Wilson Combat Tactical Carry Professional 9mm, black/burnt bronze
Thursday, June 30, 2016
The Grind...
It wasn't until after I took the picture that I noticed that the aftermarket guide rod was protruding from the front of the gun. More on that later.
The gun went through the complete cycle of operation each time.
This makes it 1330 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748), four failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734), and one failure to eject (#1,033). 670 rounds left to go.
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Everybody take another step back...
In the wake of the Istanbul bombings, the people in charge of wrapping the world in foam padding are trying to figure out more ways to make us perfectly safe. Apparently this will put a security checkpoint at the edge of the airport grounds to screen you before you get to the security checkpoint inside which will screen you to get on the plane. It's screeners all the way down!
As Larry Correia noted on the Book of Face:
The reductio ad absurdum of this, of course, is to avoid creating the security bottlenecks that make such target-rich environments by putting a TSA checkpoint outside every front door in America.
There's just no practical way to nerf the world.
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As Larry Correia noted on the Book of Face:
"[T]o keep terrorists from getting onto a plane with a bunch of sitting ducks, you added the TSA bottleneck, where now you have a giant group of sitting ducks packed into a different, even more easily reached place. Duh....and if they move screening back to the airport access road, they set off a truck bomb in the traffic jam rather than a backpack bomb in the terminal.
So instead of blowing up the passengers on one flight, they can instead blow up the passengers waiting for twenty flights at the same time. Brussels and Istanbul proved it worked, so it will be coming soon to an airport near you."
The reductio ad absurdum of this, of course, is to avoid creating the security bottlenecks that make such target-rich environments by putting a TSA checkpoint outside every front door in America.
There's just no practical way to nerf the world.
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Damaged Goods?
A local TV station ran a piece warning people about veterans and fireworks...
I was five when US involvement in Vietnam ended and seven when Saigon fell. Growing up, "veteran" meant "Vietnam veteran" unless we were talking about our grandparents. I thought the media stereotype of Vietnam veterans was pretty derogatory, but at least there wasn't this pityingly condescending note about it. Nobody was on the news telling us to not set off firecrackers out of concern for grandpa's memories of Bastogne or dad's flashbacks to the Ia Drang, at least not that I remember.
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"I've had veterans tell me firecrackers sound like a .22 and larger fireworks sound like a Howitzer," said Herman.For some reason, I found this vaguely insulting to veterans, but I can't put my finger on exactly why.
Heading into this weekend, Herman also has advice for vets who may be struggling.
"If you hear anything, if you smell anything, remind yourself, 'It's 2016. I'm in Indianapolis. I am safe. I'm not back there'," he said.
Ellis knows what it's like to remind himself of that, too, and accepts even if it does get better, there may always be some kind of struggle.
I was five when US involvement in Vietnam ended and seven when Saigon fell. Growing up, "veteran" meant "Vietnam veteran" unless we were talking about our grandparents. I thought the media stereotype of Vietnam veterans was pretty derogatory, but at least there wasn't this pityingly condescending note about it. Nobody was on the news telling us to not set off firecrackers out of concern for grandpa's memories of Bastogne or dad's flashbacks to the Ia Drang, at least not that I remember.
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Wednesday, June 29, 2016
*spit take*
Well, the impending Trumpocalypse in Cleveland is having interesting repercussions. George Will, a knee forever in search of something to bend at, has announced he's taking his ball and going home, which has mostly drawn a "'Bye, Felicia" from the GOP punditocracy.
Meanwhile guess which magazine this is from:
"Once again American politics is threatening to become a competition between rival factions of statists, eager to use the government to reward themselves and punish their enemies, with “enemy” defined as anyone who doesn’t agree with them."
If you said Reason, you could be forgiven the assumption, but no, that's Jonah Goldberg trying on a wookie suit at National Review Online. While reading it, I had to keep glancing up at my browser's address bar to convince myself I was really reading Metrocon Fortnightly and not Wookie Suiter Monthly. It's a disgruntled twelve-paragraph ode to Mencken and Nock that stops just short of Goldberg unbuttoning his oxford to reveal a Rand Paul t-shirt.
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Based on the pattern of recent events...
...I'm waiting for the U.S. government to denounce this Turkophobic, Islamophobic hate crime.
At least none of the hate crime bombers worked at the airport so far as we know, or we'd be getting more finger-wagging about workplace violence, too.
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At least none of the hate crime bombers worked at the airport so far as we know, or we'd be getting more finger-wagging about workplace violence, too.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Automotif CXXX...
Initially, the base engine for the Starfire was the Buick 231cid V-6, and it could be had with a four-speed manual. Given the dearth of performance in the mid-'70s doldrums, a 110bhp 3.8-liter six in a 2800lb car was considered kind of sporty.
Later model years could be had with small-block V-8s but in factory form, those things got whatever you call hip dysplasia when it happens to the front suspension of small GM autos. Oh, and understeer for days. (For those of you who are not car nuts, understeer is when your car loses traction and plows into the outside guard rail nose-first, while oversteer is when you hit the outside guard rail ass-end-first.)
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Tab Clearing...
- AIWB Definitions, Part I
- It may have the ergonomics of a railroad tie, but at least it malfunctions a lot!
- EU-centric defense policy? Please say "Yankee go home!"
Al-Qaeda HR Dept.: "Knock it off with the EEOC compliance!"
"To prevent future acts of jihad from being misinterpreted as hate crimes, all affiliates, associates, and franchisees of The Base are asked to focus their mass casualty attacks and other acts of jihad on majority Anglo Saxon targets, preferably heterosexual ones."So, I guess stay alert at the State Fair this year? Probably want to keep on your toes at any NPR-sponsored events, too.
That's got to be frustrating for Johnny Jihad: You tell everybody why you're doing something and they just condescendingly pat you on your little brown head and patronizingly inform you why you're really doing it. I thought Progressives were opposed to silencing the narratives of oppressed minorities and all about the self-identification? I guess it's okay to self-identify as anything but an Islamic terrorist.
