Automotif XXX...

Grocery Getter

The origin of the term "trunk".

...and sometimes unusual things just turn up in the Kroger parking lot. I don't know much about this era of automobiles, but I think it's a '32 Chevy. I love the "Save The Ales" bumper sticker in the rear window.
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Overheard in the Hallway...

RX: "What's the high temperature supposed to be today?"

Me: "82, 84... something like that."

RX: "Wow."

Me: "It is almost Memorial Day. The weatherman was all excited about the temperature. They always seem surprised when summer comes back around every year."

RX: "Well, their technology is primitive. They always figure that once Fenris wolf eats the sun every year, then that's it."

Overheard in the Office...

RX: "...these are the people who thought the story of the fast food employees hiding in the freezer was plausible."

Me: "That's because they don't know those places have back doors, since they've never been behind the counter in one."

Clutch the pearls!

My seventh-grade D&D group could have put on a better junk-on-the-bunk display.

You have got to be $#!++ing me.

The amount of breathy-voiced sphincter-puckering going on at the sight of this lame collection of firearms, BB guns, and SLOs (that's "sword-like objects") from Gotham po-po and journalists is positively hilarious.

Chief Wiggum's spokesman doesn't neglect the miscellanea in his checklist-reading, either:

 As if that wasn’t enough, cops also recovered eight swords, one machete, some nunchakus and eight Codeine tablets, cops said.

Can't forget those codeine tablets! Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.

“It was enough to arm a small army or militia,” a police source said of the bust.

Or an understrength Hoosier Boy Scout troop, you shrieking git. Jesus wept, un-clench and get a hold  of yourself, man! It's some BB guns and the floor sweepings from the local pawn shop; you could turn up better out of the cabs of the pickup trucks in the parking lot of any blue collar employer in flyover country.

Maybe once De Blasio's let the city devolve back into a crime-ridden cesspit (say what you will about Bloomberg, but he made the clocks in Times Square run on time) you people won't shriek like schoolgirls at the sight of the small arms version of costume jewelry and Mardi Gras beads, you bunch of babies.

An angle I hadn't thought of...

Over at East Iowa Firearms Training, in a sizable post on firearms training, Bill offers an angle on the importance of making carrying your pistol a routine thing that I had not previously thought of:

"When you choose to carry – CARRY. Every day and every place you legally can. First, that just makes sense to me. A predator will never willingly give you the ability to choose the ground you fight on – they will do their best to find a time and place that best fits their needs. If you figured you “didn’t need to carry today” and your paths cross . . . your day will not end well. And, words like “well, I carried today because I was going to a bad side of town, my gun just made me feel safer!” may well be true for you on that day, but in court they lead to many very uncomfortable lines of questioning – “why is THAT the bad side of town?” – “didn’t you have other places you could have gone to pick up that same item?” – “did you harbor bad feelings about people of that color?” . . . If you’re going to carry . . . carry!"

Thinking about things like this ahead of time is the very definition of preparedness. Too many people don't think through these things, and instead chant the mantra "A good shoot is a good shoot. A good shoot is a good shoot. Om mani padme hum." Don't let George Zimmerman have been horsewhipped through the public square for nothing.
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Automotif XXIX...

Residing on one short block near Roseholme Cottage in SoBro are...

 ...not one...

 ...not two...

...but three Subaru WRXs. 

(Also a regular Impreza hatch and a couple Foresters, because Broad Riparians apparently love them some Subies.)
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Johnny Cash warned me this would happen...

A young cowboy named Billy Joe grew restless on the farm
A boy filled with wanderlust who really meant no harm
He changed his clothes and shined his boots
And combed his dark hair down
And his mother cried as he walked out

[Chorus]
Don't take your guns to Moe's, son
I like the menu there
Don't take your guns to Moe's

Automotif XXVIII...

Seen while out and about: '61 or '62 Buick Special parked up at a local transmission joint. I found it interesting that this early '60s Y-body compact, one of GM's early adventures in unibody construction, is not terrible huge even by the yardstick of the Audi A4 it's parked beside.
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Rights are like muscles!

If you don't exercise them they get flabby!

I read that on the internet someplace...

Anyhow, since I'm rarely averse to a bit of recreational bomb-throwing, how many people who cheered when she got fired for exercising her freeze peach...

...are planning on boycotting Chipotle? And why?

Morbid targets...

Someone left one of those morbid "ghostly anatomy" targets at the range yesterday. Since I forgot mine (which I will not do tomorrow since I have already loaded them in the car) I appropriated the morbid target, which only had a few holes in it, most of which were well off center.

I wasn't shooting for score, anyway, mostly just for function and familiarization...

The little EAA shot fine: That's the first fifty rounds out of it inside that orange ring, a mix of Remington and Winchester budget FMJ from the bottom of my 9mm ammo can. (The head box is the PPX; I'm working on trying to run the light "double-action" trigger faster and running into vertical stringing. None of those gutterballs were mine.)
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Range Notes...

Another 50 rounds of 115gr Winchester Value Pack stuff means 200 rounds through the PPX now. The slide did not lock back on round number 180, but I am fairly certain that was operator-induced and not the gun's fault. That said, it was magazine #2, and I'll be keeping an eye out for it in the future. Subjectively speaking, it's a very soft-shooting pistol.
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Blrgl, part deux.

Two hours of sleep followed by three or so hours of fitful dozing to the drone of the TeeWee takes more out of a body than you'd think. Drive out to the range, shoot for an hour, drive back and hit the grocery store along the way and I'm wiped.

