Hmmmmmmmmmm

I find it interesting that we're hearing about how linked, then, candidate Obama is with ACORN now that he's securely president.

Allegations that were made before the election, but the media sat on the story because it was a "game changer".

Interestingly when Mr Kerry was running they printed a completely fabricated story on Mr Bush's service record that was very nearly a "game changer".

But there's no bias. None at all. Nothing to see here, move along.

The Sky Gods Are Angry

This was taken about 1930 yesterday going west on the Courtney Campbell Causeway.

The LG Voyager is not primarily a camera...

Zombie Training Sir

100 yards. 115 gr OTM Match King, mil-spec load. 6.8x43mm Cardinal Arms barrel. Aimpoint Comp M4s.

Dead zombie.

Zombie Targets are hilarious!

It seems especially appropriate to kill zombies with what is called a "franken AR", or a rifle assembled by the owner. Take that Colt!, except that Colt doesn't make a 6.8.

Muzzle Brake is a Medieval by Troy.
Barrel is by Cardinal Arms.
Frontsight/Gas Block is by Yankee Hill Machine.
Handguard is an LT15-9 by LaRue.
Rail Covers, Pistol Grip and Stock are by Magpul.
Upper Receiver, Bolt Group, Buffer Assembly and Receiver Extension are by Stag Arms.
Scope is by Aimpoint.
Rearsight is by Knight's Armament Company.
Lower Parts Kit is by Del Ton.
Lower Receiver by Anvil Arms.

Dottie's On A Diet

I replaced the Yankee Hill Machine YHM-9634 4-rail with a LaRue Tactical LT15-9 4-rail. The new rail is much slimmer, thus easier to grip and just a hair lighter.

Before:

After:

Kevina Is Going Medieval

Troy Medieval flash suppressor that is. Also added a KNS sling mount until the Troy single point mount arrives.

I filled in the text on the lens covers for her too!

Unilateral? Lack Of Debate?

Here's a history lesson.

How many days after the attack on Pearl Harbor (a navy base in a US territory) did it take Congress to declare war on Japan?

ONE.

How many days after the attack on the World Trade Center did it take Congress to pass anything authorizing the use of military force against Afghanistan and Iraq?

3 days for Afghanistan and 400 for Iraq. One year, 35 days is a far cry from not taking the time to debate the issue.

As far as a hasty, unilateral move to war? President McThag would have attacked Mecca on 12Sep01. Islam is at war with us? OK. We're at war with you right back. Those terrorists didn't represent Islam at large? Oh, well, then this will be a short war while you surrender the real people responsible, but until you do, we keep shooting.

Europe is worried about this? OK. Tell them that they have three choices: 1 join in. 2 stand back and let us work. 3 be counted among the enemy. They have until 15Sep01 to decide.

I have a feeling that going all in would have ended this by now.

But I was not and am not the president.

By the way, Iraq had chemical weaponry as late as 1995. We know they used them against Iran and we have credible reports of them using them on their Kurds. The Russians also kindly supplied us with the sales records for the 152mm shells they sold Iraq. Hardly any of those rounds are accounted for. Just because none were found after we invaded it does not mean that none existed.

I also reject the Democratic retcon about this debate. They cited the same erroneous reports then as they decry today.

I reject the current attempt at retcon about their knowledge of what was going on at Gitmo. They got detailed briefings and did nothing to stop it. In fact they continued to fund it. I am sick of the lies and I am sick of them all coming from one party.

Trip To Iowa

I had planned on coming up in July.

I am losing, or have lost, all the enthusiasm for the trip.

Wildlife In The Backyard

Those Carolina Wrens have set up a nest in one of the hanging plants and there are babies.

The camera doesn't like to focus through the leaves into the nest.

Go NASA

Here's a pic from my backyard of the Atlantis launch to go service the Hubble.

Customer Service

Remember this?

I called Bushmaster for an update.

Andrew was much better informed this time. They can be taught, I guess.