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Monday, June 27, 2016
This never fails to crack me up.
Two things are guaranteed to get Joe Sixpack riled up worse than fluoride in the drinking water:
You'd think the government would build special high-speed roadways to move troops around on in a hurry... Oh, wait, they did. We just happen to use them to drive on, too.
You can try to reason with them about this. You can try to reason with a brick wall, too, for all the good it'll do you.
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- Changing anything about the money.
- The sight of military vehicles on public roads.
You'd think the government would build special high-speed roadways to move troops around on in a hurry... Oh, wait, they did. We just happen to use them to drive on, too.
You can try to reason with them about this. You can try to reason with a brick wall, too, for all the good it'll do you.
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"Like a brick... house..."
"To the left is an SL2 MOT with Motor and 35 mm Summicron that fell 25,000 foot (7600 m) from a Phantom II fighter jet. Battered but in one piece, and deemed repairable by Leica."I don't intend to drop mine out of any planes just to see how tough it is...
Assorted Whining
Woke up with just crazy amounts of lower back pain this morning.
And the weatherman had promised a break in the heat and humidity, but they seem to have rolled that back to tomorrow. Blech.
That, and I overslept and then totally forgot what I was going to write about this morning.
It's looking pretty Monday out there today.
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And the weatherman had promised a break in the heat and humidity, but they seem to have rolled that back to tomorrow. Blech.
That, and I overslept and then totally forgot what I was going to write about this morning.
It's looking pretty Monday out there today.
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Sunday, June 26, 2016
A Few Good Stormtroopers
From elsewhere:
"Princess, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with blasters. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Senator Organa? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Alderaan, and you curse the Imperial fleet. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Alderaan's destruction, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a woman who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to."
BOOM!
The PPU was no exception. Well, actually, it was like shooting Remington bulk .22 ammo, with the amount of recoil, muzzle flash, and blast varying wildly from shot to shot. I need to order more to chrono, but it would not at all shock me to see a hundred foot-per-second variation over a ten round string of fire.
The pistol went through the complete cycle of operation every time. The eleven coil magazine springs seem to have really helped. They still pretty much require an UpLULA
to get the twelfth and thirteenth rounds in, tough, at least for my weak thumbs.This makes it 1230 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748), four failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734), and one failure to eject (#1,033). 770 rounds left to go.
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Saturday, June 25, 2016
From Elsewhere...
Presented without context:— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 25, 2016
"PTSD from Endor's Moon. Every time I walk past a Build-A-Bear in the mall I have horrible flashbacks."
iSaga
So, I've made casual references to having the iPhone/Apple Watch combo recently, but never really explained how that came to be.
Both Marko and Mike Grasso had Apple Watches and I thought they were pretty cool, but not enough to run out and change phones. My several-year-old Virgin Mobile Galaxy SII burner phone, with its grandfathered data plan and wifi hot spot, was just fine for me, even if I was about to buy its third battery.
I joked that Virgin Mobile's coverage was spotty, but the only places it really affected me were when I was at Blogorado and visiting Castle Frostbite; two times of the year that I really didn't mind being incommunicado for a bit. (Seriously, heading out from Nerd Ranch, my cell phone signal would cut off abruptly north of Española and I wouldn't hear a peep from my phone until returning; it was like the signal that Vacation had Officially Begun.)
This February I was house-sitting up in New Hamster and, it being an unseasonably warm winter, there was a nasty spot of freezing rain that turned the front lawn and driveway of Castle Frostbite into something like a skating rink with a 25° slope. I was wrestling the rolling trash bin down through the lawn, which offered marginally more traction than the driveway, thinking I needed to put on some crampons before coming back for the recycling bin when it hit me... I was way hell and gone in the middle of nowhere, out past where Jesus left his sandals, and if I fell and broke a leg badly or something, it was going to be days before anyone came looking.
Suddenly not having a cell phone signal wasn't as cool.
So on my trip up in April, I asked Marko which carrier he and Robin used, and while we were at the mall up there, I picked up an iPhone 6 and, thinking "What the hell, why not?" an Apple watch
while I was at it.
And the watch has been useful. The way the phone transmits driving instructions to it is neat. Being able to receive and reply to texts without taking your phone out of your pocket is cool. In fact, lots of things that normally involve taking the phone out of the pocket, like seeing who's calling and whether you need to answer in the first place, can be accomplished with a glance at the wrist. That's handy.
For the first couple months I used the various analog faces and enjoyed tinkering with the selection and arrangement of the complications. But when I was hanging out on the range with Mike last Friday, I noticed the face he was using on his and, being a copycat, copied it.
It was a revelation.
I have never been the most organized person in the world, so the idea of making to-do lists is something that is not second nature to me. Besides, I'd lose the lists.
But what if I could make the notes and the to-do lists on my phone or iPad and my watch would automatically display the next thing on my schedule, strapped to my wrist, and tap me on the wrist thirty minutes (or whenever) before it was time to do the thing?
Wow, this is how you organized people must feel all the time! This is great! It's like a cybernetic aid for the disorganized.
Both Marko and Mike Grasso had Apple Watches and I thought they were pretty cool, but not enough to run out and change phones. My several-year-old Virgin Mobile Galaxy SII burner phone, with its grandfathered data plan and wifi hot spot, was just fine for me, even if I was about to buy its third battery.
I joked that Virgin Mobile's coverage was spotty, but the only places it really affected me were when I was at Blogorado and visiting Castle Frostbite; two times of the year that I really didn't mind being incommunicado for a bit. (Seriously, heading out from Nerd Ranch, my cell phone signal would cut off abruptly north of Española and I wouldn't hear a peep from my phone until returning; it was like the signal that Vacation had Officially Begun.)