I'm gonna make a desultory good faith effort at weed-whacking, throw the battery on the charger, and the front lawn can wait until tomorrow. I am just not up to dealing with the logistics of cat sequestration and extension cord management right now. If the neighbors want it mowed before then, well, they've got mowers, too.
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Overheard in the Office...

Roomie is eating a snack. Rannie is begging in that very vocal way that my little chatterbox cat has...

RX: "Cat, what's a five letter word for 'beating'?"

Me: "M-O-M-M-Y."

RX: "Wow, how sad is your life?"

Note to ASPCA: I don't actually hit the cat. That's what the squirt bottle is for. Actually, you don't need to even squirt the cat with the bottle, because just picking it up causes her to go seek excitement elsewhere. Squirt threats are thus reserved for the direst of things, like actual food theft attempts. 
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Blrgl.

Roomie went into work at 0300 last night.

I woke up to feed the cats at 0600, approximately an hour and a half after I finally climbed into bed, and then drifted back off to the dulcet tones of the Today show. I meant to get up at 1100, I swear I did.

Gotta get dressed and go to the range (all workplay and no playwork makes Tam a dull writer!) then come home and mow the lawn.
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Automotif XXVII

This dead-serious Volvo V70R is my kinda sleeper. Only the stance, bright red Brembo calipers, and aero tea tray over the rear window offer hints that this ain't your mom's family bus...

Mothership.

Wagons were made to haul things: This one hauls ass.

Any car geeks can identify the race tracks represented by the decals in the bottom right hand corner of the rear window?
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Spanish mine so good is not.

I only had the one semester of Spanish, but I think the sign says "Don't play cards with Baby Jesus."
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Things I Just Don't Get, #921,753

I remember when the fad was to ruin your car's handling with little 10" diameter rims that were as wide as they were high, and use spacers so they stuck completely outside the bodywork.

Tangentially, the 3rd generation F-body design sure has aged gracefully. I think that may have been one of the high water marks of GM styling. They fruited some of the last ones up with too much aero gingerbread and fake scoopery, and then went whole hog with the study hall doodle/Texas lawn dart proportions of the 4th generation.

The 4th gen cars were better in every way, and some of the best bang-for-the-buck performance deals ever, but I can't see pulling into valet parking at a formal affair in one, unless you were crashing the party like something out of a Dee Snyder video.
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Range Trip Notes...

(I'm putting these here so I can more easily search for them in the future; Facebook's not so hot for that. They're as dull as watching paint dry, so...)

A quick range trip this morning. 50 more rounds of Brown Bear through the Glock 19 yielded the first failure since its last cleaning/lubing: A light strike on round #1,057.The trigger pull felt funny, FWIW.

Fifty more malfunction-free rounds through the PPX. Still learning the trigger, but it's turning out to be surprisingly easy for me to run fast. (Well, fast for me.)

47 on DT with the G19. All three dropped rounds happened while driving the gun to the target or on a transition. I'm tempted to give myself a mulligan on the one on dot two, because that was after I got my head all out of the game taking notes after the malf. But that wouldn't be right.

Hey, look!

There's a post over here!
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Off to the range...

The year of being less sucky with a pistol continues. I will not forget my Dot Torture targets like I did last weekend.

In the meantime, have a gun picture:

"Simo don't arshin!"

Gun Skool opportunity in Hoosieropolis...

JohnN is getting Ernest Langdon out here for a pistol class in October. Small class; I think only twelve chairs. Great opportunity. He's obviously a phenomenal shooter, but more importantly, I've heard nothing but good stuff about Langdon as a teacher.
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Climate change.

I wanted to get the Bimmer back on the road in time for convertible season. Instead, I find myself glad I got the Bimmer back on the road because it has seat heaters, which I don't think I've ever needed in the middle of May before.

I hear they had frost advisories not far north of Chicago last night.
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Smart People.

From my days on staff at TFL/THR ten years and more ago, long before I had one of these blog things, I got to meet some amazingly smart and insightful people. You already know a lot of them: Marko, Larry, LawDog, MattG, Johnny, John, Oleg, and a bunch more. It was a hell of a crew, and I still have no idea what I did to get picked to be on that team.

Sometimes, on mornings where I don't have a lot to say, or am in a hurry, I can just shunt you over to the great content they're putting out:

• Kathy, who has just cranked off a chain of great posts on her blog, has an excellent response to someone who writes that she's had a concealed carry permit for years, but has only carried a gun a couple times, and wants to overcome her uncertainties.


• Don has an ongoing series of posts on "wooden swords and laser guns", or dry-fire practice. He's got posts up on his experiences and observations with the yellow plastic 5.11 Glock training barrel and the SIRT laser trigger trainer. (I swear as soon as I can get my hands on one of the M&P ones, I'm dropping the coin.)

Overheard in the Office...

The traffic lady on the morning news has said there's a wreck at Banta Road...

Me: (talking to Huck) "Did you heard that? They ride their Banta Roads in single file to hide their numbers!"

RX: "What?"

Me: "I'm talking to your cat."

RX: "I thought it was 'Bantha'?"

Me: "It is, but 'Banta', 'Bantha', close enough."

RX: "There's been linguistic drift."

Me: "'Banta' is how Cockney sandpeople say it."

Trust in government? Are you kidding?

It's okay, I'm sure there were proper warrants for this: http://t.co/cXCJHofpMl
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 15, 2014

You know, if I were even as little as 33% sure that all those routers were destined for overseas clients, I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep.

