I read today that the Taliban are going to make heroin cheaper and how bad that is.
Hard drugs ain't good, but...
I think that heroin is better than fentanyl because you have to actively work to OD on heroin.
Besides, better that the Taliban get the cash than China.
Choose the lesser of two evils when you can.
Marion Zimmer Bradley helped her husband molest children?
I did not know that.
Sorry, I was busy not being her customer because I wasn't in her customer demo so I wasn't paying attention to allegations after she died.
The Facebook thread that informed me of her crimes makes mention of the contrast between her and JK Rowlings with regards to separating the work from the author.
Actual criminal activity: You have to look at all the good the work did for so many.
Expresses an opinion that's out of favor: Boycott her! Banish her!
Despite enjoying the Harry Potter books, I've long found Ms Rawlings an insufferable snob. She hates Americans and I hate her right back. She hates me with my money in her pocket too, fucking bitch.
But that's machts nichts.
Her being a snob and me deciding that she's got enough of my money are personal decisions that don't rise to the level of demanding she stop being a snob, or that she should no longer be published.
Zimmer Bradley? Fuck that cunt. Piss on her grave.
Her publisher is donating all the proceeds of her posthumous sales to some good causes aimed at stopping shitheels like her and her husband.
Teachers, school employees and law enforcement:
I you want me to take you seriously and believe that you're capable of handling a real threat, you have got to stop acting like this:
Is a real gun and making media posts like you stopped Bin Laden on 9/10.
Zero tolerance is full idiocy.
Change my mind.
Next up!
Picture of a bag of flour because it looked like drugs.
Early tomorrow morning BB-35 will travel from where it's been the past 32 years and be towed up to Galveston and some much needed drydock time.
I hope that the trip is dull and without drama.
Texas deserves a safe trip.
Supposed to be a live stream on YouTube starting at 0700 central time. Plus or minus, give or take.
The CMP has announced a third period of submission of packets to get yourself a genuine NSN 1005-00-726-5655 Pistol, Caliber .45, Automatic: M1911A1!
If you already have a CMP 1911, you are ineligible for this round.
Good luck!
Good shoot.
I love the neighbor who's all like, "he doesn't have a gun," when it doesn't matter.
To paraphrase the great Western philosopher William Munny, "Well, he should have armed himself if he's going to try breaking down my door."
Places with castle doctrine don't care.
But that's not every place. Know your local laws!
Finally got to 'G'!
Putin better remember that we can change it to the A-B-C-G-P's!
Eleven years ago... I posted this.
Finally got them all photographed on the same day with the same camera with the same backdrop and lighting.
Harder than it looks!They've changed a bit since:
Look under the break!
S&W has introduced an aluminum frame version of the M&P 9 2.0.
I am interested.
Dammit!
It's supposedly just 2 oz. heavier than the polymer framed equivalent and it takes the normal M&P 17-round magazines.
I dunno WHY I am interested, because I'm generally happy with the M&P 9 I already have.
New and shiny always has an appeal, I guess.
Though, I think that the aluminum framed SIG P320 is purtier.
Reader SteveP mentions in the comments that he cured the astigmatism blues with products from SeeAll Open Sights.
It's an odd system. But odd doesn't always mean bad, so I started crawling around the web to see if this is the proverbial better mousetrap.
Up front you've got the reticle on a piece of clear plastic which will gather ambient light, this piece is also what gets moved by the zero screws.
In back you have half a clear lens to magnify the reticle. This lens also takes care of parallax, so if you can see the tip of the pyramid, if it's zeroed, it should be where the bullet will go.
Pics stolen from their website.
They have models that have tritium illumination for when ambient light is insufficient.
I worry that the rear lens is too exposed and will get damaged. I also worry about getting mud in that saddle area and, thus, blocking the reticle.
The really worrisome part, is YouTube reviews are one guy who didn't care for it at all, a spattering of typically neutral gunwriter type reviews, a big fan of the system (who does beat it all to fuck) and the company themselves. With most of the videos being that fan and the company by like 8 to 1.
Considering that some of the reviews are on the older side, this company might be obscure for a reason.
Most people seem to have trouble getting a sight picture with it, most commonly saying that if you get your eye too high you run the reticle over the top of that lens and it's gone; and that point is very close to when you have it correctly aligned.
The folks who seem to like it, like it a lot! I'll wager they're super consistent with their cheek-weld too (which is a fundamental part of rifle marksmanship).
It reminds me a lot of SureSight pistol sights. Lots of people having trouble with them and a few who just instinctively bond with 'em.
If SeeAll wants to send me one for first hand review, I will happily abuse it for them.
I was an early adopter of red-dot sights.
I've had this AimPoint 1000 since 1991 or 1992.
It's bounced around from gun to gun. My Mini-14 on a B-Square side mount. FuzzyGeff's Bushmaster M17S. Marv's first AR. Harvey's Ruger 10/22 (shown here).
Two 357 size batteries gave it about a 100 hour run time, and I ran through a lot of batteries by forgetting to turn it off. It's been rode hard and put away wet a few times and never failed. Made me trust the brand.
That might have been a problem in a home defense scenario, but I used my Glock 21 or Remington 870 for that back then. They had tritium sights.
No lights neither! Gives your position away!
I've changed my mind on a lot of things over the years.
It ticks me off to have to just throw away otherwise perfectly good sights every 10 years or so because the tritium has worn out.
I have lights on the home defense guns now.
But batteries?
Aimpoints get years of battery life now. 8 years or so on my M4S. It's on its third battery since I bought it. It's been banged around a bit and survived a carbine course. The Army issues them! If it was junk then Privates, Specialists and Lance Corporals would have proven they're junk by now.
Even red-dots from the former Soviet Union have good battery lives. I did a series on the BelOMO PK-01VS. The 400 hour rating for the single AA battery made it a year without shutting down. This optic has survived a fall from about 3 feet onto terrazzo when the nail the gun was hanging from quit. No change in zero, no obvious breakage.
The StrikeFire II is supposed to have an 80,000 hour life, but it shuts off after 12 hours, meaning I constantly have to remember to turn it on.
The 29,000 hour life of the MicroPrism has an auto-shutoff too, but it also has a shake-awake so it comes back on without me having to remember anything.
So far, the only two optics I've managed to hurt have been the StrikeFire II which lost zero from a fall from the bed and I thoroughly killed FuzzyGeff's 4-12x40 Bushnell Sportsman by dropping it off the range table to the concrete.
The only one that completely died is the one that has no illumination at all! Irony!
The watermelon shifted with the tip of the knife sticking out the back.
A good sharp knife with mass behind it and my pinky's nail is readily penetrated.
I'm not seriously injured, just awkwardly.
Being a very clean cut, it bled pretty good too.
Got it wrapped in a big wad of bandage. Prolly going to lose the nail, again.
This pinky has led a rough life.
I just realized that Amazon Prime's new Lord of the Rings series is admitting that they cannot do what a typical, high-school, D&D dungeon master does on a weekly basis.
Make their own setting.
That's not even a very high bar!
Doing my normal thing and watching the reviews of a recent purchase after I've made the purchase and played around with it.
Something that comes up many times about the Primary Arms SLx 1x Cyclops Gen 2 (which I call MicroPrism) is that it's not a red dot.
That's got implications that they even explain most of the time.
The big one, and it was a major selling point for me, is that red dots are red smears to someone with astigmatism. Etched glass means I get a clear aiming point.