This February I was house-sitting up in New Hamster and, it being an unseasonably warm winter, there was a nasty spot of freezing rain that turned the front lawn and driveway of Castle Frostbite into something like a skating rink with a 25° slope. I was wrestling the rolling trash bin down through the lawn, which offered marginally more traction than the driveway, thinking I needed to put on some crampons before coming back for the recycling bin when it hit me... I was way hell and gone in the middle of nowhere, out past where Jesus left his sandals, and if I fell and broke a leg badly or something, it was going to be days before anyone came looking.
Suddenly not having a cell phone signal wasn't as cool.
So on my trip up in April, I asked Marko which carrier he and Robin used, and while we were at the mall up there, I picked up an iPhone 6 and, thinking "What the hell, why not?" an Apple watch
while I was at it.And the watch has been useful. The way the phone transmits driving instructions to it is neat. Being able to receive and reply to texts without taking your phone out of your pocket is cool. In fact, lots of things that normally involve taking the phone out of the pocket, like seeing who's calling and whether you need to answer in the first place, can be accomplished with a glance at the wrist. That's handy.
For the first couple months I used the various analog faces and enjoyed tinkering with the selection and arrangement of the complications. But when I was hanging out on the range with Mike last Friday, I noticed the face he was using on his and, being a copycat, copied it.
It was a revelation.
I have never been the most organized person in the world, so the idea of making to-do lists is something that is not second nature to me. Besides, I'd lose the lists.
But what if I could make the notes and the to-do lists on my phone or iPad and my watch would automatically display the next thing on my schedule, strapped to my wrist, and tap me on the wrist thirty minutes (or whenever) before it was time to do the thing?
Wow, this is how you organized people must feel all the time! This is great! It's like a cybernetic aid for the disorganized.
"...Imma let you finish, but America had the best Brexit of all time."
Hipster George Washington...
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Seen elsewhere on the 'net yesterday, and I can't remember where, but "After 240 years, they finally get that whole 'taxation without representation' thing." I LOL'ed.Love it pic.twitter.com/6DyGIFHdDH— Robb Allen (@ItsRobbAllen) June 25, 2016
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Friday, June 24, 2016
Apparently the Brits needed superdelegates.
Shorter @davidaxelrod: "When we said 'will of the people', we meant 'will of the right *kind* of people'." #Brexit https://t.co/iBgf2p4HEd— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 24, 2016
TIL...
Up until yesterday it was very progressive to support the self determination of people in democratic elections. I guess that stuff is only for the Libyans and Sudanese, not crackers.
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Contextual Handgun: The Armed Parent/Guardian
So, in the news recently was this dramatic security camera footage of a woman fighting off some creeptastic dude trying to abduct her 13-year-old daughter right there in the middle of the Dollar General.
If you carry a gun and have a family, odds are good that when you need to use that gun to fend off some bad guy, you will not be alone, but rather will have loved ones close at hand.
There's very little in the way of firearms training that specifically takes this into account, however. Recognizing this, my friends John Johnston and Melody Lauer have spent the last year and more putting together a curriculum built around the realities of employing a firearm in the situation that is every parent's nightmare: With toddler in hand or baby in arms.
Melody, known on the intertubes for her site "Limatunes Range Diaries" (now MelodyLauer.com) was hired by John Johnston to help stand up Citizens' Defense Research, the training division of Ballistic Radio. Melody's an EMT with a gun school resume that puts mine to shame.
John Johnston, host of Ballistic Radio, has been to a whole ton of gun school himself. It was in doing all this training that John noticed the void that the Armed Parent/Guardian class was designed to fill.
John's a big fan of two things:
Context, because a lot of tactics, techniques, or bits of gear get criticized by people who have no understanding of the context for their use; and high standards of measured performance.
It was the latter that had me criticizing the curriculum when it was first being bandied about. The class standard for shooting was high enough that I wondered aloud if students would be able to keep up.
I was wrong.
Day one began with a well-organized classroom presentation that laid out the reasons for the course and gave video examples of the sorts of situations that the training was created to address.
Melody explaining the actual vital areas on a target and how they shift based on the bad guy's orientation relative to the shooter.
The hand-picked students for the shakedown cruise of this class consisted of a bunch of industry professionals as well as a few students who had never run a gun from a holster on the clock before.
Day One was spent on the range after lunch working on basic gun handling and shooting from the holster, with the pace gradually picking up until we shot the current FBI qualification course.
Day Two started off with a ballistic gel demonstration which served to illustrate what a bad idea it is to plan on using your body to shield your loved ones. Against FMJ ammunition (or un-expanded hollow points), human bodies are concealment, not cover.
Context: Are there times when you want to close the distance on the bad guy instead of opening it? Well, is the bad guy actually holding your loved one? Will stepping in get the muzzle past your loved one?
Day Two featured the meat of the shooting portion of the class: Shooting with babe in arms or child in hand.
Shooting one handed can be hard...
...when the other hand has a child pulling and tugging on it. Techniques were discussed to mitigate this, such as pinning the child's arm to your side with your elbow, which stabilized your shooting immensely.
SAND BABY!
When I learned that the graduation exercise would be shooting the FBI qual with baby either in arm or set down before shooting, but with no change to the par time, I was again skeptical. That's tight, especially for some of the newer shooters.
Again I was wrong. The quality of instruction was good enough that the entire class shot passing scores despite having to deal with SAND BABY.
If you have munchkins, preteens, or adult kids who leave the grandbabies with you, I highly recommend looking into this class. It'll be available September 10-11 at DTS in Troy, Ohio, or you could contact Melody and look into hosting the class at a facility near you.
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If you carry a gun and have a family, odds are good that when you need to use that gun to fend off some bad guy, you will not be alone, but rather will have loved ones close at hand.