This time he told me that they really DON'T stock the post-ban barrels and that they are, and always have been, special order items. They don't change over the production machinery until a minimum number of orders accumulate. He said he didn't know what that minimum was, but the 22 on back-order now was not enough.

I changed my order to the pre-ban version because those are in constant production.

What this means is that the barrel will now have threads on the section that's being thrown away and the front sight base will have a bayonet lug that will have to be cut off and the front sight base will have to be reparked.

Progress of sorts.

EDIT

Tim's comment brought out the following reply, which I decided really deserved to be part of the main post.

Bushmaster makes just about the best barrel on the market. They know it, we know it, we suck it up if we want that quality.

I have refrained from posting a long diatribe about their attitude on the AR 15 forums because I know they have someone who reads there.

The barrel they make at all times is the 16" M4 profile. They make large quantities of the 20" Heavy, 20" A2 Gov't profile, and 16" heavy. They reliably make enough of the heavy profile short barrels and the pre-ban 16" lightweight that the waits are short. Anything else on this page; Link rendered 404 by Bushmaster being bought by The Freedom Group and their reorganizing the web page. is really a special order now.

Before the Obama Panic™ they'd make a run of 100 or so of the low volume barrels and that would last a year or two. Now demand is "what do you have?" and the machines are normally set up to make M4 profile...

I can accept that. It's capitalism, and I am fine with capitalism. What I am sick of is them not admitting what was going on!

Five months of being told, "end of the month". One call that gets close to the issue, that the service people don't have the information to answer the question. Then finally, admission that they are ignoring the orders that they are not already tooled up for because they really don't need them to keep the doors open with people buying all they can make of the stuff I didn't order.

Like Colt, they are going to discover that the people keeping the doors open when the demand was normal was people like me. And we remember shit like this. Colt has done chapter 11 twice because they keep telling people like me to "piss off! we have Government orders!" then when those contracts expired...

The Comment

Hate Crime

I see we've made it more illegal to do an illegal act against someone because they are a member of a specific group.

Do I get a shorter sentence if I murder someone out of love? Is it better if I killed someone who was a member of a group I really respected? Would that be called a respect crime?

I am all about individual liberty. Hate crimes are crimes against individuals, not groups. Hate crime laws are all about elevating the group over the individual. Listening to the people advocating them I wonder if they care about the ethnicity of the victim more than the fact the poor soul was murdered.

For me, it doesn't matter that the victim was black. It matters that they were murdered. The murderer should be punished. For murder. There are several crimes that I think deserve capital punishment, murder is on that list. I intend to execute the criminal, what more can we add to that sentence? I am reminded of the execution of John Wayne Gacy. He was convicted of killing 33 people. His lawyers attempted to delay his execution by claiming that the evidence didn't support some small portion of the convictions, like 5 of them, and a new trial should be convened. The judge essentially said, "We will go forward on the execution of the remaining, uncontested, convictions. Just one would be enough."

He's a murderer! Execute him.

He's a murderer who hated the victim because they were gay! Execute him. Being a murderer was enough.

Preferably the waste of carbon will be ended by swift action of their last intended victim. Saves time and money.

A secondary thing that always bothers me about hate crimes is that it is also thought policing.

I have every right to hate; that does not grant any right or power to do anything against the object of my hate. If I hate blacks, women or gays as long as I keep it to myself I am not hurting anyone. Literally.

We should also consider that the enhanced sentencing provisions and the controversy about them will cause some perpetrators to act where they otherwise wouldn't because of the enhance notoriety that would come with the crime. Punishing the perpetrators of crimes has two purposes, removing the people who do such things from the general population and to deter people from committing those crimes. To create a situation where a criminal is encouraged by the law is irresponsible.

Perspective

Renewed!

I got my, renewed, CCW license in the mail the other day. Good until 2016!

Rail Mount

Kevina has a place to mount a flash-light. This is the bottom half of the dual-rail gas-block that Geff once had on his rifle.