This is not insignificant if you've a real astigmatism issue. It's hard to aim when your aiming point looks like an exaggerated photon torpedo from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
For me if the dot is small enough in MOA, my glasses can compensate and it's all good. My, very expensive, Aimpoint M4S has such a dot and I can still use it.
Big dots like the StrikeFire II and MD-RGBII tend to wash out and get bloomy.
But since I very rarely stretch past 100 yards with guns intended for home defense, it had not been a problem. Until the other day with the StrikeFire when it REALLY bothered me.
That led the the experiment with the MicroPrism.
After you get past the "it's not a red dot" there seems to be a lot of commenting about how you can get it bright enough to use in the day time.
Guys. I know you go shooting on 2-gun ranges all the time and expend thousands of rounds more than I do, but...
One of the advantages of an etched glass reticle is that it's visible in the day in black. It doesn't need to be red at noon if you can see the black!
I've been using Primary Arms 5x ACSS scopes for a while and doing the outside ranges too. You don't even need to turn it on during the day except for rare occasions where the target is against a dark background and then your night setting is working fine again and you see the illumination.
I think they're just not accustomed to shooting with an illuminated etched reticle.
I can't think of many until fairly recently and with the rising popularity of low power variable optics, we're going to see them more often.
Am I the only one who thinks that of any system in the Artemis stack, the RS-25 should be the thing that a) gives the fewest problems and b) has the longest list of solutions to what problems remain?
From watching the feeds, they are looking like people who're dealing with a brand-new never flown motor.
Not a good look NASA.
My little "Behind Every Blade of Grass" carbine, Brenda really tested me with this optics and irons thing.
I really like her and she'd become my favorite AR.
The right weight and balance and...
Because I didn't completely think through how the optics work I got worried she had a major wandering zero problem.
My Mini-14 days came back to haunt me.
Chasing that wandering zero ruined many days of shooting and kept us at the 50 yard line when we should have been stretching our legs and shooting at the 100 or 200 yard lines at the Ames, Ike's range.
I didn't want to do that again, and I know that Palmetto State Armory has a bit of a reputation for getting it wrong then making it right once you complain.
Doing the re-zero of the irons today and discovering that something about the light-path means you can't use the irons through the scope restored faith in my little Brenda.
I didn't want to be unhappy with my favorite.
Took Brenda to the range to see what the fuck.
Removed the MicroPrism 1x and zeroed the BUIS.
Yes, I am still blind, but the 25m group is OK.
Once it was zeroed, a miracle seems to have occurred! The rear sight is no longer all the way over to the left!
Huzzah!
About here I got busted for using ADI F1A1 ball, which has a steel core like M855.
Then I found out my S&B 55gr M193 is bimetallic jacketed and, thus, also forbidden from the range.
So I got a couple of boxes of PMC X-TAC 55gr FMJ.
It shot the same size group to the same point of aim as the ADI, so I moved on to zeroing the SLx MicroPrism (again).
Piece of cake.
Now the fun part.
Flip up the Magpul BUIS and line the sights up through the scope.
WAY high and right from the point of aim. Parallax, maybe? Dunno.
What I now know is that I cannot use the irons through the scope.
American Defense AD-B2 STD QD mount is in my future!
I also forced myself to remember all those basic rifle marksmanship lessons and get an OK group at 100 yards. I used to be better, but I'm knocking the rust off!
All in all, a productive day!
It's the only explanation.
She killed Dick Clark, drank his blood, and stole his eternal youth.
It's the only thing that makes sense.
I took Brenda to the range with the new MicroPrism.
I'd dialed it to match the irons that I'd recently zeroed the other day.
It shot significantly to the right of aim.
When I got it zeroed, it did not match the irons at all.
Matching the irons to the scope now has the rear sight pegged all the way to the left.
Something is not right.
I think I might take her back to the range and see if the irons are way off and it's some sort of optical illusion from a prism sight that keeps them from being co-witnessed.
If so, that will mean I need a QD base for the scope so I can chuck it if I never need to use the back-up iron.
The local range does not allow handguns on the long range, and the pistol ranges top out at 25 yards.
So we can't set a target at 40 there.
The outdoor range up in Hernando would mean shooting at 50 yards because they have stands set up at that range and you must use them. They have short hours and many closed days.
Most of the other ranges in the area are topped out at 25 as well.
I guess we can check if the Guntry Club in Tampa allows 40 yards and handguns on their 100 yard range.
Lacking an accurate crystal ball, one can only bet on what seems likely at the time.
Had I known that I'd have to become a stay at home dad regardless of if I graduated I'd have skipped college altogether.
In the heady days of 2000 it seemed like a good plan.
The economy around here was doing decently, I had a decent job doing mechanical design; Harvey's career prospects were looking up as her degree had landed an entry level job as a financial aid representative for a small for-profit college.
I took classes at night and early Saturday mornings on a part-time basis at the same college that employed Harvey. Tuition discounts made it so we didn't have to borrow at this point.
Then some religious nut-bag plowed a plane into the World Trade Center.
The company I worked for went under.
The Boy hit some glandular change and became impossible to place at all of the local care centers which we could afford.
So, thinking this was temporary, we borrowed to get Harvey the MBA they said she needed for promotion and I kept at the night classes full-time.
Things still looked positive at this point that the thing with The Boy was a phase and would be over by the time I graduated and got a job.
Wrong.
Had I known then what I know now I would not have fallen for the sunk-cost fallacy and completed my degree.
My school had been sold, twice. Going from an independent college to part of Everest Colleges to being part of Corinthian Colleges. With each sale, the reputation of the school suffered.
I discovered that I could not transfer out to a different university because of the Byzantine number of rules about accreditation, the same rules that kept me from transferring credits from Iowa State to my school. Rules that the Department of Education issues and maintains via accrediting bodies which are as independent of the government as The Fed...
Every sale changed the policies about discounts, scholarships, tuition and loans.
Tuition increased every semester. My last credit cost a lot more than my first. So we had to borrow more to stay in school and not lose the progress already made.
Every sale affected the accreditation and what classes I needed. Redundant math and English classes were paid for and taken.
Then I graduated in '05. B average.
Even if the economy was robust, I was still stuck at home with The Boy.
Harvey, on the other hand, appeared to be advancing well. She'd gotten the MBA and was the head of the financial aid department and was Everest's go-to-girl to fly in and fix ailing departments and get them up to code.
Corinthians didn't want someone like her.
So they cut her.
And my mom died.
Just in time because what she left me paid the bills while Harvey looked for another job.
We still had hope! We hadn't lost that much time.
But Harvey had to start over with a new company. Twice.
Congress and the Department of Education keep changing the rules to favor the taxpayer supported state universities at the expense of cheaper privately owned colleges and academies. (Where's the bitching about your tax money going to support those?)
It's affected her career.
But it's important to note that we're not standing here with our hands out demanding that the government come save us. Though it would be nice if the genuine crimes committed by the owners of Corinthians had resulted in the acknowledgement that none of those degrees were worth the paper they were printed on and told those owners that THEY owed the loans they predatorily issued to unsuspecting students.
Technically I could have my debt wiped. If can, somehow, come up with the lump sum to pay the IRS. If your school is closed by the DoE for cause, you too can have your loans cancelled. For a gigantic tax bill.
The IRS doesn't do the, "but I don't have it game." They decide you owe, you pay, or get your shit seized and you go to jail if that's not enough.
That make us 50-something olds with nothing and a disabled kid on our hands with no place to live. Yeah, sign me up for that!