There's very little in the way of firearms training that specifically takes this into account, however. Recognizing this, my friends John Johnston and Melody Lauer have spent the last year and more putting together a curriculum built around the realities of employing a firearm in the situation that is every parent's nightmare: With toddler in hand or baby in arms.
John's a big fan of two things:
Context, because a lot of tactics, techniques, or bits of gear get criticized by people who have no understanding of the context for their use; and high standards of measured performance.
It was the latter that had me criticizing the curriculum when it was first being bandied about. The class standard for shooting was high enough that I wondered aloud if students would be able to keep up.
I was wrong.
The hand-picked students for the shakedown cruise of this class consisted of a bunch of industry professionals as well as a few students who had never run a gun from a holster on the clock before.
Day One was spent on the range after lunch working on basic gun handling and shooting from the holster, with the pace gradually picking up until we shot the current FBI qualification course.
Day Two featured the meat of the shooting portion of the class: Shooting with babe in arms or child in hand.
When I learned that the graduation exercise would be shooting the FBI qual with baby either in arm or set down before shooting, but with no change to the par time, I was again skeptical. That's tight, especially for some of the newer shooters.
Again I was wrong. The quality of instruction was good enough that the entire class shot passing scores despite having to deal with SAND BABY.
If you have munchkins, preteens, or adult kids who leave the grandbabies with you, I highly recommend looking into this class. It'll be available September 10-11 at DTS in Troy, Ohio, or you could contact Melody and look into hosting the class at a facility near you.
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Pound Takes Pounding On Brexit Vote
I'm going to go stand in the beer aisle at the grocery store and wait for them to mark down the Boddington's.— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 24, 2016
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Gun Forum 101...
You're only allowed to own one gun at a time and if you don't convince everyone else to buy the same one, you lose at internet.— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 23, 2016
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
""We don't know who the shooter is or what kind of weapons he has, but the possibility this could be a terror attack is crossing the minds of people here in Germany," CNN's Atika Shubert reported from Berlin. "You must need some sort of advanced degree to make stunningly obvious statements like that.
Reporter: "There is a silence. I must quickly fill it with noises from my mouth parts!"
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300...
...failure-free rounds thus far through the Wilson.
Took it to Indy Arms Co yesterday and put another hundred rounds of Winchester 124gr NATO ball through it.
I ran the target out to fifteen yards and fired a magazine through it, cold. Could have done better, there, but I'm still getting used to the sights. Pulled it back in to ten yards and put eighty more rounds into the target, saving the last ten to let the guys who were working there that morning get a chance to try some five-shot groups with it. Response to this gun has been pretty universally positive; the gee-whiz factor is off the charts.
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Wednesday, June 22, 2016
#RememberUCDavis
Do Capitol Police not have pepper spray?This is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in gov. Democrats are literally acting like toddlers pic.twitter.com/YUWFkvAP23— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) June 22, 2016
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Recoil-Operated
Curious to see how it would function in the Steyr, I hijacked a hundred rounds of it and took the C9-A1 to Indy Arms Co yesterday morning.
This makes 830 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with seven failures-to-fire (#8, #472, #535, #555, #558, #672, #695), seven failures to extract (#234, #266, #276, #531, #535, #543, #558), and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,170 rounds left to go.
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You're Not Helping, Part MCXII...
This is vehicle from PA heading to NYC stopped @ #HollandTunnel by @PANYNJ with cache of weapons inside. @NBCNewYork pic.twitter.com/tEavRLDCpG— Marc Santia (@MarcSantia4NY) June 21, 2016
“Astute Port Authority Police work led to the stoppage of a vehicle on the New Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel this morning, leading to the arrest of three individuals from the state of Pennsylvania on a variety of charges related to illegal possession of guns and ammunition,” according to a statement from Joe Pentangelo, a Port Authority Police spokesman. “At this time, the investigation is continuing, but the agency does not believe the incident is terrorism-related.”Seriously, that vehicle looks like the illegitimate offspring of Rob Pincus's PDN tour truck and Grave Digger.
That's, like, whatever the opposite of "Grey Man" is. Chartreuse Man? Plaid Man?
If this guy were Frodo, he'd have rolled right into Mordor through the front door with a twelve foot neon "THE RING OF POWER IS IN MY LEFT POCKET" sign over his head. It's hard to work up a head of sympathy for this cat. 10/10 for style, but minus several thousand for not thinking things all the way through.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
That gunwriter life...
Since I did not have to use my AK, I am going to pronounce this a good day.
Monday, June 20, 2016
[omitted]
Paul Revere: "The [omitted] are coming! The [omitted] are coming!"— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 20, 2016
"On this day, December 7, 1941, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of [omitted]."— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 20, 2016
Sorry.
Bobbi worked the weird shift last night/this morning, which means I was up 'til almost 0400 seeing her off, got a couple hours shuteye, woke up to feed the cats, and then dozed restlessly for another couple hours before I got up to get ready for lunch.
I'll be back to normal by tomorrow. I hope. Right now I couldn't string two coherent thoughts together on a dare.
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I'll be back to normal by tomorrow. I hope. Right now I couldn't string two coherent thoughts together on a dare.
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Sunday, June 19, 2016
Overheard in the Office...
Me: *chuckling* "Oh, man, look at this..."
RX: "..."
Me: "The name. On the back of his jersey. 'Hu'."
RX: "..."
Me: "Hu's on first."
RX: "How can you tell it's first?"
Me: "What? Because you just can! Look, there's the foul line and then the base path curves away, it can't be third; it would be a total mirror image..."
RX: "How do you know it's not second?"
Me: "Because there aren't any foul lines near second, it's just by itself in the middle of some dirt and...You know this could have gotten you shot as a German infiltrator during the Battle of the Bulge?"
RX: "What would I have been doing at the Battle of the Bulge?"
Me: "Getting shot as a German infiltrator."
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Now It Can Be Told...
Since it showed up in the mailbox, I guess I can post this...
