Two Americas...

"What Really Goes On At A Gun Show" reads the panting headline at CNN Money.

To me, the article sounds about as exotic as "What Really Goes On At A Flea Market" or "What Really Goes On At The Comic Book Show", but apparently to the writer and his soft, cud-chewing co-workers it's as titillating and exotic as "What Really Goes On In The Slave Bazaars On The Dark Side Of The Moon".

And the funny thing is, in the opening paragraphs, they acknowledge that gun shows are common, that they occur in droves every weekend from coast to coast, and that people throng to them. Then they go on to explain what happens at a gun show without stopping to think that, you know, a sizable minority, maybe a third, of the people reading your breathless little hit piece have been to a gun show and you might as well be explaining what goes on inside of a supermarket to them.

Speciation is well underway.
.

1700

You ever fire a Ruger .22 pistol until it was so gunked up with caked-on powder residue that you could watch the bolt cycle? And then you just squirted more lube on the bolt and kept shooting? Well, that's about where we're at at the 1700 round mark. Except without the "squirt on more lube" part.

Put another hundred rounds of PMC from Lucky Gunner through the 1911 yesterday after work.

I can actually feel the round clattering through the feedway as the slide eases itself shut, and it's not making it all the way there about twice in every hundred rounds now. A thumb on the back of the slide pushes it the last little bit into battery, but this gun wants oiled badly. It's not going to get it, however, for another 300 rounds.

This brings the total rounds fired to 1,700 since the weapon was last cleaned or lubricated, with eight failures to go into battery (rounds #356, #1,085, #1,247, #1,492, #1,514, #1,578, #1,627, #1,663), a failure to feed on round #513, a failure to feed a round of Hornady Critical Duty +P on round #927, and a failure to eject a round of Hornady Critical Duty +P on round #930. 300 rounds to go.

1600

Another 100 rounds of Lucky Gunner's .45ACP ammo through the 1911. The gun is increasingly dry, the Slip2000 EWL having been applied  almost two months and a case-and-a-half of ammo ago.

Unlike a lot of current polymer guns, where the slide and frame are only sort of flying in loose formation, the former only retained on the latter by tiny nubbins of sheet metal "rail", the frame rails of older designs like the 1911 or CZ75 have a lot of bearing surface. This makes them a lot more sensitive to lubrication or, more accurately, the lack thereof.

This brings the total rounds fired to 1,600 since the weapon was last cleaned or lubricated, with six failures to go into battery (rounds #356, #1,085, #1,247, #1,492, #1,514, #1,578), a failure to feed on round #513, a failure to feed a round of Hornady Critical Duty +P on round #927, and a failure to eject a round of Hornady Critical Duty +P on round #930. 400 rounds to go.

Magic Wand For Sale

The devices marketed to people who are scared to death of criminal violence and yet at the same time don't want to actually hurt anybody, even criminals, range from the merely sad to the hilarious.

The latest one I've seen is the "SALT", which stands for...well, I can't be arsed to find out, really...and is a CO2-powered pistol that fires .68" balls filled with some natural blend of eleven herbs and spices designed to incapacitate your attacker.

If this sounds like a paintball pistol shooting OC-filled balls, that's because it appears to be one. Why a five-digit Indiegogo campaign is needed to obtain off-the-shelf Tippmanns and resell them at a 33%+ markup is beyond me.

Paintball guns firing pepper balls are used by law enforcement specifically as less-lethal weapons in situations where lethal force is not necessarily called for; dispersing pre-riotous mobs, for instance. But whenever cops deploy less-lethal force, it's always backed up with the threat of the real deal. Pepper spray might deter someone committing a crime of opportunity on the jogging path, but selling it as a home defense weapon? Look, someone who is forcing entry into a dwelling they know is occupied can be hard to deter by making their eyes all burn-y and watery. In fact, it might make them mad.

My favorite part of the whole fluffy ad campaign is this:

Well, there's your problem! If you'd stop using black powder and shift to smokeless like the rest of us did in the mid-1890s then you'd clear that right up. Go check the page out; there are plenty of opportunities to sprain your eye rolling muscles there.

This is just another in a long line of use-of-force tools marketed to people who know nothing about the use of force and, indeed, view it as somehow distasteful or degrading. Calling this thing retarded would be an insult to honest, upstanding mental defectives.
.

