Faith Shaken

I love the internet.  Someone has done the research and posted it.

I was trying to find what Beretta had changed to keep the slides from cracking and found that...

Beretta's slides cracking and injuring some SEALs wasn't because of a design flaw.  It was not because of hot ammo.

It was because the got a bad batch of steel for the slides which was contaminated with tellurium.

The contaminated steel came from France and was sourced there because of a contract offset with France for their Model 92G's.

It's interesting how the myths persist.

Link to GAO pdf.

While it doesn't actually mention the tellurium contamination, it does mention that all failures occurred with Italian made slides.

That pdf is some interesting reading because it talks about the stupidity of the process  in 1981.

The XM9 selection went from, "no formal requirement for a new 9mm pistol" to "a detailed set of joint service operational requirements" to "We should buy Beretta 92's off the shelf" to "the services have created stringent pistol requirements that no off the shelf product can meet" in the course of a year.

No wonder it's so damn hard to buy new pistols.

XM9 is not the first competition since the end of WW2 either.

We tried to replace the M1911A1 with a 9mm handgun, at least, twice before.

The first time in 1954, the second as Vietnam was winding down.

In both cases it was a shrinking military and its attendant shrinking budget that kicked the can down the road and kept the 1911 in service.  It's a lot easier to find enough serviceable guns if you have need of fewer guns.

There have been attempts to replace the M9 almost literally since the contract was signed.  These attempts did lead to the M11 being adopted as a secondary standard, but not for the M9 to be replaced.

There were so many requests for proposals that by the time the XM17 competition rolled around, some manufacturers didn't bother submitting designs.  Lucy.gov had yanked the football out from the kick too many times.

It's also kind of neat to be reading about the reason we did not receive our M9's despite turning in our M1911's and ammo and signing for 9mm ammo.  I carried a Glock 17 purchased from the Patch Rod and Gun Club on the Czech-German border because of it.

In The Goldilocks Zone

Having a good day at the range with that M&P 9 Compact turns a light on.

I've long wondered why the Glock 19 was so well loved and I think I see it now.

Small enough to be easy to conceal and to keep from being too heavy.

Big enough to hang onto easily.

I'm happy.

Looking around, I think I would not be as happy with the 1.0 version.

The 1.0 was shorter, and held three fewer rounds.  That shorter grip also meant finger dangle, which I don't care for in this wide a gun.

SEAL M9

Found this at Arfcom.

Very neat!

I'll Help

Every place that threatens to go from any kind of licensed carry to a less restrictive mode; especially when the lower restrictions include open carry; carries cries from law enforcement that it will make their jobs harder.

At first I was baffled by this.

Now when they see someone carrying they don't have to do anything.  They don't have to check if the carrier has a permit, so they don't have to stop them, they don't have to be exposed to the "danger" of talking to an armed person.  They can just keep driving.

But I just realized they DO have to do more work now.

They now have to process WHAT the person with a gun is doing with it rather than just noticing they have a gun at all then "protecting and serving."

A lot of it really falls from cops being used to, and preferring, being the only ones with guns.

Remember, they fought against going from no carry to "may issue" and again when it changed from may issue to "shall issue".  Now they're upset at going from shall issue to no restrictions.

It's just the same objection every time from the same people, the police lobbyists are in the same sort of broken record groove as the gun control groups.

They've snared quite a few pro-gun folks with their line of thinking.

Aside: I have a question for both groups here that's only tangentially related:  If open carry is stupid, why don't you oppose it for uniformed officers?

The burr got put under my bonnet by some localities police harassing permit holders here in Florida for "brandishing" when their carry gun had been accidentally and unintentionally exposed.  A holstered gun isn't brandishing, but it didn't save them from being harassed or arrested.  A few were even convicted, and even if they weren't the process is a punishment in and of itself.

The state legislature made some small steps to correct this by including "brief and unintentional" verbiage in the law, but since the law doesn't define brief or unintentional, the status quo remains.

What this is leading to is Constitutional Carry and open carry in Florida.  Eventually.  We've got a governor who has stated he'll sign it should a miracle occur and it actually clear the first committee.  That's a positive step.

I don't even want to open carry.  I just want to carry more comfortably and those methods are forbidden by the sun and humidity in the summer here because the cover garments aren't near so voluminous.

Eyes crossed.

Failure To Quantify

Milspec is written in near lawyer.

Did you know that according to MIL-C-71186 an M4A1 carbine has to put ten rounds inside a 5" group on a 22x16" rectangle with rounded corners at 100 yards using iron sights to be accepted?

This is firing M855 ammunition certified to hold about 0.6 MOA from a test barrel.

I'm kind of appalled at the standard here, actually.  I was expecting it to be a lot tighter.  Like 2 MOA tight.

My PSA barrel can, you've seen the pictures, pull 2 MOA.

Warming To It

The more rounds I fire from it, the more I like the M&P 2.0 9 Compact.

All rounds fired at 7 yards.  Pink brain got 20 rounds of 135gr Hydrashok low-recoil JHP, yellow brain got 17 rounds of Remington Champion 115gr FMJ.

I fired as fast as I could get a sight picture.

I finished the box of Remington ammo giving one magazine to pinky and one to yeller.

I'm confident in the gun now, which is good because I'm carrying it!

The Fifth Rule

5: Don't stand downrange of anyone who cannot, for any reason, follow or understand the previous four rules!

I Wonder

I notice that Putin has gotten quieter about the threat of a dirty bomb and I think I might have figured out why.

It's not because he thinks the idea is bad.

I think it's because we can identify the exact machine which got the radioactive material out of the ore with spectrographic analysis.

So if a dirty bomb goes off, the wind will carry the fallout to where people who don't have a stake in the war will analyze it and can tell us where the shit came from originally.

And if it's 100% Russian, which a Ukrainian made device would not be, then we know it's a false flag and it puts Putin in a bad place.

But It Wasn't A Gun

Ames, Iowa is the home of Iowa State University.

That means there's fraternities and football players.

Way back in the depths of time, before playing D&D was OK for The Beautiful People® to play and before the term "cosplay" had mainstreamed...

If you were dressed in your persona for the Society of Creative Anachronisms and walking across campus in the wee hours during VIESHA, you might just be accosted by drunken versions of the Frat-Rat or Sportsballer.

Remember when I mentioned asymmetric response?

A wakizashi, while not a gun, is definitely more blade than three drunk jocks want to deal with at 3am.

Ames, Iowa, being the home of ISU, is also not a place where you go to the cops afterwards and explain how you brandished a sword at three assailants while on campus.

The Iowa State Police (not to be confused with the Iowa State Patrol) have a policy of punishing the closest person they think is breaking the rules and then ignoring everyone out of immediate reach.

Carrying a short sword on campus is a violation of their knife rules.

So one tends to get mum about such incidences.

Subtle

Just as I've noticed that there's fewer and fewer straight white men in television ads for products I probably wasn't going to buy anyway...

I've also noticed that the hands holding a gun in a stock photo of someone buying a gun in a gun shop for a news article are often a black man's.

These photos, amazingly enough, are mostly shown in articles talking about how foolish a given piece of gun control is. 