Now that Shooting Illustrated is an Official Journal of the NRA, if you want to change your subscription from National Rifleman or America's 1st Freedom, you can just go to the member services page and change it there.
If you want more personal defense and action sports shooting stuff, SI is the NRA mag for you.
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If you want more personal defense and action sports shooting stuff, SI is the NRA mag for you.
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It's that time again!
It's Fun Show time! Let's sing the Fun Show Song!
Flintlocks and Flop-topsNot really needing anything, but you never know. There might be that one special something I suddenly realize I can't live without.
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.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Doubleyou-Tee-Eff?
Out on the road today, I saw a Bernie sticker on an S-class Benz— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 17, 2016
A little voice inside my head said, WTF? SRSLY, WTF?
Overheard in the Office...
Me: "...and you go across the conservative side of the web and find the people who scoff at the Constitution as a 'living document' and ask them if the First Amendment applies to the Internet. Hell yes it's a living document, we have got to constantly judge how the Constitution applies to situations that the Founding Fathers could never, in their wildest dream fantasies, have imagined..."While typing:
RX: "You don't think they could have imagined Internet hentai?"
Me: "Not even...well, Ben Franklin probably could have come the closest of any of them to imagining Internet hentai... This is going on the internet."
Me: "Google's spellchecker knows 'hentai', for whatever that's worth."
Screw this.
People are acting like retards. I'm going to the range for a bit, and then go do something productive.
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Thursday, June 16, 2016
Making America grate on my nerves again...
I like how once The Donald brings up the Terror Watch List thing, suddenly we're not all TJIC anymore.
Question
How much wookie-suited threeper stuff do you have to post to wind up on a terror watch list? Asking for a friend.— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 16, 2016
Who watches the watch list?
"Before September 11, 2001, the no-fly list, which names people who are banned from boarding flights in or out of the U.S., contained 16 people. A leak revealed that that number had grown to 47,000 as of 2013. Most of those names were added after President Obama took office. The broader terrorist watch list maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center has an even more expansive scope; the estimated number of people on the list has ranged from 700,000 to more than 1.5 million, figures which include Americans and foreigners."So, what other constitutional rights do we think it would be cool to strip from people extrajudicially?
What can get you put on a terr'rist watch list? Commenting too frequently at WRSA? Linking to Mountain Guerilla?
ETA: To put a finer point on it...
"A lot of folks who are screaming to throw all Muslims on to terror watch lists are the same folks who were cheerleading for that assclown Amon Bundy and his band of dipshits. Little do they realize expanding secret lists of "enemies of the state" will be their undoing...." -A Facebook Commenter.
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Once upon a time...
Seeing a deer was a big deal. Seriously. As recently as the Seventies, just seeing a whitetail in suburbia east of the Mississippi was a rare thing. Now, though? After half a century of careful herd management here are so many of the damn things that some stretches of interstate can look like an abbatoir, with four or five of the things bloating along the roadside in the space of a mile or two.
Similarly, Walt Disney World opened in Florida in 1971 and would have been in operation for sixteen years before the American alligator was removed from the endangered species list. Now the things are traffic hazards in Florida. They also seem to serve the same function as grizzlies in Alaska: A reminder that we're not automatically at the top of the food chain.
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Similarly, Walt Disney World opened in Florida in 1971 and would have been in operation for sixteen years before the American alligator was removed from the endangered species list. Now the things are traffic hazards in Florida. They also seem to serve the same function as grizzlies in Alaska: A reminder that we're not automatically at the top of the food chain.
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Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Three Eighty Ultra Mag
There were no malfunctions of any type to report.
This makes it 1130 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748), four failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734), and one failure to eject (#1,033). 870 rounds left to go.
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Three Eighty
I switched to the upper A-zone and the Sig house brand .380 FMJ, and the gun ran like a top for the rest of the session.
That Armscor is the only ammo that's caused issues in the gun; it's eaten Prvi and Tula, S&B and Remington white box with equal aplomb. I'd say that points to the ammo and not the gun.
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Tuesday, June 14, 2016
The Master at work...
"How could the FBI have ignored all these glaring red flags?" - country about to nominate Clinton and Trump— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 13, 2016
Terminology, again...
As we enter the third 24-hour period of relentless
media coverage, the part where even the local TV stations have custom
bumpers for the incident with distinctive theme music, let's make sure
we have some things clear.
TV news does not sell news to you.
TV news sells commercial time to corporations and your eyeballs are the poker chips in the card game.
Atrocities (and let's keep our terminology straight: hurricanes and earthquakes are tragedies, this was an atrocity) are like a Double Bonus Round in the Eyeball Delivery Sweepstakes for FOXNews and CNN and MSNBC.
And all this attention is just incentivizing the next Eyeball Deliverer out there, patiently loading magazines (or mixing fertilizer, or dumping powder into pressure cookers, or studying a flight manual, or filling jerry cans...)
And, yes, ironically this post is just more attention being paid, and by complaining about the problem I make myself a part of it. It's a hell of a thing.
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TV news does not sell news to you.
TV news sells commercial time to corporations and your eyeballs are the poker chips in the card game.
Atrocities (and let's keep our terminology straight: hurricanes and earthquakes are tragedies, this was an atrocity) are like a Double Bonus Round in the Eyeball Delivery Sweepstakes for FOXNews and CNN and MSNBC.
And all this attention is just incentivizing the next Eyeball Deliverer out there, patiently loading magazines (or mixing fertilizer, or dumping powder into pressure cookers, or studying a flight manual, or filling jerry cans...)
And, yes, ironically this post is just more attention being paid, and by complaining about the problem I make myself a part of it. It's a hell of a thing.
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A point, please...
"Regardless, the three deadliest shootings in the U.S. have occurred in the past 10 yearsSo, all of those have occurred after we prohibited the purchase of guns through the mail (1968) and after we instituted mandatory background checks for firearms purchases (1993)?