Dear Media...

"Direct Action" is a term of art within the U.S. military that has a specific meaning. While you are running around with it like a puppy with a new chew toy, mangling it into "Direct Combat" and "Ground Action" (two terms I've heard so far this morning on NBC alone) understand that it doesn't mean "general ground combat" or the other thing it likely triggers in your squishy little Eloi noggins.
.

From Comments Elsewhere...

Comment to a post here:

"The Euros have a proven zero-to-jackboots time lower than just about anybody on the planet. The migrant muzzies might want to think about what happens when they get Hans and Pierre feeling good and scared and backed into a corner.

The last time the Jerries had a populist demagogue with bad hair campaigning on a nationalist platform, he was no Donald Trump."

The situation there seems to be building to a denouement.

Oh, and they might start shooting each other in the Balkans again.
.

Overheard in the Kitchen...

Me: "I'll have a couple strips of that bacon, but don't bother frying me an egg. I think I'm going to have bacon and yogurt for breakfast."

RX: "You are the most repulsive person in the history of repulsion."

Me: *walks toward refrigerator singing* "♫Bacon and yooooguuurt...♫"

RX: "Get out of this room right now you vile creature."

Automotif CXVI...

Spotted this nearly-pristine... 1974? 1975? ...Mercury Montego MX while walking home from lunch today. The lady behind the wheel certainly could have been the original owner. It reminded me quite a bit of my first car. Nothing like a gray and drizzly autumn afternoon to set off the nostalgia; wet leaves and wood smoke does it every time.
.

Possibly true.

You can tell Amish jokes on the internet, because they won't see them.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) October 27, 2015

Party trick...

So, you pour your adult beverage, reach into the freezer, pull out a 1911 magazine, and start thumbing the rounds out of it and into your glass. Amaze your friends! Fun at parties!
.

Pictures...

...of the new mystery gun are up at The Arms Room.

If anybody has any ideas about the history or origin of this beautiful little custom revolver, please feel free to email me.
.

Boom, boom, boom...

Sorry for the icky phone picture; I accidentally left my camera at home.

Took the 37 to the range today just to see what it shot like. I had two boxes of Federal's PD45G1 H 185gr Low Recoil Hydra-Shok on hand. Having left my UpLULAin the car, I was only able to cram nine rounds at a time in the gun's ten-round mag. The G17/22-size stick gives up a lot of capacity to gain that extra 0.05" in projectile diameter. You lose two rounds going from .355" to .401", but another five to go from .401" to .451".

I saved ten rounds for later chrono testing, and only fired thirty with the target set at 21 feet. The gun shot okay. "Low Recoil" is obviously a relative thing; there's a lot more sturm und drang than a Glock 19 or even an all-steel Government Model. I used to think recoil was cool; I also used to shoot a lot less than I do now.

It'd be interesting to compare the splits on this thing versus my G19.
.

Well...

...I did what non-licensees are supposed to do at fun shows: Turned two guns into two different guns.

One is a surprise that I need to take pictures of, and the other is a Glock 37 that I will be shooting the bejeezus out of  because why not?

Due to the ammo situation, po-po trade-in .45GAP Glocks are stupid cheap around here. In the days of internet ammo sales, when you can buy by the case from someplace like Lucky Gunner, the ammo not being in stock at your local gun store isn't as big a deal. This can make scratching an odd caliber itch a more reasonable proposition.
.

Fun Show Time!

Hooray! It's time to sing the Fun Show Song!

Flintlocks and Flop-tops
And Number Three Russians
Black-powder Mausers
From jackbooted Prussians,
Shiny Smith PC's from limited runs
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Socketed bay'nets
On Zulu War rifles,
Engraved, iv'ried Lugers
That make quite an eyefull
Mosin tomato stakes sold by the ton
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Rusty top-breaks!
Smallbore Schuetzens!
And all of Browning's spawn
I just keep on browsing my favorite guns
Until all my money's gone.

This time 'round I'm helping man some tables. I'll throw a couple of my older Smiths out at Greater Fool prices to have an excuse to be there. I think I'll also put that stippled FNS-9 out and if it sells, plow the money back into some other pistol to shoot 2,000 rounds through for the amusement of the internet.
.

I see a pattern forming...

