of providing their own protection as well. There should be no monopoly of force. Paying people to be vigilant while you sleep is a proven concept, but defending yourself on your own should never make you a vigilante.

With that said, why is it that the people insist on making ships defenseless? Really. Pirates are not invincible people who are trained to take down ships, and it doesn't take much effort to board the vessel with a half empty bolt action rifle when the handful of people on board are unarmed. And I'm sorry, but telling those on board that repelling boarders with rifles is futile, but repelling boarders with water hoses and beer bottles is a great idea.

Sure, some of the pirates have machine guns and RPGs, but it doesn't take a genius to see that a ship with a M2 Browning would make short work of a little boat full of armed crazies that was heading their way. And a couple of guys with Ruger Mini 14s would make the climb on board more treacherous than the ship would be worth.

What do we have to show for maintaining valuable ships full of defenseless people? An explosive increase in piracy, hostage taking, and murders.

When will we learn that being defenseless is stupid?

Update: The crew of Maersk Alabama has reported that they have taken back control of the ship, and that they have one pirate in custody; the rest have been cast back into the sea. No word on how this was accomplished, but good on em'.

Update: Well, FOX News reports that the crew was not armed:

"All the crew members are trained in security detail in how to deal with piracy," Maersk CEO John Reinhart told reporters. "As merchant vessels we do not carry arms. We have ways to push back, but we do not carry arms."

That's pretty silly, but in this case it did work. I'm sure we will have details soon.

Update: The pirates have the Alabama's Captain hostage, and are holding him on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. Not good. It seems that the Captain surrendering was part of how the crew was able to re-take the ship.

On mass shootings

There was another one last night, in California of course, and one person is dead and four wounded.

I suppose if the shooter turns out to be Korean that the media will make hay out of it, but I think these shootings are just part of the breakdown of society that often accompany economic hardships. This breakdown is what I see and hear as the main reason for the uptick in firearm sales, and the reason that people are ordering ammunition to the point where the UPS man has gained twenty pounds of muscle from lifting cases of 7.62x39mm all day. Folks are scared.

My thoughts immediately shifted to this part of the article as it seems to be the reoccurring theme in any mass shooting:

"This is the last place this is supposed to happen,"

It doesn't matter how safe your neighborhood is, or how quiet your workplace; somebody somewhere is having more of a bad day than they can take, and when they finally let go there is only moments to stop them, not minutes.

You are the only one responsible for your own safety during those short moments, and your only hope for survival is to be prepared. Take that as you will.

Thugs shoot Marcus Lattrell's dog

Glenn Beck covers the story.

Those guys had no idea how close they came to being shot to death by a professional. With that I had to chuckle hearing Lattrell tell the story about spinning their car into the ditch, and then complain because he "couldn't get a shot on the driver" as he's chasing them at over one hundred miles an hour.

One of the scumbags is still at large.

Noise pollution

It takes a special type of person to build a home next to one of the largest military training facilities on the East coast, and then bitch about the noise.

These people think that Fort A.P. Hill owes them our tax money to fix their house because they were too stupid to think that the vibration from our warriors practicing their deadly craft on base would cause nail pops on their drywall.

This sums up everything:

"We came here expecting a quiet place. "

Yah, right next to a freaking military base. Geniuses, these two.

But then we have a man ironically named Boyd Wisdom who says:

"How could something so powerful and destructive be approved without an [environmental assessment] and public hearing? I would like to know what they are doing." He suggests that there is no location on base where that noise could be mitigated.

He's talking about a line charge, which is used to destroy mine fields.

Honestly, we have military bases for a reason, like for letting Soldiers and Marines use powerful and destructive things without having to get public permission to do so. Did he think that in building a house next to such an establishment that everything would just quiet down?

The more I keep reading the article, the more I shake my head:

"With 76,000 acres, you'd think they could figure out where to put this training" so as to not affect neighbors, said William Smith, a retired government worker, who moved to Portobago Bay 11 years ago with his wife, Sandra.

Well, with 3,794,066 square miles of United States, you would think that he would have figured out that putting up a house next to where bombs are dropped would be a stupid idea, but you would be wrong:

"We're all 100 percent behind the military. We understand. But this being the only place to do it? We know that's not true." They say they've contacted Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Rob Wittman about the noise.

Seriously? Excuse me mister G.I., but why do you have to drop your bombs so loud on that federal base made exclusively for dropping bombs? Why don't you drop them some where else?

The answer is because they built the base to drop bombs, and if the US Army decides to appease these folks and un-ass the base and move elsewhere, clueless citizens will build houses next to it and bitch about the noise.

Hypocrisy at it's finest

Tim Kaine must not be interested in re-election.

Vetoing a stack of pro gun bills, most of which passed with a two thirds majority in both the House and Senate, he shows how out of touch with reality he is with Virginians.

From his statements on his reasoning for the vetoes, it's obvious that he didn't bother to read the bills. Not only that, but he vetoed the bill that would allow Virginians with a CCW to carry concealed in a restaurant that serves alcohol:

"Allowing concealed weapons into restaurants and bars that serve alcohol puts the public, the employees, and our public safety officers at risk. I take seriously the objections of law enforcement to this measure."