So we sit with a not insubstantial amount garnished from every check until the end of time. We want to pay these off, but the repayment terms are asinine once you get so far underwater. We're never getting out.
Thank you all for the sanctimonious responses and universal blanket condemnation to anyone with a student loan who might benefit from the idiotic decision of President Biden.
You know it wasn't ME who did this to you, right?
But you sure are angry with me, aren't you?
I should have picked a better school?
I should have picked a cheaper school?
I should have worked more jobs so I could skip the loans?
I should have gotten better and more jobs when I graduated?
Please explain how any of those choices keeps President Biden from doing this.
Go on.
Nothing?
For the record:
I picked a good school with an excellent reputation. It was cheaper than the land-grant university AND had better placement.
I went to college because I did not have the skills to get more than the job I had, it wasn't a matter of not working hard enough it was a case of there not being enough hours in the day to gather the funds.
I started college when the great expansion in government aid and exponential increase in tuition happened. If I had managed to save a bundle for tuition, it would no longer have been enough to make it to graduation.
Especially hard since I no longer had the hours from before because I was now a full time student.
But graduated I did.
I needn't have bothered.
You see, while I was attending a solid school when I started, it wasn't when I left.
The Department of Education allowed investment places to purchase and consolidate independent colleges. So my school was purchased by one of those and then resold and then resold.
You might have beard of Corinthian Colleges? It was in the news.
Because it was in the news, my degree is radioactive.
Thanks!
The DoE offers forgiveness for people in my plight, we just have to pay the taxes on the "profit" from the forgiveness. All at once.
If I could shit that wad of money I would never have wanted a degree to get a better job!
Being a victim of timing matters.
Graduating at a moment when my son took a turn for the worse and needed someone to be here full time meant that I couldn't get job experience before the degree became completely worthless and by the time I had time... The economy was in recession and my degree was radioactive.
Are you aware that there's a short window to get a job in your degree before the time since graduation and having no experience keeps you from talking to someone you can explain WHY you've been graduated so long without a job?
In a buyer's market for labor, that means you don't get interviews.
Extra bonus round! My previous career was now either extra work for a degreed engineer or simply offshored.
Putting my job prospects in the minimum wage range.
Yes, we made decisions, but luck is a factor to consider. Neutral decisions become bad choices when bad luck happens.
If you think you can completely avoid bad luck by making only good choices, you're a fucking fool.
Worse, you're a fool without compassion.
Even more fun is listen to the people who nattily talk about doing things to get their job because they had the freedom to do it when they were single, young and the economy was going gangbusters.
What did we do with the time and bad luck with my worthless degree?
We kept a roof over our heads. We ate. We did without.
AND IT TOOK EVERY SINGLE DIME WE HAD!
There wasn't a penny left over for those loans for years.
And we've been paying on them, not ever going to pay them off, the interest took over and they're simply unserviceable with any conceivable wage we could hope to earn.
But it's MY fault that President Biden put some of my loan on your ass?
Actually OUR ass because we're paying taxes too. I get to make my insufficient payment AND have my taxes pay for the forgiveness! I think I should be more pissed off than you are!
It's not even much compared to the other sops they hand out that you don't mention. What makes this so much worse for you?
Life would be simpler if I wasn't a gun collector accumulator.
Life would be simpler if The Lovely Harvey wasn't a gun owner.
Not only do I have to find a round that works for me in the gun that I carry, it has to work for Harvey as well so we don't have to segregate the ammo by gun.
I love her, but she routinely misremembers that .357 Magnum and .357 SIG aren't the same round and is stymied when she gets to the range. She knows they're different and not interchangeable, but she grabs the wrong box.
So if we're both carrying 9mm, I have to make sure there's just the one kind in the can. 9x18 Makarov is kept separate and we don't buy .380 that's marked 9x17 or 9mm Kurz.
Working with her aversion to heavy recoil and my dislike of +P we're sticking with 115gr. I don't care for the (theoretical?) extra wear and tear from the hotter ammo and it also means we don't need to worry about the ancient guns not rated for the extra pressure.
Hornady's Critical Defense has worked for us.
So far everything we'd consider toting in 9x19 likes it. Actually, everything we own in 9x19 likes it well enough, even the couple that aren't in consideration for carry.
Sticking with 115gr also means that we can find the right weight for practice without any effort at all because every manufacturer makes a 115gr load.
Does this make everyone else doing something different wrong?
Of course.
This is the internet and if you're not doing it exactly like the person who's publishing on the web, you MUST be wrong.
Actually... (or should I say ackchyually).
Our solution is our personal solution and just because it works for us, doesn't mean it works for you.
Your gun might hate Hornady's 115gr Critical Defense and love 124gr +P JHP from another vendor.
You might not have a significant other to keep happy.
You might only have one pistol to feed.
I was patting myself on the back about what I good job I'd done in sorting the AR magazines and keeping inappropriate ammo out of barrels not made for it.
5.56x45mm for 1:9 or 1:7 twist goes in a PMAG.
5.56x45mm for 1:12 goes in an aluminum USGI.
6.8x43mm goes into a stainless steel mag with purple tape around the base (tactile and visual!).
It all fell apart when I remembered that my XM177E2 clone has a 1:9 barrel and I can't remember if it's zeroed for M855 or M193... But I've been using USGI 20-rounders... I think it's zeroed for 55gr.
The M16A2 clone also has a 1:9 barrel, but for photos, I have a USGI 30-rounder loaded with M855, complete with green tips.
I've gotten away from 1:9 since I started this AR thing.
Kaylee started with 1:9 and now wears 1:7.
Two of the remaining 1:9 are retro SBR's.
All the home-defense guns are 1:7.
There's a tag over there on the sidebar called "Magic Returns".
I was making a fantasy setting with a strong ancient Greek influence and while I liked what I was coming up with, I bogged down in the research of Greek Gods and delineating what powers a priest or priestess should have based on their patron deity.
The Greeks had a LOT of Gods.
Worse, from my perspective, The Greeks were very observant and had lots of petty little Godlings all the way down to personal Gods of their homes.
Rome did this too.
The thing that made me quit was the realization that teaching the damnable players how their characters should treat the Gods in everyday life was a combination of Pyrrhus and Sisyphus.
So it's sat for the past eight years unfinished.
But I found my notes.
It'd still be a good setting if I get it sorted.
The MicroPrism has an epic battery life. 29,000 hours.
The StrikeFire II only has 7,000.
Neither is telling the true story.
Both have an automatic shut-off.
The StrikeFire II shuts off after 12 hours and all you have to do get the dot back is hit either button.
The MicroPrism has "shake-awake" and turns back on automatically if you jiggle the sight (or weapon it's attached to).
Auto shut-off extends the battery life a lot, and the MicroPrism has more life to give.
It also means that I don't need to remember to turn it on before bed or flail at it if I forgot because something has gone bump in the night.
So far I'm liking the MicroPrism more and more each day.
Being smaller and lighter on top of it doesn't hurt either.
Something neat about the mount holes on the MicroPrism.
Every hole comes pre-Helicoiled!
I've read about this in several mil-specs.
Helicoils are stronger than cut threads in a lot of cases, so this means it should be harder for clueless morons, like me, to strip them out.
Very cool.
The Primary Arms SLx 1x MicroPrism arrived today!
Using the medium height cantilever mount mounted backwards allows the LaRue Po-Boy to continue to have a useful function. It also makes it an ersatz first focal plane 2.5x LPVO!
I like the Cyclops Gen II reticule a great deal.