So, I decided to pattern some buckshot from my gauge yesterday. Keep this test in mind the next time you hear someone rambling on about how you don't have to aim a shotgun because it spreads shot all over the place.

All these targets were shot at 30 feet, about the longest distance you could expect in an indoor residential setting, using a Remington 870 with the factory 20" cylinder-bore barrel.

First up is Remington's Law Enforcement Reduced Recoil 9-pellet 00 buckshot, part number RR12-00BK. It's got the widest pattern at almost 7" of spread. Note, however that even this most scattered patter would keep them all on a pie plate shooting from the back hallway at Roseholme Cottage to the front door. You most certainly can miss with a shotgun, and you do need to aim them.

Plain ol' Winchester Super X unplated 9-pellet 00 buck, part number XB1200. Thumped harder than the Remington but patterned about the same.

Winchester's Ranger LE Low Recoil 8-pellet buckshot, RA120085, was tighter, with a pattern under six inches at ten yards.

Sellier & Bellot's 12-pellet 00B surprised me. I need to shoot more of this stuff at different ranges. There are a couple fliers outside of an extremely tight pattern; I want to see if this was a fluke and, if not, what it would open up to at fifteen and twenty-five yards.

Federal's 8-pellet FliteControl 00B (LE133 00) borders on voodoo. Bear in mind that with this stuff you are essentially firing a single giant Glaser Safety Slug at indoor ranges. You have to aim the shotgun the same way and with the same care you'd use with a carbine or pistol, because no lucky fliers are going to turn a miss into a marginal hit. (But whatever gets hit with that pattern is going to wish it hadn't been.)
.

Overheard in the Smallest Room...

Our protagonist is experiencing some mild discomfort with her morning pit stop...

Me: *groan* "What did I eat for lunch yesterday?"

RX: "Paste?"

Me: "Yes, a big pail of paste. And for dessert, I licked a couple windows."

.

Cue Dee See

So Adam Roth and I run in a lot of the same circles on the internet, and I finally met him at Paul-E-Palooza this year. By then, I'd already seen his innovative Quick-Detach Carrier in beta-test action on John Johnston's test 870, and was intrigued. When he offered to let me try a pre-production sample, I jumped at it.

I installed it on my own 870 at work yesterday afternoon and trotted out onto the range to do a bit of preliminary futzing around with it.

At the risk of using a trite cliche, this thing looks to be a "game chainjah" in the spare-ammo-on-the-guage market. It seems to offer all the best features of velcro-ed shotshell cards with elastic loops and rigid sidesaddles like those from Mesa Tactical, while eliminating most of the downsides of both.

To add an all-American underdog flavor to the whole thing, Adam has scrimped and saved and taught himself a whole bunch of manufacturing techniques just to get these things ready for market. Now all he needs is the injection-molding machinery for making the shell holders, but the big fundraising sites like Indiegogo, RocketHub, and Kickstarter turned him down because "Eewwww! Guns! Icky!" and so Adam turned straight to his future market. If you want in on a discount price for a first-run Q-DC for your Remington or Mossberg, go check him out at AridusIndustries.com. (There's also the usual cool swag like t-shirts and bottle openers.)
.

Netiquette protip...

"LOLOLOLOL I TROLL U" is not a magic make-it-all-better incantation after saying dumb, offensive $#!+.
.

Oh, Canada!

Gun-owning Canadian FB friends are not at all happy with the results of the election. The outgoing guy had apparently done pretty good by Canuck shooters:

Harper (the now ex-PM) did end the long gun registry. He also enacted new laws that severely limit bureaucrats and the RCMP (who are our version of the ATF) from changing rules on which guns are legal and how we can use them without making them prove why they are doing it. Before they could just change the classification of a rifle to a prohibited weapon without giving a single reason for it. They had also been changing rules around shooting ranges by trying to make it so expensive to run one that places were shutting down. Not any more. Also he also removed the extra red tape needed around transporting things like handguns and AR rifles. Once you have a background check, go through required training, and get a firearms license, why would you then need to go through paperwork to say you can bring it to the range? That is gone now too.

The new guy is apparently seriously anti-gun

As an American, Canada's supposed to be where you go to when suffering from electile dysfunction. I'd never stopped to think about where Canadians go when it's their politics that take a disappointing turn.
.

Neat things about the future...