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Monday, June 13, 2016
News to me.
I gave an involuntary bark of laughter. I'm sorry, but I don't think I've ever heard the MCX called the "Black Mamba", not even in a video game."(T)he MCX is known in military circles as the "Black Mamba"" -Mother Jones is where I go for all my gun facts!https://t.co/yGtnDAD3yU— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 14, 2016
I'm not sure whether this is an example of Argumentum ad anus extractus, which is the logical fallacy of pulling stuff out of your ass, or Argumentum ad feces fabricatum, which is argument by making shit up.
ETA: I've been informed by friends that it was in inside term during project development because the black mamba is the bane of the honey badger. I'll contend that that's still a pretty big jump to "known in military circles".
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Because I hate using good material at an away game...
From comments here:
"The inability of most people to pass an Ideological Turing Test saddens me. My daily internet meanderings take me to an eclectic variety of sites. The one unifying factor among them is that most of the people in the comments section make no attempt whatsoever to understand their opponents on whatever the issue at hand may be.
90% of illumination on the internet is provided by burning straw men."
...but war is interested in you.
Sometimes the war doesn't care if you want to be in it or not.
"Whether you think we’re at war with radical Islam is immaterial–while it may take two to tango, only one side has to decide to throw a punch to start a conflict. They’ve already been punching on American soil; the attack over the weekend was just the latest hook shot in a conflict that will absolutely continue regardless of your personal feelings on the matter. I can’t tell you the long term answers to Islamofacist terrorism, but I know they won’t be presented or pushed by our current political circus in a quip on a news clip."
"Now, now, that's not what you really meant."
An article of Progressive faith is that you don't silence a person's own narrative. Unless it's "I am doing this for Islam and the caliph!"— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 13, 2016
Understand Your Terms...
Talking heads are talking about the glory days when we had an "Assault Weapons Ban" and all the evil assault weapons like the AR15 were banished from the land, and how the evil Republicans allowed it to sunset in 2004...
This picture was taken when the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 was still in force. All three of those guns were very legal at the time. Two were legally considered "assault weapons" but were grandfathered in because they had been made prior to 1994, which made them valuable commodities at the time. One is not an "assault weapon" and was perfectly legal to buy in 2003.
All three of those thirty-round magazines ("high capacity bullet clips") had been made prior to 1994 and were thus grandfathered. They weren't terribly expensive, because there were literally millions in circulation, and those millions are a fraction of what's out there now.
At the time, I owned one AR-type weapon. Now I have several. And what I have is a tiny fraction of an electron in one atom in a water molecule of a drop in the civilian-owned AR15 bucket. Conservative estimates have the number of these things in circulation as closer to ten million than five. The horse is well and truly out of the barn.
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All three of those thirty-round magazines ("high capacity bullet clips") had been made prior to 1994 and were thus grandfathered. They weren't terribly expensive, because there were literally millions in circulation, and those millions are a fraction of what's out there now.
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Sunday, June 12, 2016
Herbivores...
The little tremolo effect Willie Geist gets in his voice every time he intones "AR15-style assault weapon" is just adorable.— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 12, 2016
Counterproductive.
I wish that TV talking heads would quit calling this "officially the
worst mass shooting in US history". Will you people quit keeping a
leaderboard? There are sick f***s watching you that take that as some
sort of challenge as they update their .xls spreadsheets.
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This morning on the telly...
Too bad it wasn't tennis interrupting my Meet the Press this morning.
Brokaw was just warbling and emoting into the camera that we need to have a "prayerful" discussion about gun control, this before everybody's bleeding has even been controlled.
Some other talking head (didn't see which, I was down the hall in the loo by that point) wanted to know whether we should construe this as a terrorist attack or a "hate crime". Hey, numbnuts, how about it's both?
Shooter's dad's first comment to press concludes with "This is not about religion," which, of course, identified the shooter's religion before anybody in any of the press conferences had mentioned it.
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Brokaw was just warbling and emoting into the camera that we need to have a "prayerful" discussion about gun control, this before everybody's bleeding has even been controlled.
Some other talking head (didn't see which, I was down the hall in the loo by that point) wanted to know whether we should construe this as a terrorist attack or a "hate crime". Hey, numbnuts, how about it's both?
Shooter's dad's first comment to press concludes with "This is not about religion," which, of course, identified the shooter's religion before anybody in any of the press conferences had mentioned it.
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Saturday, June 11, 2016
#Fantasyland
In a #worldwithoutguns, the lion will lie down with the lamb... any time it wants to, and the lamb will shut up and take it, or else.— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 11, 2016
Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #143...
A test gun has arrived...
And here I thought my irrational love affair with 1911s was safely in the past.
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Friday, June 10, 2016
Breakup.
It's not you, Lasergrip and Lightguard, it's me.
I carried my M&P9 from the middle of 2011 until earlier this year. For almost that entire time, it sported both the Lasergrip and the Lightguard from Crimson Trace. I thought both were handier than a pocket on a shirt.
I was obviously in a minority on the Lightguard. I found myself caught between two schools of thought: On one hand was the ALL THE LUMENS camp, who correctly pointed out that the Lightguard's modest 100-lumen output was barely SOME of the lumens and not even close to MOST of them. It didn't generate near enough light for "bounce" to illuminate a room. On the other hand was the camp who pointed out that most people don't go hunting for bad guys with a CCW pistol and therefore a weaponlight is unnecessary bulk and expense.
Nobody, however, could point out the downside to having something at which I'd already decided to shoot be a little better illuminated, and the Lightguard was reasonably priced and didn't make the pistol any longer or wider or harder to conceal.