Though I don't have it cranked near bright enough to see the red illumination here, you can see that you don't need it to use the scope when it's bright out.
That's a feature of etched glass reticules I really like in addition to it being crisp and clear for my astigmatismatic eye balls.
You can also see that it's not a true 1x with the ocular cranked for focus with my eyes.
The 1x MicroPrism is lighter than the StrikeFire II it's replacing. 0.5 lb. vs 0.7 lb.
Something else interesting is this, in GURPS terms, a collumating sight in terms of benefits even though it's real behavior matches a telescopic sight better.
The reticule works like a red-dot, but the optics and illumination are more like a telescopic sight.
So it should give a +1 to Guns/TL8 (Rifle), like a collumator.
But the glass nullifies a -1 for darkness penalties and the illumination another -2.
A collumating scope gives a -3, so same effect at the end of the day.
I think I need a new kind of scope rule...
Damn technology not holding still for game rules. Again.
The Lovely Harvey even got to vote in person this time as well!
I got yelled at for getting too close to her booth trying to hand her my phone with the picture of the cheat sheet we'd made to decide who to vote for in the primary.
My bad. I wasn't supposed to be back that far.
But I stopped when told to stop and corrected so there was no drama past that point.
The Lovely Harvey has been allowed to remove her sling for as long as she wants instead of the previous intermittent periods!
The incision is healing nicely without any hint of infection this second time around.
We have new exercises added to the therapy sessions and she's excited to be making progress!
And dreading the pain that will accompany the therapy.
Huzzah!
Primary Arms makes a 1x etched glass reticle optic.
Even better, it's got an adjustable ocular.
This is a red-dot for someone with astigmatism!
It's also tiny, lightweight and uses a battery I already stock deep.
Also cool is that it can be mounted on an AR carry handle.
The model shown comes with a variety of spacers to mount it at various heights and offsets from the mount base.
It's a little spendy at $270, but that's only a little more than a traditional red-dot that's really a red smear for me.
Anyone need a Vortex Strikefire II?
UPDATE: It's officially a Primary Arms SLX 1X MicroPrism with Red Illuminated ACSS Cyclops Gen 2 Reticle.
Click this finely crafted link to get yours from Amazon. It's buying it through Amazon, not from Amazon. Primary Arms is the seller.
We endeavored to persevere and tried the range in the evening.
No line, no waiting for the rifle range.
Marv's $40 airsoft EOTech fraud nearly got us kicked out because it was so off center he shot the right side wall of the range.
I wasn't even there! I was in the restroom!
After our lecture from the range officer Marv aimed downrange and I could see his barrel was still to the right after he put a bunch of turns on the knob.
More turns and the point of aim at least vaguely resembled the barrel's direction and he shot a wide group from the center to far left edge of the target.
Moving back right worked twice, but then went left again.
Something was clearly wrong, so we quit the EOFake. Once he got home, Marv found that the screw for the quick-release mount had come loose and the scope was free to move about. He's probably going to try zeroing it again. I think he should relax and let the hooks do their work and get a Vortex Srikefire or SparcAR.
I confirmed the post-fall-from-the-bed zero to terrazzo floor on Brenda. I did this because after the fall, the irons and the red-dot no longer agreed.
Cranking the dot back onto the irons proved to be correct and she's zeroed out to 100 yards again now.
Hoping the range was going to be as vacant as it was, I took Willard's Marlin Camp Carbine for a function check.
Shoots low and centered for me and low and centered for Marv.
The sights are basic and hard for my blind eyes to lock onto.
But a very neat carbine, lots of fun I think.
If it were my gun I'd get a Picatinny rail section for the drilled and tapped top-deck and plant a red-dot there.
But, even so, getting old has a price and red-dots are growing ever less distinct for me as the astigmatism gets worse.
Packed up my stuff, grabbed Marv and headed to the closest range, where we're also members.
Line didn't seem too bad, but this range has the WORST, bar none, check-in process I've ever seen.
Five minutes per customer minimum and nothing ever seems to speed it up.
Always a single person running the check-in station even though there's four actual registers.
The line is building up behind us and the person at the check-in gets on the phone.
I say, to Marv, that if the line is running out the door, you let the phone go.
This gets me glared at by one of the people in the group ahead of us in line.
So I look that person in the eye and say, "The person in the store trumps the person in the phone. Where's the money?"
He glared harder and turned around.
Ooooooh, I'm scared.
But, really, the wallet's proximity to the register sets the customer priority.
A customer IN the store has decided to shop there, what you do now can make them go away and not spend money they'd already earmarked for you.
About here Marv hears that only three of the five 100 yard lanes are running, and we'd already seen two of them were occupied.
So I decided to bail for now.
In addition to the wait, I didn't like glaring boy's company. People who look like they want to start a fight like that affect my joie de vivre.
A side note:
They are the most unwelcoming store-front for a range I've ever encountered. Harvey has mentioned it more than once.
I was getting a "Pending update of "Chromium" snap. Close the app to avoid disruptions (13 days left)" message, with the days counting down to 11 before I found the solution.
sudo apt update didn't do it because it's a snap!
sudo snap refresh got me there.
I remember the first time I tried to run Ubuntu back in 98 or 99 and it was a disaster for me. When I had time to tinker, my friends who knew what they were doing were in bed. By the time they were awake, I didn't have time to work on it.
Thankfully, the internet has come a long way since then and most of the time the answers I seek are readily available.
It also doesn't hurt that Ubuntu has matured a lot in the intervening 20+ years.
GURPS 3e: Fantasy Folk has elves and dark elves.
The distinction between them is supposedly cultural.
Supposedly.
The problem arises in that the "radical" dark elf is one who rejects the dark elf culture's racism and then gets a social stigma attached to them because nobody trusts dark elves.
How the fuck would you tell a radical dark elf from a normal elf then?
The book is silent.
It's not like the divide between Elves and Drow in AD&D.
AD&D and Lord of the Rings aren't all that connected, despite AD&D being effectively DIY fan-fic of LOTR.
The main point of objecting to all the diversity in the Amazon version of LOTR is that Dr Tolkien didn't base his world on a diverse egalitarian democracy.
It's based on Northern Europe, specifically centered on Jolly Ol' England.
That means we're going to have some pale ass characters and hardly a female ruler. Galadriel is an exception and she's shown to be exceptional, but everyone forgets her hubby! Celeborn was king to her queen.
My objection to the diversity is that if you're going to toss that into an established world, you've got to have it make some degree of sense or the willing suspension of disbelief will pop like the gossamer bubble it is.
If dwarves don't normally have dark brown skin and other classic negroid features, you have to explain why there's a queen with those features. If dwarven society is normally patriarchal, then you need to explain why there's a queen on the throne running the place.
The latter isn't even all that hard, we have English history as a real world example! The former is a lot more difficult to swallow.
Yes, children, I know that Kenneth Branaugh got away with it in his productions of Shakespeare, most glaringly in Much Ado About Nothing, but his stated goal was "best actor for the role I could get to respond" and that gives us Denzel Washington being brothers with Keanu Reeves.
You will not, however, he didn't case a white dude for Othello.
There's times and places to play this game.
Amazon's LOTR creators are bragging about shoving THE MESSAGE down our throats and making it an allegory of their vision of the real world.
What's all that got to do with AD&D?
Fuck all!
But AD&D is racist as fuck if you look at the surface.
Most of the various races have a beef against at least one other race and will go a killin' on sight.
