Blammunition update.

As long as you weren't looking for .380, the ammunition supplies at Gander Mountain were pretty much back to normal, although prices are still high relative to the first half of '08.

Selection was broad and supply was bountiful in the major auto calibers: 9/.40/.45 all had a bunch of choices in FMJ and JHP ammo. 9x19 was starting at $14/50, but the cheapest .45 was still over $20/box.

Loose bulk .22LR was available in both Remington and Federal flavors, and there were all kinds of bricks of various rimfire on the shelves. Good thing, too, since I shot my .22LR ammo can dry this morning and didn't want to break out my backup stash of unplated ammo. It may shoot okay, but it'll dirty up a gun like nobody's business...

They had a pretty 4" prewar .32-20 Smith in the showcase for around four bills, complete with a Tyler T-grip, but closer examination revealed it had been re-blued. It'd make someone a nice shooter, though.

Another Golden Age about to end?

The late '60s and early '70s were a high water mark for automotive performance, at least looking back from my time in high school. Safety regulations had piled on weight while emissions and fuel economy standards had sapped horsepower to the point that early '80s "performance" cars were shadows of their former selves; decal-and-spoiler performance packages wrapped around asthmatic powerplants without enough torque to yank a greased string out of a cat's ass.

This was forcefully brought home to me one day some years back when I was able to show the taillights of my Porsche 924S to a late '70s Ferrari 308GTB through Atlanta's "Spaghetti Junction". The 924S was a Porsche, yes, but the junior car in the Porsche lineup; it was sporty, but no threat to any Ferraris, unless they are disco-era Ferraris with EPA-mandated potatoes stuffed up their tailpipes and leaky Weber carburettors stingily dripping fuel into the manifold.

With the advent of the microchip, manufacturers found their way out of the mess, as computer-controlled ignition and fuel-delivery systems allowed them to wring out more performance from every drop of fuel-air mixture. If '74-'84 were the dark ages of automobile performance, then on average, we are living in the New Golden Age. There are V-6 family buses sporting an honest-to-Duntov 300 net horsepower; sedans that will kick sand in the face of a smog motor Corvette.

Car & Driver tested a '79 L-82 'Vette with a 4-speed manual and it turned in a 6.6 second 0-60 sprint and ran the quarter mile in 15.3 seconds at 95mph, and the slushbox-equipped ones were even slower. That's barely enough to stay ahead of a Nissan Altima Hybrid (7.1/15.6@91) and would get gutted by a V-6 Altima (5.8/14.4@101). My '98 Z3 is a whisker quicker than that 'Vette and I know that I've found myself staring in bafflement at the receding taillights of some plain-vanilla sedan or SUV more than once.

I wonder what the government will do to end this Golden Age?

Say what?

So we're watching the local news yesterday morning and they're covering a nearby amusement park having a big garage sale. As they wrap up the segment and get ready to go to weather, we're treated to this bit of dialog:

Anchorchick: "...except I hear that the Santa chair has already sold. Too bad, I kind of wanted that Santa chair."

Anchordude: "Well, you're going to need a Santa chair if you go outside today, because it's going to be beautiful out there! Now to Chelsea for the forecast..."

Going to need a lolwhut? That's going on the blooper reel he's getting for Christmas, I'll bet.

If at first you don't succeed...

With the Assault Weapons Ban five years in the grave, George Kellgren's Grendel P30 is back for a return engagement as the Kel-Tec PMR-30. It's still hideously ugly, but now it's hideously ugly in a different and modern way.

Of all the 30-shot .22WMR semiautomatic pistols on the market, it's by far the best.

Overheard in the Office:

Me: "I'm talking the old hairy-chested Starfleet with guns, not the bald-headed one with shipboard daycare centers. The one where the captain got the girl."

RX: "Picard got... well... he got a flute in that one episode."

Me: "Riker always got the girl. He was the only one on that bridge with any testosterone. Well, except for Tasha Yar, but she died early on, so she doesn't count."

Been busy...

...over at the other blog.

The writing's finished, but I still need to add more pictures.

(This is all Matt G's fault, BTW...)

Thank you iTunes!

Were it not for "shuffle mode" on the iPod in the car, I might have completely forgotten several really great albums. Three that I've recently rediscovered: Kick by INXS, Bloodletting by Concrete Blonde, and Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction.

Overheard at my Neighbor's:

Neighbor: "So why do you carry that?"

Me: "I don't want my last thought to be 'Gee, I wish I had a gun...'."

.38 Supah fo-evah!

Caleb has a post up on the .38 Super for self-defense.

