Curio And Relic

I just registered something...

To be recognized by ATF as a C&R firearm, a firearm must fall into at least one of the following three categories:

1. Firearms which were manufactured more than 50 years prior to the current date, but not including replicas thereof;
2. Firearms which are certified by the curator of a municipal, State, or Federal museum which exhibits firearms to be curios or relics of museum interest; and
3. Any other firearms which derive a substantial part of their monetary value from the fact that they are novel, rare, bizarre, or because of their association with some historical figure, period, or event. Proof of qualification of a particular firearm under this category may be established by evidence of present value and evidence that like firearms are not available except as collector's items, or that the value of like firearms available in ordinary commercial channels is substantially less.

Isn't the present value of every pre '86 transferable because of the Hughes amendment, and therefore derive a substantial part of their monetary value from being rare?

I am tickled that every transferable could be a C&R eligible gun (yeah I know they're doubtlessly ruled as not).

Resemblence

Special thanks to Penny Arcade for this comic.

I've been accused of having an adversarial GM'ing style; of creating killer dungeons.

A good hunk of the perception is the subject matter and I run internally consistent realistic worlds.  Plus GURPS.

In GURPS guns are lethal.  Hard vacuum is lethal.  Falls from remarkably short heights are lethal...

Unforgiving might be a better description of my GM style.  The players claim they love my military games like SEALs and Twilight 2000; and they get killed a lot there.

If magic or ultra-tech is available, PC deaths become very rare.

The most common way to die in one of my worlds is really from me misreading the capabilities of the party.

In the magic Old West I pitted them against a monster that turned out to be a lot tougher than the party and it killed or maimed them all.

In a Traveller conversion I really thought that the one player remaining on the ship could jury-rig something to get the drives re-lit and avoid being shot down by the high port's defenses.

Occasionally I am not the culprit.

In a cyberpunk campaign I allowed Gold-Cross.  Gold Cross is from Car Wars and is resurrection using a clone and a personality copy taken from the person's brain.  In Car Wars all you need is the head.  In the edition of Ultra-Tech we were using, you needed the spine as well.

A PC had been killed by a bad roll against supposedly non-lethal taser rounds.  The party couldn't haul his body around, but remembering that "all you need is the head and a drop of blood..."  Lopped off his melon and carried through the rest of the session.  Only to discover that they'd left behind an essential part...

Unfair Advantage

Once upon a time I noticed that nearly any fantasy trope would work in an Old West game.

So I made an old-west with magic and motored down the well worn fantasy gaming pathways.

This was GURPS 3e revised.

Luck is an advantage that lets you get two do-overs (three total) to any given roll per real world hour.

One of the players had taken Luck and upon using it, would begin stalling for time.  GURPS is not known for speedy play during combat time, so it was relatively simple to burn an hour before his next action came around.  But a ten minute round of one second game time was taking an hour because of it.

He had accomplices to help the stalling and it honestly took me several sessions to notice what he was doing.

So...

He picked a fight with three US Cavalry Troopers.

He used his luck forcing me to reroll one of the trooper's shots that would have killed him.

Since it was their action, I demanded he get on with it.  The accomplices took out two of the troopers and he rolled a critical success to the vitals of the third...

"Reroll," I tell him.

"Why?" he asks.

"He's got luck, reroll."

"He can't have luck, that's a PLAYER advantage only."

"Really? show me in the book."

There is no rule in the book that so states that Luck is a PC only advantage.

He grudgingly rolls and I take the critical failure as his roll.

He's really fuming now.  So I start stalling for time...  He notices, but has a glimmer...  His luck will roll around before my NPC's.  He's gonna win and he knows it.

Thirty minutes after I used my NPC's luck, I stop stalling and it's the NPC's turn.  I roll, miss.  I roll again, miss.  I roll again, critical success to vitals.  Roll damage, PC is dead.

PC is in a rage.  That's not FAIR!  Luck is every HOUR!

Luck, is every hour, true.  Extraordinary Luck, on the other hand is every half hour.

The debate about this takes more than half and hour, and the accomplices fail to kill the lucky NPC because of it.  More stalling on my part gets him his luck roll back in time to off accomplice one.  More stalling and accomplice two fails to end it, yet more stalling and NPC wins the fight.

Rage and hate from all three players.

