What's In A Name?

So, KEH is having a one-day flash sale on Hasselblad and Leica stuff. Even though I have no business even thinking about stuff like this with SHOT Show expenses looming in the near distance, I click the link in the email. I figure there's no harm in a little window shopping.

My eye is caught by a little Leica 14-50mm F/2.8-3.5 D-Vario Elmarit Micro* Four Thirds lens. It's not really a Leica, of course. It's Panasonic glass that Leica had some design input on and then licensed the sacred name to grace the lens. It would be like if Wilson offered a few design ideas and styling cues to Ruger and then Ruger sold a "Wilson edition" SR1911 that contained no Wilson parts nor had ever actually been to Berryville.

Yet I couldn't help but picture that lens hanging off the front of my svelte rangefinder-looking Pen E-P5 as I bicycle around Broad Ripple or Mass Ave this spring.

This is silly. I already have a vastly superior Olympus 12-40mm F/2.8 M.Zuiko Pro lens. If price tag were the chosen yardstick, the Olympus Pro is twice the lens the "Leica" Panasonic is. It's faster and covers pretty much the same focal length range. I can think of literally no situation where I'd use the "Leica" in preference to the M.Zuiko.

But it did briefly catch my eye.

Such is the power of brand image.

*As a reader was kind enough to point out, this is a regular Four Thirds lens, not Micro Four Thirds, which means I would have needed to use my 4/3-to-MFT adapter to run it on my camera. Most of my point still stands, though. Also, I shouldn't surf sales fliers before coffee.
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Fudd

Presented w/o Context: "I'm so Fudd that the only gauge I own looks like a #Magpul catalog had sex with a #Surefire catalog and they had a baby and the baby threw up on my shotgun."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) January 17, 2018

Finger issues...

Back to Indy Arms Co. yesterday morning, slithering along icy streets to get some more shooting done with the CZ. I had with me a hundred rounds of Aguila 9mm 115gr FMJ, part of a princely Christmas gift from Bobbi's friend, the Data Viking.

The gun functioned fine, although I still don't dig the sights. I'm noticing that a problem I'm having is that when I'm using the distal joint (or "power crease" because we need jargon for everything) I have a hard time letting the trigger reset rapidly during recoil. My old bad habit of "trigger pinning" creeps back in when I try shooting at speed, with the awful results you see above.

Oh, well, it's something to work on.

There were no malfunctions of any kind to report.

This makes 1709 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 291 rounds to go.
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Those double digit temps we were supposed to get?

Well, they didn't happen. Instead of the promised 13°F, the mercury struggled up to 8° and then shrugged, gave it all up for a bad idea, and began retreating again.

We're not supposed to see the far side of freezing until Friday.
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Once more unto the breach...

Constitutional Carry is up again in the Indiana legislature, in the form of House Bill 1022.

Contact your local legislator, Hoosiers, and also make sure that Speaker Bosma's office know that we will not appreciate him burying this in committee or shuffling it off to a study again. You can't call yourself "Indiana's Conservative Leader" and continue to kill gun rights bills. Pick one.

And if you're not a member of the ISRPA, fix that. Help from the national organization is always nice, but this is first and foremost a state-level fight.
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Three below...

Yesterday afternoon I got a little light cardio by shoveling our walks and those of our neighbor to the north. I wasn't cold or worn out after that, so I shoveled our neighbor to the south, too, linking up to the cleared sidewalk two doors down.

It was -3°F when we woke up this morning, so nothing at all melted off last night. Not supposed to see double digits until afternoon, too. I'm going to try to make it to the range and the store today, I reckon.
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Light snowfall...

Dammit, I just shoveled those. #snow #southbroadripple

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Jan 15, 2018 at 7:54am PST

The soft whirring sound of derp.

If you think a USB-rechargeable battery operated fan is a worthwhile addition to a holster whose claimed primary reason for existing is that it's "more comfortable" than a plain kydex rig, you need to go sit in the corner and feel bad about yourself while the rest of us point at you and laugh.

Like Joshua H. brought up on the Bookface, this might have potential for hilarity:

Guy: "What's the noise?"

Alien Gear wearer: "What noise?"

Guy: "That humming noise. It's coming from... your belt? What is that?"

AGw: *fitfully tries to conceal his poorly fitted holster* "I don't know what you're talking about man! Just leave me alone you weirdo!"

Maybe if strapping a huge swathe of something to your side makes you sweaty and uncomfortable and gets your buttsweat all over your gun, the solution shouldn't be electric fans and cooling ducts, but a holster that is much smaller and waterproof?

I mean, I just drove from Indianapolis to Shawnee, Oklahoma with a Dark Star Gear Orion holster carried IWB, and that was something like ten hours, only stopping to pump gas. No cooling fan required, either.
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Sneak Preview...

Having lost over sixty pounds on the way to my initial goal of seventy, project AIWB is well underway. I've got the P30L and I have a temporary holster all set up. I'll be ordering a real dedicated AIWB holster here shortly.