With my her new Surefire X300 mounted, we need to get her one of her own now.

SEALs In Vietnam Observation

In the process of making the 1/35 scale character models I have been reading about how the equipment looked and how it was carried.

The GURPS book has lots of equipment listed that, while it WAS used, was hardly ever used. It makes no mention of how scarce something is, just that it was used at all.

Most SEALs just used the same LBE as the Army and Marines were using. Players, however, gravitate to the things like load bearing vests and special carriers for the radio.

Players also gravitate towards the weird guns. The NWC China Lake pump-action grenade launcher, around 20 made, my group has one. The H&R T223, only ONE documented example of one ever being used In-Country, my group has one. The SEALs loved the M16. Most teams carried M16 or M16A1, the carbine variations were not used near as much, my group has several.

The Stoner Model 63 is famous for being used by the SEALs. There are three versions of the LMG listed in the game. The final version, the Mk. 23 Mod. 0, was the first version to have right hand feed. The right hand feed cured a stoppage called "spin back". The Stoner system, in rifle configuration, feeds from a magazine on the bottom and ejects out the right side, like normal. In the LMG configuration, the receiver is inverted; the ejection port is now on the LEFT side and the feed-way is now on the top. Most belt-fed GPMGs feed from the left, so the guys at Cadillac Gage did the natural thing and fed it from the left too. This puts the feed and the ejection port on the same side of the gun. Spin back is the ejected round hitting the feeding belt and spinning back into the ejection port and being captured by the bolt.

Enter the Mk. 23 Mod. 0; the feed is now on the right side of the gun. An extremely clever box system is developed to keep the belt clean and to make feed smooth. It takes much longer to load than the left side feed so the SEAL gunners convert their guns back to left hand feed by a ratio of TEN TO ONE! They far preferred the risk of spin-back to the seconds lost reloading the new feed-way! It wasn't until there was no longer a war on that the Navy managed to get all of the left-hand feed systems out of the supply chain.

My players are also survivors of the McThag Gamer Training Center where we teach that if there is only one example of a piece of equipment in the party, it will be broken as a plot device. This causes every single player to have an example of every essential item.

Like a lensatic compass. In the real world, just the officers had them, often meaning there was just one in the platoon.

Like a smoke grenade (or two, or three) of each color. Comms and colors were predetermined so that the team knew that red was the color so nobody carried yellow, green or violet.

Like carrying a star flare (or two) of every color...

Then they end up missing things like a couple of LAWS...

And no PC is EVER the machine gunner unless that's the ONLY job left open.

Kevina's New Clothes

The Lovely Harvey, with some prodding from me, decided that Kevina would be her SHTF and EOTWAKI rifle and we would be serious about her.

I changed out the M&A stock for a Magpul CTR-M and ditched the A2 pistol grip for a Magpul MIAD, both in Flat Dark Earth™. We're on back-order for a YHM-5000 Smoothie Carbine Forend, so I got a set of Cavalry Arms carbine handguards in Coyote Brown™.

Here she is without her EOTech 552.A65/1.

And with.

With her sister Cheyenne.

With her partner Dottie.

Because this is the ready-gun, it's more exposed to dust and stuff, so I got her some spiffy GG&G flip-covers for the EOTech.

Not just for Claymores anymore!

WOW!

I ordered some tan 550 cord for The Lovely Harvey's SHTF carbine, Kevina.

I placed my order for just after midnight Wednesday, ship via USPS Priority Mail.

The order was in my mailbox at 3:30 this afternoon.

Optics Planet sent a notification that my package had shipped at 6:30 this evening.

That's NEGATIVE three hours shipping from time of notification!

Who says the post office is slow?

Taxation Without Representation

I was reading that half of the US doesn't pay any taxes at all. I have also read that almost all of the revenue is paid by less than 20% of the population.

It seems to me that those 20% are not being represented very well at all and the bottom half are being represented quite well indeed.

The Difference...

I do come across as a Republican. I'm not really, but it's hard to show much of the time.

