Gun show poophole

Yesterday the news was awash in coverage of the meeting in congress from families of the Virginia Tech massacre. These folks were asking congress to pass federal law aimed at making private sales at gunshows go through a background check. This seems to come up several times a year, so I'll address some of the issues with this.

The main argument against is that there are tens of millions of gun owning Americans that will not be told that they cannot sell their personal property to another American unless they get government approval for the transaction. This is entirely missed by advocates of new federal law. If I want to sell my Marlin .22 rifle to my brother, I'll be damned if I'm gonna ask for permission. This goes the same for an AR15 as it does for a Mossberg slug gun.

On top of this is that there is no mechanism in place that I'm aware of that would even allow it to begin with. Can anyone walk me through how Joe Schmucketelly would be able to conduct a background check on John Quincy Public so that he can legally sell him his Colt Peacemaker? Who provides the forms? Who does Joe Schmucketelly call to do the check? Who pays for the call? Who pays the cop who has to conduct the check? Has anyone conducted a study to find out how many Police officers and federal agents will need to be hired for each state to entertain the capacity to do these checks? How will Joe Schmucketelly be required to keep the record, and for how long? Or would somebody else be required to do it? Will ATF agents then be authorized to come to Joe Schmucketelly's house and audit his records? Who is going to provide the training needed to properly and legally assert the forms on the buyer, and who pays for that?

None of this is insurmountable, but how long will it interfere with American's rights until this whole process can be implemented and working smoothly? Do any of these people care?

So really - they might not realize it - they're asking for a fiction, which ultimately means that if congress does pass such a law, and tomorrow an American has to provide for a background check in order to sell a personal firearm to another American, there is no means to do it, so the law becomes a de facto gun ban. Raise your hand if you want to be the person to tell America that their personal property is now frozen in place.

The obvious elephant in the room is that despite what the "panel of experts" (snicker) found in their report in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, the scumbag murderer did not buy firearms from a gun show. I saw on the news last night, and can't seem to find it this morning, a reporter talking about how the two murderers at the Columbine massacre bought their firearms at a gun show, which is flat out wrong. Three of their guns were purchased at a gun show by an 18 year old girl who would have passed any such background check, and the fourth was sold to them by a friend, which was already illegal and would not be any more so with the passage of new federal law.

The thing that grinds in the minds of gun owners is that there is no "loop hole" in the law; a gun dealer that wants to sell guns at a gun show has to conduct a background check, and they are licensed by the federal government who provides the infrastructure to conduct that service. Those advocating the passing of new federal law are saying that the government will have to provide for the licensing and service to tens of millions of people. This would ultimately create a massive federal agency. Maybe that is their secret hope.

Turning my mind to the offense, would that mean that every Tom, Dick, and Harry that wanted to sell a firearm would need to be licensed by the federal government in order to have access to the N.I.C.S.? If I have to have a license to sell a gun, than by selling the gun aren't I now acting in a public capacity, and not a private one? Doesn't that make me bona fide gun dealer? Wouldn't that enable me to buy directly from the wholesaler, or possibly even the manufacturer? Do these folks really want tens of millions of bona fide gun dealers able to buy and sell as they please from Smith and Wesson, without regard for quantity? How many federal, state, and local gun laws would that render obsolete with the swipe of a blue pen?

The anti-gun folks may not realize how well they have it right now. Best leave the hornet's nest alone.

Convenience store shooting on tape

In Detroit.

The store owner lives, fortunately. Three things I noticed right off the bat: one, the scumbag with the goofy hat didn't have a round chambered in the pistol; two, the same scumbag didn't know how to work the gun in the first place, as he tried to shoot, tried to chamber a round again, and then the gun looks like it went off when he wasn't ready; and three, he shot the store owner while his friend was in the line of fire trying to manhandle him.

Let's hope that scumbags from sea to shining sea are just as incompetent with their weapons.

Here we go

"ARMS DEALER BUSTED IN ARIZONA!!"

Weeeeeeeeell, maybe not so much. I may eat crow over this one, but I doubt that it will come to that.

First and foremost, if this guy was such a dangerous human being, than why was he only briefly detained? What is he charged with? So far I only see him "accused" of a "federal firearms violation.

Second, where are all the "assault thingies" that he was allegedly selling? All I see are walnut stocked pump action Winchesters and pearl handled 1911s. Whoopidy doo.

Next, ATF agent Tom Mangan is running this piece, so that should tell ya that this might not be on the up-and-up.

Lastly, if the guy used to be a licensed firearms dealer, than it makes sense that he would have "over a thousand" firearms at home, and that he would be a collector. So he still buys guns, which would be "replenishing" his stock in ATF speak.

As for him not conducting background checks, is there a mechanism in place for private Citizens to conduct them? If not, and I don't believe there is, than that accusation should be retracted. You can't accuse someone of not doing something that they have no way of doing in the first place.

Seems to me that there is the typical lack of substance here, and that maybe the ATF needed a scalp to nail to their wall. It was this guys ticket they punched. Too bad.

Cop kills swordsman

Crazy sword wielding articles aren't that hard to come by these days. This one is like all the others, kinda blah, but the point remains (feel my pun!) that sharpening a piece of metal is easy to do, and swords are every bit as effective as a weapon as a firearm.

In through the out door

Yeah, it's the title to a Zeppelin song, but it's also the title to a post about the shitty court system in Central Virginia.

Burton Leon Brown III, 28, was charged with discharging a firearm from a vehicle, using a firearm in the commission of a felony and reckless discharge of a firearm. Brown was placed in the Rappahannock Regional Jail under no bond.

So what does this happen to do with Zeppelin again? Nothing, but it has everything to do with several municipalities and counties in Virginia previously letting a violent and dangerous guy out of prison over and over again so that he can joyride at 2 a.m. while firing his gat out the window of a car within a mile of my house.

I don't what the hell is going on in my AO, but y'all need to get your shit together and start holding on to these guys. I'm tired of hearing about some vicious yahoo getting the kid glove treatment his whole life from my county court, and then doing something really stupid that gets people hurt.

Back to this particular yahoo, a quick search of his name in the Virginia court database reveals that this scumbag has such accolades as obstructing justice and assault and battery of a police officer, making him already a felon who cannot legally own a firearm. There's lots of other piddly stuff in there too, but the fact remains that this guy has a history, and now he needs to be history.

Just so we're clear here, if I rack up charge after charge in a particular locale, and then sometime later punch a cop, I can go about my business after paying $900 and change and giving up my drivers license for a month and a half. Good to know. I wonder how much I would have to pay out for shooting a handgun up in the air while driving?

The persecution has begun!

"Early on Thursday morning, wildlife biologists and technicians descended on the park and netted the birds. The biologists, who work with the wildlife services division of the United States Department of Agriculture, then packed the geese two or three to a crate and took them to a facility where they were gassed with lethal doses of carbon dioxide, said Carol A. Bannerman, a spokeswoman for the wildlife services division."

Holy smokes! Thousands of geese across America are being rounded up and exterminated.

Too bad they didn't pull up with a box truck full of Winchester shotgun shells and let the locals make a day of it. Think about if they charged ten dollars admission per goose - that's a profit that could go towards fixing the roads or installing gunshot detectors or something. And don't tell me it's inhumane; it's much more ethical than netting and gassing.

So what about the carcasses?

The bodies are frozen, chopped up and fed to captive raptors and bears.

Coooooooooooool. Now, I'd pay to see them fed to raptors and bears! I'd pay triple to see them fed to raptors and bears while still alive!! I wouldn't pay to watch homeless people eat them though. But it is a good cause!

The lesson that we can all take away from here though is to not poop in the park, or you may be the one netted, gassed, and fed to a homeless guy. Nom nom nom nom!!

Target practice, cartel style!

Militaryphotos.net has a good thread on the guns of the Mexican drug cartels.

Gunshow guns, the whole lot of em'. What, you don't believe me? Have you noticed at how far the prices on gold plated AKs have dropped?

Yeah, me neither.

Ever the optimist, I notice the piss poor gun handling of these guys, as well as their "marksmanship." I mean, who doesn't fire rounds into the air when they go to the range?