I also got my hands on a subcompact for carrying when concealment might be more important. It's going to be the subject of the next VFTP 2,000-round test before I start carrying it, though, so watch this space once I finish up with the CZ.
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Automotif CXLIII...

Got lunch at Books & Brews in Broad Ripple proper this afternoon, after hitting the Indy 1500 Fun Show. It's in the building where the Monon Food Company used to be. It's a shame MoFoCo had to go away (I loved their new menu) but this means that Broad Ripple has a used book store again, and one that serves beer, to boot.

After lunch, we walked next door to Rusted Moon Outfitters, where this beastie was spotted, parked up outside.

An old school 280GE Geländewagen.  To paraphrase an old C/D review, it's like a Land Rover for people who prefer Dobermans and black leather trench coats to Irish setters and Harris tweed.
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This is making me all OCD...

I need to find a one-hour class. I'm feeling itchy looking at that total...

I'm also feeling powerful nostalgia for 2015.
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Changing with the times...

I noticed that the latest CDNN advert was ate up with ARs and AR uppers featuring quad-rail forends. And they were throwing a free quad rail forend in as a deal sweetener for packages with Colt 6920s and other guns.

And I got to wondering...

Who is still buying quad rail forends in 2018? And what are they going to do with the unsold ones?
They'll probably be donated to Third World charities like old sports game t-shirts are.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) January 13, 2018

I'm picturing some emaciated child soldier in Sierra Leone or wherever with an "NFC Championship 2013" shirt and a spanking new Yankee Hill Machine quad rail on his blaster.
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Resumed testing...

Thursday morning saw me at Indy Arms Co. with the CZ-75B Omega and a hundred rounds of TulAmmo 115gr FMJ ammunition.

I'm starting to close in on the finish line here and I want to get the 2,000 rounds wrapped up so I can move on to my next project.

That being said, I really like the way this gun shoots. I'm tempted to drop some Dawson fiber optic sights on it and go holster shopping and dabble at gaming. The target above was hosing in great big long 6- and 7-round strings and a couple mag dumps, and the heavy gun was stupid easy to control.

There were no malfunctions of any kind to report.

This makes 1609 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 391 rounds to go.
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That was fun...

While Roomie was finishing getting ready for work this morning, I headed out to go start her car and thaw off the ice.

I was greeted by an RX300 in a quarter-inch thick cocoon of clear ice. The door wouldn't budge. The ground was too slippery to yank very hard, too. I'd grab the door handle and pull and wind up sliding toward the vehicle.

I crunched my boots through the frozen crust, set my feet and yanked again, but I became worried about tearing door seals. So, I headed back into the house and grabbed an old blow drier and spent the next five or ten minutes using it to thaw around the edges of the door.

Once inside, it was just a matter of letting it warm until the ice started thawing away from the heated glass over the vents and then knocking it off in big sheets.
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Filling in...

Back on January 2nd, I upped the round count on the CZ75B Omega and didn't note it here for some reason...

There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

This makes 1509 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 491 rounds to go. 
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Still more abuse...

I hit the range at Indy Arms Co. yesterday morning with the Glock 32 and another hundred rounds of Lucky Gunner's Remington .357SIG 125gr FMJ to subject the Surefire XC1B to more trial-by-muzzle blast.

I'll note that the switches are positioned such that, if you shoot with a thumbs-forward grip, the Glock 32 recoils enough that you're likely to inadvertently turn the light on while shooting. It's probably because of this that the light needed a new battery by the end of yesterday's range session. Fortunately AAA batteries are cheap and we keep plenty of them on hand at home.

Also, every hundred rounds, I'm tightening the battery cap. Blue Loctite should correct this if it becomes annoying.

I had applied a little grease to the lens at the start of the test, and yesterday I wiped it with a Q-tip and the lens is clean and clear as new.

This gets the testing up to 550 rounds, and the light is still functioning.

Tinkering for tinkering's sake...

Once upon a time, computers weren't all constantly connected to the intertubes. What we call "air-gapped" these days was the normal state of machines back in the desktop beige box days.

Back then, when you bought a program it came in a cardboard box on physical media. You would install it on your computer and it would work the same way from the day you installed it to the day you stopped using it. Nobody could rearrange the menus on WordPerfect or change the buttons in Secret Weapons of the Lufwaffe... Good times.

Nowadays, half the software you interact with doesn't even reside on your PC. Further, there are whole departments at, say, Facebook or Blizzard or Google whose entire job is to "enhance the user experience". If they're not constantly dicking around, adding and removing features, changing what buttons do, moving things around...then they're not doing their jobs.

We have incentivized instability.
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Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig!

Good evening, readers!

A leisurely five-ish hour drive after taking my time checking out of the hotel in Rolla, Missouri is a lot less stress than hammering through straight from Shawnee to Indy in one ten-plus hour slog. Plus I get more Holiday Inn points, so I should get at least one night free during my stay in Little Rock for Tac-Con this year.