So, you're tooling along at 35,000 feet from ABQ to ORD at 485kts and glance out your window to see a speck leaving contrails some distance to your south and below you.

In the past, you would have just had to wonder what it was and where it was going.

Dimmer Skies Are Safer Skies! I can almost taste the barium!

Now that there's an internet connection on the plane, you just call up Plane Finder HD on your iPad and discover that what you're looking at is a Southwest B737-800 flying from PHX to MDY at 33,000 feet.
.

Ba-dum...

I just thought of a good passive-aggressive joke but y'all probably wouldn't like it.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) October 20, 2015

Shooting stuff...

So, I mentioned that my draw was one of the things that needed work on that last FAST. Some of my readers, bless their hearts, took that as a solicitation for advice, and so I received unasked-for tips like this:

"[F]irst put something of moderate weight in your strong side jacket pocket. Keys, cell phone or similar. That extra weight won't slow you down and it will carry the corner of the jacket back behind you longer, clearing your grip area. And it helps if you're drawing with the wind from behind you."

I don't get it: The video was right there for the guy to watch, and it was pretty obvious that I wasn't having any issues with the cover garment fouling my draw, which was actually pretty non-grabasstic for a change. (And I happened to have a half-full pistol mag in my right pocket anyway, although not for any specific reason.)

In fact, slicing your hand between your body and the cover garment, letting the pinky lead the way along your ribs, seems to be consistently faster than making grandiose flipping-and-clearing gestures and then having to come back to the pistol that your hand has passed.

At any rate, the actual problem with my draw was a weakness in mechanics that the FAST is designed to provoke: By drawing to a 3"x5" target at seven yards, many people subconsciously slow their entire draw stroke down. In the video you can watch my hands react to the beep by racing to the gun as fast as I can and then s-l-o-w-l-y bringing it out to aim in on that small target. Instead, I should have drawn at full throttle the whole way and used the time saved to refine my sight picture at the end. The exaggeratedly slow extension did nothing practical to help my accuracy and killed my draw speed; without putting a stopwatch on the video, that looks about a 2.0-2.5, and I know I can get close to a half second off that with some work.

So one of the things I did at Blogorado was draw over and over again to the small poppers out at ten or fifteen yards.

But I forgot my timer back in Indy. Dammit.
. 

Note to self...

Post-vacation lag combined with Bobbi working the graveyard shift really makes my normal sleep schedule take it right in the shorts.
.

Crunch

I've just spent a little over a week out on Mountain Time, hanging out with friends. This creates an odd jet-lag like situation because I stay up late having fun, but my Eastern Time Zone internal clock grants me the super power of waking up early under the light of their yellow sun. Needless to say, this creates a pretty serious sleep deficit over the course of a week.

Follow that up with the most comprehensively nightmarish flight home on United Airlines that was...well, let me break it down for you:

• Check in was a goat rope. And flying with suitcase and a Pelican 1700 means there's no way to avoid having to wait for a person to check you in. The three people manning the counter at ABQ were friendly and trying as hard as they could, but plainly overwhelmed by a couple of heavily-booked flights departing close together. Ours to ORD, and I think there were ATL and LGA flights mentioned.
• After an eternity at the check-in, it was off to the TSA, which would have gone smoothly if I hadn't been behind The Only Woman At The Airport, who leisurely took time to stop and continue her text conversation on her phone no matter what the line or TSA agent ahead of her were doing. Had the roped cattle chutes been wider, I'd have simply walked around her on more than one occasion. I have never before been possessed by such a powerful urge to snatch a portable electronic device out of someone's hands and fling it as far and as hard as I could.
• The gate was a madhouse, as everybody from boarding groups 1 through double-Z clumped around the counter the minute the gate attendant indicated we might possibly be boarding the aircraft soon. Never have I seen so many people so eager to go toward Chicago. When I finally got on, I had to stow my Lowepro camera bag two rows behind my seat, since the bins directly overhead were filled with the steamer trunks of folks sitting further back.
• We needn't have been in such a hurry, since the aircraft hadn't been, you know, fueled, necessitating a lengthy ramp delay.
• Meanwhile, I got to know my seatmates. They were nice enough folks and would have been ideal seatmates had they let us sit in the grown-up chairs. As it was, United's "Economy Plus" seats provided extra legroom, but no perceptible advantages in width. I am rarely the smallest person in the room and used to having to try to keep from intruding on people's space on airliners, but in this case, I was the slender waif of row 8. Unlike Delta's "Economy Comfort" seating, which comes with free drinks and Sky Priority boarding, United's "Economy Plus" comes with grief and an NFL nose tackle in your lap. I lost the Battle of the Armrest, but planted my knee resolutely at the frontier between seats E and F and prepared to ¡No pasarán! my meager remaining territory to the grim death.