Update: Check out the Browning 1919 machine guns! I just turned several of those down a few days ago from a sale offer through Bass Pro Shops. They were giving them away with the purchase of Barska spotting scope, but I already have a pile of 1919s rusting away in the closet. Sometimes I think that getting machine guns is too easy here in the US.

First aid stuff

Something on my "to do" list that is long overdue is to put together some first aid kits; one for the car and one for the house. My Xterra comes with one that's pretty nice, and I've even added a couple of things.

If you're shopping for things to put in one, or are trying to start from scratch, go on over to Hell in a Handbasket for some ideas. Also, check out the comments section for some reader weigh in. Excellent ideas in there!

Shootout ends well

Everyone got shot, and everyone lived. Well, so far: the bad guy is still fighting for his life. I don't have much sympathy for an armed robber.

The CCW wave is gone in Virginia

It looks as though most of the Virginian's who wanted to carry a concealed gun have already kissed the royal hand: permits are down the first part of this year.

Never leave a man behind

A good article on how a Soldier from WWI was found in France and returned to the family in the US. Some forensic and gool ol' fashioned investigative work was involved in this; I had no idea that DoD had such assets out and about looking for our fallen every single day. Good to know.

This comes on the heels of my family finding out that my grandfather, who served in WWII and Korea, and my grandmother, may be lost in Arlington National Cemetery due to the rampant stupidity that was discovered there recently.

Hopefully Pvt. Thomas Costello gets better treatment.

Traced to the US, no doubt

Adding more and more nails to the Mexican Drug Farce coffin, militant cartel gunman attacked Mexican federal police this weekend with grenades. Who wants to bet that the grenades were either M61 or M67 type made in the USA?

Any takers?

I ask because that would mean that, you know, the grenades could be "traced" to the US. Probably came from a gunshow, or the back of an NRA gun dealers van, or even Gander Mountain - they had a buy-one-get-one-free sale on foreign and domestic grenades this weekend. I hear that next month, they're giving away mortars to the first twelve people to buy a gun safe, so keep your eyes peeled!

What's old is new again: Home Improvement Edition

Regarding yesterday's A/C fiasco, I dialed up a number from the Good Ol' Boy network to ask an electrician buddy of mine about what he knows about central A/C units. Electricians know probably more about the HVAC trade than folks in any of the other trades combined, and even that knowledge is extremely limited.

You HVAC boys have that market shut like a lock.

My buddy didn't have much information for me other than he would come over and help me in any way he could. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, SailorCurt dropped me a comment with a link to a post he did on fixing his A/C unit. I read that post several times.

Could these frickin' things be that simple? I've set dozens of A/C units on the pedestal, leveled them, and then wired them up, but I've never really looked inside of one. The voodoo involved in making them work is the specialty of the HVAC boys; they go down deep within the heart of these units and add magic potions mixed from elven babies blood and unicorn tears. The units themselves are expertly forged by the hands of mighty dwarfs, crafted from the finest aluminum hewn from inside the Stickitooomeee mountains. I just envisioned them being so complicated considering that they cost thousands of dollars, they have to be installed by experts licensed. . . LICENSED!!. . . to add the magic potions, and some of them are even powered by trains that you can't even see! Nothing can stop those ones.

So imagine my surprise when I opened mine up and found out that Yup, it's just a run-of-the-mill compressor with a radiator like thingy surrounding it, and a simple motor with a fan. A consult with Google-The-Wise showed that the HVAC boys affectionately refer to them as "squirrel cages."

I've got it now.

Armed with SailorCurt's post, and my new found confidence that I can swap out a motor and make it work as long as the compressor is still good, buddy and I set about to make my world a better place. Good buddy noted that he had an A/C unit that the Direct TV installer had climbed on and broken, but that the fan motor and capacitor were still good to go. It was about five years old, but had only operated for a few weeks when the incident happened. Basically it was all brand new, but would it fit?

Like a glove!

Now the only problem I had was that the new fan spun the wrong way; the 3-blade fan that came with the new motor was too big, and the 4-blade fan that was on the old motor was pitched the wrong way. New motor with old fan went into the A/C unit, and managed to get my house down from this, taken last night:



To 81 degrees this morning. I went out to check on things this morning and the A/C was kinda milling super hot air around the unit, instead of blowing it out the top. These A/C thingies are really pretty neat; the fan pulls the coolest ambient air around (the air closest to the ground) through the coils (radiator looking doodad) and up out the top, all while also drawing the super hot air around the compressor (at the bottom of the unit) out the top with it. It's like the radiator in your car, only with the fan on top of the motor blowing the hot air out a big vent in your hood. Smart!

Thinking about it last night, I realized my remedy was to cut the thin aluminum blades of the fan that was on the new motor. Measuring carefully and guiding the Sharpie along by edging my fingers along the curved end of the blade, I marked off about an inch and a half of blade which was easily scored by a razor knife. The cut part peeled right off just as pretty as you please. The fan's hub is steel, and I didn't mess with it. One thing to know is that the fan is balanced, so cutting it runs the risk of making the whole unit wobble when it spins. Mine now has a barely perceptible wobble, which I can fix with the counter weights from my old fan. . . .on a cool day; it's good to go right now. When I fired it back up this morning, I could see it draw the ambient air through the sides of the unit like it's supposed to, and hot air was blowing right out the top.

All should be well now!

My kids were up until close to midnight last night, and everyone was in a foul mood from the heat. We had little room fans set up all over the place to make sure there was some circulating air, but it was still miserable. The bad part about it is that all of this could have been prevented with a little preventative maintenance.

The reason the old fan siezed up is because one of the two 125 volt lines that feed the motor had long ago come loose - long enough that the exposed copper was slightly corroded. The fan, running on half power, and with a full load from struggling against the heat wave on the East Coast, over taxed the capacitor, which was visibly bulged when I took off the electrical panel cover on the A/C unit. If I had shut the power off and looked over the daggone thing this spring, I probably could have avoided the whole fiasco entirely. Just the same though, ordering a new motor and capacitor costs less than a hundred bucks, which is way better than calling Home Despot to send out a barely trained installer to replace your A/C unit for $5,000.

Some things can be done yourself.

I'd like to give a big thanks to SailorCurt for his very helpful post! I really appreciate it!

What was old is new again

I got my Suunto watch back yesterday. Truth be told, Suunto had the watch fixed and back out the door in about a days time, which is awesome; the reason I got it back yesterday is because FedEx took their sweet ass time during delivery. Looking back, I dropped the watch into the package on Thursday the 24th, Suunto emailed me about the price to fix it on the following Monday, and had it in the mail on Tuesday. That's fast.

I did have to pay $55 for the service since the watch was well out of warranty, but for my troubles I basically got a brand new watch. They replaced the case, the face, and the bezel; I also got a new set of D-rings - I had ordered these with the crappy velcro strap about a year ago and used them with a Zulu strap which I highly recommend. The crappy rubber strap that came with the watch rotted off, so it needed a high quality replacement.

Let's recap.

Here is what I sent:



And here is what they returned:


I didn't buy this watch to wear to the Prom; I bought it to withstand the harshest environments on the planet, which it has. After four years of abuse, it looked like it was flogged with a sock full of nickels, and now it looks cool again.

I'd say that Suunto makes a great product and stands behind it. Good on em'.

Now I want to buy more of their stuff! See how that works!

It's all about the timing

The A/C unit in my house went out yesterday in what is the start of a week long heat wave. The sleeping conditions were rather eventful last night, to say the least.

Good times.

The fan was seized up this morning, but I managed to get it spinning again with the help of a meat fork from my grill. Maybe with some tender care the thing won't die on me yet. If its time really has come, I will be shelling out the equivalent of a new rifle for a new A/C.

My 3rd of July

What a great day! Yesterday I spent a few hours casting bullets while everyone around me was shooting fireworks into the air. Sure, the bigger ones wake the kids up every now and then, but this comes around once a year, and I like the scenery.

Anyhow, I learn more and more every time I give this a shot, like not smelting at 900 degrees unless you want fluffy purple bullets. The zinc wheel weights usually float to the top, but when the heat is high they can and do melt. Ooops.

Here is yesterday's booty:


Click to make bigger and more beautiful.


See those eeensy weeensy little ones? Those would be 102 grain boooolits for my Kel-Tec P3AT! No more ammo shortage for this guy. Dies are in the mail. Now to expand on my shell casing collection, and I will be mass producing those as well.