This trip was also a shakedown cruise for some gear I'm planning to use going forward. More on that later. For now, I just want to take these boots off. They're comfy...for boots, but I'm ready for house slippers after this past weekend.
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No Fate But What We Make

So, with Sunday being the final day of the class, I knew we'd be shooting the scored qualifier. For a change of pace, I field-stripped my carry Gen4 Glock 19 in the hotel room Saturday night and used a patch and some FP-10 from my range bag to wipe off the worst of the cack inside the gun. I didn't want to be clearing a malf on the clock*, and cleaning and lubing the gun couldn't hurt.

Setting out from the hotel to BDC Gun Room, I figured that I could just go ahead and leave the range bag in the hotel room that morning.

You know what else was in the range bag, other than cleaning supplies? My gloves.

Simunition rounds on the bare hands hurt.
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Long haul truckin'...

Indianapolis to Shawnee, Oklahoma is a pretty long-ish haul. It was something on the order of 740 miles on the odometer by the time I got down here. I drove in my usual style, stopping only long enough to put gas in the car.

Of course I stopped to get gas in Terre Haute, despite being only a couple gallons down at that point. See, since I have a dangerous firearm strapped to my hip, I'm only olly-olly-oxen-free driving across The Land of Lincoln so long as I don't exit the vehicle.

I gassed up again just on the far side of Saint Louis and again in southwest Missouri, grabbing a packet of soy & wasabi almonds and a Monster Zero at the latter gas stop for at least a little stomach ballast.

Having left Indy just before sunrise, I rolled into the hotel parking lot right before sundown. It was -6°F on the Z3's thermometer as I crossed the Wabash at dawn, and 34°F in Shawnee when I got here. Tonight it's still above 40°F here just before midnight, but tomorrow morning I'm headed back to a predicted high in the mid 30s and "wintry mix".
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I'm happy. For now.

The Casino Drill, it's called.

You stand on the five yard line with a holstered, concealed pistol and two concealed reloads. The pistol and both spare mags all each loaded with seven rounds for a total of twenty-one rounds on your person.

At the go signal, you draw from concealment and shoot one round into the triangle with the number "1" on it, then two rounds into the red circle bearing the number "2", then three rounds into the number "3" triangle, four rounds into the square labeled "4"...et cetera, reloading every time you hit slidelock.

The idea being that you are drawing from concealment, firing twenty-one shots with two mandatory reloads, keeping track of where you are on the target, and finishing this all under a twenty-one second par time. Each missed round, or round engaged on the wrong target, adds a second to your finishing time.

I've scooted under the par time barely on previous runs, but only when shooting by myself in a pistol bay, and not shooting from concealment, at that. I've blown into the nineteens in classes...but only in raw time. It always involved a couple dropped shots that pushed it over the 21 second mark.

But today in the EDP class at BDC Gun Room in Shawnee, Oklahoma, with the introvert's nightmare of being the only one shooting while Tom Givens stood there with a timer and the rest of the class stood around judging watching, I managed a 20.26 clean. That's a personal best, and I'm stoked.

Now to get better than that.
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Ugh.

I feel an essay comin' on...
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Hope and Change!

Drug warriors gonna drug war. #PumpMoreSwampIn

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) January 5, 2018

I have to say that...

...the highlight of this latest Trump-Bannon scuffle is the fact that there are people running around in the comments section at Breitbart saying "Guys! Guys! Stop fighting! They're still secretly BFF's and this is just some 6D chess move to something something deep state drain the swamp!"

I am going to have to break into the strategic popcorn reserves before this plays itself out.
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Cold again, but...

...at least we're a whole degree on the right side of zero now, so yay?
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L versus X

So, in the circles in which I run, a fairly common Glock modification is to take a 17 and chop the grip to take 19 magazines. It's even got an informal nickname: the Glock 19L, playing off of Glock's own name for their longslide 17L.

The reasoning behind this is that, when you're carrying inside-the-waistband, barrel length is largely irrelevant to concealment, while grip length is very relevant. So theoretically the "19L" has all the velocity and sight radius and other benefits of the full-size gun, with the shorter more concealable grip of the 19. This copies the old "Concealed Carry Officer's" pistols from Gunsite, which married a Commander-length slide to an Officer's model frame for the same reasons.

Now Glock is selling what is basically a commercialized version of their MHS entry as the "Glock 19X", with the 19's compact slide atop the 17's full-length grip. For the MHS entry, this was because the contract specified both a 17-round magazine capacity as well as a maximum overall length.

A lot of the shooters I know are having a field day with this, with parodies like this one popping up all over social media:

The general shooting public vastly outnumbers the tiny demographic slice who even know what a "19L" is.

The general shooting public likes 1911 Commanders, 2.5" K-frame snubs, and putting Pearce grip adaptors on the G22 mag in their OWB-carried Glock 27. They buy truck holsters and Remoras.

Given how many people carry their SR40 and XD40 subcompacts with the (included) full-size magazine and (included) adaptor sleeve, Glock shows it knows more about the general shooting public than any of us 19L-loving snobs. They'll buy this.
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Warning...

I would like to take this moment to remind my fellow Hoosier motorists that 0°F is not an arbitrary number, like comedians have told you all your life, but is actually the freezing point of brine.

Drive accordingly.
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Reminder...