I've noticed in conversations with Libtard Lenny that I end up defending the Republican because Lenny's point is based on some aspect of the Republican that's patently not true. Then we end up having a debate about whether it's true or not and it's invariably some subjective perception of character. "Bush is an idiot." "Sarah Palin is a moron." are typical examples. It is a definite indication of his character that he never calls a Democrat an "idiot" or "moron" when they do exactly the same thing that he's using to justify his assessment of the Republican.

He's also called Rudolph Guilianni a Fascist. Mayor Guilianni never glorified the military, seized the means of production or any of a number of other tell-tales. He was extremely zealous in enforcing New York's laws. Strict is the word that Lenny is looking for. I would also like to point out that the laws are generated by the legislature, not the executive. The legislatures are the people to really blame.

I have a short phrase that sums up how I feel about the two parties. "The difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is the difference between being hit in the balls by a sledge hammer and having your balls ripped off. You definitely don't want either, but you damn sure know which you would prefer if you were only given a choice between the two."

I vote R because I think that we can recover from the damage done. I think that they tend to move slow enough that we can possibly even reverse the "progress". Despite his flaws, Reagan managed to reverse some of it. That's why he's remembered fondly. The Democrats move fast, with no thought to the consequences. They tend to make huge changes that are almost impossible to reverse.

Given a real choice, I would not choose either of the two ruling parties.

I Need A Geek Pic...

I was reading the comics online and discovered that Red Dwarf is back on the air. I have not seen many episodes, but I enjoyed what I did see.

One of my favorite characters from Red Dwarf are the Skutters. They are little robotic maintenance drones.

Farscape has a similar bot called a DRD. They'll always be Skutters to me...

Gunner's Mate 1st Class James "Taki" Jensma USN 1968

Dragon messed up the Stoner.  This should be a left feed gun, not the mirror image right feed.  The right hand feed drum is insanely rare, farm more common was left hand feed.  This also represents an anachronism for the character since the right hand feed was not developed until 1969.

Home Improvement Continues Apace

I have a new, stylish, sink in my man-cave bathroom.

Here's Marv being cute with his propane torch.

Radioman Master Chief Petty Officer William Earl Emley USN 1968

Another NPC, he's 1st squad's RTO.  I built this guy straight out of the box with the exception of using an M16A1 instead of the hush-puppy.  I need to make an aerial for the radio, which reminds me...  I need super-glue.

Check out that cord!  What a pain in the rear, it's springy and only sits in one place.

Woo Hoo!

My approved ATF Form 1 arrived today!

The timeline.

Forms Sent: 12/23/08
Check cleared: 01/06/09 (14 Calendar, 8 business days)
Pending Date: 03/05/09 (82 Calendar, 49 business days)
Approved Date: 04/13/09 (121 Calendar, 76 business days)
Forms Received: 04/17/09/ (125 Calendar, 80 business days)

Now I just need Bushmaster to unass the barrel I ordered.

I am now officially legal to make a GURPS LC2 firearm. How many other of you gaming geeks can say that?

Machinery Repairman 3rd Class Mikolaj "Mike" Wodaszak USN 1968

I didn't like the pose I selected for my Mary Sue.  So I dremeled off his kneeling legs and glued on some standing ones.

I Realized Something

Tyler Durden says, "In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway."

In the lifestyle he's describing, he's right, leather clothes will last you the rest of your life. Not because leather clothing is so much more durable than cloth, but because the average lifespan in a hunter-gatherer society is 35. For a sufficiently short lifespan, pink taffeta could last a lifetime.

Oh, the American Indian replaced his clothing annually, or more often.

File Under Best Come Back Is Always Too Late To Sting

Libtard Lenny is experiencing some buyer's remorse about his presidential pick.

While I got to say, "Told you so," about his fretting about gun control he retorted, "I didn't want to vote about just one issue!"