Range report to follow hopefully in the next week or so. In the meantime, I'm going to smoke my single stage press making .45 ACP. The zombies could be braying on my door as early as tomorrow, so I have to be prepared.

Happy Independence Day!!!!

Stay safe out there!

Or you could just wear bubblewrap

"Strong currents, debris such as tree branches and slippery rocks have caused injuries and deaths. It is safer to enjoy the river from somewhere outside the water, rather than in it."

Yeah, nothing sucks more than enjoying cool clear water by getting in it. What a moron.

If you can't swim, than wear a life jacket and swim with sober friends; you won't have any problems. It is a deadly river, sure, and you wouldn't know by looking at it. The reason people drown in it all the time is because they're usually drunk, or can't swim (well), don't use the buddy system - it's really just a lack of what is generally refered to as common sense.

I hear that skydiving and lion taming are very safe, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to give it a shot on my own; common sense says that I would find some competent buddies to help me out, and I wouldn't be shitfaced on my first try. Lions look all nice and cuddly and all, but I know that looks can be deceiving. That's why I would be careful.

Every year though, several people drown in the Rappahannock, and usually two drown on the 4th of July. Sometimes a child drowns, and it breaks my heart. The parents are always to blame; youngins should be wearing their life jacket, and both parents should be sober.

The numbers are sobering: 85 people have drowned in the river since 1985. The last ones were in June 2008. The victims were a 51-year-old Stafford man and a teenager from Maryland.

Sobering is the key word that people don't get.

So enjoy the water. Get in it if you can; it's a very historic part of this nation, and it's a cool place to be. Sure, if you want to tie one on then stay on the shores, but if you're of a sound mind, don't let this "official" rain on your parade.

An Arsenal of One

During the night, someone broke into the vehicle and made off with a Colt M-4 rifle, two loaded M-4 magazines and two loaded .40 caliber Glock magazines. The thief also took two sets of handcuffs, two Montgomery County Police badges and a baton.

One rifle = arsenal. This is, of course, NBC News we're talking about; sensationalism runs rampant in this organization. They are but one half step above grocery store tabloids that run stories about bat-boys and B1 bombers on the moon.

Interesting that a Maryland cop gets issued an automatic weapon, and then leaves it in the car overnight to get stolen by a scumbag. Can Maryland Citizens own full auto weapons legally? I bet if they do, they don't leave them in their car.

No word on why the thief bothered to risk life and limb to steal such a weapon from a cop when he could have just been issued one at a Virginia gun show for a few dollars.

Ooooh Oooooh!! A caption contest!

You must enter!

It seems that Clay Jones, on his blog at Fredericksburg.com, has an opinion, and he wants you to be a part of it!

Go on over and show Clay just how much you treasure his anti-gun opinion, would you?

Here's my entry:

More stupidity on the Virginia restaurant carry

You absolutely have to check out this shamelessly biased video on the matter from NBC Washington.

That is no accident. In case you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, the commercial at the beginning of the video is a cyber-stealing awareness video that has two masked men with rifles walking into a bank while firing on full auto.

Jackie Bensen is the reporter in the video, and whether or not this is her doing, she is still accountable.

She did give Jim Snyder of the VCDL a crack at his take on the law, which he helped push through. Still, there's just no covering up the bias.

Virginia laws in effect today

Concealed carry in restaurants that serve alcohol is legal today, as well as being legal to transport a firearm in a vehicle's locked compartment. Also, you can ask Master to renew your concealed carry permit by mail, and court clerks now have to tell you that you can appeal a denied concealed carry permit.

Not too shabby.

Do notice some of the people's confusion in the comments at the article.

Oh yeah, and check out the picture to the article on NBC Washington's front page. Smart anonymous reporter takes you back to the Wild West, despite the Wild West not being very wild. Predictable.

Confirmation Proclamation

I have always looked on in wonder about how pointless the Judiciary Confirmation process is, considering that Supreme Court nominees get confirmed pretty much regardless of what they say.

Howevaaaaah, it seems that they do sometimes catch these judicial creatures making statements that they soon violate; in this case the wise Latina doublespeak between DC vs Heller and McDonald vs Chicago.

Not that that changes anything; it's all one gigantic fiction that we keep on watching for some reason, like we expect a drastically different outcome despite knowing damn well what's gonna happen. Old Yeller doesn't live in the end, and judges are human and have opinions.

Weird.

Gun rights in sheep's clothing

The old policy prohibited town employees, except police officers, from bringing firearms into town buildings or properties during working hours. The new policy bans weapons on town property unless they're legally permitted. It will allow employees to carry weapons in places where other residents could.

There is a whole lot in that paragraph to address.

First, the old "policy" exempted cops, of course, but more importantly barred town employees. Policy is not law; thus it was not unlawful for town employees to carry, but getting caught meant potentially getting fired. Citizens however, were not held accountable by this policy as they do not risk losing their job.

The new "policy" is where the meat is. Again, it's policy, not law. As the article describes it, this policy now allows everyone to carry as long as it's legally permitted. To be contentious, there is a big difference between legal and lawful; the latter meaning true law, and the former meaning color of law, or basically fiction.

In my opinion, this new policy under the guise of freedom and 2nd Amendment rights is really a dangerous way of making people think that they have more, when in fact it seems written to control people under color of law. A wolf in sheep's clothing, if you will. What it boils down to is that town employees want to carry without the worry of losing their job, which is understandable to say the least, but the method towards this end is to give up more of their rights - keeping in mind that the employees rights were not threatened before this new policy - in exchange for being "allowed" by the local government to carry.

In short, they're offering the same entity that discriminates against them more control in exchange for not discriminating. It's the same as telling the bully that steals your lunch money that you will clean his room every week if he doesn't steal your money. And I am sure that this is being haled as a gun owner's victory.

On the flip side, there is the typical resistance from the scared senseless folks that can't bear to see anyone armed and capable of protecting themselves, and they offer to the local news man the predictable "guns near kids" sacrifice. Also, do not miss the NRA, Pro-Gun spokesman mouthpiece giving his burnt offering of "this is going too far." Sometimes the Redcoats are dressed in Mossy Oak.

My point is to be careful of what you wish for. Everyone wants to be able to carry where they want; just be sure that you don't give away a right for a promise to be left alone.

Little beauties

Last night I got done with my first full batch of 45 ACP.



Putting each one together is like watching a child grow.

I'm so proud!!!

I am going to mass produce ammo like never before. Just the thought of being able to shoot my 1911 lifts my spirits.

.380 ACP is next; the mold should be here today. Now I just need some time.

Something someone mentioned to me the other day though when I said that five gallon buckets of dirt hung from trees make awesome animated targets, he said that that was a "green" way to shoot, as I wouldn't be putting lead into the environment. I guess so! I'm goin greeeeeen man!!

It's also a good way to save lead. Not that I'm that stingy; wheel weights cost very little, and the amount of bullets that can be made from one bucket of them is amazing. However, it sure would be easier to re-melt lead bullets than to melt wheel weights with the metal clips. I'm gonna make this lead last.

Guns incorporated

The Second Amendment applies to cities and states too? Not just the federal government?

Who knew?

This news is making the rounds, and it's sickening to see how many journalists still think that the Constitution "grants" rights. What exactly do those folks learn in college again?

Range report

Saturday I went out to see how my rifle likes the 168 grain Federal Gold Medal Match. I went back out to the old pond; only this time I took a weed eater to clear the vegetation, as I learned my lesson well from last time. Still, I ran the weed eater out of string and bent my machete in the two hours it took to cut a shooting lane.



I got there right at 1000, and the temperature was already above 90. After clearing a lane and setting up targets, I was soaked with sweat down to my knees. The humidity was at 48%.

A week ago I bought a 4 foot plastic folding table to shoot off of. I've eyed them for a long time, but all the folding tables I've come across are too rickety for range work, but not this one. It's good to go. It sure makes things easier than shooting off the hood of the truck, and it was nice to be able to drive down to the targets with A/C instead of walking.