Unfortunately, when I switched to the Glock earlier this year, I discovered that the shape of the Glock Lightguard was not as friendly, especially during extended shooting sessions. By the end of the first day of the Contextual Handgun: Armed Parent/Guardian class in Topeka back in April, I had the worst case of "Glock Knuckle" I've ever had. I'm not normally susceptible to the malady, but with the addition of the Lightguard, the second knuckle on my shooting hand was slathered in Liquid Skin and wrapped in Bandaids by the end of the class.
What made it annoying is that I've taken that M&P, complete with Lightguard, to multiple classes and it never caused any problems.
The modest benefits accrued by the Lightguard aren't worth that. After five months, it looks like my Lightguard is coming off the Glock.
Similarly, the Lasergrip. On the M&P, it's a no-brainer. It simply replaces the pistol's factory backstrap, unobtrusively adding a laser for no increase in bulk at all. It's such a no-brainer that I'll admit being a little judgy of people who run M&Ps without one.
So when I switched to the Glock 19, I ordered a Glock Lasergrip from Amazon. I didn't think anything about it until April, which was the first time I was having to reload the pistol on the clock and... holy cow did this thing complicate mag changes! Any benefit I'd gained from adding the Vickers mag release was negated by the fat battery saddlebag sitting right where my thumb needed to go to get to the release.
So it's a reluctant goodbye to the LG-619, too.
Ironically, Crimson Trace has just released a new product, the Laserguard Pro, which combines a light and laser into the footprint of the Lightguard. I'd put one of those things on my Glock 19 in a New York minute and figure out a way to mitigate the "Glock Knuckle" problem, but CTC is only going to offer them for the bitty little Glock 42/42 and not the normal-size Glock 19. Que sera, sera.
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I was obviously in a minority on the Lightguard. I found myself caught between two schools of thought: On one hand was the ALL THE LUMENS camp, who correctly pointed out that the Lightguard's modest 100-lumen output was barely SOME of the lumens and not even close to MOST of them. It didn't generate near enough light for "bounce" to illuminate a room. On the other hand was the camp who pointed out that most people don't go hunting for bad guys with a CCW pistol and therefore a weaponlight is unnecessary bulk and expense.
Nobody, however, could point out the downside to having something at which I'd already decided to shoot be a little better illuminated, and the Lightguard was reasonably priced and didn't make the pistol any longer or wider or harder to conceal.
Unfortunately, when I switched to the Glock earlier this year, I discovered that the shape of the Glock Lightguard was not as friendly, especially during extended shooting sessions. By the end of the first day of the Contextual Handgun: Armed Parent/Guardian class in Topeka back in April, I had the worst case of "Glock Knuckle" I've ever had. I'm not normally susceptible to the malady, but with the addition of the Lightguard, the second knuckle on my shooting hand was slathered in Liquid Skin and wrapped in Bandaids by the end of the class.
What made it annoying is that I've taken that M&P, complete with Lightguard, to multiple classes and it never caused any problems.
The modest benefits accrued by the Lightguard aren't worth that. After five months, it looks like my Lightguard is coming off the Glock.
So when I switched to the Glock 19, I ordered a Glock Lasergrip from Amazon. I didn't think anything about it until April, which was the first time I was having to reload the pistol on the clock and... holy cow did this thing complicate mag changes! Any benefit I'd gained from adding the Vickers mag release was negated by the fat battery saddlebag sitting right where my thumb needed to go to get to the release.
So it's a reluctant goodbye to the LG-619, too.
Ironically, Crimson Trace has just released a new product, the Laserguard Pro, which combines a light and laser into the footprint of the Lightguard. I'd put one of those things on my Glock 19 in a New York minute and figure out a way to mitigate the "Glock Knuckle" problem, but CTC is only going to offer them for the bitty little Glock 42/42 and not the normal-size Glock 19. Que sera, sera.
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Thursday, June 09, 2016
Froggy Life Flight
"Morgan got in touch with a frog hospital nearly 500 miles away in Cairns and an airline reportedly offered to carry the injured amphibian on one of its flights there.In case you were wondering what the dot at the top of the pyramid of Maslow’s Heirarchy was, now you know. You’ve pretty much gotta have the cave bears wiped out and a good handle on what next year’s crop is going to look like before you can start life-flighting frogs.
“It was unbelievable coordination to be able to get the frog to us but he did eventually make it to Cairns and we picked him up from the airport,” Deborah Pergolotti, president of Frog Safe, told local media."
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More shooting...
I had one box left of that 115gr Blazer Brass. I also had half a box of Fiocchi 115gr ammo that, unusually for Fiocchi, had been extremely under-powered. I'd used it testing the Ruger 9E, where it had turned in an average velocity of 1035fps, with some rounds not even breaking the 1000fps velocity mark. That caused this in the Ruger:
Now, my Glock 17 is old, at least as Glocks go, with a serial number that dates it to 1992, but the recoil spring assembly is fresh, having been prophylactically replaced...*checks logbook*...428 rounds ago.
It's been running fine with the Blazer Brass, but how would it deal with this dregs of this defective lot of Fiocchi? (And I do mean defective. The velocity spread between the fastest and slowest rounds in a ten shot string was a full hundred and five feet per second.)
I ran the target out to seven yards and did a bunch of single shots and fast three- and four-shot strings from low ready with the Blazer Brass, before sending it out to fifteen yards to shoot at the upper A-zone with the Fiocchi.
The Fiocchi ran the gun fine. I wish the same could be said of me, but it was hard to make out the head box at 45 feet. I probably would have done better on a traditional bullseye, or even a free-standing USPSA target.
The CAP sights are such an improvement over the factory Glock sights, especially for shooting fast.
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It's been running fine with the Blazer Brass, but how would it deal with this dregs of this defective lot of Fiocchi? (And I do mean defective. The velocity spread between the fastest and slowest rounds in a ten shot string was a full hundred and five feet per second.)
The CAP sights are such an improvement over the factory Glock sights, especially for shooting fast.
Wednesday, June 08, 2016
Overcorrection...