I got distracted by the rest of the goings on and I have thought of a come back. "Since I told you so, and you didn't just vote on gun control, can you shut the fuck up about the one thing I warned you about?"

I may yet get to say it.

I Have Been Approved

I called BATFE today and asked about the status of my Form 1. The nice man on the phone indicated that my application had been approved 13APR09 and should be in the mailbox real-soon-now.

GLAD!

I am officially in the GURPS LC2 weapon club!

All I need now is for Bushmaster to cough up a barrel.

Nancy Pelosi And Gun Registration

Wasn't she just a month ago saying she didn't want any new gun control?

Here's the deal.

WIth registration, the government now has a list of all the guns registered and if you are caught with a gun that isn't you're going to jail.

If a future government decides to ban firearm ownership, they know where to find the registered guns.

If we left it there, it would be theoretical.

Time and time again, the registration lists precede the banning then confiscation of firearms. Most of the governments doing the banning have been less than savory. Quite often the government doing the banning is not the government that put the registration in place. The classic example here is Weimar Germany requiring registration and Nazi Germany banning.

I think a damn good rule of thumb for a government is to ask, "Did the Nazis ever do this?"

California and New Jersey both banned guns that had previously been subject to registration and used the registration lists to ensure compliance. Isn't Pelosi from California?

With a track record like this, why would an honest, law-abiding, gun owner be worried about registration?

Oh, and registration does not stop the sort of tragedy they say it will. Thomas Watt Hamilton murdered 17 people with three registered handguns. These murders were the justification to change registration to banning and confiscation in Britain. While there hasn't been a mass murder like Dunblane since, murders in general are on the rise. Even if the government doesn't go Nazi on you after the gun ban, you will still be less safe. Criminals, by definition, don't obey the laws.

When you counter-point the British experience with the US one it gets even sillier for Ms Pelosi. The US is adding MILLIONS of guns to private hands every year. Yet our murder rates are declining. MANY MORE guns and fewer murders. Conceal carry has gone from a novelty in a few states to being nearly universal; crime rates fell.

The "wild west" scenario never happens. (By the way, Dodge City, Kansas in the "wild west" days was much safer than south central Los Angeles today. Look it up!) Gun control in the old west was non-existent and crime rates were much lower than today, we likely have a perceptual problem because the old west criminal has been romanticized so thoroughly.



Comment:

Obama Pizza Thing

He did indeed fly the chef from Pi Pizzeria to make him and his staff pizzas.

Telling me that he used his own funds does not change why I am ticked off about it.

What ticks me off is flying this guy in is exactly the kind of extravagance that he has said we should be avoiding. Lead by example, SIR. Set the standard by living it.

Otherwise it's do as I say, not as I do.

This goes quintuple for Al Gore.

A secondary irritation is knowing the media would be demanding Bush's head on a pike for such an act where here they insist that it's OK since Obama didn't use public funds.

By the way, since Obama hasn't had a job that wasn't public sector in a long, long time, he spent public money filtered through his paycheck.

Again, I am not upset he had pizza man come to him. I wish I could afford to bring down some Pizza Pit. What I am ticked off about is him and his party telling me I need to cut back on luxuries when he's not.

Customer Service Observation

I ordered a barrel for the XM177E2 project on December 2, 2008. Bushmaster said, at the time, that deliveries were running 6-8 weeks. That put delivery (at worst I thought) not later than January 27, 2009. When I called on the 29th they said that because of the panic that orders were really taking 8-12 weeks, sorry. Grumble. That put the delivery about February 24, 2009. I called then and they said, "about a month" left and I had read that five months was the actual wait, so I waited until today to call.

Guy on the phone says that deliveries are taking 18 weeks from time of order. I said, "Great, then it got here last week! Um, except it hasn't shipped yet, has it?"

"Well, sir, we've been swamped."

"I understand and you have my sympathies, but if you don't know, you should say so."

"It changes everyday because of cancellations and..."

"If you CANNOT know you should say so."

"It would take an hour per customer to..."