But I looked at it more carefully when Hasbro tried to sanitize the racism against Orcs because someone decided Orcs were an allegory for black-people.
It's not a clash of races, it's a clash of cultures.
The different races even have different patron deities. A holy war if you use those gods in your campaign.
Never mind that you can choose to play as an egalitarian world as you like.
I know I have.
Never have I gotten more feedback from the players about a setting than the time I made the languages nationalistic and had nations which were predominately of a single race, but not exclusively so.
They took the idea of a nexus world having a bar and grill that served sophant meat in stride, but make the Elves speak a non-racial language?
I'll bring the beer.
I'd read about the true story part before.
Kinda neat.
Wanna bet that they toss in all the negative stereotypes of the Vietnam war and overlay them on the story in a way that never happened?
I will lash out at any and every government agency and agent with every word at my disposal as is my right as an American citizen.
I will especially not take advice from Mike Pence about how I should comport myself.
Advice is all it can be, since he's in no position to give anyone orders.
I, especially, reserve the right to lash out at the FBI in a rash and unfounded way just to vent my spleen so that I don't have an aneurysm from bottling up my frustrations.
Especially since, as time goes on, the conspiracy theory people are sounding ever more rational about things.
PS: Mike, calls to defund the FBI are not the same as defund the police.
The calls to defund the police were from a racist and bigoted idea that disparity in outcome automatically means racism in intent. Violent criminals with lengthy records getting killed by the cops for being violent while they resisted arrest is not racism on the part of the police even if the, now dead, violent criminal with a lengthy record was black and the cop who ended that lengthy and violent career was white.
Calls to defund the police when a, now dead, criminal with a lengthy record OD's and goes berserk in their death throes because the cops had to use extra force to restrain them isn't rational.
Calls to defund the FBI are stemming from the feds making up crimes then aiding and abetting people while deftly skirting around the carefully defined borders of entrapment.
Calls to defund the FBI are stemming from the FBI being available to arrest and harass conservatives but being unable to investigate clear criminal activity as long as that activity is being done by a Democrat or a close relative of one.
So, Mike, shut the fuck up and ram your own dick up your ass.
The thing that bugs me most about an elf that played by an African descended actor is that it blatantly forgets that racial characteristics exist for reasons.
There's an evolutionary reason for Scandinavians and Europeans having pale skin.
There's an evolutionary reason for Africans to have dark skin.
A people from a given location tend to look the same.
The reason that we have people who look different in modern society is because we have insanely efficient and fast transportation and communication.
Prior to this, people from elsewhere didn't venture far from where they were born.
The new LOTR show is going to have to explain some stuff they can't explain.
Not that there CAN'T be an explanation for a dark skinned dwarf, it's that they cannot fathom an explanation is necessary.
Having mixed race... uh... races means you need even more explanations.
Having done it in a couple settings, I know it's possible. It's not even particularly difficult to come up with plausible explanations. My players seemed happy with them, and we had an anthropology student rules-lawyer playing for a while.
After running AVG for, like, five days straight, svchost was using ALL the RAM.
So I go for a reboot.
It hangs on the Starting Windows screen for ten minutes then dumps me into startup repair.
I let that run for a bit and the screen goes dark and the monitors go to sleep, but the drive is clicking like mad.
After about 40 minutes of that, the fans are down to idle speed and the clicking has stopped.
So I hold down the power button to force a shut-down and reboot.
Viola! All better now!
Windows is so damn random sometimes and some of my problems are likely because it's a Bootcamp installation of it.
Thanks to an anonymous comment...
I found the settings to exclude the HFS+ drive for the Mac side's OS.
Started the deep scan again.
Hit a wall in the progress when the deep scan hit the HFS+ formatted drive for Time Machine that the Mac side uses to back itself up.
Bootcamp is handy for running Window on Mac hardware, but comes with oddities like this.
So I excluded the Time Machine drive and am running deep scan yet again.
Something interesting has appeared.
With the E: and I: drives included in the scan, progress at the end of the C: drive showed as 98%
With just E: excluded, same deal.
With both excluded progress is 83% at the end of C:.
I love technology.
UPDATE: 2 hours and 30 minutes to scan all the NTFS and exFAT drives. Nothing found. As hoped and expected.
Have you ever discovered that you forgot to take a picture of the latest configuration of one of your project guns?
I had not taken a pic of Brenda by herself in the (hopefully) final configuration with the buttstock storage buttplate.
Despite thinking that I'd long since done so when I was taking pictures of the buttplate stop; last June.
It's a subtle change in this image, but I do try to keep things up to date.
I keep repeating it to the liberal people that still bother to talk to me.
Many of the things they are most worried about are symptoms, not causes.
They think that by attacking and eliminating the symptom they are "alleviating" the cause.
What people were demanding at the early TEA party rallies and getting a President Trump are symptoms.
There's a large number of people whom, not only, feel that they have been disenfranchised, they have been systematically excluded from many aspects of controlling their own lives.
They've always been a plurality in American politics, and it looks like they're heading to be a majority if they aren't there already.
Perhaps even a significant majority.
There's a huge swath of things that Americans think is wrong, and are sick of being told that nothing can be done about it by the people committing the wrong in a space they've carved out to be immune from the consequences.
Our, would be, rulers have forgotten that legal and right aren't actually the same thing.
They are confronted with, "what you are doing is wrong!" and replying, "I'm not breaking the law!"
Those are not mutually exclusive positions.
In a day long passed, Mr Nancy Pelosi's stock trades would have been a career ending scandal for her despite nothing illegal going on.
In a day long passed, the families of those in office would have been held far from their dealings; because it was bad form for even the appearance of nepotism to be hinted at.
Now it's the fucking norm and people don't like it.
Most Americans are really in the A = A camp about things and think that's how things should be run.
What remains to be seen is if they will need to kill someone to get back there.
What's obvious is the people in power are signalling that they're willing to kill someone to keep things as they are. If some of the theories are right, they've already started killing people.
If you ride to the fight, but fight on foot; you're a dragoon.
It doesn't matter what you ride. Mule, chariot, horse, bicycle, scooter, car, APC, or airplane.
That makes airborne and paratroopers dragoons.
If you're nowhere near the fight but are still fucking shit up on the battlefield, you're arty.
That's a lot of Air Force and Navy here.
It gets confusing if a pilot dropping bombs is in the fight or not or just being direct fire arty.
The silly scarves kinda imply a cavalry relationship, but they don't wear silly hats, making it hard to tell.
If you're cavalry, you really should wear the silly hat!
Never lose your hat! Any plan where you lose your hat is a bad plan.
The main purpose of the lanyard is to retain the pistol should you happen to drop it, sparing it the fall and the indignity of landing in the dirt or mud.
That's the official reason.
The real reason is you'd have to get off your horse to retrieve your gun and that's unacceptable!
DEATH BEFORE DISMOUNT!
PS: This is also how we can tell that Cav Scouts ain't really Cavalry. They mainly dismount to do their, essential, job.
Tankers remain mounted the entire fight.
In a nutshell:
If you walk to the fight and fight on foot, you're infantry.
If you ride to the fight and fight on foot, you're a dragoon. (Like the "cavalry" during the Indian wars).
If you ride to the fight and fight from your mount, you're cavalry.
If you don't get near the fight at all, but still fuck the place all the Hell up, you're arty.
I decided that I wanted to use my computer again rather than wait for it to finish scanning a drive that Windows can't write to.
AVG doesn't let me exclude that drive from the scan nor scan individual drives.