With the table set up, I laid out the rifle and commenced to setting up the chronograph. I also walked down and set up a target at 100 yards to get these rounds zeroed. In that ten minutes time my rifle was almost too hot to touch just from being out in the sun. As for my target, I used a piece of thin cardboard from a pack of orange dots as it was field expedient, and also because I could measure it with the range finding reticle on my scope. I paced the distance off to start with, and between my well calibrated eye and the scope reticle, I'm convinced I was at 100 yards. Some teenage scumbags stole my rangefinder, so I'm learning to use other methods.

As it turns out I couldn't see my shot holes on the little six inch piece of cardboard, so I went back out and put up a piece of drywall that I had brought along to shoot my new 45 ACP handloads at. I got dialed in pretty nice, right after I shot a half inch three shot group just outside of the top right dot.



I wasn't there though to shoot groups at 100; I was there to dial the rounds in at 285 yards - as close to 300 as I could get on Saturday. My first three rounds I used .7 MILs hold over instead of the 1 MIL that I was supposed to use, which put me just under the bottom black dot. Despite that, they were tight, which made me happy:



I then fired off a five round group at the bottom black dot, which I pulled the first round high and to the left, and marked it so in my book before clicking off the next four rounds. That group made me happy too, discounting the first shot.

At that point, the gun was blistering hot. Normally it takes between ten and twenty rounds to get this gun to warm up a bit before it will shoot tight. It likes to run hot. Saturday was the exception, as there was no hiding from the sun, and I had to wrap the barrel with a wet T-shirt and stuff the whole gun in the case for twenty minutes just to be able to fire off another three round group. I would alternate shooting it and my little AR15 to keep from sitting around - notice the three little shot holes near the top black dot. Apparently the drop compensation chart that came with the Burris Fulfield II scope is off: those rounds were aimed at the bottom dot. Not a bad group though.

The mirage was terrible, and worse with each shot fired and minute passed. I have little to no experience shooting with mirage, and combining that with my sweat soaked face not getting a cheekweld, and you have a recipe for some piss poor shooting.



That would be my last group fired, this time at 256 yards, measuring 2.831". The three shots on the right are from the AR15. At least they're minute-of-groundhog.

As usual, here's some through-the-scope pictures. First, the Horus Hawk:



And the Burris on seven power:



Last but not least, I shot almost twenty rounds of my wheel weight handloads of 45 ACP to see how they did. I intended to shoot a lot of them that day, but I had had enough of the bugs and the heat.



Powered by six grains of Unique, they averaged in at 858 fps, which is dead on as a substitute for ball ammo. I'm happy as can be about that. I was shooting off hand at fifteen yards, not shooting for groups, and they all stayed within the front sight post. Can't do better than that for target fodder.

I am now going to mass produce some more 230 grain LRN ammo so that I can actually shoot my 1911, instead of just dreaming about it. I haven't shot the thing in many months due to ammo not being readily available or affordable. I am also going to stock up on the FGMM as it seems to shoot well in my gun, and JBM Ballistics says it will make it close to 950 yards or so. One day I hope to test it out.

Obviously she should be stripped of her gun rights

And all others as well. We wouldn't want "individuals with known or suspected ties to terrorism" from exercising their rights now would we?

Hopefully the FBI will give her a special redress number.

Come to think of it, terrorists have long used kids as weapon delivery vehicles. Why not ban kids in general from flying? Perhaps that's too extreme. Maybe every child should be physically searched, just in case, ya know? It's not like they're going to resist or anything.

It kind of reminds me of this.

A utopia free from fear

Isn't that why DC gunlaws are so restrictive? To make sure that Citizens feeeeeeeel safe? To make them free from fear?

Well now, that ship has sailed. DC folk are no longer feeling safe these days, and who can blame them?

As the rest of the wholesale community got back to work Thursday, vendors worried that the escalating crime in the area will soon put them out of business.

“Yesterday, about 10 or 15 customers told us that they’re afraid, even during the day time to walk around this area,” said Shaikh.

“I’m still scared. I couldn’t sleep all night,” said Suleman Hussain, who owns a nearby business. “We’ve been here for only a year and a half, and I don’t know, I don’t want to be here anymore. It’s too scary.”

But but but, there's cops and stuff; many of them with super high tech equipment that will warn them at the precise moment a scumbag ends your life. Look, there's even a big brawny cop standing next to some crime tape, diligently writing important stuff in a little notebook. All is well in hand.

And a harsh notice to all you vile crooks out there that feed on the soft underbelly of society: crime will not be permitted! It simply won't be allowed! "We can't have people out preying on the community like this."

See how easy that was? Chief Lanier is now going to commence "getting them." She's now going to round up the murdering hooligans, or have a stern face-to-face talk with them to find out what reason and cause they have to rob and kill.

Please Citizens, there's no reason to arm yourself for your own safety! The cops will be by with their notebook shortly. Peace be still!

You know, these incompetent goons insist on disarming everyone because nobody but the po-po can be trusted to provide for their own safety, as they may all go berserk and shoot up presidential motorcades with their sub compact Glocks, so I'm thinking that the community may have a claim against the DC police here for failure to make them feel safe.

Canadians: the new terrorist menace

I casually read the headline to this article, and knew it was a load of bullshit before I even clicked.

Police arrest driver of weapons-laden car near G20.

Tell me the first thing that comes to mind is that the guy has like an SKS or something in his trunk, and the cops and the press are making mountains out of it? Or perhaps a .25 auto and some fireworks? Maybe a couple of shotguns, a Beretta 92F, and a old Marlin .22 to make it an "arsenal?"

Nope. So what did this crazed, lunatic terroristic fellow have in his car to make it "weapons laden?"

Canadian police Thursday arrested the driver of a car laden with five fuel canisters, a chain-saw and a home-made crossbow close to the Toronto center where G20 leaders will meet.

Man, was that car laden! It was like so totally laden, that it could have easily been called Bin laden! Actually, now it can be called BEEN laden!! Get it! Been laden?!?!

I should be a counter terrorist, because my wit and humor would no doubt be helpful on long stakeouts, watching black hearted men surreptitiously planning the next massive bombing while innocently filling their lawn mower with highly explosive elixir of Allah.

Hell, everyone is potentially a terrorist these days, or even practically a terrorist. Who knows how many unregistered gas cans are within the Canadian border. And this guy had a fucking half empty soft drink, and you know what those can be used for. . . . .

Inside the car they found five blue and red fuel canisters, some only partially full, a half-empty soft drink bottle, a bundle of arrows with red and yellow tips, as well as a large chainsaw, the homemade orange steel crossbow and a baseball bat.

Everyone knows that a crazed madman with a baseball bat can take out an entire little league team!

Three medium-sized suitcases were found to be stuffed with batteries, scribbled notebooks, and a copy of "100 ways to Make Money on the Internet."

There was also a tall, oversized wooden paddle, a bottle of cleaning fluid, and a dirty sleeping bag stuffed in the trunk.

Is it me, or does the anonymous reporter that wrote this garbage remind you here of the janitor from Billy Madison, at that scene where he's in Eric's office with a list of all the petty childish things he witnessed Billy doing? "Billy likes to drink soda. Miss Lippy's car. . . is green." Connection, no?

Anyways, the day is now saved, thanks to the daring bravery of 20,000 the most courageous and under worked mall ninjas on the planet. Good save guys.

Allegedly, the terroristic book "100 ways to make money on the internet" is subversive fodder for the violent and easily manipulated mind, written by none other than the ghosts of Attila the Hun, Hitler, and Glen Beck's great great grandfather. The cover is even made of the skin from a thousand slaughtered Jack Russell puppies!!

So just how close did the madman get to the G20? A thousand feet? A hundred feet? Ten feet?

Nope. Less than half a mile.

That's what you call danger close!

Meanwhile, as this nutcase Canadian was getting aggressively interrogated for endangering the lives of countless Canadian babies and interrupting the peaceful utopia of Toronto, what were those 20,000 brave cops doing to maintain the tranquility?

A swath of downtown Toronto has been ringed with steel barricades, schools and businesses have been closed, and one level of the main Union Station has been shut, leaving only local trains able to ferry passengers.

Just so we're clear, guy driving through town with some gas cans, a bottle of mineral spirits, and a sleeping bag = the most dangerous threat in the world; ten battalions of doogooders with body armor, automatic weapons, and tear gas turning downtown Toronto into FOB G20 and arresting people with gas cans = necessary keepers of world peace.