Every time I see someone addressing their "haters", I feel compelled to hand out this handy Primate Body Language Protip for the Internet: When someone is pointing at you and laughing in great big helpless girly shrieks, the emotion that is being expressed is not "hate".

And if you think this song is about you? Well, then it is.
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Oh, about that Kel-Tec ad...

The line was "For those who'd drink their own urine", while the hardcore survivalist dude in the photo had a beard and eyelashes covered in ice, so presumably he is surrounded by snow.

Anybody who'd drink their own pee for "survival" reasons when they're hip-deep in, you know, frozen water is either dumber than a stump and maybe doesn't need to be buying guns or they...well, we won't do any kink-shaming here today. Whatever floats your boat, Dollar General Bear Grylls.

(nb: Should you find yourself in this position, remember to thaw the snow and drink the water. Don't just eat the snow. That's bad.)

Argle Bargle

You're typing away, thinking you're communicating, and then suddenly you find out you aren't.

It's a funny ol' world.
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Overheard in the Office

RX: "Do you have a flashlight?"

Me: "HAHAHA!"

RX: "No, I mean, do you have a flashlight ready to hand?"

Me: (looking at a literal pile of flashlights behind monitor on desk) "How many lumens do you need?"

Holiday weekend, 7°F outside...

I'd say that the odds of me changing out of pyjamas today have officially dropped to zero.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) December 30, 2017

Breaking 1911 Nerd News...

From my inbox...

Wilson Combat® Acquires Chip McCormick Custom/Shooting Star Industries.
Berryville, AR & Spicewood, TX

Wilson Combat is pleased to announce the acquisition of Chip McCormick Custom/Shooting Star Industries, a leading manufacturer of quality 1911 magazines and related products. This purchase solidifies Wilson Combat as the quality brand leader in 1911 handgun magazines and related product development. The new company will be known as CMC/Shooting Star Industries during the transition.

“The CMC/Shooting Star line is a very important group of products within the 1911 industry and has a great history of innovation and success. Wilson Combat is committed to ensuring the broad availability and future development of more quality and innovative products under the Shooting Star banner for years to come.” - Bill Wilson, President and CEO Wilson Combat.

“Bill Wilson and I have been good friends, shooting competition competitors and friendly business competitors since the early 1980s. When I made the decision that I wanted to simplify my life and retire there was no one that I felt more comfortable selling the company to than Bill Wilson and Wilson Combat. With Ryan Wilson now running the daily operations of Wilson Combat and his son’s Josh and Hunter being interested in firearms, I’m confident Chip McCormick Custom will be in good hands well into the future.” - Chip McCormick, President and CEO Chip McCormick Custom, LLC

CMC/Shooting Star will remain headquartered at its current location in Spicewood, TX while a new Shooting Star facility is built in Northeast, TX. There will be no interruption of service from CMC/Shooting Star during the transition of business ownership. All orders for magazines and customer service will be handled at the current CMC/Shooting Star location listed below.

CMC/Shooting Star Industries
105 Sky King Drive
Spicewood, TX 78669
Sales@CMCmags.com
http://www.cmcmags.com/
830-798-2863

Stop buying hot garbage.

Maybe if we all work together, we can make 2018 become the year where leather holsters with non-reinforced mouths cease to be a thing.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) December 29, 2017

Internet-Know and Know-Know

It's a weird period in history where you can "know" someone, even collaborate closely in real time for years, and never see their face.

There are few people now who wouldn't understand what you meant if you said "Joe Jablonski? Yeah, I know him...well, I don't know-know him, like, face to face. I internet-know him."

And there are whole nuanced tiers to internet-knowing someone...

1. You recognize their name because they run in the same circles you do online. Further, people you know and trust have mentioned them, and never with negative connotations. This is like the baseline level.


2. You recognize their name because they run in the same circles you do online. Also, you read their stuff every now and again, and maybe even been in the same conversations or message threads, but never directly interacted.


3. You find yourself in the same discussions and directly interact on a reasonably regular basis.


4. You find yourself in the same discussions and directly interact on a reasonably regular basis. Further, you have exchanged the occasional PM/DM/emails regarding the topics of those conversations.


5. You find yourself in the same discussions and directly interact on a reasonably regular basis. Further, you have exchanged the occasional PM/DM/emails for purely off-topic, social reasons.


6. You talk on the phone or Skype/Google Hangout/FaceTime at least semi regularly.


7. You've hung out in person, at which point they have earned the "IRL" designator and are no longer an imaginary person who lives in your cell phone and computer

Proof I don't understand Kel-Tec's target demo

I mean, I've had a few customers I've thought were piss-drinkers over the years, but I don't know as I'd have called them that to their faces. Maybe I was doing it wrong. Bold strategy, Kel-Tec.

Hey, look!

My review of the XD-E is up at Shooting Illustrated.

Brr..

-1° fondly Fahrenheit. Wind chill is -12F°.

We won't be going anywhere until noon, probably, by which time the sun will have warmed things to a toasty 10°F or so.
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Overheard in the Office...

Me: "Did you say 'This sounds like a bad chemical breakfast'?"