And I don't even necessarily mean Moscow or Tehran. Spying on foreign countries is what the NSA's there for, and there are two kinds of countries in this world: Those who spy on putative allies, and those who haven't gotten caught yet.

But given how the intelligence services' watch lists for domestic hanky-panky are proven over and over to be just another tool of hardball partisan politics, anybody trusting those pictures above to be acting in the national interest with respect for the rights of American citizens is so naive they shouldn't be allowed out in public without a minder.

Watergate wouldn't make page three today.
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QotD: Dark Ages Edition...

Waiting to see the "cultural sensitivity" spin on this:

" 'Adultery' and 'apostasy' are acts which should not be considered crimes at all, let alone meet the international standard of 'most serious crimes' in relation to the death penalty. It is a flagrant breach of international human rights law," 

While the Margaret Atwoods of the world worry about the Baptists enacting some horrible draconian theocracy here in the US*, it's actually happening in other corners of the world. I guess over there it's charming and ethnic and we shouldn't judge them by our imperialistic Western standards. Why, one person's flogging for an unapproved marriage is no different from another person's $15 ticket for jaywalking!

In the Tom Wolfe quote about that "great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe" one could substitute "theocracy" and "the Third World" for "fascism" and "Europe".


*Both atheists and believers want to feel oppressed here, because oppression is the coin of the realm in 21st century America and can be traded for valuable cash and prizes.

It's barely after nine...

...and Iowahawk has already won the internets for the day.

If, some day, Michael Sam sacks Tim Tebo, Twitter will take down the entire US power grid.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 15, 2014

So...

Not only was there the measuring tape trick with the pistol the other day, but I just got a postal scale in the mail. And the Chrony.

I have the urge to go measure stuff now. I feel like I should have a lab coat. And a pocket protector. I bet my roommate has some dial calipers.

FWIW, an empty PPX weighs 26.9 ounces, while an empty FNS-9 comes in at 24.6. I had an empty Glock 19, but it had a Lightguard on it and I didn't think that was fair. I'll probably go weigh it, too.

I wonder if I could get Huck to stand still on the platform?


*Oh, and the trigger pull gauge. Thanks for reminding me, pdb!
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Argh!

43°F under glowering skies, and the radar shows a huge band of rain just crossing the border with Mordor and heading this way at a brisk clip.

I'm guessing that today's not gonna be what you'd call "good chrono weather" either.
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Because my Roomie's not on Twitter...

...I get to tweet the funny things she blurts out sometimes:

The Velveteen Toad #FailedChildrensBooks
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 14, 2014

Rain, rain, go away...

I had planned to go to the range to get comfortable using a chrono today, and it's supposed to be piss-pouring down rain all day.

Chronographs have always been faintly mysterious things to me; things that other people owned and set up and then asked me to please be careful not to shoot. It's time for me to demystify them, so I'll be trying out both your classic Chrony and this funky new Magnetospeed doohicky, once the monsoon ends.
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Mixed feelings.

So the Today show just showed a preview tour of the 9/11 museum located underground at the macabre al Qaeda victory monument in Manhattan.

Mike Bloomberg gave Matt Lauer the tour. I assume the NBC cameraman had to use a special wide-angle lens to get both of their egos in the frame at once.

I have mixed feelings about it. It looks like an interesting museum, if you're willing to go to Manhattan to see it, and it's an event that deserves memorializing but... I dunno.

I mean, there's a Pearl Harbor memorial and museum, too, but we built that after we had rolled up our sleeves and absolutely crushed the foe that attacked us. Make no bones about it; in 1945, to steal a phrase from Weaponsman, there was absolutely no doubt about whose boots were under the bed of whose sister. This round of warfare just doesn't have that feeling to it.

Sure, we bagged the guy that ordered the WTC hit, but VJ Day isn't April 18th, if you know what I mean.


*The April 18th mission was named Operation Vengeance. That was back before we started naming military operations after strippers, presumably for security reasons.
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Unqualified.

I dreamed last night that I got hired for a technical writing gig: To wit, writing a Field Manual for the military on the mounted drill for the M9 pistol.

I'm wondering if anyone in the Army has fired an M9 from horseback in anger? There is an outside chance, you know.

Anyhow, how I wound up with this gig I don't know, because technical writing really isn't my bag, baby. And I was getting all bogged down in nomenclature arguments about everything from pistol parts to horse tack.

This was obviously a very complex version of the basic "unpreparedness" dream where you have to give a book report but you're naked.
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QotD: Logic Is Dead Edition...

Chief Weems on the sudden binge of municipal governments in Georgia buying metal detectors and hiring security to keep CCW permit holders from being able to legally tote in government buildings in the Peach State after HB60 goes into effect on the first of July:

"That’s right; people who took no steps to keep out armed criminals are taking steps to keep out people who have actually passed background checks.  I just wanted to make sure everybody was clear on that."

Roll that one around in your head a bit.
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A little birdie has informed me...

...that there are still chairs open for Massad Ayoob's MAG-40 class up at Sand Burr Gun Ranch in Rochester, Indiana from May 29 - June 1.

As they say on eBay: "A+++ Recommend! Would take again."
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Ow...

...my head.

I thought that, what with the rain and all, I could skip the Claritin. In retrospect, probably not a good idea, especially not when combined with "Sure, I'll have another beer and stay up and play World of Warcrack for another thirty minutes or so."

What a friend we have in Vitamin I!
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Does this trigger pull make my butt look big?

I don't know where this method of trigger reach measuring came from, but I think I learned it from Kathy. You can use a dressmaker's tape or, if you don't have a cloth tape handy, you could mark a string and measure it against a ruler.