Some more keepers from this shit article:

"We are not up north, or deer hunting so these weapons were a matter of concern."

I would say that the stupidity, reckless endangerment, and needless violence by Canadian law enforcement is a matter of concern too. And is he suggesting that people hunt with gas cans and a chainsaw? Don't think so? Well, how about this gem:

"This is an ongoing investigation," he said, adding the car was "filled with weapons of opportunity."

If this moron had a clue, he would know that every human being that lives in a modern residential structure has access to countless weapons of opportunity that are far more powerful than a chainsaw or crossbow. Why don't you just lock up everybody then?

He said the hazardous materials team would be analyzing the contents of the fluid containers to see what they were, and the arrested man had not yet given any clear explanation of what he was doing.

I gather that the guy can't give a clear explanation because he's bound and gagged, and probably has some big federal goon's arm and eight-cell Mag light up his ass, looking to "anal-yze the contents of his fluids." Get it? Anal-yze?!?!

I'm so funny.

This is what you get when you give Big Brother the keys to protect you from everything.

Actually, don't even waste the minute and a half of your life reading that article. It's rubbish. It's kinda telling though that during a meeting of the world's most powerful bankers, and during the coordination of an army of cops of this size, that we would hear about something like this to justify the whole mess. It seems like nobody really gives a damn about a bunch of rich bankers, so something has to be made up and perpetuated by the press to make the masses of sheep think that the efforts of their taxed labor is going to a good cause.

Yay world peace!!

On warranties

Use them if you can. A sign of a good manufacturer is if they both include a decent warranty, and if they honor that warranty. It has to be both, or the warranty is crap.

Car manufacturers are the perfect example of what not to do.

They may advertise a good warranty, but they try as hard as possible to not honor it. I've had every type of warranty known to man from car manufacturers, and at the end of the day they are going to screw you, so don't bother. They make their money on repair work, not the car itself. I've had car manufacturers consult with lawyers; take apart pieces of my engine and take pictures of it to send to HQ for an opinion; send experts to the dealership to look at the repair, all in the name of doing whatever it takes to make money.

There are companies that make other products that do whatever it takes to make their customer happy, and thus spend more money on buying more of their products. T.A.D. Gear is a good example of this: remember the jacket that I bitched about this past winter? They sent a pre-paid shipping label to my house so that I could send the jacket back to them. Turnaround time was about a week, and I had the jacket back, good as new. That's good service. I can't wait to buy more of their stuff, comfortable knowing that when I break it, they will stand behind their gear.

I'm going to test the customer service of another company that I have thus far held in high regard: Suunto.

Waaay back at the beginning of 2006, I bought one of their Vector watches for my all expenses paid vacation to beautiful Ramadi, in sunny Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Good times. Good times.

Since then I have replaced a couple of batteries, and one wrist strap. This is one tough watch, and I love it dearly, but yesterday the pin hole for the wrist strap broke, which leaves me checking my wrist for the time. I feel like I lost my hand.

It's out of warranty, and I don't have the fundage at the moment to buy a new watch, so I've been kinda bummed. Checking out the comments on the Suunto website, the company responded to a customer who had some negative things to say about a broken watch out of warranty; they said that for a nominal fee, the watch could be sent in for a facelift where they replace the housing and band and basically give you a new watch. That's fantastic service right there! Other commenters speak highly of this non warranty warranty, so I gave Suunto a call and they confirmed it.

Using their handy dandy website, I got a FedEx label printed up, the watch boxed up, and the whole shootin' match in the mail. The friendly lady on the phone also informed me that there was no wait time at the moment, so my watch should be back in a jiffy. I'm happy cos' it saves me several hundred dollars to replace an expensive watch.

Here is a pic of my watch shortly after I got it:


Notice the temperature reading on it says 122 degrees F.

Here is a picture of it before going into the FedEx package:



It's pretty beat up. This watch has been through hell for sure, and it's lasted this long. A facelift will be nice. I'll give an update with details when I find out how much it's gonna cost, and what they're going to do.

Wyatt Earp's gunfight testimony

Super bad-ass! Click on over to Hajisplace for a look at a sworn affidavit of the events up to and including the gunfight at the OK Corral.

That's sure to stop crime

DC is imposing another curfew on residents who are 17 and younger.

Personally, I wouldn't let my kid stay out after midnight anyways, but it sure as hell wouldn't be because of some silly statute. I have to wonder though if anyone actually believes the gun toting gang bangers will follow the letter of the law.

Something tells me that they won't, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Predators in the wild

When wandering the great outdoors, be advised that there may be dangerous predators afoot, such as this nutjobby gollum like creature.

Frickin' weird!

I love the fact that the victim decided not to "give him what he wants" and provide police a sketch later, but instead pounded the creature's face in and ended the attack. If only they all ended that way.

But what about the NyQuil?

I thought that taking away everyone's cough syrup made it impossible for the crazies to make meth in their kid's room?

I feel flim-flammed!

So does that mean I can buy NyQuil again without providing a hair and urine sample?

Firearm training in Mexico!

It looks like Mexican businessmen need meat puppets to protect them from the cartels. I can't blame them.

Of interest is that there is only one day of live fire. Also note the part about Mexican Special Operations Soldiers, as well as SWAT cops, changing sides and joining the cartels.

You don't reckon that they bothered to take their issued automatic weapons with them, do you?

Ammo giveaway at The Survivalist Blog

M.D. Creekmore at The Survivalist Blog – a survival blog dedicated to helping others prepare for and survive disaster – with articles on bug out bag contents, survival knife choices and a wealth of other survival information is giving away a 1,000 round case of 9mm – 124 Grain FMJ (a $200 value – donated by LuckyGunner)! To enter, you just have to post about it on your blog. This is my entry. Visit The Survivalist Blog for the details.

What are you waiting for? If you don't have a blogger account, you can make one here.

Rule number four!!!

Yikes!

That's some good fortune that that family has. Firing rounds up into the air is a big no no.

Drive-bys and Go-Gos

The DC mentality never fails to impress.

In response to a drive by shooting of nine people earlier this year, some of the families of the victims want to ensure that no one else in DC has the means to protect themselves from the rampant violence. Their means is to lobby congress to prevent the pro-gun bill that gets attached annually to the DC voting rights bill from ever seeing the light of day again.

These people no doubt just want the violence to stop, so I don't cast any stones at their end result, only the means.

At the first link, notice how all three of the men who carried out the shooting had extensive criminal histories. This happens again and again and again all throughout America: some scumbags that have made a career out of hurting people decide to elevate their crimes to murder, and the first thing the community and bureaucrats do is try to make things safer by taking away weapons from everybody, instead of focusing on the real problem of keeping these scumbags locked up in the first place. Or, sometimes when the bureaucrats go at it alone, without the help of grieving families, you end up with efforts to ban Go-Go joints, or pizza shops, or dead end streets, or high school football; anything but an attempt to strike the root of the issue.

The opportunity to prevent violence like this drive-by in question occurred years ago, but sadly was lost by the same people who are now trying to stop it by trampling the rights of everyone else. Again, I don't question the heart of these families, or the politicians who are listening to them, but I have to say that if they are not looking at fixing the revolving door policy of DCs criminal justice system, than they are only helping the next murderous teenager in carrying out his crime.

It's not the guns; it's the criminals. When the criminals show a pattern of violence, then put them away for good and you will have your remedy. Why aren't the outraged families screaming about the violent criminal history of the three scumbags? There will never be any shortage of weapons for criminals, but there can definitely be a shortage of scumbags if they are kept in a cage.

Feel good legislation will only take an opportunity away from the good citizens, and aid the DC scumbag in achieving their crimes.

Happy Fathers Day!!

What did you get for Father's Day?

I got stitches!! I should have listened to my wife, who told me not to do any work today. Instead, I had to defy her orders and work outside under the deck for awhile; at one point I thought that maybe some Vicotin and a smashing headache would enhance my afternoon, so I jumped up and banged the top of my noggin on the edge of a beam.

I knew it was bad when I took my hand off my head and it was dripping with blood and pieces of meat. Head wounds apparently bleed profusely. All I could smell was blood.