The obvious comparison is to .357SIG, which is a fine and reliable cartridge in guns designed around the shorter 9mm/.40 platform, but is a bear to get running in a 1911 action, which is designed around a longer cartridge and has a two-piece feed ramp in its unmodified form.

The .38 Super is merely a higher-pressure loading of the old Colt .38 Automatic round, which dates back to some of John Browning's earliest autopistol work, 'way back in 1897; the two cartridges are dimensionally identical (which is why all .38 Super is technically "+P" according to SAAMI.) The advantages it has over the .357SIG are fairly esoteric and mostly center around the bottleneck: The short neck makes the SIG cartridge difficult to reload, and limits the range of bullet weights the cartridge can handle easily.

I've always hoped for a .38 Super revival, even if one attempted resurrection in rimless form has already failed (the "9x23 Winchester".) The reason is that the longer case can handle 147gr .355" bullets with ease, which offer the same sectional density as 180gr .40 or 230gr .45 and more sectional density is more penetration. In the shorter 9x19 case, these heavy bullets are going to be traveling at under 1100fps, but in the longer .38 Super with its greater powder capacity, ~1200fps is not out of reach. 147gr@1200 is getting into low-end magnum revolver ballistics.

In a single-stack gun like a 1911 or SIG P-220, you could get ten rounds easy; a double stack 1911 or Glock 20-sized gun would be serving up 18-20 rounds of low-end-.357-Magnum-level whupass. I'd be lying if I said the thought didn't intrigue me every now and again.

The things up with which I put.

In case you were wondering how my roomie, the geekiest chick on the web, spends her free time, lately it's been restoring an old telephone. It is not yet hanging on a wall somewhere in the house, but I suspect that is coming.

Mission Control is shutting down.

As of September, 2011, millions of mindless drones across America will have to turn elsewhere for instructions on what to read, how to vote, and what to think, because the Hive Queen will be ceasing her daily transmissions.

Things I Learned From Television:

I watched a bunch of TV to stay awake over the last couple days, and I learned a lot of valuable things:

1. Despite bogus theology, awkward physics, and plot holes through which you could navigate the QE2, "Ahnold vs. The Devil + A Whole Lotta Explosions" is a formula for an entertaining movie.
2. The fabric of spacetime is different in Las Vegas, and the Vegas PD has access to alien technology: They can get DNA tests back faster than an Indianapolis cop can run your license plates.
3. 12 gage 00 buck has nine pellets. It will blow through a steel door and an expanded metal grate and six of the pellets will make a nice, tight pattern on one victim's chest, pitching him over a railing, while the other three pellets mysteriously veer off on a downward tangent and kill the cabbie below and across the street. (My neighbor wondered why I started laughing and walked out of the room just when CSI was "getting interesting"...)
4. The cocaine daze in Hollywood actually peaked in the late '80s, when somebody signed off on The Fly II. As a matter of fact, The Fly II rates a post of its own...

Coming into day three...

I can see the music.

Everybody is very, very funny. Scintillatingly witty. I haven't heard an unfunny joke in over twelve hours. Seriously, you're all hilarious. I love you guys, each and every one. I'm going to drive around and give everybody a great big hug...

After I take a nap.

Glrg, Part II.

I came home, did chores, caught a nap from 10:00 to 1:00 on the futon, did more chores, drove my neighbor to her 4:30 follow-up appointment, came home, ate, napped from ~7:00 to 9:00 and now it's back to playing Florence Nightingale for another night.

On the list of "Things Tamara Wants To Be If She Grows Up", I think we can safely cross off "Third Shift Candy Striper".

Regular blogging will hopefully resume tomorrow.

Ha!

Okay, that's about awesome.

Glrg.

Stayed up all night playing nurse, helping a neighbor recover from sinus surgery.

Haven't pulled an all-nighter in a while; I don't recollect it being this tough. I feel like three miles of bad road.

Being so tired that you're seeing things doesn't make squinting at the bitty little Eee display any easier, I'll tell you that.

Meeting other bloggers is fun!

Newbius is trying to put together a blogmeet for the peeps in the Northern Virginia area. He's working through some snags right now, but it's looking like the first week of December...

Neat trick.

Cute trick.

It's helped by the fact that the G35 is lightly sprung with respect to its slide weight. That, and the guy doing it is fairly buff.

About zero practical application, however. While not as cool-looking, snagging the rear sight is barely slower and a lot more positive. And "positive" beats "cool looking" in the all-important category of "not getting one's ass shot off".