"You've spent more than an hour with me total now in four separate calls and I am thinking I am being lied to."

"We can cancel the order..."

"I want the barrel I ordered. I want you guys to be honest about it. I appreciate that you are swamped by the mass of orders since the election but the internet is telling on you. You've dedicated all your barrel production to M4 profiles and you're letting people who want something else dangle. Delivery time on an M4 is 6 weeks. I've read it over and over on the forums. I suggest you open up some non-M4 production before someone sues you. You're listing things on your catalog and website you don't have any intention of making in the timeframe you are promising. A clever lawyer could get me a free barrel that would cost you my (and your) legal fees. At the present rate, I am not sure that going to court would actually delay delivery!"

"We, uh, can cancel the order, we... I'm pretty sure we can get you your order by the end if the month. We're back-ordered on rifles by 180 thousand units."

"I totally understand that your system is overloaded. What I wanted was for you to say so and admit you have no way of knowing when you can fill my order."

"We don't have any way of knowing, with the volume, huge back-orders on our orders, back-orders from suppliers and cancellations how long an individual order will take. It appears that you should have your order by the end of the month."

"Thanks!"

Lieutenant Tom Andrews USN 1968

This is Tim's character.

You may ask yourself, "Why such a big scope?" That's an AN/PVS-2B STANO 'Cat's Eye'. Yes, it's as big as and weighs as much as the rifle it's mounted to.

This figure took more fabrication than both of the other two combined. It was GREAT!

Mandatory group shot!

I'd like to mention that the reason all the figures are right handed is because they came that way. Being right handed, it didn't even occur to me that a character would not be. My bad.

Ensign Carl Dietrich USN 1968

This is Geff's character from my SEALs game.



I think the H&R T223 came out really good. It's like killing your kids to have to do things like cutting the pistol grip off so that it fits the figure's hands. The "smoke" grenades are going to be made into 308-1 grenades, one TIARA marking and one napalm. Because they have identical bodies to the M18 smoke grenades, I decided (for Geff) that this character carries the smoke grenades in an M18 Claymore's bag.

Technically, I think his character was carrying a M1956 LCE Lightweight Rucksack, but I decided to have some fun with it and used a ruck from an NVA figure kit. This was really done, so I don't feel bad about it at all. The floppy hat is also an NVA item. Geff approved that change. Such hats were worn to show the enemy a "friendly" silhouette.

 

Check the S&W Mk 22 Mod 0 "Hush Puppy" tucked in there! I will add a lanyard made from fine wire as I get closer to finished.

SEALs in 1/35

Here is my Mary Sue character; MR3 Mikolaj "Mike" Wodaszak.  I am especially proud of the M3 OSS.  The silencer is home-made and the stock is stolen from the M16 Family kit; it was supposed to be for an M231 Firing Port Weapon.

I am a member of the build then paint school because the glue adheres better with a plastic-plastic joint.  My putty is all dried up, so I need to get more before filling in some of the gaps, especially the left shoulder.

Here is an R607 with the stock extended and a 20 round mag substituted for the 30 that came in the kit.

Edit: I just wanted to insert a pic showing what that R607 started out as.  Adding the "extension" was a pain in the ass to get straight and the correct length.  I also fixed the magazine's length.  The Dragon kit comes with some "loose" magazines you can use as in a diorama or something to show ammo laying around or you can cut a section out and replace a 30 rounder with a 20 as I have done here.  Problem is they are not real clear about where to cut and at what angle...

It's A FACT

Did you know the word "democracy" does not appear in the Constitution of the United States of America?

Nor does any variation of the word, such as "democrat" or "democratic".

Section. 4.

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.

That's the paragraph with the only mention of "republic" in any from.

Interesting!

A Sore Subject

On the left we have a 'clip'.  On the right we have a 'detachable box magazine', or just 'magazine'.

Clips feed the magazine; magazines feed the gun.

I Give You Kevina and Cheyenne

Edit to add: Kevina and Cheyenne are The Lovely Harvey's carbines!