O'Hare was O'Hare. This is the highlight (and, indeed, the only good thing) of the O'Hare experience:

Yes, that is a fossilized brachiosaurus just on the far side of the TSA checkpoint at O'Hare. What nobody tells you is that it was in perfect health when it first got in line for the Porn-O-Scan a hundred and fifty million years ago.

• The flight to IND got moved from gate B21 to gate B3 causing me some consternation when I ambled over to the former five minutes before boarding was to commence, only to find myself having to OJ my way across the terminal to the latter.
• The United gates at O'Hare have numbered cattle chutes for each boarding group in an attempt to make this more orderly. Which was great except that they started funneling us into the jetway before the wheelchair crew had gotten their passengers settled. Which meant that we all stood stock-still in the jetway for ten minutes rather than out in the gate area. Yes, I timed it. I was growing increasingly petty by this point.

It looked like I was going to have a whole row to myself when, just as I was allowing myself to feel hope, a family of Kenyans interrupted some long-standing internal quarrel long enough to board the plane. At first, the woman I presumed to be the matriarch of the posse plopped down in the aisle seat and deposited her dufflebag-size purse on the floor between us. "Um, ma'am, you can't put that there," I informed her.
"And why not?" she huffed.
Patience lost, I replied "Because if this %&^er spins off the runway and catches fire, I don't want to break my neck tripping over your $#!+ trying to get off."
Eyes big, she plopped it on the seat between us instead.

Then the man of the group...or, rather, the chronologically oldest male member...finished running up and down the aisle looking for a place to stow his bag and was guided to his seat, which was the one currently occupied by Ms. Largepurse. She moved next to me and the dude settled into a sulk in the aisle seat, pulling his hood over his head and doing the worst "I'm so mad at you I'm going to sleep rather than talk to you" at the Missus I've ever seen.

Fortunately, the flight was brief. Unfortunately, the dude kept up his fake-sleeping sulk on the ground at the gate. "Hey, can y'all have your family spat elsewhere? Some of us want off this plane," was more dialogue than I wanted to have, but proved necessary.

How I knew I was back in Indianapolis:

Normally I jog-shuffle quickly across IND to get to the baggage carousel, lest my bags beat me there. With United, there was no worry about that. In fact, it was a full hour between touchdown and my bags getting into my hands. Further, I pulled my suitcase off the carousel and went over to the "oversized bag" belt to collect my Pelican, and waited and waited and waited...

Fortunately, I happened to glance over at the regular baggage carousel just in time to see my Pelican 1700 tumble down the chute and into the scrum from the ORD flight. I cleared a path with elbows flying and grabbed it before someone else did. Apparently United gives you those baggage claim checks just for show. Delta, US Air, and American at IND usually handed the case over with the solemnity of changing the watch in a Minuteman silo, and only on seeing ID and/or baggage claim stubs.

So I got home at close to midnight and then went to work at the gun store the next morning. Saturday passed in a fog and then the sleep deficit caught up with me last night. I woke up this morning to feed the cats and then I climbed back in bed, intending to wake up and watch Meet the Press. Instead, I have only vague recollections of Ted Cruz saying something and then pundits wondering if the Hillary campaign had risen from the dead, and then it was noon and there were infomercials on. I guess ten hours of sleep is what the doctor ordered.

Three Quarters

Having a range five minutes from my front door is a real boon. "Hey, Bobbi! I'm running out to go put another hundred rounds of Lucky Gunner's .45 through the CCA gun before it gets busy over there. I'll be back in thirty minutes and we'll go get lunch where they have those great pork bahn mi sammiches."