But it didn't find anything on the OS drive.
I'm going with that. For now.
Although it wouldn't be until September that the documents were signed on Missouri, Japan decided that it'd had enough canned sunshine for a while.
Good thing too, we were out of assembled packages at the time and only the demon-core was available for more.
A poster on Arfcom recorded his experience with the Hotel's SWAT team.
He's a little miffed at the experience, and his language filters are off.
Gun free zones are where people go to get killed, and it looks like the hotel staff is ready and willing to be the killers.
Spend your money elsewhere.
Every once and a while I just stop and take it all in.
The world can be very pretty sometimes.
One of the few parts of the FBI which still has a good reputation is the crime lab.
Edit in the indent.
Boy, did I get the above wrong!
But, knowing a thing or two about the Single Action Army and its modern variations and their ways to avoid accidental discharges, the FBI crime lab is correct.
They have determined that the gun Alec Baldwin was holding at the time Halnya Hutchins was killed could not have gone off without him pulling the trigger.
Bringing us back to the idea that the 4-rules are a damn good idea and Hollywood should stop breaking them.
I'd like to add a Rule 5: Don't be downrange of anyone who's violating any of the first four.
There have only been two A2 uppers that have passed through this house since I started getting into AR's.
Andrea wears the only one left.
The first one through was on The Lovely Harvey's second AR.
Cheyenne does not look much like this anymore. She's now a clone of a R651P from Platoon because she likes SSG Barnes.
Cheyenne's old upper got sold off. I can't remember if it went with the HBAR 20" barrel or not. Andrea's came with the barrel from pre-Remington Bushmaster.
A2 stocks... About five of those things have passed through here and been snatched up by eager cloners. Usually just in time for me to decide I wanted to make an A2 clone again.
Now that I have an A2 and A4 clone, I think I have enough stocks to last for a while.
The anti-virus is still clawing its way through the Mac drive.
One second per file and thousands of small files...
When I first started making AR's from kits, I was firmly set in making clones of retro guns.
Fortunately for me, I caught the bug when retro parts were practically being given away. You cannot buy a vintage A1 upper receiver for what I paid for Bubba's complete A1 upper assembly.
I was ahead of the trend.
At the time kits were pretty evenly divided between A2 uppers and flat-tops; but the utility of the flat top took hold and there was suddenly tons of unwanted A2 uppers to be had.
I dabbled a bit at making an A2 clone but didn't really commit for years until I made one from an 80% lower engraved with the serial number from my issue M16A2.
I am glad I hung onto that A2 upper receiver now!
Just as quickly as the market was awash in A2 uppers... there were none.
A2 uppers just weren't around.
That appears to be changing, because the trend is now to make M16A2 clones.
What was old is new again!
I wonder if Beretta M9 and Model 92FS prices will spike along with it?
A longish while ago Willard bought a Savage 340 from one of the local pawn shops.
That's a bolt gun in .30-30.
A thread at The Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy known as Arfcom where someone is wanting a .30-30 but is not enamored of lever guns made me want to show them a picture of that 340.
I did not take a single one.
I remember it being very finicky about how fast you worked the bolt and we were not certain if the detachable magazine was in the best shape.
I don't recall if the Triple K replacement worked any better.
It also occurs to me that the Savage 340 is the kind of gun we used to hear about on Forgotten Weapons. Alas.
You are correct, Director Garland, unfounded accusations against FBI agents should be condemned.
However, we are talking about the recent raid on former president Trump's residence...
Tell you what:
You actually arrest and charge Hillary for that illegal server and I will strive to consider the hurt feelings of federal law enforcement officers when they appear to be making partisan motivated raids on former elected officials.
Or work with the DEA to bust Hunter Biden.
Or arrest and charge... well... ANYONE whom Ghislane Maxwell was convicted for making arrangements for. There's at least five people who engaged in the sex that she was convicted of trafficking. Possibly even the magistrate who signed the search warrant for Mir-A-Lago.
But we shouldn't disparage the fine folks at the Bureau.
Well, except that's the entire point of a First Amendment; to be able to say things about the government and its workers without fear of reprisal.
There's even a federal law, little used, that's supposed to be applied to feds who shit on citizens rights. If I were a former president whose house had just been searched on a warrant signed by a partisan magistrate by an equally partisan FBI, I'd be talking to my lawyer about bringing those charges.
There's bound to be an honest judge and cop who will make the arrest.
There's some things in the realm of guns that are established fact.
Gun owners break things that are difficult to break with little to no effort.
A common complaint of the Savage Axis magazine is breaking off the plastic latch-hook.
I've often wondered exactly how they did this. Mostly so I could avoid it. At $45+ for a magazine, I'm careful with them.
The other end of the magazine is where I expected problems to happen.
That's the front locking "lug" for the magazine and it's common to the DBM magazine on up-market versions of the gun. Nobody complains about bending or breaking this.
Savage improved the latch for the short actions, but doesn't seem to have done so for the long actions yet.
There's a rumor that The Czech Republic and Finland are considering exiting the European Union.
Unlike The UK, they aren't considering it over economic decisions.
But, like The UK, they are doing it because unelected and distant rulers are making rules that they feel they cannot abide.
Rules over guns.
The Czech republic because it's decided that an armed citizenry cannot be dragged into totalitarianism. They've some experience with their disarmed citizenry being dragged into totalitarianism. It happened twice last century, after all.
Finland is looking to put a rifle behind every tree and wants to put a sort that gun banners hate there. They're also concerned about what would happen if Russia were to obtain the registration lists should they decide to go Ukraine on them.
Both countries are objecting to registration schemes decided on in Brussels. Finland is objecting to the limits on type and the number one can own.
And I sit here thinking that Finland will probably get constitutional carry before Florida.
I like lanyards for service pistols. I've even ordered parts and committed gunsmithing to get a loop on a couple guns.
Most notably my .38 Super Gov't Model, but also an easy swap in my M&P 9. Many guns come from the factory ready to go.
Another NFA gift from the 1986 FOPA is a definition of a silencer.
18USC921(25):
The terms “firearm silencer” and “firearm muffler” mean any device for silencing, muffling, or diminishing the report of a portable firearm, including any combination of parts, designed or redesigned, and intended for use in assembling or fabricating a firearm silencer or firearm muffler, and any part intended only for use in such assembly or fabrication.
ATF drove on with the idea that only a complete assembly needed a tax stamp as it had prior to FOPA.
Suddenly, they've discovered that every part and supcomponent is its own thing?
Got to get your congress critters on repealing this definition.
Even better, get that hearing protection act passed. That moots the whole deal.
Get Gunowners of America to back the fuck off their mailings so that incremental recoveries of our rights are possible instead of the nothing we get from all or nothing stances.
I still remember them torpedoing linking Fix NICS and national CCW reciprocity. Do you? Well, we got fix NICS... But we didn't get anything else because it wasn't a full repeal of all gun laws everywhere.
When a friend comes down with 4 Trojans and a malware, and you've borrowed a file or two from them...
It's time to do a deep scan.
And that's what my desktop is doing for the next... who knows how long.
After three years of the CMP diligently shipping guns and hundreds of owners posting pictures of the various grades...
How can someone still be disappointed in the condition of the gun they got, especially when they're active in the thread with all the pictures?
I'd love to see if the people most disappointed are people who were never issued one at the end of its life.
The pistol I got from CMP is in a lot better shape than 1164935 was when I turned it in for the last time and it started its second life in the Philippines.