The pro-gun slant with the "look, they're law abiding and buying from a shop where they get a background check!" photo gives off the warm fuzzies that minorities joining us as gun owners is a good thing.

And it is a good thing.

The more the merrier!

I've long maintained that the best, perhaps only, way for a minority group to keep from being persecuted or killed off is to get their hands (regardless of color) on some guns.

The Bielski brothers are a good example with a better outcome than the oft-cited Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

More recently, armed blacks didn't get lynched and queers that tote don't get bashed.

D&D Nerds, likewise, don't get picked on near so much when the response is asymmetric either.

But Did He Drive Afterwards?

In the crime-free liberal Mecca of California, someone broke into Nancy Pelosi's house and beat on her husband with a hammer.

Normally, after getting hammered, he goes for a drive.

No word on this yet, but we'll try to stay on this story as it develops... 

Snark aside, I'm wondering about the motive too.

Just normal criminal activity in the San Francisco explains it, but there could be more because she's Speaker of the House.

One wonders what Paul knows about the Clintons, for example.

Someone Burned The Witch

Remember that vid I posted showing an alternate way of installing the front take-down pin on an AR?

YouTube has taken it down.

HA HA!

Germans demolish wind farm to get access to coal vein.

How's that green shit working for you, Rudy?

2 MOA

Most ARs with off the shelf ammo are 2 minute of angle guns.

That's a 2" group at 100 yards.

I can do that, most of the time.

But the stars have aligned and I've gotten a much smaller group out of sheer providence a couple of times.

It will convince you that your rifle is better than it really is and frustrate you to no end on a bad day when you can't hit a barn at 10 yards!  From the inside.

I'm reading on Arfcom about someone doing average but is frustrated that their expensive new ACOG didn't make their groups any smaller.

I feel for them.

Update: Chevron reticle, not dot.

Uff Dah

And here I was thinking that the computer to run DCS was prohibitively expensive.  Two grand or so...

The stick, throttle, rudder pedals are about $1,000 for good ones.

Add another $300 for switch panels.

And another $850 for the multi-function displays and center controller...

Then you will have a decent simulacrum of an F/A-18C cockpit.

There's a reason that I don't flight sim any more!

I'm Being Manipulated And I Do Not Care

"Speculation on the limited availability of the McRib includes theories concerning the fluctuating price and unreliable supply chains of bulk pork, manipulation of availability windows to turn the product into a better loss leader for the company, and the generation of renewed enthusiasm and higher sales as a result of scarcity."

I get the annual McRib every year, Harvey often has two.

We don't get them for the flavor any more than a cocaine addict snorts for the smell.

It hits the same center as the Winn-Dixie brand Peach soda.

I CAN QUIT WHENEVER I WANT!

Hi.  I'm Thag.  I'm a McRibaholic.

Progress!

The Lovely Harvey, alone and with just one spur, made a meal more complex than heating up chicken nuggets!

The tuna and noodles hit the spot too!

While it doesn't sound like much, it's a huge advance for her because she needed to work a can-opener and lift the pan into the oven.

HUZZAH to Harvey!!

Radical Idea

With The Lovely Harvey working from home I get to hear her dealing with the managers of the people she's paid to catch.  She's the other end of, "this call may be monitored..."

It is obvious that the place she works is not hiring people who are capable of doing the job properly.

I asked and she listed the salary and benefits for this job that has a 15% turn-over rate for policy violations.

Many of these policies, if the employee is not terminated, gets the government involved and that could lead to legal consequences for where she works or charges against the managers.

The salary and benefits are generous, but they are not attracting the quality candidates.  What few quality candidates whom are hired do not find the compensation satisfactory enough to be retained.

I've seen it over and over.

The three most difficult things for any business are:

1. Hiring the right people.

2. Getting out of their way so they can do their job properly.

3. Creating an environment where they want to stay.

I've met the people who would take to the job Harvey polices like a duck to water.  They would not stay at the company she works for because of the people who need hourly corrections in how they do their job.

The people causing this bad situation are your usual band of entitled minority types whom cannot easily be terminated because of "you fired me because I'm ________!"

Yeah, it wasn't you breaking the law during your call, it's because of endemic racism/sexism.

AND?

The headline about there only being 25 days of diesel fuel sitting in tanks ready to use is making the rounds.

Since that was two days ago, does that mean there's only 23 days left today?

I'm not finding mention that the supplies have gotten lower, it's as if...

They're still making it!

One article makes passing mention that diesel production is higher at the moment than is normal.  Production is up when oil is pushing record prices too.

If that's true then the problem is demand is higher than normal, not that supplies are lower than normal.

I'm not seeing any article mentioning the 25 day supply that even speculates as to why we're using more diesel than normal.  So much more than normal that above normal production isn't keeping up with demand.

One reason is that the economy might be righting itself.

The places panicking about the 25 day supply are the kind of places that don't want to see that right before the midterms because a recovering economy means fewer Republican votes.

Yes, Virginia, the conservative press has an agenda too.

But it could be as simple as more goods being hauled by trucks because railway transportation and river transportation has been disrupted.

Rail by the owners and the unions in unrelated bullshit.

River by record low water levels. 

Trains and barges use less fuel than trucks.

More consumption means more demand.

The big question isn't how many days supply there is, but is demand outstripping supply to the point where there will eventually be no fuel at some outlets.

The articles hint at that, but don't actually say it.  They aren't showing numbers.  They aren't comparing X barrels consumption vs Y barrels supply vs Z barrels production.

They do compare the days of supply to other time periods.  Like 1951 when our economy was so much smaller, but they don't really explain that.  You had to know that already and panic because our current economy will run through 1951's production in hours!

But...  We're not using 1951 production in supply or production.  Though we might be better off if we had 1951's rail system and managers.

Which brings me to the point.

Use your critical thinking on every news source.  Make no exceptions.

Trust no one and keep your blaster handy, Troubleshooter.

Eight Bullet Per Round Limit

Considering that duplex and triplex ammunition wasn't a rousing success, I think we're OK with a legal limit of 8 bullets per round considering present technological limitations.

Remington .22's

My 341 Sportmaster is descendant from the Model 33 and this lineage keeps going all the way to the 5 hundred series guns.

The 33 is a single shot.

34 is a 33 that doesn't take-down, has a tube magazine and improvements to the action.

The 341 is essentially an improved 34 combining features with the model 41 single shot.

The 512 is an improved 341.

There's lots of other 3x, 4x, 34x and 5xx in this series too.

Single shots, detachable boxes, target sights, scope mounting provisions, different barrel profiles... etc.

Deshakified

Got the driver's side outer tie rod replaced today.

All wheel shaking is deleted!

The inners are a bit loose, but they will make it a couple months, I'll bet.

Did a red-reck alignment because I lost count of how far to screw the tie-rod in.  Only took two test drives!

Follow-up trip to get a sammich confirmed everything is doing what it should now!

It's nice to work on a car that doesn't actively fight back, like The Precious often did.

WITCHCRAFT! BURN THE WITCH!

The maker of this video is in league with Lucifer!

I have launched so many of those damn detents even with tools...