It's been over a month since the gun was suddenly pressed into the test, getting a half-ass scrub of the rails with a nylon brush and a glop of Slip 2000 on the rails, muzzle, and barrel hood. An interesting side-effect of the lack of proper lubrication in the five weeks since then is that the slide locking back on the last round became somewhat hit-or-miss with this range session, especially with my thumbs-forward grip causing the joint of my thumb to lightly touch the base of the slide stop.

This brings the total rounds fired to 1,500 since the weapon was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go into battery (rounds #356, #1,085, #1,247, #1,492), a failure to feed on round #513, a failure to feed a round of Hornady Critical Duty +P on round #927, and a failure to eject a round of Hornady Critical Duty +P on round #930. 500 rounds to go.

Automotif CXV...

1966 Chrysler 300 4-door hardtop

Available with a 383 or one of two flavors of 440-cid engines. 'Merica.

Working on this...

Spent some time working on drawing to a small target and doing slidelock reloads.

More later.
.

The hits just keep on coming.

Hey, since we normalized relations, maybe we can help out the ol' Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias with some sealift. Looks like we buddied up again just in time!

What a goat rope. *rubs bridge of nose* Smartest guy in the room, you bet.
.

From an away game...

Someone was asking about the legality of using lethal force to defend against an unarmed opponent (or several) in grappling range who were trying to get the dude's CCW piece away from him.

"Can you articulate to a jury how someone attempting to draw a gun at you poses an immediate, potentially lethal threat? Can you articulate that it doesn't matter whether the gun they're trying to draw is on their belt or yours?

Related: If you're being attacked by someone within arm's reach, you don't have a gun, y'all have a gun. It's probably best if it stays in the holster until you've bought enough space to make it just your gun again."

Never read the comments.

In yet another episode of "I Liked People Better Before The Internet Let Me See Into Their Heads" comes this comment over at a PJMedia column:

"You know what I think the country's problems are? Three in number: drugs, promiscuity, step parents."

Have you ever seen a step parent drink a glass of water, Mandrake? Vodka, that's what they drink, isn't it? Yup. It's pretty much a known fact that step parents are out to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.
.

I see no possible way this can go badly.

So, we've got U.S. and Russian warplanes carrying live warshots on the rails, flying actual combat missions in the same airspace, and only the most rudimentary of deconfliction plans in place. And that's not even taking into account the fact that we've apparently got escorted cargo aircraft dropping supplies to some of the same dudes the Russians are bombing.

If that don't give you the warm & fuzzies, I don't know what would.
.

Automotif CXIV...

1967 Plymouth Barracuda fastback

Ooh! We played this game back in the day, too!

(CNN)After four years and 250,000 deaths, the Syrian civil war is getting even more complicated. And now the U.S. and Russia are stepping up their roles in the country -- though on opposing sides. 

Back in the mid-'80s, Game Designer's Workshop had a series of wargames revolving around a hypothetical near-future NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict. The first game in the series featured the Main Show of the '80s; the clash of armored armies along the inter-German border in Europe. Subsequent volumes dealt with NATO's northern and southern flanks. The fourth and final game released dealt with the theater where the war had been triggered in the first place.

Instead of Syria, the scenario there was a civil war in Iran following the death of Khomeini, with the US and USSR backing opposing factions in a multi-axis power struggle. Diplomatic support became logistical support, logistical support turned into technicians and advisers, and next thing you knew, American and Soviet troops in Iran were exchanging fire, so the Reds just decided it was time to pour through the Fulda Gap...
.

'Splodey...

"Achmed had developed a reputation as the luckiest VBIED driver in Anbar province..."

.

I used to play this game at LAN parties!

"C-17s, accompanied by fighter escort aircraft, dropped small arms ammunition and other items like hand grenades in Hasakah province in northern Syria to a coalition of rebels groups vetted by the US, known as the Syrian Arab Coalition."

...although I have to ask, wouldn't it be quicker to just hand the weapons to ISIS rather than to the people who will surrender them to ISIS at the first sign of danger?
.

Heartwarming...

So an Indianapolis woman had an intruder in her house. She proceeded to start punching the bejeezus out of him. In the process she attempted to get her pistol out of a drawer, but opened the wrong one, and so went for Plan B: A sword.

Dolley actually has some experience in medieval combat fighting from her days as an 18-year-old fighter in the Society for Creative Anachronism, a nonprofit for members who re-create arts and skills from Europe prior to the 17th Century, according to the organization’s website.