RX: "'Practice'. I said 'This sounds like a bad chemical practice'. Although Bad Chemical Breakfast would be a great name for a punk rock group."

Me: "Actually that's the title of my band's next album."

Nostalgia doesn't belong in your CCW gun.

Super Vel Ammo: I have to vent.

What kills me is how they're hyping 90gr +P .38 Spl & 9mm and 185gr +P .45ACP bullets as if the last thirty years of accumulated terminal ballistics knowledge hadn't even happened.

Flying dimes with no sectional density moving at Warp Factor Six are how we got Miami and then wound up spending twenty years wandering in the .40 caliber wilderness, and the shit is being pimped by people who should goddam well know better because, I dunno, Cameron Hopkins is a nice guy or something and the boxes make older gunwriters feel nostalgic.

Ugh.

It's eleven bleeping degrees and blustery out there and I absolutely have to get to the store.

My joy knows no bounds.
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Cars of the future from the past...

From conversation elsewhere:

Man I remember back in 1982, we all thought we'd be driving nothing but 3-cylinder diesels by the turn of the millennium. If you went back and told some gearhead in my high school class that in 2017 Dodge would be selling a "street legal" 10-second Hemi Challenger, he'd think you were talking about the 0-60 time of a 4-cyl car.

The computer changed everything. Not only in engine tuning and performance, but in design and modeling.
I had an example of a classic late Dark Ages car, an '84 Trans Am with the LG4 305c.i. Rochester Quadrabog motor. A hunnert and fifty horsepower and nearly every engine function powered by enough dry-rotting vacuum tubing to reach to the moon and back...
Only a few years later and exotic computer-designed and controlled long-runner port fuel injection systems were common on domestic performance cars and HP numbers were on the right side of 200 for the first time in a decade.
It was coming out of an awful time. Like a friend wrote: When he went into seminary you could buy a Mustang with a nearly 400bhp engine option. When he left seminary, the Mustang was a Pinto.

Being a car enthusiast in America in the latter half of the 70s/first half of the '80s was like being a dirt farmer in Fifth Century Britain, marveling at the weed-grown roads and disused aqueducts left by a race of giants and building your pig shed with stones looted from a burned library.

Currently Open Wikitabs...

• Image sensor format


• Blacker Bombard


• Mary Mallon

Merry Christmas!

Blogging will resume shortly.

Overheard in the Office...

Someone in a discussion group has mentioned the sometimes regret that can come from lowered inhibitions mixing with the instant gratification of Amazon. Discussion ensued in the Roseholme Cottage office:

Me: "Tuesday is the day that sober weekday you gets to find out what presents you're getting from inebriated weekend you. Marko joked that Amazon One-Click should have an available USB-powered breathalyzer lockout device."

RX*: "That's why I do not have One Click enabled. I do not have it enabled. I will not have it enabled."

Me: "But it wants to enable you!"

*Roberta Ecks hardly partakes so's you'd notice. The fifth of Pimm's that is her occasional luxury lasts her a year or more.

Last blast before the pause.

 'Twas the Friday before Christmas and all through the local gun store, the customers were crowding and queueing and pewpewing.

Needless to say, I was glad I'd taken the time to load the first box of fifty Remington .357SIG from Lucky Gunner into magazines before I got to the range. When it gets crowded on an indoor range, I feel like the proverbial long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

I dumped the first fifty on the lower A-zone at seven, jammed the mags full again, shot up the upper A-zone, and called it a day.

The XC1B is still working like a champ after 250 rounds and shows no sign of loosening.
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Shrinking...

So, for the XD-E launch event back in spring of this year, Springfield Armory's people sent a form asking for shirt and hat and belt sizes among other things.

When we got there, they had little backpacks with our names on them with logo-wear and belts and holsters and such to use on the range that day. This is pretty typical. They let you keep some of the tchotchkes, which is cool if you're into gun company logo t-shirts and ballcaps, I guess.

I was dumb and kinda fudged a bit and gave a vanity size for my belt.

Dumb.

In the backpack was a heavy leather Crossbreed gun belt and, after stuffing the holstered XD-E into my waistband, it was all I could do to suck my tummy in enough to get the belt to close on the last hole. Even at that, it was so tight that sitting down was physically painful and I only picked at lunch and probably risked dehydration to avoid 'sploding that belt.

Out of curiosity, I wore that belt today instead of my usual Galco Instructor's Belt, and I'm using the fourth hole on the belt. Even after a biggish lunch and a steak dinner, there's still enough room to get both hands between me and my waistband if I suck my tum in a little.

If I had known there was a legit booze and steaks diet like this, I'd have been doing it years ago.
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Stress check...

A complaint I'd heard regarding the original SureFire XC1 was that it didn't hold up to much shooting, which is not the sort of thing you want to hear about a light that's attached to a, you know, gun.

In addition to having better switches and having 50% more lumens, the new XC1B is supposed to have corrected the fragility issues of the original. I could think of no better way to check it out than by clamping it to the accessory rail of my Glock 32 and shooting the snot out of the thing.