But the condition of guns has run the gamut of what I would have expected from the guns which were still in inventory as the M9 supplanted them.
People talked about how bad it could be for years before CMP shipped the first ones. People showed pictures of theirs as they took delivery, and for the most part they've been on the better side of the range we expected with very few as bad as we feared they'd be.
And people are still surprised and disappointed?
I guess some people have to complain about everything, huh?
The Beast's seats are far more accommodating for conceal carry than The Precious.
Not since The Biscayne was a daily driver have I had room to carry strong side IWB.
That and teeny guns...
So I'm trying out my Shield Plus in a Galco Summer Comfort holster. Shown with the pocket carry options.
My first Galco holster was a summer comfort model for my Glock 21. I carried my S&W 640-3 in the similar, Royal Guard for a whole summer as well.
We'll see how it goes!
The Dancing Monkeys are all in for Ukraine.
Just like they are/were for Venezula.
On top of the apparent Clinton/Biden crime syndicate shit; I am starting to think that Pooty is the good-guy here.
Damn.
Will I have to finally forgive Russia for once being the USSR?
That'd be up there with forgiving Ruger for the trespasses of Bill.
The Order of the Stick has just shown an old favorite of mine from the AD&D Monster Manual II.
A Quinton and a few Monodrones.
MM2 has a few things like that, detailing the things that inhabit and run the outer planes.
If you think about it, the original Monster Manual has that too with Devils and Demons.
If you think too hard about it, Deities and Demigods is where this extraplanar stuff should have been and E Gary should have been working hard at detailing HIS world's gods instead of cribbing from myth and literature.
By the time they got done it was renamed Legends and Lore to mollify The-Entirely-Too-Loud-To-Be-Silent-And-Not-Near-Numerous-Enough-To-Be-A-Majority religious fanatics and all the gods from literature had been stripped.
I had thought to get the books with the Modrons for AD&D 2e from Drive-Thru RPG, but I can't seem to be able to determine WHAT book they're in. Perhaps the Planescape campaign boxed set?
Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, says that there's more death threats from "deplorable and dangerous" Trump supporters since they raided former President Trump's residence in Florida.
Well, Mr Beria Wray, perhaps if you behaved more like the FBI from the 1960's TV show, and less like a budding NKVD, people wouldn't feel that their only recourse was to fling threats at you.
I'd be more sympathetic except:
Almost all of them are cranks. They are never going to DO anything, they just scream into the phone or smash at their keyboards and cluck a bit to their friends about how they showed YOU.
Perhaps you should call the Secret Service and ask how many death threats the president gets and how many rise above the crank level.
Deplorable and harmless, perhaps?
Plus the real reason you're not getting any sympathy from me is the long running string of arrests where the person who went to jail would never have risen to the level of crime without the active assistance of The Bureau in getting the materials together.
The FBI changed the harmless into the harmful just to make an arrest.
In a just world, this is called entrapment, but entrapment has been legally defined and The Bureau is gaming the law.
The signal that it really sends is that if there's so little crime that the federal cops have to make up their own, then perhaps we don't need federal cops.
The real reason we have federal cops at all stems from states being reluctant to agree to enforce questionable federal laws on people who crossed state lines.
Maybe federalism is the proper response to federalization and the director of the FBI calling people deplorable after the term has been supercharged politically by a Democrat.
The thing about the left that bugs me the most is the constant "heads I win, tails you lose" mode they're in.
How they react to federalism is a huge indicator.
Legalizing marijuana: Federalism GOOD!
Liberalizing gun laws: Federalism BAD!
Make gun laws more restrictive: Federalism GOOD!
Restrict abortions: Federalism BAD!
Eliminate critical race theory from the classroom: Federalism BAD!
And on and on and on...
I cannot help the sinking feeling that the reason there's a conflict in Ukraine at all is because of the Biden clan in the first place and the only reason we're not letting Russia have her way is because of the same clan.
They spent a lot of time there fucking around with the energy companies that kinda triggered The Bear to get grumpy.
"[H]igher prices for basics such as eggs, milk, butter, and bacon — and women under 40"
Uh...
The prices for women under 40...
I didn't see any for sale at the local supermarket.
The Lovely Harvey says that I should bring one home, but I'm not getting where The Washington Examiner is buying theirs.
I'm also thinking that this might just be a tad illegal.
Even renting a woman under 40 can get you into trouble!
This gentleman was right:
"[T]he True Remedy for the Fugitive Slave Bill is a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap." This solution has SO many applications if you think hard on it.
Got the quote from "The View From North Central Idaho."
I've long liked Mr Douglass. He had, as it were, skin in the game with regards to the rights he hoped to secure. Something that current "civil rights leaders," being millionaires, don't.
The ruling from ATF that makes bump-stocks federally illegal is a regulation, not a law.
I'd think that Bruen and West Virginia are going to figure large in the appellate proceedings.
ATF has not been specifically empowered to write the definitions of what the things defined by law are.
By the black letter of the law, changing the fire control group of an M16 to an AR-15 makes it a normal rifle and not a machine gun. Even with the hole drilled for the auto-sear.
ATF is who came up with "once an X, always an X" rule, not Congress.
The law is pretty clear it's about the at-the-moment configuration and not the possibility of an easy conversion to an illegal one.
But that doesn't stop regulatory agencies from expanding their power by issuing regulations.
This could be very exciting!
We might even get a ruling on if machine guns are still banned because while NFA might be OK under the taxing power, 922(o) is an outright ban; which the Supreme Court has ruled is a no-go.
Also exciting.
I'd love to see Thomas writing something to the effect of, "As was noted in Miller v US, weapons of war are particularly protected by the 2nd amendment. Machine guns are emphatically such weapons and are appropriate for the militia."
It's a headline here and a story there...
But I keep encountering a theme of self hate among the people on the left.
Not sure if it's a widely held idea, but if you hate yourself, you're very unlikely to have any capacity to love anyone.
This means that hate is their only motivation, regardless of the bunting they hang on their stated reasons.
You can see it clearly when all talk of equality is really just giving unfair advantage to a group they perceive as being disadvantaged.
You cannot fairly arrive at equality of outcome.
Life is unfair.
Equality of opportunity is as fair as you can make it.
You cannot force someone to take the opportunity.
But we should stop letting people blame others for their own failings.
I know from personal experience that this is a very difficult thing to learn.
Paid the mortgage like usual, but the lender keeps changing the dashboard.
This month their estimated value of my home is displayed alongside the amount I still owe.
Chateu de Ghetto has tripled in value according to the bank!
I also love how in a 30 year loan that the first 20 years don't even halve the principle; but the principle is visibly shrinking now.
The spike in value means that we're getting home equity loan offers in addition to the offers to buy the place outright.
I don't need more bills, so we're not going to take one of those loans, and we've seen the effect on people who did.
77 years ago, this very moment, Bock's Car dropped the second, and last, atomic bomb used in anger.
That's one hell of a record.
Here's hoping we make it 100. A faint hope with the current resident of the White House...
The mayor of the city of New Fucking York is upset that the governor of Texas is shipping the illegal huddled masses to him.
The tone I'm getting from this is that it's A-OK for red-states to be overrun with illegal aliens, but NOT OK for a deep blue city to have to deal with the problem.
Oh, and it's a problem now that it's in NYFC and wasn't when it was in Texas.
It's very interesting to me.
It's established wisdom that 9mm is easier to learn to shoot than .45 because the gun kicks less.
When comparing full size service autos this is certainly true.