No Room On The Sidebar

There's no room for racists on my sidebar.

No clicks from here go to your racism.

There's a couple places that I've been suspicious of for a bit, and one of them went open.

At least one more is on the block.

It's a thin line between noting the race of someone exhibiting a behavior and blaming their race for it.

There's a keyword that show which position you've taken and it starts with "N."

Once you start using that word, then I can no longer trust your data because you've revealed your bias.

First Off

If you have a question you really want answered, sign your comment so's that someone will see your question.

Next, don't abbreviate if you want a swift answer OYWNGACRFM.

It took me a bit to figure out that RST6 means Ruger Standard 6".

Good news!  I figured it out and I can happily declare that all pre-A100 guns take the same stocks regardless of barrel length.  Triple check that your Standard isn't an A100 before you order!

I got my nice walnut examples from Numrich.  At the time of posting, they still had no-logo walnut stocks for the Standard for about $32.  And some more expensive options too!

I posted when I did it back in 2013, but it seems unreasonable for everyone to remember that.  Especially since it took me near an hour to find the post and see that I did not link to the actual parts!

Alternate .22

Because I has very upset with Bill Ruger, both senior and junior, for a very long time I tended to avoid Ruger products.

That did not keep me from shooting rimfire!

 

The rifle is a 1938 made Remington 341A Sportsmaster that my grandfather on Mom's side bought new.

He was a hired farm-hand and got extra money shooting rats in corn cribs and silos in Missouri and Iowa.  It's one of three guns he left me when he died.

The damn thing is still a tack driver and will shoot .22 Short, .22 Long and .22 Long Rifle.

25 yards with all 15 rounds of .22LR!

I've talked about the Challenger recently, and I prefer it to the Ruger Standard by a wide margin.

But the Ruger Standard / Mark series is the gun to beat when you're making a .22 pistol, and the Colt was driven out of production by it!  Several objectively better guns were, in fact.

Leave The Hands

 Morons try to destroy a Monet this time.

I can cure this.

You leave whatever they glued to whatever where they glued it when you take the rest of them to jail.

They can have medical treatment once they've paid the fines.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go burn a tire to aid their efforts at reducing carbon emissions and oil consumption.

Considering I can get the tires for, essentially, free; I can counter protest a LOOOOOONG time.

Improved But Not Fixed

The passenger side outer tie rod is replaced on The Beast.

Of course, the driver's side is fucked too.

Marv even mentioned that I should order them both at the same time.

He was very gentle with his, "I told you so."

For some reason ordering the driver's side was $21 cheaper ordering it today than it was on Wednesday.

I ordered inners too.  Just in case.

There's nothing complicated about this work.  It's almost relaxing after the battles with wheel-hubs on Moxie.

Ruger Day

Today is 10/22 with an extra 22 on the end.

So I am reusing an old picture of Harvey's 10/22 with an extra 22!

You DO have a Ruger .22 of some sort, don't you?

I think it's mandatory.

That Can't Be Good

 

A buddy of mine had a birthday, and wanted to waste it at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino.

On our way from dinner to the tables, I spied this.

Betcha you didn't know slot machines ran on Windows 7!

There was an irate customer staring at it.

Can't say I blame him.

I've seen a screen similar to this one before, it's survivable, but you just lost what you were working on.

I'm assuming the irate customer was up in his game when it crashed.

Bold Move Cotton

Charlie "Suntan" Crist's campaign manager, Austin Durrer, just resigned to tend to a "family matter".

Unrelated, probably, Austin Durrer was arrested for domestic violence.

I have to say, calling answering to a domestic violence charge a "family matter" is fucking bold.

It's also telling how they feel about domestic violence victims, isn't it?

On Frequency

When I called using a shoulder holster as "arm pit carry" some of you took me literally.

You've got to get on my wavelength here and tune into the snark as intended.

I am not Thag the accurate contract science writer guy.

I deal in truths, not facts!

Uh...

LOOK!  A MONKEY!

At any rate two things come from a comment by Bartholomew.

First is I am not wearing my holster all the way up in my arm pit, nor is it dangling around at belt level.  Those two locations get in the way doing other things.

It's at the height suggested in the comment, and has been there for 11 years.

That's where it feels natural to me, glad I guessed right.

Second is the speed of presentation.

I don't think that it really matters if you get your head out of your ass and pay attention.  Be a little paranoid and you will spot those out to get you.

My unscientific observations make me think that if the draw time matters, you're already behind the curve in the victim selection timeline and that's exactly the wrong place to be.

I think you should be alert enough that the response is, "oh dammit," instead of, "FUCK!"

Circumstances don't always work out that way, but it has been working for me for a long time.  I don't remember if I've noted all of them here, but one time in Wal Mart stood out.  Here and here and here are good examples.  The last one being were I was being a bit clueless.

Tie Rod

The Beast has a wheel shake in gentle right hand turns and sometimes under hard braking.

All signs point to a worn outer tie rod end.

Going Moog!

Should be here Saturday.

Ah, the joys of a used car.

Corollary

"Do not trust safeties."

It gets quoted over and over.

Like any mechanical device, a safety can fail.

But the overall lesson has been lost in the repetition.

They don't fail in the holster, they fail when you're pulling hard on the bang switch with your booger hook!

I'm willing to bet that the most common safety failure is it simply being disengaged unintentionally followed by an unexpected bang.

I've seen guns where the safety was decorative from being worn out.

I've read about a couple of designs where disengaging a worn safety could result in a bang.

In both cases, if you're aligned with what you want to shoot before disengaging the safety or pulling the trigger, you're golden.  Surprised, but safe.

I've heard about guns firing with the safety engaged and the brute ape strength of the firer breaking the parts keeping the gun from firing; resulting in a bang.

Again, if you're following the rules this will result in the bullet going down range and not into something you want to keep.

Some of the worry makes me think that we've got a hindmost hiding in the bushes and the safety of Pierson Puppeteers is the goal.

We need to work harder, we do live perilously close to an asteroid field.

Almost Normal

The nail is almost normal again.

 That didn't take long at all.

Three weeks ago.

From an injury two months ago.

Arm Pit Carry

It appears that I have never actually written up my experiences with carrying in a shoulder holster.

If you search you're going to find three Galco models are my main experience.

All put the gun facing aft under my left arm pit.

Yes, I am sweeping everyone behind me.

With the trigger guard completely enclosed by the holster.

The first thing you have to get comfortable with is the idea that your gun isn't going to go off unless you put your booger hook on the bang switch.

It just isn't.

Any gun that will isn't safe to load.

Arm pit carry has a bonus in that it's not natural to be fondling the gun.

The draw is where the instructorati give spontaneous creation of kittens.  Like gun grabbers, the instructorati live in a world were potential energy equals kinetic energy; where can is synonymous with will; where P 0.01 is rounded up to P 1. 

I'm still waiting for the citations showing more people shot (including themselves) by someone drawing from a shoulder holster than other forms and the severity of the injuries.

You're bringing the gun around 180° and likely sweeping friendlies to do so.