Look, I know that The Little Golden Book of World War Two is incorrect when it teaches kids that the war started when Pearl Harbor got bombed and then the US saved everybody from Hitler with 1911s and Sherman tanks.
And I know that Hollywood has performed some amazingly ahistorical gaffes in the past with movies like U-571 that basically write the British out of the story and fabricate tales of American war-winning out of whole cloth.
But to leap from that into this quote is pure knee-jerk-ism...
I blame Star Trek for this bizarre inclusionism. I realize that there were Vulcans and Russians and Klingons and Scotsmen and African-Americans on the bridge of the Enterprise, and that's great! Maybe that's how it is in the 23rd Century. But there were darn few Japanese-Americans on the bridge of CV-6 at the Battle of Midway, and when some future war movie throws some in there because inclusionism, it's just going to be awkward. "No, Billy, your great granddad wasn't on the Enterprise at Midway; he was in a concentration camp in the desert. No, an American concentration camp."
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And I know that Hollywood has performed some amazingly ahistorical gaffes in the past with movies like U-571 that basically write the British out of the story and fabricate tales of American war-winning out of whole cloth.
But to leap from that into this quote is pure knee-jerk-ism...
"But despite "Band of Brothers," despite "Saving Private Ryan," despite those 11 photographs taken by Robert Capa in the swell on that morning of June 6 1944, D-Day was not a predominantly American effort. Rather, it was an Allied effort with, if anything, Britain taking the lead."Band of Brothers was a story specifically about Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The reason the British are not portrayed in Band of Brothers is because...sit down, this is going to come as a shock...American Army units tend to be made up of Americans, while British people are usually in British army units.
I blame Star Trek for this bizarre inclusionism. I realize that there were Vulcans and Russians and Klingons and Scotsmen and African-Americans on the bridge of the Enterprise, and that's great! Maybe that's how it is in the 23rd Century. But there were darn few Japanese-Americans on the bridge of CV-6 at the Battle of Midway, and when some future war movie throws some in there because inclusionism, it's just going to be awkward. "No, Billy, your great granddad wasn't on the Enterprise at Midway; he was in a concentration camp in the desert. No, an American concentration camp."
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Overheard in the Office...
Bobbi is reading an '80s SF novel in the cyberpunk subgenre...
RX: "I don't think he knows much about cattle butchering. Twice now a cow has been killed off-camera and then people are eating steaks a very short time later. And he keeps making up calibers. He gave one character an HK 7mm pistol."
Me: "He knows 9mm is a real caliber, and Future Bullets are smaller. By giving somebody a smaller caliber, that's how you know it's the future, like having a black or woman president."
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Bobbi had the a/c off and a box fan running in her bedroom window last night, its low hum providing a pleasant white noise that had me sleeping the sleep of the Just...
...until about 0mygod30 this morning, just before dawn, when she turned it off and suddenly in my dream the red emergency lighting came on in the subterranean asteroid colony as the air-handling system went silent. That had me sitting bolt-upright in bed, let me tell you.
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...until about 0mygod30 this morning, just before dawn, when she turned it off and suddenly in my dream the red emergency lighting came on in the subterranean asteroid colony as the air-handling system went silent. That had me sitting bolt-upright in bed, let me tell you.
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I'm Winchester!
I've got at least a case of premium Winchester Ranger and Federal HST, but I'm danger low on 9mm FMJ practice ammo. How'd that happen?— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 8, 2016
Way of the Gauge
Darryl Bolke, who is a veritable fount of clue, drops some knowledge bombs to dispel the myths you hear about shotguns on the internets...
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"One of my personal favorites is “you just need to rack the shotgun and criminals will run”. This is utter nonsense. In my first shooting, the two carjackers I was up against both told investigators individually in interviews that they heard me rack my Remington 870 as I exited my car. The effect it had was exactly nothing. They did not surrender or change their actions at all, other than to prepare for a fight."You should go read it. Now.
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Just shooting.
I had a box and most of another one of that CCI Blazer Brass 115gr FMJ...you know, the stuff that won't run the Canik or the Steyr reliably?...and so I took it and my Robar Custom Gen2 Glock 17 to Indy Arms Co. yesterday morning.
Robar-ed Glock with Ameriglo CAP sights, Vickers mag release, and Zev Fulcrum trigger, UpLULA, and Raven Eidolon holster.
Unlike the Canik and the Steyr, the Glock happily chewed through all ninety rounds without a malfunction.
I fat-fingered the target carrier controller and poked in 31 feet instead of the usual seven yards. Despite not being able to distinguish individual 9mm holes at that distance with my sunglasses on (let alone the faint lines around the scoring zones) I decided to go ahead and shoot from 10.33 yards anyway.
On the upside, I seem to be finally getting accustomed to the Zev Trigger in the Glock. Since I was by myself out on the range, I didn't feel bad about breaking the 1-rd/sec speed limit, and the whole reset-during-recoil/"flip and press" is coming a lot easier now.
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I fat-fingered the target carrier controller and poked in 31 feet instead of the usual seven yards. Despite not being able to distinguish individual 9mm holes at that distance with my sunglasses on (let alone the faint lines around the scoring zones) I decided to go ahead and shoot from 10.33 yards anyway.
On the upside, I seem to be finally getting accustomed to the Zev Trigger in the Glock. Since I was by myself out on the range, I didn't feel bad about breaking the 1-rd/sec speed limit, and the whole reset-during-recoil/"flip and press" is coming a lot easier now.
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Automotif CXXIX...
Seen on my trip to the corner grocery store yesterday...
...a nice-looking butternut yellow '67 Camaro RS convertible.
Fender badges say it has the base 250c.i.d. inline six-cylinder, which means it would have a hard time matching the scintillating performance of, say, your typical Chevy Aveo rental car. Still, I wouldn't kick it out of the garage. If you're going to be in a pig-slow car, it may as well be a gorgeous one with a folding top.
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