After I got some stitches, I noticed how dry the weather was, so I broke out my casting equipment for an innaugural day of making bullets. Freakin awesome!



The learning curve was rather quick, and I noticed that it takes a very long time to get a 5 lb. pot heated up and broken in. With that out of the way, I was kicking out 230 grain round nose bullets like a champion. Discounting the 30 or 40 bullets that I screwed up, I ended up with 205 serviceable rounds that I can load, and eight 1 lb. ingots for another day. I didn't even put a dent in the bucket of wheel weights that I have, and it is one of four.



I still have to prep my brass and size these bullets before I can get to loading them. About two hours including cleanup is what I had for the day, and that's huge in my world.

I'm pretty thrilled.

I'll let you know how they shoot when I get them loaded and to the range.

A sorry excuse

"And despite having more than 300,000 graves at the site, the cemetery does not have a computer database to keep track of those buried there. Records are still kept on paper."

P-p-p-p-p-p-pooooooooor meeeeeeeee. I don't have a computer!!! It's not my fault!!!

Burying a veteran on top of another veteran shows that there's more to this than "we don't have enough technology." These two incompetent morons deserve some jail time, not taxpayer funded retirement. How exactly is that punishment?

They were "forced" to retire, see?

As for the technology part - how in the world did General George Washington kick so much ass without so much as one lousy laptop? Hannibal bitched about Windows crashing all the time, making the task of personnel tracking a real pain in the ass, but he still managed to give the Romans hell for 17 years. And King Leonidas, I hear that his abacus malfunctioned, and that there were only 298 Spartans at Thermopylae.

Reams of paper and stone seemed to work just fine for the better part of ten thousand years, and two government jackasses can't even account for the dead for less than twenty.

Crazy Times

I've been on travel again; this time to Texas. I would like to take this opportunity to say that the people who design the roads in Texas must be so high on crack that they contaminate every one around them with their toxic stupidity.

When navigating a Texas highway where you are not intimately familiar, you can count on the fact that by the time you see the sign that you are looking for in order to find your way about, if the county even bothered to put one up in the first place, it will be either too small to see until you are ten feet from it, or it will be so perplexed with little road maps and such that you won't be able to read it. Also, it will probably be white instead of the traditional green, as Texas loves to distinguish itself from the rest of the union, and just as surely as the sun rises in the East, the damn thing will not reflect the light from your headlights, so as to make it impossible to see in the dark. There is also the matter of the sign being on the opposite side of the road where you need to turn. Every time.

And while I'm on the subject of street signs, I would like to give a shout out to Sea World to perhaps install a few so that people not from the area may actually find this establishment without driving around in the middle of nowhere looking for the place. You would think that this all common sense, but I can assure you that once you get off the highway, the only way you will find Sea World is if you happen upon it by accident. The shark display is fantastic, by the way.

A couple years back, I was traveling so much that I spent a good third of every month on the road somewhere, or in the air. I'll tell ya, I'd rather drive ten hours in a rental car than go through one security checkpoint at an airport. The whole process is designed to be as humiliating as possible, and I can't see at all where it provides any security whatsoever. TSA is too busy feeling up grandmas and soccer moms to catch Al-Qaeda, or their laughing at the ding-dongs that they get to see with their fancy new scanners. I have to be on a list somewhere as I have to go through one of those "random" machines every time I fly.

If you haven't flown in awhile, it doesn't matter one bit if you have the metal detector friendly shoes or belt any more. Your shoes have to come off, period. I decided this time to use one of 5.11's tactical belts with the polymer buckle, thinking that I could spare myself the part of removing my belt, but pretty boy TSA man with his $90 shiny thing on his shoulder though it best to go ahead and make me remove it anyways so he could give me a fondling, even after I went through the peeping tom machine so the voyeurs could get a good look at my junk.

As far as they have gone with this theater security in airports, I consider those checkpoint people to be less than human, to the point where I would sooner feed my sandwich to a fat puppy than a starving TSA agent. And that goes for the customs people too. If you want to get strip searched by those perverts several times, just go through customs in uniform. Seriously, they will strip search you every time. I guess enforcing their will on the low hanging fruit is much easier than risking a law suit for stripping the guy in the dishdash.

Since I generally frequent military bases when I travel, I do not take a pistol with me as it would be pointless. This time though, it would have given me peace to have it with me. San Antonio is a rough place; while wandering around on foot, the natives instantly took note of my presence, and I could feel their eyes sizing me up. In every major city in America, there are rough parts of town; the trick is to identify that they are not the place for you to wander through flashing your camera, and skirt around them. Sometimes I blunder into them by accident, and it's never fun.

The one that sticks out the most is when I was circled by teenagers in a car while out on foot in Saint Louis. Ten more minutes and it would have been dark, and my ass would have ended up a bad smell in a dumpster.

These days, I advise travelers to drive to their destination. Get a rental car if you have to. If I travel anywhere on the East coast, it is so much cheaper and faster to get a rental car and drive across four states instead of burning up a day at airports. I haven't had a straight through flight in years, and by the time you get done fiddling with shuttle buses and luggage carousels, you will have burned up most of the day anyways. If you drive though, you miss out on all that "special attention" that TSA loves to give you.

I give up

I'm done handloading for the LR-308 for now. My last batch of handloads were too hot when the temperature got in the 80's, so I made a new batch for an OCW test that were loaded with 42.8 - 43.2 grains of Varget with a 175 grain Nosler CC bullet. I had those rounds loaded for two months, and I finally got the chance to shoot them, and it turned out to be a cluster fuck.

I should have known better.

It always starts raining the very moment I start shooting. Every time. This has been a phenomenon that has plagued me for years, and yesterday was no exception. I decided that I would spite mother nature and shoot anyways, to hell with her, but the lightning got pretty serious. I sat in my truck in the middle of the woods, stuck like shit because of the aforementioned lack of traction that was a direct result on Nissan engineering incompetence.

The wife watched the kids for a few hours to buy me the time to shoot, and I spent an hour waiting on the rain, forty five minutes digging out my XTerra, and fifteen minutes setting up to shoot my rounds.

The shoot was a disaster.



First, the humidity was so high that the moisture in the air made seeing the target an absolute challenge.



After I fired three rounds from each of the loads, I realized that I was about out of time, so I picked up the pace. The sun came back out and made it so that I could just barely make out the one inch black diamonds, to the point where I was guessing where they were. It was the most challenging light I have ever had to shoot in. I should have just quit.




The range was 121 yards, and my velocities were averaging between 2,400 fps on the low end to 2,490ish on the top end. Too low for what I'm looking at.

So, I have placed an order for some 168 grain Federal Gold Medal Match, as I have decided that since it is a rare occasion that I can go out and actually shoot, I had better spend it shooting and not fiddling around with handloads. One day when my kids are in school, and I have a little more time, I'll be able to find the right load for that gun.

I'm pretty bitter about this, but it's the right thing to do. I can't figure out when life became so busy that one does not have the time to enjoy life. Something has to change.

Equipment Change Proposal

Haven't done one of these in awhile.

I'm gonna try real hard to keep this somewhat clean.

The latest thing that has my blood boiling is my YORK gas furnace. It seems the engineers at YORK haven't the slightest frickin' clue as to the magical force known as gravity.

Way back in the mid 90's when my house was built, YORK engineers were too busy playing D&D and smoking pencil shavings to actually pick up the part about gravity in school. Apparently on their first job, they decided to put the condensation drain outlet on the furnaces they were designing four feet off the ground, so that when the outlet jams up with crud it leaks all over the fucking furnace and gets all over the floor. Also, the outlet is positioned so that the PVC pipe that you stick on to it to allow it to drain can't be tilted downward to give that gravity a chance to work.

Keep in mind that in the mid 90's we had ICBMs that could rain death on hundreds of millions of people, and there were space stations in space. Mankind could build all of that, but can't place a drain on a gas furnace in a spot that lets gravity work. I guess those that can, build space stations, and those that can't build furnaces.

The next thing that engineers have jacked up is the "Limited Slip Differential," known to those who have actually been offroad as the "Un-limited Slip Differential." What it all boils down to is car manufacturers are a bunch of cheap-ass swindlers.