The real highlight of the post at The Firearm Blog, though, is the Counterstrike Kiddie in the comments section who says:

It could almost make dual wielding handguns a viable combat method, as it saves a lot of time on the reloading.

Now to design a mag holder that would hold the mags for you so you can put them in more easily one handed…

Oh, definitely! I'm going to start "dual wielding" my 1911s tomorrow, because zOMG it's teh awes0m3!!!!1!eleven!~!

Who the $%^& lets these children on my internets?

Oh, that's just wrong!

I'm going to need a wire brush to get this out of my forebrain.



(It's all Kristopher's fault.)

National Ammo Day.

Thursday is National Ammo Day.

This is especially fortuitous, because I put a hurtin' on my supply of 9x19 and .45ACP plinking ammo on Sunday, and the bottom is visible in the .22LR ammo can. I don't want to have to break into my stash of unplated bullets, so it's time for another brick or two of the plated stuff.

A teachable moment.

Brigid had her house broken into. Being Brigid, she turned it into a practical discussion on home security that makes those cartoon PSA's look like McGruff the Crime Chihuahua.

Unsolicited product endorsement.

Some of the cleverer readers may have noticed that I snuck a link to the Leatherman Juice in at my most recent Arms Room post. I did this because I really like mine.

I managed to resist the whole multitool fad for several years because everything on the market was either a teeny gizmo only suitable for fingernail cleaning best carried on a keychain or a giant brick of a folding pliers that required a belt pouch as awkward as the geekiest of '80s HP calculators. It wasn't until I discovered the Juice in early '02 that I found a multitool which offered the versatility of a reasonable number of tool gizmo thingies with a size and shape that allowed me to carry it in the pocket of my jeans like a Swiss army knife instead of on my belt like Batgirl.

Unfortunately for me, I picked the now-discontinued "kf4" model, which was the only Juice in the lineup without a beer bottle opener. The kf4 has been discontinued, and the slightly larger "CS4" and slightly smaller "S2" soldier on, each with a bottle opener.


(Really really clever readers may note that the CS4 has made it to my Amazon wish list, just in time for Christmas!)

Atrocity Exhibition.

In the Place Where Great Britain Used To Be, arms collectors are largely reduced to owning legally "deactivated" firearms. The process is involved, pretty much permanently ruins the gun for any use other than as a source of spare parts, and costs around £80 (~$135) according to my pal staghounds.

While the world is unlikely to miss a few extra Mosin Nagant 91/30s or Arminius revolvers, .455 Hand Ejectors don't exactly grow on trees...



For a good look at the carnage, go to Bonham's auction site and plug "deactivated" into the search engine. (The Luger was also especially painful...)


BONUS: An entire business dedicated to selling deactivated guns! There's something immensely sad about an adult human being actually paying money for a deactivated GSG-5 .22. That's only half a step above a deactivated Red Ryder.

The mighty hunter is home with the kill.

There is fresh venison over at New Jovian Thunderbolt's.

It's his first deer, which puts him one ahead of me.

Monday Morning Potpourri...

• Yesterday night, after I put the finishing touches on the Arms Room post, I did something relatively unprecedented for me: I turned on the Colts-Patriots game. I mean, it had been billed as a Really Big Deal in all the local media, and I could hear fellow Broad Riparians hooting like caged orangs in the surrounding houses, so maybe it would be interesting. I turned it on early in the third quarter and am given to understand that I shouldn't have fallen asleep at the two minute warning. The last NFL game I'd watched was Super Bowl XXXIII, because it featured the home town Falcons, and before that was Super Bowl XXII, so every time I see a football game I feel like Rip Van Winkle. "Wasn't that pass interference?" "Do they know they only have one running back?" "How can they go for two? This isn't college football." "When did they start using jet packs and lasers?"
  
• Got back to regular weekly handgun shooting yesterday at Iggle Crick after a two-weekend hiatus. The Ruger 22/45 and the Smith K-22 are the best firearms purchases I've made in years; they literally live in my range bag.
• Mmmmm. Lunch at Shalimar. (Thai Cafe was still closed at noon fifteen.)
• What is up with the Democrat Party nut-huggers at NBC? The peacock is green all week to celebrate Al Gore's guest spot on 30 Rock, and half the Today Show this morning was dedicated to reminding us that Emmanuel Goldstein Sarah Palin eats her young and is known to sacrifice kittens to Cthulhu. It's getting to the point that I wouldn't believe these %&*$ers if they told me Palin woke up in the morning. They don't even make a show of trying to cover their scat anymore; it's just left steaming in the middle of the parquet.