First off, Virginia doesn't have "bars." All establishments in Virginia that serve alcohol that is consumed on premise also serve food, which makes them restaurants. You can carry openly in Applebees, and you can consume alcohol. Legally. This bill would make it illegal to drink while carrying your concealed firearm, so how does it put the public at risk? Now, say you're out shopping with your wife and decide to swing into Olive Garden for lunch, how does your wife open carry her firearm if she carries in her purse? Tuck it into her waistband? What if she's wearing a dress? Should she carry it in her hand? What do you do if you're carrying in an ankle holster?

That, my friends, is an infringement.

Second, Governor Kaine is a flat out hypocrite considering he signed Senate Bill 776 into law last year which allows Commonwealth Attorneys permitless carry of a firearm concealed or otherwise anywhere they damn well please, to include schools and restaurants which serve alcohol, and all that without any training whatsoever. So it's all fine and dandy for the people on his payroll, but it's unsafe for us mere citizens. Got that?

Next up is this statement on the veto of SB 1528:

"The state requires an applicant for a concealed weapons permit to take a written safety test to demonstrate that the individual understands how to use a weapon in a safe manner. Allowing the testing to be done online would weaken the ability of the Commonwealth to determine who is actually taking the test and open up opportunities for individuals to receive a permit under fraudulent circumstances with no guarantee that they can use a weapon safely."

That's the first I've ever heard of a written safety test to get your CCW training. It seems that he has his facts wrong, and again I don't think he bothered to read the bill.

Considering that Virginians love their firearms, and also considering that Kaine won the election on a small margin, he might want to reconsider shitting on the people who he wants votes from.

We must spend to save jobs!!!!

Unless those jobs are in the defense industry.

Dog parks and shopping malls, which are totally absent from the Constitution, need millions and billions of our hard earned money because it "creates jobs," yet spending money to provide for the common defense, which is specifically chartered to government in the Constitution, is wasteful spending that needs to be stopped.

What?!?

These are jobs that don't need to be "created" as they already exist. And when the hell did the F-22 Raptor become "outdated?"

DC scared of mass shootings?

Eleanor Holmes Norton, in a breathtaking display of ignorant foresightedness, actually believes that if DC stops shitting on citizen's right to bear arms that mass shootings will occur in the District!

No, really.

"In only the 25 days between March 10 and April 5, 53 people have been killed in mass murders by gunmen," Norton said in a release. "Yet, members of the House and Senate have not looked at the gun amendment, but have regarded it as just another routine attachment to a local D.C. bill. The bill would eliminate all local gun laws, making the city, including official Washington, more open to gun violence than any of the jurisdictions where the mass killings have occurred in March and April."

As if DC has not been open to mass killings all this time. It's only in the renowned strength of the imaginary powers of DC gun law that the violent masses have been restrained from getting firearms and killing so many people that they're piled six-by-six in the road.

Ass.

This is specifically why DC citizens don't deserve representation in Congress, aside from the Constitutional specifics. When citizens elect representatives of the caliber of Eleanor Holmes Norton, they are not far from destruction.

Varmint piercing bullets

So I'm all happy joy joy now that I have found reloading components for my rifles. I had almost run out of Sierra Matchkings in all sizes, and I had pretty much given up on finding large rifle primers.

This weekend I found all of that and then some. The large rifle primers were a particularly satisfying buy considering I only had about forty primers left. In reading various forums on reloading stuff it's no wonder why. I read stories from guys who complain about not being able to find primers because all the morons are "panic buying," but then in the same sentence they will say that Gander Mountain got a shipment in so they went and sold their wife's car and bought the whole damn pallet "just in case."

Thanks for that.

Fortunately, I'm way too busy in life to be able to shoot competitively, so by the time I'm ready I shouldn't have to buy any rounds for a season or two. For the time being, I will just have to spend time smoking groundhogs with my meticulously handmade cartridges that punch such neat little holes at distance.

Last night I got my spread set up to make 52 grain Sierra Matchkings, and after that I will kick out some 55 grain Hornady V-Max for the above mentioned groundhogs. Soon I will be turning out .308 Winchester as fast as possible, and hopefully do some load development if I can find some new cases. Time will tell.

Can gun control work?

ABC News, in a drastic change of direction on their anti-gun stand, interview Jim Jacobs, a New York University professor and criminologist who has studied gun control for most of his life, and has authored a book with the above title, who says that it's not possible to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals. Not with laws or otherwise.

The question of "if it saves at least one life, shouldn't we just try?" comes out, but he says the cost of countering that with gun control would be too high, and that there may be other consequences.

Of course the Brady Campaign was quoted in all of this, but Jacobs casts that aside by saying that the Brady Law may have "some very limited" impact in the attempted purchase of a firearm by felons, but that they would just get a gun from else ware.

Excellent work by ABC News. Go give it a look.

Infighting

Wow. Even badge carrying law enforcement officers can't be trusted by the Secret Service.

Strange.