Don't engage the booger hook and/or disengage the safeties until you've got a sight picture.  Lift your weak side arm over the gun so you don't point right at your radial artery.

Pretty much everything about getting your gun out of appendix carry applies here with regards to not shooting yourself, and your gun is pointed less at you the whole time.

The way to make sure you're doing it right is to practice your draw.

You will not find a public range which will let you.  It's rare to find a range that will let you practice drawing from strong side OWB hip.

So unload the gun and practice on the mirror or television.  Get in some dry fire practice too. 

What works best for me is a twisting deal with my weak arm up and weak hand on my strong shoulder turning at the waist as my strong hand grabs the gun; pulling it and the holster around my torso to get the gun more in line with the target.  Now I unsnap the thumb-break.  Then I twist my torso back during the draw and present the pistol.  This reduces the out of holster sweep to less than 35° and leaves the trigger enclosed until the very end.  It also points the muzzle at the bad guy early so that if I needed to I could pull the trigger and fire through my shirt if the ranges have closed faster than desired.

It looks awkward, but it's not.  It's slower than several other forms of draw too.

Gotta keep better situational awareness, I guess. 

With all that out of the way...

A shoulder holster puts the weight on your shoulders.  Where the straps cross puts pressure on your neck.  It takes a little getting used to.

The gun is in the same place standing or sitting.  It is not masked by seat-belts or center consoles.  It is not pinned under your beer belly.

No part of the gun is being shoved into a tender spot.

Spare ammunition is handily balancing out the weight of the gun on the strong side.

This is not legal advice.  I am not a lawyer, let alone your lawyer.

Do not not try this at home, even if I said, "try this at home."

Not a guarantee.

I For One Am Shocked

My first day of carrying the M&P 9 Compact was exactly the same as carrying any other gun in a Miami Classic.

Uneventful.

It was the first time I toted in a shoulder holster in The Beast, which was also uneventful.

I need to remember to adjust a bit before I set off, the seat tends to push the center of the back joint up a bit.  The same as Moxie, actually.

Recycling

We've accumulated a few military crates over the years.

The Lovely Harvey decided that she'd moved one of them out of her way once too often!

Now it's a table!

With storage:

These hairpin legs come in about ten heights, we're thinking of making more end-tables out of some of the other boxes.

DeSapointed

Apparently a DeSantis campaign event is banning the attendees from carrying.

Ann Stone appears to be utterly stone deaf with regards to the objections being raised about banning guns from the event.

It would appear that the rules for the governor attending create an illegal situation with regards to the venue.

The cops say and the law says are different things.  Again.

Considering that gun owners with carry permits are, by far, the most peaceable and law abiding demographic in the nation, Ron's got very little to fear from someone who's legally carrying.

Yet, it would appear that someone is being paranoid.  Again.

It's not a good look for a pro-gun governor to put such restrictions on attendees and for his campaign manager to ghost requests for comment about it.

While I might not vote FOR Suntan Charlie, I can be convinced to stay home and not bother voting.

Gods I am getting sick of this kind of shit.

Especially when I've stood less than a yard away from Bobdole and Phil Graham with a loaded shotgun.

We gun owners are very safe to be among.

Someone should remind the politicians of that before we decide that if we can't be trusted with our guns, they cannot be trusted with our votes.

Though I strongly suspect that this is FDLE and their "only cops should have guns" attitude on display rather than something the governor's office generated.

But I won't know that until his campaign manager breaks silence.

Dungeon Dwelling The Golden Age Of Piracy And You

If you look at the weapons list for D&D you get the whole panoply of medieval/renaissance martial toys.

If you look at what pyrates were using, and why, you notice that the main weapons are rather short.

A cutlass is a short sword.  A boarding ax isn't a big ax at all.

It makes sense, the deck of a sailing ship is fairly tight quarters and below decks even tighter.

What's this got to do with dungeons?

The tight quarters.

You aren't swinging that halberd in a confined space.

The key word in archery is 'arch'.  Your range will be limited because you can't elevate the shot without hitting the ceiling.

That it took me this many years to notice...  As noted philosopher Groo The Wander once said, "What did he mean, 'slow of mind?'"

The Nazis Have One Thing Going For Them

There's nobody out there saying that "nobody has tried REAL Nazism."

Out in Portland, someone decided to finally deal with a homeless encampment.

https://katu.com/news/local/destruction-at-the-big-four-corners-natural-area-portland-oregon-camps-cleared-homelessness-homeless-trash-environmental-impact#

There was no government inside the camp.  Just what the homeless put up for themselves.

It was libertarian.

Or is the preferred term still anarchy?

In the forum I found that link I noticed people trying to distinguish libertarianism from what was going on in that camp, "that's not REAL libertarianism!"

They are correct.  REAL libertarianism is just as workable and realistic as communism.  Utopia cannot be achieved.

Inside the boundaries of that encampment, the libertarian ideal was in place and running...  Exactly as well as I expected it to when I compared what people like L Niel Smith sold to human nature.

There's so many great ideas that don't expand well past the monkey level.

I will concede that it wasn't real libertarianism.  The fact that there was so much stolen property inside the borders says that someone wasn't using the non-aggression principle.  Or were they?

As I recall, you can do back what was done to you and many homeless in these camps are nursing grievances.  "I stole that because society stole from me!" is kind of a libertarian response.

"BUT THAT'S NOT HOW IT'S SUPPOSED TO WORK!" the libertarian in the comments will say.

True.  But that's how it DOES work when you try it with real people.

PS: Notice how the news article doesn't call them "homeless" but "campers"?  There's the real problem.

Fingers Crossed

Beeper knocked my laptop off the stool it sits on next to the bed.

While nothing but the bezel around the screen popping loose appeared to be wrong, the mouse started acting erratic and the drive started hitting a lot.

A reboot did not cure it.

Rebooting to Win7 from Ubuntu showed that it was worse in Windows.

Did a complete, battery out shut down and reseated both hard drives and the RAM.

Booted smoothly to both Windows and Ubuntu.

I think I dodged the "new computer" bullet.

I will have to make sure that the computer is all the way centered on the stool from now on, I think it was half off and balanced on the bed and when she jumped up, like she's done a million times...

Eyes crossed!

Being Silly

In an earlier post I joked about Kijiro Nambu copying Bill Ruger rather than the other way around.

Ruger certainly got more mileage from his version.

I'm quite fond of my 1957 made Standard.

It pairs well with Bill's other .22, perhaps the most successful design ever made.

Though the older (and for me cheaper) Challenger shoots better.

I've never had much use for .22LR.

It's just not something that grabbed me like it seemed to grab others.

It might have something to do with my getting into guns just as NATO was completing their transition to 5.56 and the end of The Cold War.

Surplus ammo seemed almost as cheap as .22 then.

Winter Is Here!

It's Hawaiian shirt weather starting tomorrow!

Packing my lightest ensemble in Miami Classic yet!

 

M&P 2.0 Compact 9 with two spares.

Just 3 lb. 13.6 oz.

Lewis Gun

I've long loved Issac Newton Lewis' invention.

The first time I noticed it was in a western of all damn things.

Probably The Professionals, I don't remember the movie much at all.