The safest way to measure is on the frame of the field-stripped pistol, although some firearms will require that they be cocked to get an accurate measurement. Clear the chamber and then, since the gun is only "unloaded" in a Schrödinger's Cat sort of way, ensure that the muzzle remains pointed at something that you would not mind putting a hole through when you put the tape into the trigger guard.

Basically, you're looping around the trigger and the backstrap to come up with a number that is more relevant to "trigger reach" than simply measuring the straight-line distance between the two points, since it takes the girth of the pistol into account as well. A single-stack pistol and double-stack pistol could have the same distance from trigger to backstrap as measured by calipers, yet the fatter gun would be harder for the small of hand to get a good firing grip on.

Some plastic cop guns I had handy:

• Smith & Wesson M&P 9 (with CTC Lasergrip mounted): 7"
• Walther PPX: 7"
• FNH FNS9: 7¼"
• Glock 19 (Gen 3): 7½"

Classics for comparison:

• Springfield Armory PC9111 "Professional" (VZ Gator Backs): just a hair over 6¾"
• Smith & Wesson K-22 Combat Masterpiece (Spegel stocks): ~7½"

First We Take Manhattan...

I have made no secret of my Sunday morning habit of pressure-testing my cerebral arteries by indulging in a bit of Meet the Press. I didn't understand the appeal of political talk shows when I was younger, and apparently this is because yelling at senators is an adult vice, like whiskey and cigars, the taste for which must be acquired over time.

Meet the Press is the senior show on the chatter circuit, having been on the air as long as there's been air to be on and sporting the slogan "If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press," and it serves as a reliable bellwether of what political matters are currently considered important by people who dwell east of the Hudson and south of Harlem.

Thing is, the pack of hippies, SWPLs, Social Justice Warriors, and wannabe-Europeans who have taken over 30 Rock like SDS protestors did the dean's office at Berkley have steadily run the old gray mare into the ground. We have reached the point that this most venerable property in the political talking head circuit has slipped to third place in the ratings and was preempted yesterday by a Limey soccer game, and likely will be in future weeks by the Monaco Grand Prix and the French Open.

Really, though, that fulfills the apparent current mission of Meet the Press quite nicely. Because the only things that'll make a Manhattanite feel more European (and therefore better) than being lied to about government healthcare plans by a political appointee are cheering for Manchester City F.C., watching Frogs play tennis on dirt, and being snubbed by Bernie Ecclestone.
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CEF > SVO > HEL > BTV > TYS

Antique rifle markings can lead strange places...
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Law & Ordnung

Arizona Rifleman on Swiss nonchalance regarding weapons:

I admit to doing a double-take when I saw a guy with a slung katana picking up some groceries in the main station, but nobody else seemed to care. “Guy with a sword getting a liter of milk and some eggs. Meh.”

Even rather unusual things, like the guy wearing a full-body ghillie suit with a rifle slung on his back buying a cup of coffee from the McDonalds, go completely unremarked-upon by anyone here.

Of course, the Swiss culture is pretty alien to me in a lot of ways. The very sight of the weapon in public is subconsciously tied to “Oh, this person is a participant in some organized and/or sanctioned activity.” And if there's anything to which the Swiss respond well, it's organization and sanction.

If you had a flamethrower, they would probably just assume that you were a licensed flamethrower owner on your way to your flamethrower owner’s club’s mandatory monthly practice meeting to keep your flamethrower certification in good standing.
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QotD: Yeah, What He Said! Edition...

Whole theories of conflict are built on a "study" that supposedly proved an inhibition in killing each other. There's a problem with it...

(FYI, before anyone starts citing BG SLA “Slam” Marshall, do more background research into the repudiations of his “research.”).

If you won't listen to me, listen to him. After all, he knows a bit about killing folks.

Most of the really deadly carnivore species seem to have a deep reluctance to use their built-in lethal hardware in intraspecies conflict, and this makes sense; if lions or wolves went to full-throttle throat-rippin' every time there was a question of who got to use the drinking fountain first, pretty soon there wouldn't be any more lions or wolves.

Thing is, we're not long-term dues-paying members of the Really Deadly Carnivore Species Union. We just moved into the neighborhood relatively recently and where we were living before, we could get pretty medieval on each other to sort out social problems without worrying about accidentally killing the other monkey.

Ever since we figured out how to tie sharp rocks to sticks, we've been reliant on learned social behaviors to serve as a check on our capacity to do lethal harm in an eyeblink, and those learned behaviors can be a pretty thin veneer at times. Some folks never seem to get the hang of them at all.

Anybody who has read Ordinary Men or who owned a television set between April and July of 1994 should sprain their eye-rolling muscles every time they hear this theory that human beings have a "hard-wired" reluctance to harm other humans.
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La Dolce Vita

Roadsters: Miata, Boxster, Z3.

At the SWPL Mart yesterday, fetching steaks and taters for an impromptu post-yardwork grilling session*, it was a top-down two-seat kind of day...


*I say that flippantly when I should not. I have babysat children smaller than the filet I ate last night and Bobbi did a hella job grilling it; I think she threw dried sprigs from the dead rosemary bush in with the hickory lump charcoal. It nearly put me into a food coma; it was all I could do to slither to a hot rock where I could curl up and digest it. 
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"Oh, the humanity!"

I do have a long, un-bubba'ed Mauser Gew.98, but it's a post-war re-arsenal; what's called a "transition" rifle. It's on a 1916-dated Spandau receiver and no two small parts have matching numbers. It's distinguished as a Wiemar-era transition rifle by the flat tangent rear sight.