High powered gun laws

Do not stop shootings or hostage takers.

BTW, is there such thing as a low powered rifle?

And the truth shall set you free

FOX News did some investigative journalism on the Mexican Gun Fiasco and managed to find some truth.

It's about time.

The "90% of guns seized from cartels" line that you keep hearing? It's more like 17%.

The article goes on to state that many of the automatic weapons come from over 100,000 Mexican soldiers that left their post and took their guns with them.

"The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It's estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?"

Ed Head, an instructor at Gunsight Academy in Arizona said:

Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."

And there you have it.

Read the whole thing.

Update: Watch the video. Good stuff, huh? The reason most of the weapons such as select fire AK47s seized from the cartels are not traced back to the US is because they don't have serial numbers. How can they be traced without them? US firearms must have a serial number in order to be legally owned and transferred, with the exception of weapons made or imported before 1968. Good luck finding any of those in the US.

Update: AG Eric Holder is now saying that the US is not looking to change gun laws to stop over and under shotguns from being smuggled into Mexico:

Holder said the U.S. is not seeking to change any of its gun laws as part of the effort to curb weapons smuggling.

"I don't think our Second Amendment will stand in the way of what we have begun," he said.

Let's hope he means it.

Update: ABC News is still saying that guns are coming from the US, but tries to change the tone into something subtle that the casual reader will not pick up:

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reports that up to 95 percent of guns seized at scenes of drug violence in Mexico can be traced to U.S. commercial sources. These weapons are increasingly higher-powered, including .50 caliber rifles and armor-piercing ammunition.

So now it's 95%, huh? I would love to know where they got that number from, and why they didn't bother to tell the readers that the weapons were originally sold to the Mexican government.

Update: Damn!! ABC News put out a ton of articles on the Mexican Gun Farce yesterday. This one is the most interesting though:

Try to bring a refrigerator into Mexico in the back of your pickup, and you are almost certain to get stopped by Mexican customs officials.

Stick a couple of AK-47 rifles in your trunk, and chances are you'll whiz right through.

Chances are that if this article was printed on paper it wouldn't be worth letting your dog whiz on. This fantasy crap is somewhere in the vicinity of the "teddy bears are more regulated than guns" fiction that the media loves to spread. But there's more:

North of the border, however, the cartels simply pay straw buyers to pick up weapons at gun shops, gun shows or flea markets, then resell the arms to smugglers.

Perhaps in small amounts, and most of them are handguns. Now, we're getting into the good stuff here, and ABC News uses their single source of information, ATF Agent Tom Mangan, to disseminate the same lies that they have been spreading for at least a year:

"A year ago, we never saw those guns [Barrett .50 cal] going south into Mexico," said Tom Mangan, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "Now we refer to it as one of the weapons of choice."

Did you mention the hundreds, if not thousands of Barrett rifles that were sold to the Mexican army? Of course not. But Associated Press Writer ALEXANDRA OLSON did think it noteworthy to point out this garbage:

And while cartels get most of their high-caliber assault rifles from the U.S., they are turning to Central America for other military-grade weaponry like grenades and even the occasional rocket launcher.

"High caliber" weapons come from the US? Like M16s? The M16s that we sold to the Mexican government so they can outfit the army with them? Sorry, they fire the 5.56x45mm round which is a far cry from "high caliber."

"You're seeing truly military-type guns, like grenade launchers," Mangan said. "They're not coming from the U.S. The hand grenades that are being used, you're looking at that stuff migrating up from Central America."'

Wow! ATF Agent Tom Mangan says something true! Weird. But not so fast:

Experts also agree that the Mexican military, which is often outgunned by traffickers, has not been a significant source of weapons despite the potential for corrupt soldiers to sell out to the cartels.

Many of the cartels' grenades and other heavy weapons could be leftovers from Central America's civil wars, Mangan said.

Just who are these experts? I presume that you actually meant Agent Mangan, since he is the only person you retards seem to be able to get information from and he has no problem being your sock-puppet when you need him to be.

What your "expert" is saying is that the corrupt Mexican government has too big of a heart to sell US made M16s and M203s to the cartels, and that the Mexican soldiers don't bother to keep their issued M60s and M4s when they walk off the job. If I was "outgunned" by the cartels because I only had an M16 or an M60 I probably wouldn't keep it either. Who wants to fight with such inferior hardware anyways. We all know that real narco-terrorists outgun the army and their silly H&K G36s with those AKMSUs.

What do you get when you don't bother to investigate to find the truth, but instead rely on one idiot ATF agent? Junk.

(H/T to Seth)

Keeping inmates from getting machine guns

So let me get this straight. Inmates steal eleven handguns and five select fire Colt M16s from a Mississippi police department arms room four years ago because the ceiling was unsecured, and somehow it's the fault of Mississippi gun store owners for allowing straw purchases?

Someone please tell me that HOLBROOK MOHR of the Associated Press didn't get paid for this trash!

Anti-ship ballistic missile hysterics

And get a load of that title! Do you get it!!

KILL KILL Kill Kill kill kill. . . .

Awesome reporting there FOX!