It's just a neat looking gun, even if the cooling system is pretty much worthless.

It's operating system begets both the FG.42 and the M60 machine gun.

Surprisingly, I've never made a character who had one, except that one SE.5A pilot.

Someplace I have stats made up for the .30-06 M1913 which the US would probably have bought had Crozier not so hated Lewis. 

Watching Peaky Blinders is making me want to make a character with one.

I have that Prohibition with magic setting that I never got players for...  Might fit there.

I wonder what would have become of the BAR if the Lewis had been our LMG from before we got involved with The Great War.

Free Batteries

I ordered a charger for my camera's batteries because the one I had was the only device I had which used micro-USB instead of USB-C like everything else.

For the price, I was surprised to find batteries in the box from Amazon.

I don't object at all.

Just surprised.

I wonder if they're any good.  They say they have more mAh than the OEM batt.

Shockingly Recent

Three things that impede the economy by creating compliance cost without returning benefit.

Department of Education: 1979, Carter.

Department of Energy: 1977, Carter.

Environmental Protection Agency: 1970, Nixon.

Jumping off the gold standard, also Nixon, probably did not help.

But none of these agencies would be much bother at all if we were able to end and prevent corruption in our elected officials.

Carts Push Horses

With the losses of records resulting from the destruction of WW2, we will probably never know why Kijiro Nambu tried to scale up Bill Ruger's .22 pistol to an 8mm centerfire design.

T-72M1

The Chieftan has walked us through the commander's and gunner's station on the T-72M1 via a video game.

It's full of new information that makes me thankful I didn't stop learning.

The gunner's sight isn't what I expected.

There's features present that I didn't have on my tank.

There's features absent that I expected.

I did not expect to find that the TC cannot fire the main gun.

I was not surprised that the night vision was pathetic, they taught us about that in OSUT.

Avoidance

I have not been posting much because I have not been reading the news or other blogs much.

I have enough in my life to be mad and depressed about that I don't need to be finding other sources of it.

Maybe it was from growing up in a hyper-liberal college town that clued me in early to things that other people are just now talking about.

Welcome to the party.

I was Cassandra.

When I was right, I was not believed.

The level of utter stupidity that a hyper-liberal college down generated was epic.

And it spread.

Nobody believed it could, but...

Here we are.

You want to know why science died?

Because the morons in charge of grants didn't care for the advancement of knowledge unless it supported their preconceived conclusions.

No money for research outside an ever narrowing topic of discussion and no experiments which would cause the cash-tap to shut off.

It isn't scientists who make the decisions about where the money goes.  It's politicians, and they've no use for science if it doesn't advance their careers.  The same can be said for many businessmen.  Science doesn't sell.

It's why there's no Bell Labs.

It's why we cannot discuss the war on poverty.

It's why we cannot discuss the war on drugs.

It's why we cannot discuss immigration and the effects of not assimilating the people who move here from other nations.

It's why we cannot discuss the wisdom of letting subcultures hostile to the main culture exist and thrive, despite the constant evidence that allowing it is damaging our culture, nation and economy every day.

I tried to write to get my thoughts out and be informative and, perhaps, guide someone to knowledge if they were open to seeing it.

I tried.

But my little 1,000 hit a day blog doesn't reach many people.

But I get the most hate back from people who'd nominally agree with me, but since I took the wrong route to agreement, my concurrence was invalid.

It doesn't help much to see them cited as experts when they showed they didn't know what they fuck they were talking about several times when they ventured outside their narrow expertise.

Being an expert at one thing doesn't even imply expertise outside that field.

Murry-Gellman-Amnesia is so fucking real it hurts.

Lame

Went to the local gun show Saturday.

If I wanted a Glock or AR at the same price as the local gun shop...

I'd have been set.

Wasn't shit for C&R interest.

Ammo was comparable to the internet sellers including shipping.

Marv was able to get a magazine for his primary carry gun and a buttstock cleaning kit for his Garand.

Triumphant Return

The Lovely Harvey made it to the range yesterday!

It was just 20 shots from the Colt Challenger, but it was something and her groups weren't atrocious.

All part of therapy!

She also expressed glee at the Challenger.  It's a damn fine example of what Colt used to be.

It's amazing what the budget Woodsman can do.

Any Tank Will Do

The subject of old tanks being restored to service reminds me of Twilight: 2000.

There were official game stats for tanks as old as the M48, Leopard and T-55.

Some had gotten upgrades, some did not.

There's even the Romanian M-81, a T-55 sporting a 120mm Reinmetal gun!  This tank never existed.  Romania's actual T-55 developments had a locally developed 100mm gun using the same ammo as the old D-10.

Just as being the one eyed man makes you king in the land of the blind; having a functioning tank in T2K makes you master of all you survey.

Anti-tank missiles are scarce with the combination of having been used to thin the tank herds and the lack of targets remaining.  Why lug the thing around when you most likely aren't going to need it.

I can't recall a single player buying something heavier than a LAWS during the entire course of me GMing it.  Not for 37 years.

But we have had an M1A2 once.  A couple of LAV-75's.  The heaviest armor the players regularly got was a LAV-25.  A LAWS will suffice on a LAV.

It was a hobby of this GM to separate the players from their legitimately obtained armored vehicles through theft, destruction or breakage.  At least once they had to abandon their LAV-25 because they'd run out of fuel and the still had only started perking when a marauder band hit them.

Knowing what I know now, that I didn't know then, was I should have had more light mortars among the various groups and encouraged the players to do the same.

But, like the LAWS being the heaviest "anti-tank" they'd take, the heaviest indirect munition they'd buy was an M203; and even then wouldn't get the best rounds for supporting fires.

I Learned This When I Was Like Six

When someone is doing you a solid, don't actively antagonize them!

Elon Musk has been providing Star-Link services to Ukraine for nada a month.

Apparently some Ukrainian official told Mr Musk to, "fuck-off!"

Mr Musk has, indeed, "fucked off," and is shutting down Star-Link in Ukraine unless someone foots Ukraine's bill.

Bravo, Ukrainian official!  BRAVO!

What's next?  Demanding that Pedo Brandon ship aid packages in designer colors?

DRL Delete

I have disabled daytime running lights on The Beast!

I triple checked to make sure it wasn't illegal.

In Canada, it's illegal.

In Florida, it's legal and as simple as pulling the fuse.

The DRL system runs on its own command from the BCM using its own relay and fuse to run the lights.  It back feeds the normal headlight wiring to turn the bulbs on during the day.

Froggy

The Beast, in an ongoing tradition for the Caprice since 1991, has horrid headlights.

There's a relatively cheap option to add fog-lights.

I think I shall avail myself of this option.

I have asked Marv with his electrical engineering degree and chess club brain to figure out the wiring for me so that I cannot forget they are on and drain the batteries.

Looking at the wiring diagram, it appears doable.

It also looks like I can disable the DRL by just pulling a fuse!

I hate DRL.

Car Guys

Marv and I both remember Hydramatic M16's.

In his case, it was the rifle he signed for.

In my case, it was a rifle in the platoon.

Because all of our M16's were M16A2's, the one I remember had to have been subject an upgrade kit.