What I don't have is a classic Great War-era Gew.98 with an intact lange vizier "rollercoaster" rear sight. Like this one that had been turned into a floor lamp at an antique shop...

"Oh, the humanity!"

To top it off, it was priced well beyond what the un-ruined rifle would have been worth, dashing any faint hopes of a restoration.

Occam Airways

Over at Instapundit, Glenn Elizabeth Price Foley writes:

"Read the whole thing. I personally believe Lt. General Thomas McInerney, who has claimed he has intelligence sources that have confirmed the plane landed in Pakistan."

The dude in question is quoted as saying:

"I do believe that those people in Pakistan, in the ISI, those people who knew where Osama Bin Laden was and didn’t tell us. I believe those same elements could be involved with getting that airplane into a Pakistan air force base. "

I dunno about that, though. I mean, if the ISI wanted to get a 777 onto a Pakistani air force base, they could practically taxi one there from Jinnah International, which is right down the road from the nearest air force base. And they wouldn't even need to 'jack one when they've already bought eight, leased a ninth, and have five more on order at Boeing.
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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #90...

Still not sure about the aesthetics of the pistol, but I was happy with the aesthetics of the photo.

Another 50 rounds downrange. No ignition troubles or any other failures. Well, I did get "trigger freeze" one time when I was playing with riding the reset; like many of these pre-loaded quasi-double-action setups *coughParaLDAcough* there's just no payoff. All I had to do was let up on the trigger and squeeze again, though, so obviously the mainspring was cocked, I just hadn't let the trigger out far enough to pick up the hammer.

Incidentally, the pull measured a consistent 5.5 lbs on my RCBS fish scale trigger pull gauge.
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Gone Shootin'...

Because this is the year of being less sucky at shooting.

Off to Iggle Crick.
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High speed light rail.

"I just can't get past the fact that they're full of... of... toaster parts." -Bob Howard

FN FNS-9 on the left, Walther PPX on the right. The FN has a pretty beefy "chassis" comprising the front frame rails and locking block all in one piece. The Walther has very Glock-like vestigial tabs for front rails and a separate large "axle" for the lower barrel lug to cam against, a la the 1911 slide stop pin.
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QotD: Money Where Your Mouth Is Edition...

International Lord of Hate, Larry Correia, on the celebrity selfies that are... I dunno, supposed to melt the hearts of barbarian slavers and make them give up their captives? Or something? ...anyhow, Larry offers a more, er, practical suggestion:

(I)f your selective outrage is really up in arms about this one, movie stars with the hash tag, I’ve got a simple solution for you. Take some of your millions of dollars and hire some mercenaries to go into Africa to shoot all the members of Boko Haram. I wonder how that would trend on Twitter. #gurkhaskillscumbags

#hellyeah
#wheredoIchipin
#notdoinganythingnextThursdaymyself
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Goofproofing atttempt.

Remember the anonymous Smith M&P owner who gained internet notoriety by assembling their pistol with the barrel in upside down?

It looks like those clever engineers at FNH had him in mind when designing the FNS-9...

"...with instructions on the heel."

Bobbi points out that this would still be easy for the ingenious person to derp, because "up" is ambiguous. Do they mean "up" as in "toward the top of the gun when I'm holding it right-side up?" (Incidentally, the M&P photo led to a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation in Facebook comments where I learned the term "poka-yoke".)


ETA: I know a guy who knows a guy, and he confirmed that it's just a funny coincidence of inspection marks. I had actually been holding out a little bit of hope that it was as cool as the old 8mm French Ordnance Revolvers, which had hinged sideplates and the internals stamped with big numbers in order of reassembly.
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Multipart assembly.

The feed ramp is a separate piece. The barrel appears to be flanged at the rear, with the locking block slid over it from the front.

The locking block appears to be MIM. The feed ramp looks like it might be pinned in place?

Molded-in logo and caliber designation.

Three shots of the three-piece barrel assembly on the Walther PPX. I can tell I'm going to get a lot of use out of this new (to me) macro lens. I find it interesting that the feed ramp is a separate insert but the locking shoulder is just the MIM block. My initial instinct is that Joe Gunowner isn't likely to take a Dremel to the locking shoulder, but any materials engineers in the audience are encouraged to speculate. (Anyone who just wants to chime in with "MIM bad! Hurr-hurr!" is welcome to go do so at cletusgunforum.com.)

What I find interesting about the gun is that it's obviously designed to be inexpensive to manufacture, but at the same time be serviceable as a duty sidearm. By that I mean that there are plenty of "Ring Of Fire" zinc blasters that are designed to be cheap, but are obviously not designed with an eye toward ruggedness and reliability, whereas this does not appear to exude that vibe; witness the steel slide and slick Mec-Gar mags. Maybe it's a legacy of the volkspistole projects at the end of WW2, but the postwar Germans have been leaders in finding ways to make inexpensive-yet-reliable handguns, from HK's pioneering of polymer frames to Sauer's making slides out of heavy-gauge stampings...

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #89...

At the range yesterday: Glock 19 still plugging away at a T&E and a Walther PPX just starting one.
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That time of year...

Since I am not the nicest person, I did not get to meet the rider.

Squeaky clean little Honda twin parked up out front of Twenty Tap the other day. A CB350, I think, but I'm pretty fuzzy on old SOHC Hondas from the era of wire wheels, drum brakes, and kickstarters. Love the matching paint on the fork tubes, bar-end mirrors, and very practical-looking luggage rack.