Stop me if you've seen this before: your bad ass four wheel drive truck right off the show room floor, in all its 35" tire glory, with all its skid plates and Z20-something "off road" shocks bought as part of that "SVT/NISMO/SR5/Goat Hoof Ninja Traction "racing package," gets hung the fuck up in a wet grassy field with a 5 degree pitch because the "Limited Slip Differential" lets the right rear tire spin at will, while the left rear tire is. . . . .limited?

Seen it before, haven't you? There is an amazing piece of technology that is finally, Finally being incorporated in brand new cars so that you don't have to buy one yourself and pay thousands to have someone install for you. This technology is called a "Locker" and it lets the driver lock the differential at will so that both wheels spin with equal traction. One cannot spin more than another, because they are locked together. They don't work so well on the street where you have to take corners and all, so that is why lockers are activated by the driver when needed.

Every single time I have ever been hung up in the mud, and every single time I have witnessed someone else hung up in the mud, without exception, was because one wheel in the front and one wheel in the back are spinning their little asses off, while the other two wheels do nothing. Limited Slip is for every day driving on the street, and absolutely useless for serious off road. It kills me to see the truck industry pushing these so called "off road" packages with winches, shocks, skid plates, and shiny stickers, and then equipping both axles with FAIL so that the very moment you get into six inches of mud, you essentially have a two wheel drive truck with a glowing light on the dash saying you're in four wheel drive.

My XTerra was not equipped with lockers, although the newer ones have lockers in the rear differential. It's criminal that manufacturers do not equip both axles standard with lockers on newer trucks. And before you bring up cost and how silly it is to add such a simple and cheap device to a truck, let me ask you, do you have "traction control" on your truck? These devices apply brakes to the wheels that are spinning, with the idea that the wheel not spinning will somehow get motivated and actually do something. While traction control may have some worthy application on sports cars and minivans, in my opinion they are a shitty gimmick for off road vehicles, and they are much more expensive.

I mean, that's the answer for the ol' "one wheel drive" problem? Install some complicated computer controlled doohickey that slows down the wheel without traction? Why not install something that works from the very start, and stop screwing the consumers with your pathetic junk.

I've got three kids in diapers and I'm gone at work for eleven hours most days, so when I've finally acquired the two hours to go out and do some shooting, I don't have the time to be dicking around with a fucking shovel trying to dig my truck outta the mud because you douchebag engineers at Nissan don't have the common sense to build axles that lock.

Lockers. Live them. Love them. Install them on every automobile so that we may not get stuck when the going gets rough.

Nanny-State FAIL Trifecta!!

Cellphones, cameras, and cops. . . .Oh my!!

David at Fighting for Liberty lays out a post on a self defense FAIL.

The way I see it, the good Lord gave me the gift of life for a reason, and I aim to have it. I owe my kids a father, and my wife a husband; those responsibilities are far too important to leave to a third party.

It seems that there are vast amounts of Americans who do not mind Natural Law; that is to say that they rely on other human beings or technology to save the day, when they should have been there for themselves all along.

Choose you path.

Way of the Ninja

Sneaky ninjas steal a bunch of stuff from a school without tripping the alarm. Not known is whether they used a grappling hook to get onto the roof of the building, or whether they got up there using the power of the mind.

Even if they were caught and brought to justice - we're talking hypothetically here - how could they even be tried? Being ninjas and all, how would a judge even be able to see them to issue a sentence?

Whomever installed the security stuff in the school is incompetent. I mean, you've got motion detectors that can't detect people crawling around on the ground (not that they can detect ninjas to begin with), but didn't bother to place a security device of any kind on the hatch that leads to the roof? Did that slip your mind?

It's like bad TV or something.

Another assault with a deadly assault thingy

A very highly trained police officer injured an innocent when he used his patrol assault thingy inappropriately.

I do point out that this is the second example in recent history where an innocent was injured with one of these Assault Utility Vehicles (there is nothing "Sporting" about them). Their big knobby tires are only designed for one purpose, and that is to shred stuff like mud, sand, baby harp seals, and innocents. And who really neeeeeeds four wheel drive?

Something not quite covered in detail is whether the suspicious "child" acting in a such reckless manner as to distract a very highly trained police officer operating a 5,000 lb Assault Utility Vehicle on a crowded beach was close to the age of consent, and happened to be wearing the minimal amount of clothing as required by law.

These crucial details may help further exonerate the officer from blame, so that Daytona Beach Citizens can go about sunbathing without fear.

A difficult case to crack

"We don't know why they were here; we don't know what brought them here; we don't know why they were shooting at each other,"

DC Council Member Jim Graham is no Sherlock Holmes.

I would say that the Escalades brought the several men to the night club, where they were probably there to. . . oh I don't know, seems like such a long shot. . . but I guess they were there to drink, dance, and have a good time. Marvel at my powers of presumption!

I'm totally lost though on what could possibly compel men outside of a DC nightclub to start shooting at one another. Aren't guns illegal to carry in DC? Perhaps nightclubs should post "No Guns" signs at every door to prevent such things in the future, as signs and laws clearly have that effect.

You know, it bothers me these days to see so many articles just like this one. They're all exactly the same, in the same format like the news agency has a frickin SOP for day to day multiple shootings: several people are shot, the venue around the shootings is usually somewhat dubious, no names are released, and then some "official" mouthpiece starts rattling off obvious stuff, like the fact that there are no facts. Nobody has a clue.

I'm sure it's just like this in major cities all across the world, but I think the real difference in DC is that when a guy like Jim Graham gets in front of the camera, one can't help but get a Gothamish type feeling about the whole thing, with those radar-like voodoo glasses and the little bow tie. It seems like something you would read in a DC comic. Appropriate, no?

Malice Aforethought Gun Violence

That's a mouthful, huh? You saw it here first!!!

Anyways, Utah is going to execute a murderer via firing squad in about a week, and there is an outcry from some about how mean it is:

"The firing squad is archaic, it's violent, and it simply expands on the violence that we already experience from guns as a society," Bishop John C. Wester, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, said during an April protest.

There's a lot wrong with that statement.

First, can it really be considered archaic if it's still in use? That it's violent is about the most stupid thing I've heard in a long time; exactly how do you expect someone to be put to death non-violently? Sprinkle poisoned fairy dust in their last meal? Death by pillow squad?

People are always bitching about how violent, barbaric, unfair, unethical, immoral, inhumane, or disgusting state sanctioned executions are, and they may be right, but every type of execution arguably meets all of that criteria, so what's the controversy? It's like protesting that water is wet. So a firing squad is too violent, and lethal injection may hurt too much, so what's the answer? Hanging? Guillotine? Ol' Sparky is probably the most violent way to go, yet people still ask for it from time to time. This scumbag asked for the firing squad over lethal injection, so what does that say?

Lastly, how does execution by firing squad expand on violence in society committed with guns? Does lethal injection expand on violent poisoning? Does the use of the electric chair cause scumbags to run out and electrocute somebody? Pretty silly.

Of interest to me is that one of the five rifles is alleged to be loaded with a blank round of ammunition, under the idea that none of the executioners will know for sure if the fatal round came from their rifle. This is really stupid in my opinion, mainly because if you can't tell the difference between a real shot fired and a blank round fired, then you have no business shooting at someone who is owed a clean death. If you have never fired a blank round of ammo, there is virtually no perceived recoil, and the report from the rifle is noticeably different, although it's likely that an executioner firing amongst others won't be able to hear his rifle anyways. Considering that these executioners should be experienced marksman, and are probably mandated to familiarize themselves with the rifles to be used by firing them on a range with live ammunition, they should definitely be able to tell from the recoil of the rifle if they are one of the unfortunate souls who fired a live round into the heart of a fellow human being. There's just no way.

On a lesser point, if executing condemned human beings is in your job description, and you volunteered for that job under your own power, why exactly does anyone think you're owed the opportunity to have a cloud of doubt cast on your duty? It just seems kinda pointless.

The thing that gets to me the most in all of this though is that there seems to be no question of his guilt. Nobody is arguing that he shouldn't be shot to death because he's not guilty; the argument is that it's wrong to shoot someone to death because it's too brutal, which brings us back to the whole death by pillow fight thing. Gardner shot his victim to death without consideration of the cruelty of his method, so really this sentence satisfies pretty much every criteria that I can think of in Exodus.