The .357SIG in the compact Glock 32 not only exposes the light to ferocious muzzle blast, but also to the battering of recoil in a gun with enough slide velocity that it took the starch out of a 20# CrSi recoil spring from ISMI in only 1,700 rounds. (I've seen lighter ISMI CrSi recoil springs in soft-shooting race guns go to five figure round counts without seriously affecting function.)

Lucky Gunner was kind enough to sponsor the ammunition for the test and sent some Remington UMC 125gr FMJ. This is the stuff that, when tested through this gun last year, chrono'ed at an average of 1,355fps for a ten-round string. That's a lot of sauce for a compact auto pistol.

I'd already run a box of Gold Dot 125gr through the gun, and yesterday I grabbed the 32, the first hundred rounds of the Remington, and a QP-T target and headed to Indy Arms Co.

As I was getting ready to head out to the range, some women came in with a Groupon for a deal on range time and firearms rental. They were telling the clerk that they hadn't shot before, and so I rushed the range session so as to be mostly done by the time they got out there. .357SIG is pretty loud from this gun and I didn't want to make things any harder than they needed to be for the newbs.

The gun ran fine, the light functioned properly during and after shooting, and didn't loosen on the rail at all. If you have grownup-sized hands and shoot with a thumbs-forward grip, you may inadvertently activate the light while shooting, BTW.

So that's a hundred and fifty rounds on this light. More to come, thanks to Lucky Gunner.
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Yule

Longest night of the year. And me without any mead.
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All Linky, No Thinky...

• An absolute n00b's guide to "What's the first lens I should buy to complement the kit zoom that came with my camera?"


• Das Bootless: The Jerry navy is stuck with its entire sub fleet high and dry.


• Progressives really don't dig Murray Rothbard.

I'm Still Not A People Person, Apparently

Tuesday night was shorter than usual and Wednesday began early for Bobbi's Big Sinus Adventures. I got to enjoy the seething mass of aberrant humanity that is the crowd in Big City Hospital's waiting room, which confirmed that yup, I'm still a raging classist.

There was a woman who flopped down on the loveseat next to the table where I was sitting who looked like Flip Wilson's Geraldine had aged badly after picking up a horrible meth habit and joining the Hep C Generation, to boot. Or perhaps someone had boosted ol' Amenhotep II from the Cairo Museum and done him up in bad drag before reviving him.

She had a full-volume conversation on her cell phone until the battery died, whereupon she got up, leaned over me without so much as a "sorry 'bout your personal space" and plugged it into the wall next to my chair. She smelled like a Bob Marley concert during a Cheech & Chong film festival in a bad perfume factory.

Across the table was Bubba, Bubbette, and Bubba Jr. having the sort of conversation that was so mind-numbingly banal I was considering eating the gun I wasn't supposed to have with me just to make it stop, but Bobbi doesn't have Uber and wouldn't have been able to drive herself home, so I persevered.

While not as bad as the crowd at the courthouse downtown, most of these folks would have had to dress up to make it onto the People of Walmart page. If this was the outpatient surgery waiting room, the ER waiting room must have been like the cantina from Star Wars.
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Designated Driver, Designated Shooter

In a comment thread at Oleg's to a post containing a picture of a pistol and a bottle of liquor, someone felt compelled to remark:

Which, I mean...Ell Oh Ell.

My thinking (which coincides with the law in Indiana) is that public intoxication is illegal. There's no special law in Indiana about public intoxication while strapped. I think getting drunk in public isn't a good idea anyway, but if your plans involve going out and getting turnt up, leave the gat at home. Let your Designated Driver be the Designated Shooter, too.

I personally have no issue with the idea of a beer or two or a glass of wine with dinner, or an after-dinner drink while toting, but too buzzed to drive is too buzzed to tote.

Other states have different laws, of course, and most seem to frown upon alcohol consumption (no matter how little) while strapped. Know yourself and your state and local laws and ordinances...
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PEWPEWPEW!

 Tuesday morning meant another hundred round range trip to Indy Arms Co. with the CZ-75.

I started out with a box of fifty at the 8" circle, with the target out at fifteen yards. I was having pretty serious trigger control issues, which was frustrating. I pulled the target back to five yards and put a mag into the right hand 2" circle and the remaining two into the 3x5.

I wish I could say that the shot in the 1" square was intentional, but alas, it was the result of prepping the trigger in recoil too aggressively. My sights were nowhere near settled when that shot broke.

There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

This makes 1459 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 541 rounds to go.
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Realism In Training...

"You probably already know the person you're most likely to have to pepper spray, and other self-defense facts we don't want to talk about."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) December 19, 2017

And the sequel, "Holistic Defense: Shooting Fifty Cals is Fun, Losing Fifty Pounds Isn't."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) December 19, 2017

None of which is as fun as shooting cardboard terr'ists with an AR-15 from twenty-five feet.

Self-defense stuff overwhelmingly focuses on "stranger danger", partly by necessity and partly because that's how people imagine crime happens, but that's really the minority part of violence.
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This Lens Exhibits Heavy Vignetting, Part I...