Ocypus olens

 Sunroof open and windows down, ready to go cruisin' down Broad Ripple Ave. It's very... red.

Going topless.

 MG A and Jeep CJ-5 out front of Brugge Brasserie at the mystical corner of Westfield and Westfield.
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More later...

Should have taken the macro lens to the range. Light hit? Primer not seated all the way? Cap popped on the second try. Was it reman'ed ammo? Dunno, I pulled 50 rounds out of the loose ammo can to run through the PPX, and it could be factory Blazer Brass, or it could be a factory reload. Had this result twice.

I don't know whether to mock the arrestee or the arrestors.

So, an FBI agent boarding a plane apparently tried to do so with a loaded pistol magazine, resulting in his arrest. The temptation is there to mock the dude, but I know how one can forget these things; there's a reason I never take the bag I use for a carry-on anywhere near the range if I can help it.

Unfortunately for the agent, he was not trying to board a plane at Sky Harbor in Phoenix, where he would have gotten a stern talking to and maybe lost the magazine if he didn't want to miss his flight. No, he was catching a hop from Karachi to Islamabad and, apparently unlike many US states, there's no mens rea requirement in Pakistan for what he did, so they arrested him.

The funny part is what they charged him with:

" On Tuesday, he appeared in court on charges that he had violated local anti-terrorism laws..."

Wait, they have those in Pakistan? Were I in his shoes, it would have taken every ounce of self-control to not paraphrase Captain Willard while they were hooking me up: "Charging a man with terrorism in this place is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500."

Coincidentally, I just got back from the range, where one of the guys was relating what happened when he had forgotten some live rounds in a coat pocket on a recent trip. It didn't involve Pakistani prisons, I'll tell you that.
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Well, that was brilliant.

I wrote a post that I meant for Blogger to put up at 0800, while I was still sound asleep. Or as asleep as one can be when it's a time one is normally awake and have already been up to feed the cats anyway.

Of course I appear to have muffed the scheduled publishing feature and it went up last night. Derp. I'm getting a lot of mileage out of that "excuses" tag this week.
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Unpossible.

The local news claims that Dude A and Dude B got in an argument over a video game and, when Dude B would not leave Dude A's house, Dude A started shooting at his feet with (and I quote) a ".40 calibre gun". Which, you know, is apparently what one does to solve video game arguments and why I only play online these days.

Dude B hopped in his car to speed off to the hospital and get his gunshot feet looked at. Dude A hopped in his own car and tore off down the street to flee the scene of the crime (not demonstrating very good planning skills, since the scene of the crime was, in fact, Dude A's own house, to which one presumes he would eventually need to return.)

The po-po apprehended Dude A. According to this news report, though, Dude A has an alibi, in that he's a convicted felon and we know that they can't have guns because it's against the law. Further, even if he did have the gun, it can't be serious because:

Streit told police, "It wasn't like I was trying to kill him."

Well, heck, I know that when I'm not trying to kill somebody, shooting a gun at them is practically the first thing I do to prove it.

Cue cries to make it double secret illegal for felons to have guns in five, four, three...
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While we're pig-piling on Hillz...

...I'm not averse to the occasional late hit in these circumstances:

“She referred to recent high-profile incidents of minor disputes in movie theaters or parking lots that escalated into lethal shootings, saying, “That’s what happens in the countries I’ve visited that have no rule of law."”

You mean like those countries you visited where you had to duck sniper fire getting off the plane? Those countries?

'Course, that little lie was a long time ago. After all this time, what difference does it make?

(H/T to Unc.)
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Overheard in the Office...

Roomie mentions Hillary's latest RKBA announcement:

RX: "'I think that we’ve got to rein in what has become an almost article of faith that anybody can have a gun anywhere, anytime.' It's good to get that on record, Hillary!"

Me: "Yeah, but fortunately... well, fortunately for her and unfortunately for us, she's angling for the primaries, here. Primaries you gotta run towards your base, and then back toward the center in the general. Expect to see pics of her shooting skeet at Camp David in 2016 if she wins the nomination, to show that she stands behind your Second Amendment right to hunt clay birds."

RX: "Good thing we'll have this bookmarked!"

Me: "That's two years from now. After all this time, what difference does it make?"

RX: *rueful laugh*

Me: "See what I did there?"

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #88...

I just swapped my SP2022* for a Walther PPX, more or less on a whim. There were multiple reasons, foremost being that I'm kinda curious to see how well a pistol designed to compete in the "used Glock" end of the market actually works, plus the thing was just "pound puppy" ugly sitting there in the showcase. I kinda felt sorry for it; poor little hydrocephalic thing.

The construction method has a very volkspistole vibe to it. It uses as many manufacturing shortcuts as you can without going all the way to a simple cast pot-metal slide and straight blowback operation. It's got heavy-gauge stamped slide with a separate pinned-in breechblock, a la the classic P-series SIGs, except this breechblock appears to be a casting? Or maybe a big chunk of MIM? Two piece barrels are nothing new, turning up in everything from classic High Powers to new Springfield 1911s, but this one has a three-piece affair, with the barrel pressed into a locking block and then a feed ramp affixed to that assembly.

It's the next step down the road from the Sauer SIGs, through the Glock, and now to this. I'm going to shoot it and see if it breaks.


*If anybody's dying for a two-tone SP2022 with factory nights, it's probably in the showcase at Premier Arms even as I type this. One owner, only a hundred rounds!
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Day Three. Thoroughly Disoriented.