Dolley would don armor and engage in unchoreographed fights using rattan swords, which are safer than steel. She fought against men who stood taller than 6 feet and had 20 years experience.

In the beginning, her opponents could guess her moves because she was afraid she was going to hurt someone, she said, so an early lesson was to move confidently and aggressively after someone.

Now Dolley is using those lessons to help in roller derby, where she's a new recruit known as Foul Morguean with Naptown Roller Girls.

A heartwarming tale with something for all my friends. The only thing that would make it better would be if she'd beaten him unconscious with a sack of d20s and tied him up with the power cord from a ham radio.
.

That's pretty cool.

I got name-checked by Mas in a magazine article. Not gonna lie; I'm kinda happy about that.
.

What I want to know...

...is why Marshall, Will, and Holly didn't just escape the sleestaks at a brisk walk. (Not like their rubber band powered pistol crossbows were all that terrifying to start with.)

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #136...

Saw this at the range today. I need me an AR lower with some cool laser engraving...
.

Protocol Droid

My initial reaction?

Or I can wait until Apple releases the iRobot.
.

"...she said, nervously."

Looking at the general world situation, I'm thinking about a GoFundMe to buy bulletproof vests for Archdukes. Anybody wanna kick in?

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) October 7, 2015

"Politicize All The Things!"

WTH, Daily Beast — politicize all the things! Also, is Montana really that red a state? pic.twitter.com/qwqOphhxuS

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) October 7, 2015

"All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war." -Billy Beck

The important thing here is not that there was a crime committed, but that we find out whose team the criminal was on!
.
.

Excerpts from the morning...

"NATO on Tuesday rejected Moscow's explanation that its warplanes had violated alliance member Turkey's air space by mistake and said Russia was sending more ground troops to Syria and building up its naval presence.

With Russia extending its air strikes to include the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he was losing patience with Russian violations of his country's air space.

"An attack on Turkey means an attack on NATO," Erdogan warned at a Brussels news conference."

Rolled over in bed and grabbed the iPad to check email and the news before starting my day. The above story resulted in a lot more one-fingered typing on a virtual keyboard than I usually do, and so I'll just copypasta the highlights over here now that I'm on a real computer...

• This has the potential to spin right the f*** out of control before anybody involved realizes what they're doing.

To the suggestion that Russia would just continue to punk NATO with no response:

• Yeah, see, sooner or later some individual fighter pilot or other trigger puller isn't going to understand that he's supposed to be punked.

To the suggestion that NATO should buzz off:

• Clearly. A mutual self-defense organization to counter a militarized Soviet Union is a relic of the past, since toothless and cuddly Russia is a friend of Europe now and has no territorial ambitions beyond their own borders.


• So, you don't necessarily mean NATO needs to go away, just that we need to get ourselves out of it? That I could maybe get behind. We've been subsidizing the welfare states of Europe for far too long by effectively acting as their Ministry of Defense.

To the allegation that NATO has been expanding too aggressively:

• You mean, not recognizing the legitimate territorial claims of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?
• If I were the Baltic states, I'd join any organization that offered to help me keep Moscow from its regular incursions. I'd like it if it kept the Germans out, too, but frankly Berlin is just not much of a threat these days.


• [I]f you'd had the Russians camping out in your master bedroom for forty years (or much longer in some cases) and they left, would you not lobby to join an organization that promised to help you if they came back?


• (I will add, however, that if NATO did go away, this is France's best chance to hand Germany a one-on-one curb stomping since the Congress of Vienna.)

On our naive fascination with Popular Uprisings:

• I understand the initial American infatuation with the Arab Spring. Delight at people toppling tyrants is baked deeply into our cultural DNA. But certainly by a couple of years ago, we should have seen what a dog's breakfast it was making of the region. Continuing to support anti-Assad forces is farcical and a willfully obtuse denial of realpolitik.

On the value of American promises to our allies:

• We have here a stunning reminder of why it never pays to trust Uncle Sam's word too much. Our Uncle has a bad case of Bipolar disorder and promises lots of shit that, four years later, he decides he has no intention of delivering.


• Taiwan could teach other countries a graduate level course in the topic; it's been putting up with our national schizophrenia for a half century now.

This whole mess is why I was pulling for Admiral Josh Painter in the '08 elections, instead of President Hope'n'Change.