Part of the conceal carry renaissance is first getting .380's in the same form factor as .32's. Then getting 9mm in that size then getting high-cap versions of that 9mm.
Guns like the Shield Plus weren't possible in the '80's when Florida passed shall-issue. Never mind there wasn't much market for such guns anyway because it was, nationally, difficult to get a carry permit.
But what these little guns aren't is easier to shoot than even a compact .45; like a Commander.
Not really a novice gun, and they are lots of people's first gun. Sometimes only gun.
People get their permit and ask the person behind the counter, "what're the good ones for carry?"
As long as they get some practice time, I think they will be happy with their purchase.
Of course, most people don't and are happy as clams packing a gun they put a single box through once, and have never checked to see if the recommended JHP works in their gun.
Even with record crime going on in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York (SPIT) City; the odds of actually needing your carry gun are still quite low most any place you're allowed to pack it. Hmmm... Not in those places I named? Odd.
Anyway!
A subcompact 9mm is as difficult to shoot as any light .45; not easier.
But since it's many people's only gun, they're never going to know that.
They just need to get out there and put rounds down range to learn their gun.
They might even benefit from paying an instructor.
If you've Amazon Prime, click on over to Thirteen Lives.
For once, Hollywierd did not fuck up a historical drama.
Even knowing the outcome of events did not affect my enjoyment.
John Leguizamo, a Latino actor who's played several Italian characters, is bent out of shape that a white dude got picked to portray murderous dictator Fidel Castro.
First off, John, if you're going to play non-Latino roles yourself, you have to accept that non-Latinos will be playing Latino characters.
Especially when there are Latinas like Cameron Diaz.
Suck it up.
But let's take this further.
Something I've seen for myself living in Florida is Latino is not a singular, monolithic, homogeneous group of people.
The different nationalities of Latino fucking HATE each other.
John, you're Colombian. Who the fuck are you to complain that someone who's not Cuban play a murderous Cuban dictator?
By your own rationale you aren't even qualified to play his murderous, thug, henchman Che Guevera.
Che was Argentinian.
I guess if you MUST play a murderous thug, Pablo Escobar was a fellow Colombian.
PS: James Franco is a better actor and got the part on merit, not ethnicity. He even looks like Fidel a bit.
My interest in the retro side of AR's has led, for a change, being ahead of fashion.
20" rifles seem to be getting popular again. At least there's a lot of chatter about them lately.
Heck, with an M16 or M16A1 clone, you're not even talking a heavy rifle.
I am a little tempted to build an all-modern pencil barrel rifle with a KE Arms plastic lower now!
Yeah, I need another AR like I need a hole in my head.
Unfortunately, I had to cut off the conversation just as Willard was warming to his argument... We're often in agreement about a point in a way that doesn't SEEM like we agree.
But I have theorized that the three enemy combatants at The Battle of the BTR-152 whom were shot with the, now, obsolete and useless Colt Commander and Winchester Silver-Tip ammo are now alive.
What with all this new fangled, better, guns and ammo available now, anyone killed with something so old and out of fashion must surely be rendered alive again because all such gauche guns could not possibly have ever been effective.
Right?
I am sure that snarkily calling .45 ACP "forty-five AARP" scores points with the Instructorati, but it doesn't erase decades of effective stops.
And 9x19mm Parabellum ain't no spring fucking chicken neither. It's OLDER than .45 ACP by three years!
What's happened in recent years is bullet design has allowed 9mm to perform as well as .45 did; but in smaller, lighter guns that hold more bullets and are easier to shoot.
Perform as well.
That means .45 will still get the job done, you'll just have fewer chances to hit and your gun will be bigger and heavier and you're going to have to invest more time into learning to shoot it well.
I happen to like both rounds and own several guns in each caliber.
It should be noted that those same advances in bullet design don't apply to .45 ACP because of the much lower velocities, even in light +P loads. Those same advances might explain why 10mm ACP is making a bit of a comeback, you can't accuse that round of being low velocity in most loads.
It should also be remembered that there's not a lot of difference between suitable pistol rounds at all.
We've really been arguing around the margins for a long while.
Watching the 2011 version of The Three Musketeers and I am surprised to discover that the French had monowire.
Milady de Winter deftly avoids being shredded by this advanced technology while she steals some piece of the queen's jewelry.
Masters of science and technology the French were in the 17th Century!
Because I am absolutely certain that this film was held to documentary standards with regards to historical accuracy.
Talking to FuzzyGeff I am reminded that I was victorious TWICE shooting my .38 Super 1911 despite my opponent using a Glock 17 and a red-dot.
He was blazing fast, but I was simply better.
Amusingly, this same shooter was nearly beaten by a guy shooting a 7-shot .357 revolver. But the revolver shooter was almost Jerry Miculek in speed.
I am not certain where we came up with the idea that since a thief, robber or burglar isn't trying to injure the rightful owner of the property they are stealing that the rightful owner cannot injure or kill them for taking the property.
Considering that thieves were being strung up as recently as the 1880's, this is not an old Blackstone legal tradition.
I've long held that such crooks should be subject to lethal force.
Fuck 'em.
The law does not, as of yet, support my position... mostly.
Florida's default state is anyone who's broken into your house is there to do grievous bodily injury so you can plug them as you encounter them.
But that doesn't stop them in the lawn with your TV.
China, take fucking notes.
America gets creative when it comes to existential war.
Hiroshima went up in smoke 77 years ago this very moment!
You may ask yourself, "How did I get here?"
-T Heads
Now that I think about it I'm an odd duck with regards to resistance to change and early adoption.
I do both equally.
Thanks to looking up all manner of real-world numbers for guns, I've never felt that 5.56x45mm NATO wouldn't do the job, or 9x19mm Parabellum for that matter.
But I'd have fought you if you tried to get me to own an AR-15 in 1990 when FuzzyGeff and I first started thinking we should finally join the ranks of civilian firearms owners.
FuzzyGeff has a germane quote from the time, "I have drill sergeant shaped scars from that gun."
I had long nights cleaning the damn things for turn-in shaped scars myself.
That's how we ended up with Mini-14's. It didn't hurt that a Mini was about half the price of a Colt at the time.
I successfully avoided owning an AR for years after that, with a Daewoo DR200 replacing the Mini. The DR200 took AR mags which were plentiful and affordable during the AWB. FuzzyGeff went with an AR-mag-taking Bushmaster M-17 bullpup.
SoftwareJanitor fucked up our happy world talking about making AR's from kits.
He also mentioned that modern, commercial, cleaning gear was capable of easily cleaning an AR, as opposed to what the Army gave us...
So we dabbled (Marv got roped in here too).
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| Notice that my guns are the only ones that can't take an optic? |
Kaylee originally started as a carry-handle 16" heavy barrel carbine.
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| I didn't even have a good camera then. |
I didn't want all those new-fangled things like a flat-top or railed handguards. Why would I need optics or a light on a carbine?
But, over time, my attitudes changed about lights and scopes.
Now all of the "go-to" rifles are equipped with the capability for both. I've tried the full cheese-grater handguards and they offer real-estate I'm not using.
I was slow to embrace plastic magazines as well. I let someone else do the field testing for Magpul.
Interestingly, to me, is how many of my M3 magazines have that silly window. That's because 1) I needed one in tan for pics and comparison and 2) a rumor that because it's a USMC issue item it's held to slightly better tolerances.
I did notice I was ahead of a trend with regards to making my "go-to" gun lighter. Yay me!