I slept from one to two, and again from about quarter to four until six, when it was time to feed the cats. (You have to wake up then or Huck starts stealing things from Bobbi's room as part of an organized terror campaign to get fed. Things as large as a remote control, or a leather belt pouch with the Leatherman tool still in it.) I did some sit-ups and toe-touches and then somehow it was seven something and then I was dozing through the Today show instead of the local morning news and I was going to wake up at nine, pinkie swear. And now I'm awake, I think.
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Just in time...

I needed this today. I needed the whole "Red Barchetta" thing: the wind in the hair and the wailing motor and the three-pedal dance.
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Missing man.

Dammit.

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Campaign promises...

Well apparently the moment wasn't right then, apparently that was just what you'd call one of those rhetoric thingamijigs... whaddaya call 'em? Campaign promises? ...anyway, he's gettin' around to ocean recedin' and planet healin', any minute now.

Obama has pledged to renew his efforts on climate change during his second term, including using executive actions that bypass Congress. He's introduced new regulations on truck emissions and created "climate hubs" that help businesses prepare for the effects of climate change.

I'm pretty sure "healing the planet" is there in Article II someplace, probably hiding behind one of those emanating penumbras.

I notice this is the front page story on CNN, which is good, because #Benghazi is uncomfortable to the media and the game of chicken we're playing with Russia over events in Ukraine would be enough to cause one to lose continence and start digging a fallout shelter in the backyard if one thinks about it too much.

Y'know what'd cause some climate change? Global thermonuclear war, that's what.
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The NaRrAtive.

The column was titled:

Big bad NRA comes to Indy; but runs away, afraid to talk to Black folks

My first thought was "Well, when I saw Colion Noir on the show floor I was too shy to go up and introduce myself for fear of bursting into unseemly fangirl squee. Does that count as 'afraid to talk to black folks'?"

I notice that the media line on the NRA is pretty entrenched among Televison-Americans, and even people who should know better.

Notice how Amos Brown has seemingly uncritically absorbed the implication that the NRA is some kind of trade organization dancing on the puppet strings of the big bad gun industry. (A claim which is hilarious on its face, since the 'big bad gun industry' is a fraction of the size of, say, the big bad breath mint industry or the big bad athletic shoe industry. Heck, Nike's ad budget alone would probably buy the whole Remington group, lock, stock, and threaded barrel.)

The other entrenched meme is that the NRA is a partisan right-wing SoCon organization that happens to dig old movie actors waving muskets and the occasional loonie statement from crazy old rock stars who like to hunt. This was a meme I bumped into myself in the week leading up to the convention.

"Hey, you coming down to the show?" I asked the waiter at my local hipster in-town brewpub. I knew he liked guns; he'd just gotten his first AR-15 and often helped man a table at the big Indy 1500 fun shows.

"Nah," he replied, "I'm not an NRA member. I'm pro gun, but I'm a liberal," as though setting foot on the convention floor to look at Aimpoint scopes and the Magpul bus would be like signing on to support everything from the invasion of Iraq to HJR-3.

"Dude, it's the National Rifle Association, not the National Republican Association," I wheedled, "Besides, it's just like a big gun show; you'll love it. It's not all politico-religious or nothing; just guns."

Saturday night at Thr3e Wise Men, hanging out with the blogger crowd, my phone buzzed in my shirt pocket. It was a text from Caleb, who was down at the big stadium shindig:

"Sarah Palin just said "waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists" word for word"

Thanks, Sarah. Thanks a lot.

While I'm trying to generate my own content...

...y'all can go nerd out on electronic hearing protection. Because science!
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Weird days again...

Roomie is covering someone else's shift in the starship's engine room, and so her alarm clock went off at, like, 10PM last night. In a house as small as this one, the schedule revolves around the one with the alarum clock, since I can internets pretty much whenever. (That, and although our little corner of SoBro is a bit off the beaten path to have any loiterers in the alley, I feel better seeing her safely in her car and off and away when it's 0mygawd30 out there.)

My gyros are pretty thoroughly tumbled. Sorry for the late posting; I totes meant to schedule something.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #87...

"It's not you, SIG; it's me..."

Well, it doesn't happen 100% anymore, but even with the smaller backstrap, which allows the base of my strong-hand thumb to be positioned more horizontally on the frame, I still wind up with the slide not locking back three-quarters of the time. If I concentrate really hard on not putting my thumb where I normally put it, I'm okay, but the juice just isn't worth the squeeze to have one pistol I have to grip differently than all my other ones. (Especially because during longer strings of fire my thumb wanders back to its usual place anyway.)

It just looks like me and the SIGpro SP2022 have irreconcilable differences, which kinda sucks because it's objectively an excellent pistol. Maybe I'll see if I can't trade it towards another FNS-9 or maybe an M&P Pro or something...
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Bike snob bikes...

My Broad Ripple SUV was decidedly down-market out front of Twenty Tap the other day...

Nice Surly with Brooks saddle, brass bell, and bar-end shifters. Tastefully retro.

Harvey Cycle Works frame build. I knew it looked nice, but I didn't know that I was looking at $2k of hand-built frame. There's more money in that bike than I paid for my Subie. And it's obviously well-used. I approve. If you're going to shell out that kinda dough for good gear, an actually bespoke frame, then it deserves to get the piss ridden out of it.

Coffee is for closers.

ABCD is my new mantra: Always Be Constantly Dry-firing.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 4, 2014

Heading to the range...

...more content later.