FuzzyGeff and Standing Bear (an Iowa gaming legend) both step in and explain how they brought this on themselves by abusing the advantage in the first place and didn't seem to mind when everything was going their way.

$5 With WHAT?

A discount for an accidental discharge?

Captain Greene

Related to the players would just space the bitch.

In one of my first conversions of LBB Traveller to GURPS the players rebelled.

They demanded that one particular player, FuzzyGeff, be forced to make a character who was not, "a squeaky clean, law abiding, Eagle Scout."

FuzzyGeff obliged and they made a desperate pirate crue.

Their first haul was a fat noble's yacht.  The crew of the yacht, with the threat of bodily injury imminent, hand over the son of the actual owner.

Changing smoothly and seamlessly from piracy to kidnapping they grab the teen and haul ass before the local patrol cruiser can respond.

To show the dad they're serious, the lop off one of the kid's fingers and ship it off.

The players have less imagination than I do about how to trace a parcel back to its source, so the noble learns where they're hiding and sends a couple of Imperial Navy destroyers to deal with them.

The 200t fast courier is no match for a single 1,500t destroyer (but it can outjump it) so there's much panic among the group.

"We have to let him go!" they wail.  They'll stop to pick him up and we can get to a safe jump distance and escape.

FuzzyGeff, Captain Greene, agrees.  His character grabs the kid by the scruff, tosses him into the airlock and hits the cycle button.  "There, we've let him go!"

I did not omit the step where Green put the kid in his suit...  He skipped it.

"You pushed him out the lock without his suit!?!" the other players, and I exclaim.

FuzzyGeff sighs.  Has his character grab a spare suit, toss it in the airlock and hit cycle.

"There, he has a suit now.  Happy?"

I'm laughing and the players who insisted that FuzzyGeff be forced to break his law-abiding ways are stunned to silence.

Like Totally

Did you know you can plug headphones into an iPod and use it like a Walkman?

I am kind of surprised that line hasn't gotten a, "what's a walkman?" reply.

Of Dogs And Maintenance

Shi Shu heartily approves of windows down driving in the Biscayne.

Of course, something caught his eye and he looked away instead of taking a more photogenic pose.

Cowboy Bebop

In episode 3 4, they capture someone "Twinkle" Maria Murdoc she's got a large bounty.

The bounty is cancelled because their prisoner's terrorist outfit has pressured the government issuing the reward into dropping it.

Jett and Spike are NPCs.

Player characters would shrug and space the bitch.

Why I Am Awake

Our cat is 17.

She's a flight risk because she thinks she should be an indoor/outdoor cat.

With at least three great horned owls in the area, bad kitty planning.

I went to bed at a reasonable midnight for a change and woke up at 4am.

Did I mention she's a must be CLOSE to the human bed hog?

I woke up and there's no cat hogging the bed and pinning my legs.

I search the whole house.

I check outside.

I dispair.

Sometimes she manages to get out and we let her in when we let out the dog.

I hope.

I pop in a movie to calm down from worrying.

She jumps up on the bed.

Someplace in this house she has a secret hiding place!

Confused

On one hand we have people demanding that being gay not matter positive or negative.  Sexual preferences really only matter to the sexually preferred.

On the other hand we have celebrities declaring they are gay with as much fanfare as they can muster.

If it's a neutral condition, then why have a press conference about it?

I mean it either matters or it doesn't.

Right?

Weight

A stripped, low shelf, A2 pattern, semi-auto AR-15 lower receiver is 8.8 oz.

250g in Godless metric.

0.6 lb. in GURPS.

Willard has begun an AR from a bag of parts project.  The lower is the first bit.

We should put every single part on the scale!

Rifle Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III*

I ordered a stacking swivel from Numrich a week ago.

It arrived!

It was the part that the SMLE was missing for the entire twenty years I've owned it.  Finding one has been something of a unicorn.

Of course it was happenstance that led to the purchase.  Willard's $9 91/30 was missing its rear stock screw.  I owe him a favor or three so I went to Numrich looking to buy him that part, the stacking swivel was padding to save on the minimum order charge (or to make the purchase exceed the shipping costs).

It installed like it was made to go there (which it was).

I noticed that my 1916 made SMLE III* is a numbers matching gun.  Dunno know why I never noticed that before.

Vanessa is a grand old dame of 98.

Old Cars

Not really OLD cars, but an article on old nameplates.