So, here at the tail end of 2017 and going into 2018, my road back into photography has wandered from crop-sensor Canon DSLRs through crop-sensor Nikon DSLRs and now to mirrorless.

My lens situation is a little bit of a mess though, because I have Sony E-mount cameras in both APS-C and full-frame sizes, as well as some Olympus Micro Four Thirds bodies.

While the Sony lenses will physically interchange between the full-frame ɑ7 and the APS-C bodies, the situation there is analogous to the Nikon DX/FX situation. If you put one of the crop-sensor lenses on the full-frame body, it will only use the chunk of sensor in the middle to avoid giving you the big black circle around your picture.

So, in Sony E-mount full-frame lenses, I have a decent fast 50mm prime lens and a Zeiss 24-70mm f/4 zoom. This camera is mainly intended for work stuff.

In the APS-C crop sensor E-mount category, I have most of my lens bases covered. I have a sweet Sigma 30mm f/1.4 for a prime lens, as well as a Sigma 60mm f/2.8 ART for portraits. There’s a Sony 18-105mm f/4 G-lens for a vacation lens and a 55-210mm kit zoom for a zoo lens. I really only need a good wide-angle and a macro.

So what about Micro Four Thirds? I own MFT cameras for a couple of reasons…

The most important reason is this: While my Sony NEX-5T, with its 16MP BIONZ sensor, is technically superior in most benchmarks to half the Micro Four Thirds cameras I own, it feels like its interface was designed by a guy Sony transferred to cameras from the alarm clock or DVR divisions three weeks prior.

By contrast, my Pen E-P5 or OM-D M5 is oozing photographic charisma. You want to grab those little condensed cameras and go out and start making pictures as soon as you pick them up.

Maybe because the lenses are physically smaller, Micro Four Thirds glass is cheaper than APS-C or full-frame. Maybe because both Panasonic and Sony are working at it, the lens library is much larger than that for the Sony E-mount.

It didn’t take long before I’d built up a pretty decent lens selection for MFT. Panasonic’s 20mm f/1.7 and the Olympus 45mm f/1.7 were no brainers for fast primes. A deal on an Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO set me up with a good fast zoom. I bought an extra Pen E-P1 body that came with a Panasonic 40-200mm that would make a good zoo lens. Now I needed a vacation lens.

In my book a vacation lens is the one I keep on the camera that is slung around my neck more or less constantly. I’m never on vacation by myself, so when I want to pause to take a picture, I don’t want to inconvenience the people I’m with by juggling lenses and setting up the shot. I need to keep a lens on the camera that will handle everything from wide-angle landscapes to middlin’-long telephoto.

For a few years I used a Canon 18-135mm on my EOS 20D, which was supplanted by the Nikon 18-140mm on the D200. I had a good vacation zoom now for the Sony E-mount, but what about Micro Four Thirds? I started digging around online, prowling KEH and the used sections at Roberts, Adorama, and B&H.

I finally spotted a good used Olympus 14-150mm lens for sale at Roberts cheap enough to be affordable. Since they’re local, I could buy the lens online at midnight and check “Pick Up At Store” instead of having it shipped, which appealed to my instant gratification needs.

The next morning, I hopped in the Zed Drei and drove downtown to one of the last camera stores in Indiana.

To be continued…
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Wee Dram

A splash before bedtime. #glenfiddich #basicaf #benshot #singlemaltneat

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Dec 18, 2017 at 6:56pm PST

I'm not sure there's actually such a thing as a basic white girl single malt Scotch whiskey, but if there were, Glenfiddich 12 would be in the running. It's a solid mainstay in the cabinet, though, so there's that.

Sunday Shooty Sunday

Sunday saw me dragging the now seriously filthy CZ to the range for some more dirtying. I met my old IAC coworker Zach there, and he'd brought along a different CZ product, an 805 BREN, which seems like a pretty cool rifle.

The lower A-zone was two mags at fifteen yards. The bit in the logo at the upper left was Zach fam-firing a mag at seven.

I really dislike the sights on this thing once they get dirty. They're an indistinct gray-black blur against the indistinct gray-black blur of the target. Combine that with fogging eye pro and I was basically having to use a Cirillo-esque "silhouette point", which is no way to be landing good hits at forty-five feet. If I decide to keep this thing to get my gamerfag on with, it's getting some Dawsons.

There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

This makes 1359 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 641 rounds to go.
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Overheard from Down the Hall...

I don't know what Bobbi is doing in her room, but I just heard her loudly and frustratedly exclaim "This is a topological nightmare!" which made me think of something in a Lovecraft novel that, when looked upon with mortal eyes, would blast a person's sanity to tatters.

Friday Range Day

Friday morning the Fed Ex dude left another case of TulAmmo on the front porch, and so the CZ-75 testing resumed at its usual pace.

I have no ides where my front sight was for a couple of those. Trying to push speed until the wheels come off unfortunately does involve the wheels coming off.

There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

This makes 1259 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 741 rounds to go.
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#ableism

What about people who, for reasons of disability, are incapable of wang chunging tonight? Have you given any thought to them, you insensitive bastards? #checkyourprivilege

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) December 16, 2017

Subsidized light rail.