In the meantime, Sitemeter drew my attention to an old forum thread, where somebody asked what an internet gun forum would have looked like in 1912 when Smith discontinued the No.3 top-break .44s and another poster replied:

Today's top posts on Ye Olde Gun Forum:

"OMG, Army's going to .45 automatics. WTH?!?"

"Woodrow Wilson coming for our guns?"

"WHAT IS VALUE ON MY VELO DOG PLZ"

"S&W Hand Ejectors just not as good as the old stuff."

*sniff* That's beautiful, Tom Servo; I wish I'd written it.

The next time someone is going on about MIM or lamenting the end of pinned barrels and recessed chambers and suchlike, bear in mind that the very first manufacturing change Smith & Wesson ever made to their revolvers, between the First and Second Issue Model Number 1 .22 short tip-ups, was to go from an oval cross-section frame to a flat-sided one and from a tiny round sideplate to a big odd-shaped one in order to make the guns cheaper and easier to manufacture.

One wonders if telegraph operators in 1860 bitched about it to each other?
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I just squee'ed a little bit.

XCOR Aerospace totally just favorited my tweet. Sometimes it's cool living here in the future and I find myself loving the internets.
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Well, alrighty then.

You stay freaky, Holland.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair...

"We need better satellite coverage of Russian troop movements. Ask Putin if he'll loan us a launch vehicle."
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 3, 2014

Future Prediction: In 2024, the Chinese ambassador presents whatever Democrat machine politician or Brylcreem'd RINO we've put in the Oval Office with the flag Neil left on the moon.
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Old habits die hard.

@CollegeInsurrec @instapundit Being mean to people with thoughtless language is gay and retarded.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 3, 2014

My desire to be a nice person bumps up against my inner Mean Girl a lot. If I say something is "gay", do I mean it's brave, smart, and funny, like my friend the GayCynic? If I say someone is "retarded", do I mean that they're sweet and shy like the adult child of one of my regular customers back in Knoxville?

Internet etymology has already evolved an out for the former, with the gradual evolution of the word "ghey".

It's a lot easier for me to be flippant. I dunno... I'm not usually this introspective on a sunny spring afternoon. Probably this awful pollen headache stirred up from the lawn-mowin' yesterday.

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #86...

Walther's polymer-framed gas-delayed-blowback compact pistol, the new CCP, was getting a fair amount of attention. More on this one later.
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Half the Battle.

One time I took a one-day class (for which it turned out I was woefully underqualified) from Todd Green called "Speed Kills". Last Saturday morning I took a four-hour class that could have been titled the opposite:

"Speed Saves": 100bpm chest compressions are gonna blur in available light, and she's not dawdling with the AED pads, either.

It's been a long cold lonely winter without conventional gun skool, but when I asked Kathy Jackson over lunch on Monday whether I should count the eight hours of Indiana Firearms Law back in February and Saturday's four hours of Shooter Self Care towards my "I Love Me"* total, she looked at me like I was slightly dim and said "Well, yeah."

School's in Session: AD in tha house.

If you're going to be shooting a lot, even if it's just for fun, and especially if you're going to be going around armed in the day-to-day world, there are a lot of things it could be very important to know beyond how to shave a quarter second off your slidelock reloads.

There are reviews of the class all over the place, so I'm not going to go over stuff what's been done elsewhere already: Go read them.

Thanks to AD for the fancy book learnin', Brownells for the chow, and Bound Tree Medical for the Band Aids, and thanks to Franciscan St. Francis hospital for hosting.

*The asterisk is because this ties into a post about "certificate collecting" that I've been meaning to write for months.
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Sorry.

Sat down to write and realized I hadn't done my morning physical jerks, which I've started taking more seriously because I don't like how flabby and out of shape I've gotten.

Blogging to follow shortly.

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #85...

Para USA booth was stylish and cleanly designed, although a couple of the displays had a slightly awkward "circular firing squad" vibe. I didn't count the SKUs, but with the various combinations of double- or single-stack, LDA or single-action, and all the calibers and slide lengths, they've got to have one of the widest arrays of 1911-pattern guns on the market even before you get into finishes and sights and stuff like that.
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It never rains but it pours.

Roomie's mom is back in the hospital. Thoughts, prayers, veves, well wishes, and incantations all appreciated.
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Poor oppressed jocks.

Obviously NCAA players need to unionize; even the most successful are reduced to shoplifting gourmet seafood: http://t.co/zUfUSGfT38
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 1, 2014

I can honestly say I've never been hungry enough to stuff big chunks of frozen crustacean down my trousers, so I probably shouldn't judge. Then again, it doesn't look like he's missed any meals lately.

Speaking of jocks, our Replacement Peyton here in Indy seems a likeable enough young lad. I especially like the neckbeard and goofy grin that, combined with the Stanford diploma, lets you know that he's not just an NFL quarterback, but he's also an 8th level elven fighter/magic user.
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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #84...

Nice BB guns.

High-end competition air rifles like this are to your basic "Daisy Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time" as the Lockheed SR-71 is to a Piper Cub. They're mechanically capable of basically stacking match pellets one atop the other from ten meters away. Bare rifles can cost like an FNH SCAR and then you'd need to add about the cost of a Glock for the sights; high-end rifle/sight packages are encroaching on "nice stack-barrel shotgun" prices.

Still, perhaps due to the ease in finding places to compete, it's the fastest growing youth shooting sport according to the CMP.
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Overheard in the Office...

Me: "Flash-flood warnings in New Jersey. Maybe it'll wash the garbage out to sea?"

RX: "In the unlikely event of a water landing, your governor can be used as a flotation device."