The headline was misleading, it made it sound like there were cars that were still in production for decades unchanged.

Nope.

It was cars that still had the same name for decades.

Like the VW GOLF!  The present iteration is quite literally not the same car as when the name first appeared at the dealers.

VW appears several times in the list.  The Passat makes it.  I had a '73 Passat and there's not enough money in the world to get me back into one.  A 2014 on the other hand, I'd be more than happy to own.

The mention the Mustang; but miss the Corvette, F-150 and Suburban?

Checked Again

I double checked and none of the guns at my house shot anyone, let alone killed anybody since I've owned them.

Considering how many of them are surplus military rifles, I really cannot say with any certainty that none of my guns have killed anybody ever.  If the original owner of the 1903A3 is to be believed, several Japanese soldiers met an honorable death at his hands with that rifle.

At any rate, wasn't me, didn't do it in California last week and the same applies to Clearwater Beach yesterday.

The only time I even left the house yesterday was to get The Boy's prescriptions filled and the pharmacy is nowhere near Clearwater Beach...

Bleg

I've got a sick puppy here.

Shi Shu's got an abscessed tooth.  The abscess is the kind that goes up and out through his face instead of down through the gum.

He needs an extraction and we don't have the $350 in hand.  Update: That's on top of the $235 already spent on his annual visit and the diagnosis.

If you stab the donate button it'd really help.

I'd consider it a loan and pay you back within a couple months.  This is a bad timing rather than can't truly afford deal; we'd just completed annual maintenance on the cars and that's eaten the surplus.

Where Are The Travonites?

I read this article.

I guess since nobody died and the shooter is the "wrong" color, nothing to see here.

I wonder what would be the response if he'd actually shot the guy he was warning.

Memorial Day

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free. 

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears. 

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe. 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them. 

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam. 

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night; 

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

I Can't Believe I Can't Find This On The Internet

Adding the AN/APR-25 to several Navy planes was done under Project Shoehorn.

Adding the AN/APR-25 to the USAF F-104C was done under Project Pronto.

Adding the AN/APR-25 to the USAF F-4C and F-4D was done under Project...?

Unbroken Streak

I have not been awake for an Indianapolis 500 for 20 straight years!

I'd watch it if I were up, but...

It's also been brought to my attention that the Andretti's have not won there while they were driving since I was born.  As if I were somehow cursing them as I presently curse Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Six Dead

I promise that if I go on my mass murder spree I will start with the last person; me.

Would that more of these jerks would do the same.

What's the appropriate waiting period before pointing out that the strict gun laws in California did nothing to stop it?

Clearing The Mind

Sometimes you just gotta go for a drive.

Open Carry

Going to try to say this without making a latte look flat and lifeless.

The goal of open carry seems to have two main obstacles.  Direct opposition from the same people who hate that we can own guns at all.  Overcoming the inertia of the people who don't really care and will do nothing pro or con.

I am not privy to the plans at places like Florida Carry as to how they intend to get open carry in Florida; but I am pretty sure it is not Guy in a grubby T-shirt with an SKS --> ??? --> Victory!

The Florida Carry open carry fishing events are swell.  But they're really innocuous.  Nobody notices, which is good in a way, but it really doesn't raise awareness if it's so far into the background that its invisible.

The guys in Texas surely got noticed!  It appears that they did so in the worst way possible without actually breaking any laws.

Getting noticed seems to make the usual suspects from the hate us forever crowd to rally around the flag and do what they're going to do anyways.  Advocate for more restrictions, if not from government; from private parties.

Hoplophobes gotta phobe I guess.

I don't think there's a single national restaurant chain that likes gun owners.  They definitely dislike it when we get our boycott on.

I think that on a corporate level they are aching for something like this to come down so that we cannot claim the moral high-ground about their banning our presence.  Now if we boycott them for asking us to not be dicks we ARE the dicks.  The Texas OC people handed the hoplophobes the photo-op they needed to press their case and take away our footing to oppose them.

I think we need to really REALLY stress that no laws were broken and absolutely nobody got hurt, even if some were uncomfortable being around guns.  The present emphasis on "y'all done fucked us," is fodder for the antis; haven't they been given enough?

The thing is, eventually the objections of those who are uncomfortable around guns will have to not matter and we will have to assert our right to be armed peaceably.  Looked at one way, they cannot be acclimatized to seeing guns everywhere until they actually see guns everywhere.