I only recall it because I remember saying, "Hydramatic, like the transmission?" 

Yes, like the transmission.

General Motors, Hydramatic Div. made M16A1's in the early '70's same time as Harrington and Richardson.  Mostly to show that we weren't tied to Colt as the sole manufacturer, partially to show Colt they didn't have a monopoly on making them.

I wish I'd known more at the time to make some notes.

An M16A1 converted to an M16A2 wasn't much more than the lower remaining from the original gun.

The "AUTO" marking was supposed to be changed to "BURST" and there were a few ways of doing that.

Selector markings were supposed to be added to the right side.

The buffer, spring and receiver extension were retained, but the entire fire control group was replaced, even the parts which were the same.

The complete upper assembly was replaced.

Probably saved $25 a copy.

Three Year Plan

Shorter than the normal five year plan.

Russia is modernizing some 800 T-62's they've got laying around since Gorby tore down the wall.

Reading what the planned upgrades are, it's nothing that hasn't been done by other nations to their old tanks.

What's unusual is that these appear to be destined to return to Russian service and aren't being upgraded for sale and export.

Returning to service in three years.

Will the Ukraine situation that's driven the need to refurbish these old things be resolved by then?

It makes me wonder.

I'd think that if things were going to be resolved and back to "normal" that there'd really be no need to refurb them and they could return to making their new stuff again.

Or do they expect that things will never go back?

Moar Bruen?

Federal judge blocks law banning possession of firearms with serial numbers removed.

That's sure interesting.  MSN link in case CNN goes away (they've changed URLs on me before).

Considering that serial numbers weren't even required on guns until the 1968 GCA, it would appear that serial numbers aren't, "consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."

If you can't require serial numbers, you can hardly make it illegal to alter them.

Perhaps in a fraud case when the number is altered to create false provenance, but it does appear that this provision of the GCA is heading for the dumpster.

I, for one, welcome the change.

Style Note

If a dancing monkey's name is spelled correctly here, it's by accident.

I'm shocked that I care enough to mention them from time to time, but that doesn't mean I care enough to bother spelling their names correctly.

One should also consider that misspelling a dancing monkey's name is deliberate.

Intentional disrespect.

Especially for anti-gun dancing monkeys.

Says?

You'd think that one thing you'd learn in journalism school is how to use tenses in a sentence.

"Paul Neuman says..."

Paul Neuman be dead.  Paul Neuman SAID.

He not be sayin' nothin' no more.

M7/M9 Universality Check (Continued)

I swear I'd checked before, but...

The M7/M9 holster will fit a S&W model 59.

This is not unexpected.

Triple K

Got two Triple-K magazines for Willard's Astra 600/43.

Well, Willard got them and had Marv drop them off.

I don't know if they feed yet, but...  Both will hand cycle snap caps.

Magazine 1 will not insert on a closed slide when empty.

Magazine 2 will, but will not engage the slide lock.

I also checked and the M7/M9 holster is still the king of universal fit!

 

Labeled

 This is nowhere near the worst thing I could think of to label my floppy-coaster.

I thought of several things that fell under the 4-rules of funny that Mr Fleetwood came up with under the "You had to have been there," rule.

Storage Problem

Converting Dottie over to a KE Arms KP-15 lower presents a snag.

It will not fit in my M12 rifle rack.

I really need to get this thought out of my head.

As much as I would like to support KE Arms here, I just don't need to change Dottie.

I don't need to take parts from the bin and revive having a second 6.8 AR.

I don't need.

Got a serious case of the wants, but no needs.

Needs got taken care of some number of guns ago.

Not A Good Look

 

It would appear that a lot of people have decided that a payment processor shouldn't be in the opinion business.

As PayPal strays farther and farther from facilitating payments fewer people think they're trustworthy.

What they are doing in essence is being McDonalds complaining that the trucker who hauls their frozen meat uses Goodyear instead of Firestone tires on the truck.

The brand of tire has no effect on the meat quality or how McDonalds prepares it.

It's not something that matters, so they shouldn't be involved, yet...

Here we are.

No More Donations

PayPal has decided to be idiotic about their terms of service, so I have decided that I cannot, in good faith, continue to have an account with them.

A contract which is only binding on one party and can be amended at will by the other is not a contract, but the courts are not fixing it.

All one can do is not do business with them any longer.

I am open to suggestions to replace that donation button with a different service.

It Doesn't Make It Make More Sense

"Maiden America" is two words.

It can't be what was said in context, but neither can trunalimunumaprzure be parsed.

Do You Know What A War Is

Reading about Russia's response to their bridge getting blown up by... someone.

Probably Ukraine, but they've never seemed to be the suicide bombing sort.

Doesn't matter.

Vlad, transportation infrastructure is a legitimate target.  Roads, railways and bridges are valid.

Every time something like this happens, he seems shocked that Ukraine could attack targets outside Ukraine.  Like it was off limits or something.

Volodymyr, energy production and distribution infrastructure is a legitimate target.  Power plants, power lines, pipelines, POL storage, etc. are valid.

That Russia did not attack such things for so long is probably related to their thinking they'd be owning it soon and, thus, didn't want to spoil it.

Now that it's increasingly likely they won't own it, and might even lose what they'd gained or more, there's no reason for Russia to avoid breaking the stuff.

The Press.  Shut up.  You're as qualified to opine on this as you are to perform gene-splicing.  ie: not at all.

Got My Anchor Baby

The Lovely Harvey is a non-Dawes Blackfoot.

We're celebrating Columbus Day, not Indigenous People's Day.

She happens to like air conditioning and electricity, which her ancestors were unlikely to have developed without the colonization of their native lands by... other native American tribes before Chris hit the Caribbean.

The truth is that there are more native Americans alive today than at any point before Europeans moved in.

I am not saying that the colonization of the US was an unalloyed good, but everyone here is better off for it having happened than without.

Were people only able to see it as a crucible moment where they come out better and stronger than when they went in, there'd be a lot more peace.

I should reiterate that thought next February.

Limit Three

I have joined the fray of Lego Star Wars army building.

I've long collected Clone and Storm Troopers.  I relate to them.  I hear this is somewhat common with veterans.

For the most part, I've been getting Phase 2 clones, but mostly in twos or threes from different battalions.

Phase 2 clone troopers have their armor marked to denote their unit.

L->R 187 Btn, 212 Btn, 501 Btn, 332 Co of 501 Btn.

To date, I've mostly gotten 501 battalion guys because I bought four of the 501st battle packs.  I have 12 regs and 4 jump troops.

I have not opened three of those sets.  Lego tends to appreciate.

I had a distinct lack of the Phase 1 clone troopers.

I had 4 of the old design from the first version of the AT-TE.

I got two with another set, but I can't remember which.

But Lego gave an exclusive Lego store pack with an NCO and two regs per pack, limit three per purchase.

It's taken a year to get six sets.  Army builders are buying them out as fast as Lego is making them.

 

My original intent was to populate my AT-TE with a phase 1 crew.  The current AT-TE came with the 212 Battalion Phase 2 troopers.