Kevina, top, is a Del Ton 1:7 chrome-lined 16" M4 barrel flat-top, Anvil Arms lower, M&A mil-spec carbine stock and a DPMS LPK with YHM folding sights and an EOTech 552/A65.1.

Cheyenne, bottom, is a complete Del Ton 1:9 chrome-lined 16" Lightweight kit on an Anvil Arms lower with a Magpul MIAD grip, Troy Medieval flash-hider and a late M4 mil-spec stock added.

Macabre And Non-PC Observation

The gunman in Pittsburgh killed three and made a vegetable out of a fourth police officer.

CNN's narrative about the situation paints the shooter as someone who was convinced that the US Government was going to take away his guns so he went on a rampage to stop the confiscation.

That's a 4:1 kill ratio.

If Mike Vanderboegh is correct about the 3% being about three million people willing to shoot back, that means they're going to need about 12 million cops. That's bigger than the Army.

I also think that a good sized hunk of law enforcement and the military will not participate in enforcing a door-to-door seizure of privately held firearms. Oath-Keepers comes to mind.

Most of the 3% are familiar with this:

"During an arrest, you think since you aren’t guilty, how can they arrest you? Why should you run away? And how can you resist right then? After all, you’ll only make your situation worse; you’ll make it more difficult for them to sort out the mistake.

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family?

"Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

The Organs [government agencies] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! We didn’t love freedom enough. Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself."

I've said before, "Never make me choose if it's me or you who dies. I pick you every time."

$5k 10 Guns 1 Hour

http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=7297745&page=1

Not one law broken.

I really hate how they act like what Mr Samaha did was made illegal, but someone forgot to mention private sales at gun shows so while it's technically legal, it was supposed to have been banned when they made it a requirement to have an FFL.

Since he didn't fill out any paperwork it had to have been 10 private sales. If he'd bought from a dealer, he would have had to fill out an ATF form 4473, produce valid ID and wait for the FBI NICS check, and that's just the federal stuff, Virginia might have other requirements. Florida does. In Florida when you buy from a dealer you need to have a concealed carry license or you're waiting five business days to take a handgun home, or three business days for a long gun in some counties.

Private sellers are not bound by these laws. We don't pay sales tax on the sale either! Neener neener!

Some people have drawn some parallels between buying guns and alcohol.

I think that those are very apt.

I don't need a liquor license to hand out drinks in my home. I don't need to check ID. A bar does. They need a liquor license to sell drinks. Is this called the "living room loophole"?

Time Travel

Every once and a while I contemplated time travel and gaming.

We've made ourselves as characters a few times, so I naturally considered what would be the best gun to have if I was 100 or so years in the past. That prompted me to go buy a Colt Anaconda in .45 Colt; just in case a GM dropped us in the Old West.

I've been thinking about it again.

I have some guns chambered in some pretty damn old rounds and some not so new.

I have:
.22 Long Rifle (1887)
5.56x45mm (1963) and I can use .223 Remington (1964) too.
6.8x43mm (2002)
7.62x51mm (1954) plus .308 Winchester (1952) works just fine as well.
.30-06 (1906) but I could use M1903 ammo.
7.62x54mmR (1891)
.303 British (1889 as a black powder round and 1891 as smokeless)

.25 ACP (1905)
.32 S&W (1878)
.32 S&W Long (1896) this can also chamber the .32 S&W mentioned above!
.32 ACP (1899)
.380 ACP (1908)
.357 Magnum (1934) but I can also use .38 Special (1902) and .38 Long Colt (1892).
.44 Magnum (1955) but I can also use .44 Special (1907) and .44 Russian (1870).
.45 ACP (1904)
.45 Colt (1872)

12ga 3" which can take 2", 2 1/2" and 2 3/4" rounds developed from 1866.

Also in the house there's guns that I don't own.
.243 Winchester (1955)

.357 SIG (1994)
.40 S&W (1990)