Gun rights are civil rights and we should not shy away from comparisons to other civil rights groups.  There are a lot of parallels to gay rights and gun rights.  The big mistake that the LGBT people made wasn't in getting in people's faces and confronting them but rather not realizing they'd won and declaring victory.

There.  I hope I presented it civilly and rationally this time (because I sure as hell didn't succeed the previous FOUR times including two that I deleted).

Success!

I wrote up something about open carry, got some outside opinions about it.

My line of reasoning in the post might be completely wrong.  I think I shall do some more thinking about it.

At present I feel.  Not a good place to start a rational discussion.

Happily, having written it and gotten some feed back the URGE to pontificate has been satiated.  It can ferment in the drafts folder for a while while I decide if that's still how I feel when I learn more.

I am but an egg.

Thanks to Tam and FuzzyGeff for bearing the brunt of my "thought" process.

Update: the urge returned, but the message is substantially altered.  I think I see what I was getting wrong now.  I am sure comments will let me know if I erred.

Withered On The Vine

I have a post in drafts about the gunfight in the vacant lot adjacent to the OK Corral.

The take-away is Tombstone's gun ban was mainly a political tool of the Earps to deal with their rivals and not merely a "crime's out of hand we need to do something" law.  Using the law and their positions as town marshall(s) to handle other conflicts unrelated to the crime the local cowboys were up to.

The Earp brothers were not exactly lilly white law-and-order folks.

The reason that post is in the drafts is the research backing up my take-away is like trying to look up one thing at TV Tropes.  There's material that backs up my claim, but organizing it into something readable is likely past my ability to write.  I'm still pecking at it and hope to have something before long.  It's at least interesting.

The second take-away is that such laws and ordinances were very rare in the old west.

That's A Bummer

Cylinder and Slide finally slogged through their backlog and got a look at my ailing Detective Special.

The bolt stop was rounded off and one notch for it on the cylinder had been rounded as well.

It's terminal since they can't economically get a new cylinder.

Apparently Colt didn't give a lot of engagement with the design and there's just no way to fix it.

The gunsmith, Paul, says it's $100 in parts to them, so I get a check for that.  He thinks they can make a nice "how detective specials work" cutaway from it, so I am also promised a picture of it cut up.

Paul sounded like he was kind of bummed he couldn't fix it for me and even offered me some priority to the head of the line should I have something that they can fix (like a Hi-Power).

I originally bought the gun to help a friend who needed money; mission still accomplished.

Nope

Thought of something to say.

I think I might have done well.

Panic attack.

Delete.

I screwed the pooch so hard earlier I am now afraid to post?

Dang it all.

Another Real Problem

We're more than happy to divide ourselves and self defeat.

The Real Problem

Tam has pointed out what I fool I've made of myself here.  It's below the cut now because she's also right that I tend to delete too much once I've had an attack of the stupids, without even the excuse of drinking.

I take back the crappy things I say in this post.

Shame! Redacted.

Be ashamed!

Hide what you are!

Don't go out in public where people can see you for what you are!

This is your proper place!

You don't deserve more or better!

Slink in the shadows where you will not cause alarm to anyone.

Dress normally.  Marry appropriately.  Sit in the back of the bus.  Eat in the designated area.  Get on the train.

You never did believe that it was a right, did you?

Liberty has warts you fools.  If you can't accept the warts, you don't deserve the freedom.

Or make an ass of myself.  It comes so naturally it's astounding.

Mosin Bits

Speaking of refurbishment and mixing and matching...

My Kiv/39 is a "B Barrel" marked 1942, but almost definitely made post war.  The VKT pressure proof probably indicates that VKT did the assembly.  The Bolt body is Remington marked.  The bolt and cocking piece are Tula; with the cocking piece being blued by the Finns.  The striker and guide bar are Izhevsk.

The Chinese Type 53's bolt assembly is entirely Izhevsk.

The Kiv/28-30 back to mixing and matching.  Izhevsk bolt and cocking piece.  Tula body, guide and striker.

The Soviet M-91/30 is from Izhevsk and except for the striker and cocking piece it's all Izhevsk.  I don't know who made those parts because none of the online guides mention B marked bolt parts (although there's a mark that's tantalizing close to a circle R...).

Coincidence

Guacamole is a kind of mole made from avocados.