Again, I'm not advocating state executions. That I'm pretty torn on. Ultimately though, there is no real argument that putting someone to death one way is less nasty and cruel than another. We can have a round table discussion on what is the best way, and we can even invoke methods and ideas from the likes of Tom & Jerry or Roadrunner, but at the end of the day there is a heavy job to do. Here we have a man who has chosen his way, and he should have it.

Illegal rifle smuggler caught at the border and the media doesn't care

We're talking .50 caliber terror, Glocks, and the dreaded .300 caliber of doom.

Oh, and by the way, did I mention that the smuggler is Iranian, here illegally, and was caught smuggling weapons from Canada into the US? Yup, and to top it all off, the guy was caught from his own incompetence, and not by Jack and Cloe.

Nothing to see here.

Running a business selling "Police Supplies" one has to wonder if these rifles qualify as "patrol rifles." Also, who would be stupid enough to fire a .50 caliber rifle at a tank?

Really though, this story should be all over the news.

Citizen told to leave coffee shop for Open Carry

And would you believe that he is a Portland Police officer who was in uniform at the time?

The realist in me sees this both ways. I understand what the author is trying to convey, that the guy is a cop and cops have guns. I can also see the store owner's point of view that some cops have a bad reputation associated with them, or perhaps their department, and he has the right to tell anyone to leave.

Cops are supposed to be the good guys, so it surprises some people to know that some Americans don't like them.

I do have some empathy for the cop, especially considering that he had a good attitude about the whole thing, but I also agree with him that they are failing themselves. Stuff like this doesn't help, and isolated incidents in no name counties like mine sometimes give an us vs. them mentality that doesn't have to be.

A case in point.

None of the responding officers bothered to even knock on the only neighbors door despite having dozens of deputies with rifles staged throughout the property for hours. It's hard to have respect for officers when they won't let you leave the house, won't tell you what's going on, don't care about their rifle barrels dinging your car doors, and are otherwise callous to the very people they claim they're protecting. And go ahead and file a complaint; you'll be pulled over and ticketed 100 yards from your driveway once a week for the next year. The above linked article turns out to be nowhere near the truth of what happened, but hey, the deputies got to handle their new rifles, so it's all good, right?

Then there's incidents where cops treat peaceful armed citizens like they're criminals, pull guns on motorcyclists and people throwing snowballs, and to the extreme side of things, where they mistakenly shoot someone's dog or a mother and her kid. It all ads up. I no longer trust the Sheriff's department in my county after the above case in point.


But back to the article at the top. I found this piece amusing, and wondered if it really applies to everyone:

My daughter and I were so distraught by this negative experience, about the way the café treated the police –when they should be treated with gratitude and respect and honor – that we went the next day looking for a café with class and dignity for all people, no matter what they are wearing.

We found the Palios Dessert & Espresso Bar in Ladd’s Addition, http://www.palio-in-ladds.com/ and we mentioned the situation we encountered, and the man behind the counter, and he said they treat all people equally there.

And what if John Q. Public strolls in with a handgun openly visible on his hip? Would they be treated equally?

Young boy shot to death while breaking into home

How devastating. As the reporter points out, the kid wasn't breaking into the home because he needed money or drugs; him and his friends were just doing something they weren't supposed to be doing.

The police haven't released any details other than the other two boys ran when the homeowner confronted them with a gun, but Devron didn't.

I'm sure the homeowner is torn up about this as well. That the parents aren't blaming anyone, and are using this as a warning to other kids says a lot about their character. Good on them.

Delicious wounding

"Four young girls had been watching a bunny in a wooded area near the park as it played in the grass.

Kishpaugh took his dog away, then returned to where the children were still watching the rabbit. The mother of one of the girls told police that Kishpaugh then got a "smirk" on his face as he ordered his dog to "get it."

Something tells me that this guy is going to get these charges dismissed. Sure, he may be a cruel dude to subject four kids to the type of thing that their parents let them watch on Animal Planet, but the reality is that he cannot compel his dog to do anything. The only thing that could potentially stick is the leash law, and even that is pretty flimsy.

The idea that he "siced" his dog on a poor defenseless bunny is a stretch; even more so that he's being charged with animal cruelty for letting his dog do what tens of thousands of years of genetics tell it to do with every fiber in its body.

Porno man gets stabby

Who uses a samurai sword as a prop for a porno movie? Strange.

Anyways, this is another example of a sword being a deadly weapon. I'm not inviting them to be banned, only pointing out that sharpened pieces of metal can still be used as effectively as they were a thousand years ago.

Common sense law now in effect!

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law yesterday a bill that makes it illegal for violent felons to wear body armor. Violent axe-murdering psychopaths and spree shooters hardest hit.

To the unintelligent, this may sound smart, but read the article to discover the reasoning behind it, and thus the reason why this is such a dumb ass law.

"On Jan. 20, an armed man suspected of killing eight people in Virginia was wearing a bulletproof vest when he was apprehended by police. On March 19, a parolee with 19 arrests and four convictions was found wearing body armor after a high-speed chase in Los Angeles."

What Senator Padilla and Gov Schwarzenegger are saying is, a guy who would murdered eight people with a rifle, and a guy with 19 arrests and many violent convictions would now opt out on putting on their body armor before heading out for a night of mayhem, all because of this shiny new law and it's mandated 2 - 3 year sentencing.

Beware all you wannabe killers out there: if you already have a violent felony conviction or three, that ninety year sentence that you scoff at could wind up to be a ninety two year sentence. Best leave your second chance at home.

Next on the legislative agenda is a law to make thinking violent thoughts a felony. You know, why doesn't California pass a law mandating world peace? Seems logical, right?

Lawmakers really are as dumb as a box of rocks.

More ammunition shortages ahead

The Nosler ammunition plant in Bend, California blew up yesterday; fortunately everyone made it out safely. No word on what caused it, but it sounds like the emergency policy at Nosler was followed to a T, and that may be why everyone survived.

This does not fare well for an industry that cannot keep up with demand as it is. Godspeed on getting a new and better facility, Nosler.

This slope sure is slippery

The DC fire chief wants to ban consumer fireworks in the district. As it stands right now, the fireworks that are legal in the district are pretty pathetic, but the sheep can't be trusted because apparently they're not highly trained firework specialists, so they must be taken away.

You can bet that the citizens living in DC will gladly hand over the win.

I've always laughed at fireworks laws like DC's, or even Virginia's, which are equally pathetic, because I find it absurd that governments that can't seem to balance a budget year after year insist that us incompetent commoners can't be trusted with firecrackers.

We can be trusted to hand our children burning hot sticks of molten steel to wave around in the dark and light fountains that shoot ten foot jets of thousand degree flame. Those things are safe. Little firecrackers that can be lit and backed away from, or that launch up into the air to pop from the safety of a hundred feet or so, are way to dangerous so they have to be taken.

It just seems so petty.

I expect the 4th of July this year to be no different than any other year, with Virginians passively defying fireworks statutes and celebrating our independence as they please.

Who really neeeeeeds to be a cage fighter anyways?

They're much too deadly to allow anyone but the most highly trained people to use. Oh, wait. . . .

A U.S. cage fighter ripped out the heart of his training partner while he was still alive after becoming convinced he was possessed by the devil, it was alleged today.

Jarrod Wyatt also cut out Taylor Powell's tongue and ripped off most of his face in a brutal assault that police said looked like a scene from a horror film, officers said.

People who are skilled at fighting should be registered and taxed just like a suppressor, machine gun, or sex offender. Think about it, what would happen if an unregistered cage fighter was loose near a school amongst children? Crazy, huh?

Good slideshow

NBC Washington News has a good slideshow from Arlington National Cemetery this weekend. The first picture is a doosy, and there are several in there that will make your eyes well up.

President Obama decided to check out of this Memorial Day at the Cemetery, and instead went home for the weekend. Personally, I think that was the better move for a president that hasn't the slightest clue about the sacrifice our military goes through every day. Vice President Joe Biden was there though, and although he never served in the military, his son is in the Delaware National Guard, so he has some respect for the men and women in uniform. I'll even give him brownie points for not having a silly grin on his face during the wreath laying ceremony like some of the political looking folks in the picture; instead he has a hard grimace as one would expect during such a service.

Good stuff!