I need 6 regs and 3 crew for that.  I figure I can make the NCO's the crew!

If I stay Phase 2, I can use the 501st guys for that.

It's nice to have choices.

Fotografik

Moon through tree limbs.

 

Looking back at my old pictures of Dottie I am struck at how far my photography skills have advanced over the years.

I can see, clearly, how far I have to go to get where I want, but it's nice to see that I have been making progress.

It is not hurting me that I'm five cameras better than when I started.

That improving technological advancement aided my photography "skills" is exactly what technology is for, in my mind.

My first digital camera was a wedding gift from Aunt The Bat and was really quite horrid.

The Kodak DC3200 was fixed everything and took under and over exposed shots with equal aplomb.

I inherited Mom's Casio QV-R40 and got zoom and more pixels.

Then the Canon Powershot S5IS, then Powershot SX20IS and now the EOS M50.

Every time more pixels and better software to run them.

But even then, I had to learn to set things up to take the picture I wanted and not just get whatever.

Learning about light.

Learning about shutter speed.

Learning about depth of field and how to use the aperture settings.

Learning ISO and exposure...

Learning.

It's fun too!

It's also been a lot more fun with digital than with film because of instant feed back and not having to pay for film or developing.

Happy Good Commie Day!

Today is Dead Che Day!

55 years ago, Bolivia showed us how it's done.

Treat your favorite commie to a ride with Pinochet Helicopter Services!

2" Isn't So Bad

Doing my normal reading and surfing on the various gun fora and stumbled across someone worried that they're not a good shot because they just plopped a $1,200 ACOG on their AR and their groups, while better, are just 2" at 100 yards.

The reassuring thing, for me, is that an AR shooting 2" groups at 100 appears to be decent with J-Random barrel and over the counter ammo.

Valentine's mil-spec barrel from Brownell's is in the J-Random category.  As is nearly everything that Palmetto sells.

Better barrels are readily available and often not a great deal more expensive.

Brenda and Valentine represent a different philosophy in barrel selection.

Valentine needs to look like an M16A4, that dictates profile and finish.  From what I've read; the barrel I selected is one of the better ones fitting that bill.  It also occurs to me that it's hardly even broken in.  Prolly fewer than 100 rounds total so far.

Brenda was built being very budget conscious.  Sure, for a bit more I could have gotten a Faxon tube that reviews well...  But that doesn't fit with the Behind Every Blade of Grass concept of lightweight at an affordable price.

The poster did not mention trigger, but the basic milspec trigger will hamper attempts to tighten your group.

Dottie has a LaRue MBT trigger in her and it makes small groups easy.  Of course, she has a match-grade barrel and expensive match-grade ammo.  There's not much "range fodder" available for 6.8 SPC if you're not a reloader.  She also shoots just under an inch-and-a-half for me at 100.  And it most assuredly IS me.

I need more trigger time.  As little as gets done, I seem to take all damn day doing it.

Shuffling

Dottie is not wearing the lower that I first made her with. 

She's a gun I learned a lot about AR's with, so naturally she's seen a lot of changes.

Her original lower is now part of Alice, FuzzyGeff's mid-length carbine.

The Arfcom FLHTF lower from Spike's Tactical is her current lower.  A very rare novelty lower.  One I intend to keep.

 

But...  Dottie's a pig and I keep fighting to put her on a diet and the pounds keep creeping back on.

An OD KP-15 lower keeps the green theme, takes a pound off her and sends some much needed money to KE Arms to help them fight GWACS' stupid frivolous lawsuit.  (Don't forget to use code DEFEND2A25 with your order!)

Musical Lowers

Ever want to just change the novelty lower from one gun to the next?

I'm half considering shuffling some around.

I'm 1/200th considering dropping the $130 on getting an OD KP-15 lower for Dottie.

That means the FL Home Team Forum lower will have to migrate; I intend to keep that one in service.

Adding a lower means that there will be a spare.  Not sure which one.

Beer Run

Apple TV has done good.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever is excellent.

Check it out if you have the means. 

Pairs well with PBR.

1.05

When wrenching, there's lots of things you can do alone.

There's things that require more than one person.

Sometimes that second person doesn't do much, but provides the feather's touch to get the job done.

I was that feather for Marv tonight getting the upper control arm out of his Impala.

Actually, we got the new one in too.  Snugged but not torqued.

Ewwwwww

Our big torch that we use to light the bonfires wouldn't light the other night.

Marv noticed that the gas was coming out the aeration holes up by the valve.

He surmised that it must be clogged.

I decided to find that clog.

I did.

An anole had crawled all the way up to the aeration holes and become lodged there and died.

Because you cannot disassemble the damn thing, I had to drag the poor thing's corpse out through those aeration holes one teeny, icky, part at a time.

Blech!

Epic Timing

We noticed that the internet was down.

Just shifted gears and watched movies on local media and read a book.

What I did not notice was my phone had decided to take vacation.

Until I'm sitting here wondering, "FuzzyGeff always calls on Friday night..."

Without the internet I couldn't remember the combination of button pushing to reset the phone until...

This morning when we had internet again.

Technology rocks.

Well Dangit

This might be a good day vs bad day deal but:

Brenda at 100 yards with a 1x scope:

Valentine at 100 yards with a 5x scope:

Considering that Brenda was made with severe budget constraints to prove out the "Behind Every Blade of Grass" idea and Valentine was top shelf, I am disappointed.

Or impressed at the deal that the Freedom barrel from PSA, bought at a complete upper, is compared to the genuine milspec from Brownell's.

Progress

The Lovely Harvey is definitely on the mend!

The orthopedic doc is happy about how the appliance is doing and impressed with the range of motion he can manually move her arm in.  He indicated surprise at how much movement she has.

That's an indication of how bad this injury was, I think.

Physical therapy continues apace.

Progress is solid and visible, she's gone from 28° to 46° range of motion in just a month of PT.  86° is normal.  The ortho doc says she should get about 80° by the time she's done!

That's the nature of the appliance.  They're much simpler joints than the natural shoulder.

She is technically capable of driving herself now, but she's not until she recovers some strength in that flipper.  A short test drive showed that road bumps can overcome the strength she has in that arm and she feels that could lead to a loss of control.

However, she's now cleared to begin strengthening exercises at PT starting tomorrow.

More pain!

But definitely gain.

Could Be Worse

Moderating the spam doesn't take much time here at The Abode of McThag.

The system is pretty good at flagging it and I, mostly, never see it.

I spend more time deleting the content of comments where the author neglected or forgot to sign their post.

Even so, most of you seem to have figured out how to make your comments stick.

Moderating the comments has also led to some wry amusement for me.

A couple of readers decided to hit the size limit in the comments section and after being informed that their future comments would be scrutinized more fully than previously... they stopped trying to comment.

Greek Poets most affected.  I am not sure anyone noticed, but he has successfully commented here after special scrutiny was placed upon him.  He just doesn't make comments which fit as posts on his own blog better any more.

As it should be.

If I wanna rant, I rant here.

It's what this place is for.

Tortured Logic

Polk County, Florida recently lost a deputy during the service of an arrest warrant.