You use Avogadro's constant to calculate a mole.

Who Here Can Read Chinese

That's the barrel shank markings on Lei.  Arsenal 296 is either Chongqing or Jianshe depending on who you ask.  I am wondering what the text reads and if it decides the matter.

Snubbie From Gehenna

Went to the range yesterday and practiced with the carry gun.


That's Willard shooting so I could capture the muzzle blast.

This is about seven yards.  A decent social distance for a pocket gun.  It shoots low.  I remain impressed with the Apex trigger I installed.

I also put some of my precious .22LR down-range from the Ruger Standard.  Willard's .357 shots are the big holes on this target.  There's nothing like practice to improve ones groups and I feel like I am getting better with more shooting.

Something else I noticed using these turkey targets is my groups widen out a bit without a grid pattern on the target like I'd been using.  The grid is a wonderful aid for zeroing, but I think that it gives references that won't be present in a real shooting situation.  If that's true, I can't be the first person to notice it, and I wonder if anyone else has.

Why Finland

I prefer Finnish Mosins over Soviet.

I think it has a lot to do with never having a Finnish soldier aim his rifle at me.  I can't say that about Soviets or Czechoslovakians.

Then there's the sympathy towards a nation that seceded from totalitarianism.

Finn Mosins tend to come from two main sources for the receivers.  Guns they had when they said no to the revolution and guns they captured from those who said yes to the revolution.... ;)

They're also responsible for about half the Mosin variants!  Kiv/24, Kiv/27, Kiv/28, Kiv/28-30 and Kiv/39 are uniquely Finn.  Mauserized Mosin is how I've heard it coined.  Plus those new made guns on existing receivers are in addition to the original Model 1891 (Kiv/91) that they continued to make (remake) up to the end of World War Two.

Then there's the split between the Army and Civil Guard.  It makes me pine for an American version.  Even with the association the Civil Guard was given to the National Socialists after the war by the victorious Communists.

A Finn marked gun is probably a been there done that gun.  I like the chance that history clings to them.

This is yet another facet of guns that was influenced by gaming and sims.  GURPS: WW2's supplement for the Winter and Continuation Wars, "Frozen Hell" and the Finnish campaigns for IL2 Sturmovik made me aware of this theatre.

Incomplete

A problem with Mosins is nearly every single one has been through an arsenal refinish (or two).

A good example could be this rifle (link could be dead since they're only active for a limited time at Gunbroker)

That's a Remington Mosin-Nagant M-1891 a'ight.

Looks to be in fine shape too!

But what's this?  That looks like a Sako stock, hard to tell.

And this?  That's an Izhevsk bolt.

The numbers matching at this point is a clear clue that it's an arsenal rework, the Imperial crests being intact on both the shank and barrel kind of point at it being a Finn.

To be fair, the seller did show us these pics so he's not trying to pull a fast one.  It does illustrate how hard it is to get a "real" Remington.

It's Tam's Fault

Yes.  Let's blame Tam.

She posted a pic of a Finn NEW Mosin M91 and it reawakened my desire to own a 91...

So I've got a bid in that's sure to lose, but hope is still uncrushed.

It's a Tikka barreled gun with a multi-piece Finnish stock and not a super rare collectable.

Fingers crossed!

T Shirt

Linoge is offering another shirt for us to wear out completely...

I hope he doesn't mind me swiping his pic.

I B SRSLY

Giza In The Rear View Mirror

In any of the Israeli campaigns in SF2 it is obligatory to buzz the pyramids if you have a mission anywhere near Giza.

From the front office of an F-4C (with the 1967 RHAW upgrade) from the 45th Tactical Fighter Squadron "Hoosier Hogs" in a Six Day War "what-if" stationed at Ramat David.

Stuff You Did Not Know You Needed

Marv's M&P 9 has a rail.

I suppose that one could put something useful, such as a light or bottle opener on it.

But why?

Plus Tea Cup!

Why on earth would you want something useful when you can have a zombie green LaserLyte pistol bayonet?

Tremble in fear, Palm Tree!

The hilarious thing about the tree shot is the bayonet popped off when he stabbed the trunk.  It stayed in the tree, but the pistol came loose.

I should give some credit to Jay G for his extensive product testing of these things.

Rules

There are two rules to surviving in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Don't get married.

If your last name is Stark, change it.

If at all possible, don't attend weddings.