The suspect hid in her home, and when discovered, produced a soft-air replica that sufficiently resembled a real gun to elicit gun fire from the two deputies in the house.

She was wounded.

But since Rule 4 will not be ignored, the deceased deputy outside the trailer was struck and killed by one of his fellow deputy's bullets.

The suspect they were there to arrest is now being charged with 2nd degree murder.

The laws which charge a suspect with everything bad that happens while trying to arrest them is the most "that makes sense in the most what-the-fuck-over way".

It makes sense that you want people to surrender peacefully, so being charged with everything is an incentive to do so.

It doesn't make sense because the suspect didn't even have a weapon that could fire lethal ammunition.

As the sheriff says (paraphrased): Everyone in that home was a felon, with long histories, all she had to do was surrender when they knocked and she'd only be charged with the things she'd allegedly actually done.

On the flip side, this sort of law creates a perverse incentive for the police to be reckless.

A cop rushing to join the pursuit can t-bone a family in a mini-van without personal, legal, consequences because the suspect being pursued will be charged.

Something of the sort has already happened.  A cop rushing to join a pursuit t-boned another cop doing the same thing.  One was killed, the other severely injured and the suspect, miles away, was charged for some level of murder.

However...  I'm just not seeing this additional charges thing affecting people whom I wish to continue sharing air with.  If a murder charge over the death of a deputy who was shot by the other deputies trying to arrest her finally gets her in jail for good.  Good.

But I sometimes think that two massive upheavals in our laws would fix the problem better.  We can even leave the criminal is responsible for all the bad shit that happens arresting them in place, but my suggestion will lead to fewer situations where it will matter.

First we stop with all victimless "because it's good for them" laws.  Someone wants to commit slow suicide with crack, let them.  Crack is only expensive because it's illegal and that high cost leads to them stealing everything not nailed down to buy more.

Second we institute truth in sentencing.  The time you're sentenced to is the good time.  You get a year, you serve a year if you're a model prisoner.  You're a bad inmate, your bad days don't count.

Hand in hand with this, once released they are done being punished for the crime.  They return as a full member of society with all the rights associated with being a free citizen.

If we really want them punished for life for what they've done, then we should imprison them for life.  If not...

Duck Dice Ooh Ooh

 

Got my polyhedral set in it's decorative tin today!

Added my 6d6 from before and subtracted one d6.  We've a local coffee shop named "White Duck" and they have a collection of duckies on their drive through window.  We're going to give them a d6 for that collection!

For most of the dice, when a 1 is rolled, the duck is upright.

This is true for the percentile dice in a fun way.  The 0-1 die has it upright on 1, the 00-99 die has it upright on the 00.  Thus, 00 and 1 make a roll of one and both ducks are upright!

The duck is upright on 20 with the d20.

The duck is never upright with the d4.  He's upright with the 1 point facing down, so he's upside down on a roll of a 1.  I think they're saying that the d4 is just weird.

Metal

Who else has noticed that there's a few new pistols with metal frames?

SIG makes an aluminum frame for the P320.

S&W makes the M&P 9 with an aluminum frame and the all new CSX.

FN's High-Power is aluminum.

Is this a trend?

Especially since the aluminum framed versions compare favorably with their plastic polymer counterparts in mass.

The Future™ is an exciting place to be.

Tubby

Commenter JKing hit on something.

FN's High-Power isn't competing with the old Hi-Power.

It's competing with...  Every other 9mm being made, or ever made.

They specifically mentioned girth.

If your new gun is bulkier than a Beretta 92, you've kind of failed.

Your gun has to be as good or better than the gun to beat.

When the Hi-Power was introduced, it was the gun to beat.

Beretta did that with the 92, then it was the gun to beat.

Glock supplanted the 92...

The SIG 320 might be on its way to being the gun to beat with it in so many law enforcement holsters and its adoption by Big Mil.

Many designs reach equivalence to the gun to beat, they're real contenders, but they tend to be "also rans" than becoming the gun.  My M&P 9 is in this category.  It tends to be the striker fired polymer gun you get when, for some reason, you don't want or can't have a Glock.

The M&P almost made it to being the gun.  There was a lot of Kool-Aid being distributed by a lot of bloggers back when.  Then, one day... Back to Glock.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Glocks.  I tend to like them better than the M&P, but I got outvoted in the standardization meeting.

I am considering getting a new rig to pack Glock this winter.  The Glock 45 would be just dandy in a shoulder holster...

But I digress...

Something that often is forgotten about guns is they don't have to be brutally functional things.  They can exist simply to delight the owner.

Nostalgia fueled more than one purchase sitting in the safe.

Delight is why there's so many .25's in there too.

My M1873 Artillery model has no practical purpose than to make my happy neurons fire.

The new High-Power might not beat the best gun out there in any objective manner.  That might not be the goal at all.

Sadly, FN has an alarming tendency to make a good gun and then drop it after a very short period of time.  Kinda like a European Ruger in that regard...

Kilobuck pricing will keep my happy ass away from them.  It's why my OGHP is an ex-Israeli police gun.

I am most at risk of getting one of those new metal framed M&P's than a new HP.

There's even a small risk of me getting an M17 version of the P320.

But probably just be buying ammo and magazines (and holsters) what I already got.

Getting There

It's almost that time of year when the guns transition out of pocket and into holsters that can be hidden under a shirt you can now actually wear without heat stroke.

Living south of 35°N means that your carry options are severely curtailed, especially in Florida where there's no open-carry option.

I really want that open-carry thing to pass so we can get to a "semi-concealed" level of clothing where it's concealed but will occasionally be seen.

Think how a detective carries rather than a beat officer for what I mean.

I'm waiting for the people who live up where it snows to come down here and try their summer carry in OUR summer.

We call your summers "winter" here.

I Wanna So Bad

I ordered some of these:

While I have used real 3.5" floppies as coasters, these are silicone.

I am so tempted to mark them with really inappropriate stuff.

No, worse than that.

NO.  Worse than that.

WORSE.

You're still not there.

Can't Ice Cream Decorating

Sorry for the lack of free ice cream, we're doing Halloween decorating.

It got off to a false start yesterday because the people Harvey trusted to help her do tear down broke some treasured items.

She's no good at being mad at someone who's not present so when I hit a "walk away and calm down" moment, she got to target that anger on me.

We do this.

After a bit we calm down, find the real source of the angst and we press on.

That was today.

We have accumulated so much over the years that we're having to decide what doesn't get used and that means more actual thinking about what's going up.

Marv, as usual, was instrumental in getting things hung up.

We've got a theme going with spiders.

No Nail

I peeled off the hunk of nail that remained from the accident.

Should be normal again soon.

Gun Jeebus Makes Mistakes

He's human, after all.

The OG HP did not use any leaf springs.  They're all coil or wire springs.

Edit:

I make mistakes too!  The sear spring is a leaf spring.  Thanks unsigned anonymous commenter whose post is deleted for not following the instructions!

First Snowbird Sighting

Dear Damnyankee from Rhode Island at the corner;

Florida allows right turns during a red light if it is safe to do so.

When your car and my car are the only visible vehicles... it's safe to do so.