So, there was this time I was house-sitting up at Marko's place, and it was a fairly long trip.

I had brought a long gun along that I was working up some review stuff with. I figured, what with it being February in New Hampshire and there being rather a lot of nighttime, I should probably throw a light on the thing. So we stopped by Shooter's Outpost in Hooksett on the drive from the airport to Castle Frostbite. (Shooter's Outpost, by the way, might be the most squared-away gun store in which I've ever set foot. It's a real treat.)

They were having an extremely good sale on Inforce WML lights, and so I grabbed one that had IR and strobe and such to throw on the gun. I got it out of the box, and the build quality felt...well, chintzy. Cheesier than the other Inforce I had, for sure.

When I got home, the Inforce was quickly relegated to my backup carbine, and I moved my ancient Mini Scout onto the new gun. I'd rather have 110 lumens that can take a beating than 500 lumens with a reputation for spontaneously disassembling under recoil.

Since I bought my Mini Scout, it had been superseded in Surefire's catalog by a 300 lumen version and now, as of a couple weeks ago, that 300 lumen version had been replaced by a new 500 lumen light. A review copy of the new 500 lumen M300 Mini Scout arrived from Surefire the other day, and it immediately supplanted the Inforce on my backup carbine.

Well, not immediately, because I had to figure out how to get it on the gun with some offset so I could thumb the tailcap switch properly.

Surefire makes a 45-degree offset mount, but I don't have one of those handy. However, I remembered something down on my workbench that might finally get some use...

 In the media goodie bags at the second Crimson Trace Midnight 3 Gun Invitational was a 45-degree Warne mount intended for mounting offset sights. It had been gathering dust in the basement for four years now, so I decided to see if it would work with the light. It did, and should function fine until I finally get around to getting the Surefire mount.

 Sure, it looks silly in red and will no doubt get me killed on the streets. I mean, if I ever take this gun on the streets for some unexplainable reason.

(The M&P15/22 is in the picture because I had it out looking for sling stuff. And that's not a blunderbuss or recoil enhancer, it's a TLR-1 HP.)
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Ugh.

I need to go to bed earlier and get back in the habit of my morning walks.

The darkest month always brings the SADs, plus all the year-end stuff, the ramp-up for SHOT, and the holiday season things to do have stuff stacked on my plate so high things are falling off. I need something to give me a feeling of control and a schedule, and getting up on time and walking around the block is a pretty easy thing to do.
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Parenting & Guns...

I am not responsible enough to have children. I'm not even responsible enough to have a dog or an aquarium. A cat or a ball python is about the level of involvement with another living creature with which I can be safely entrusted, and they don't take much involvement at all.

When a reader sent an email asking for some pointers to blogs with material covering the safe storage of guns around kids, I immediately referred them to Kathy Jackson and Melody Lauer, who are go-to sources on armed parenting.

I can't think of any dudes who have written on it more than tangentially, so if you know of any good armed parenting blogs written from the dad's point of view rather than the mom's, shoot me an email.
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Problem Solved?

I had a suspicion from something I read in this article by David Merrill that the off-center light strike problem in the G39 was caused by the recoil spring not being able to overcome the striker spring if the slide closed while the trigger was still to the rear. This issue in the Glock 32 and 20 was solved with heavier recoil springs able to close the slide with more force, but that solution is more difficult with the subcompacts.

So I tried coming at it from the other end by installing a lightened striker spring.

For the first time since I got it, the gun ran through a box of fifty rounds without a hitch, even when I pinned the trigger in an attempt to provoke the out-of-battery off-center light strike problem.

I'm cautiously optimistic and plan on running another couple boxes through to check.
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A pox on Ian Fleming and Eon Productions.

James Bond's retardate gun choices have caused the American firearms buyer more grief than anybody, including Dirty Harry. Discuss.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) December 12, 2017

Relics

The American mall continues its death spiral.

Specialty retail still has a niche, I think, but the department store is going the way of the dinosaur, it looks like, with the big box Martmarts and Amazon fighting over the carcass. Without department stores, you don't get the foot traffic that keeps the little specialty retailers and food court shops open.

What goes in those spaces?

We already had our nearest mall die. Glendale Town Center went through the entire cycle of opening as an open-air shopping center, being converted to an enclosed mall, and having the mall demolished and being converted back into an open air shopping center. The super Target and the Lowe's are thriving there, but I don't know how much longer that particular Macy's is for this world.

Muzzle Blasts

Last Tuesday's project was to expose the Surefire XC1-B to some muzzle blast and recoil. I put some clear tape over the lens, but it was blown off with the first shot even though I'd taken pains to make the side toward the muzzle as flush-fitting as possible.

Fortunately, the position of the lens doesn't appear to accumulate much cack. I'll fall back to the old trick of a smear of Vaseline or similar for long range sessions, and then wipe it off afterward.

While I was there, the Smith 745 got a box of Armscor 230gr FMJ through it, just for fun. I heart this gun rather a lot, even if I did have to tighten the grip screws when I got home. Fortunately, I keep one of these on my desk. (I can't believe those are bringing thirty bucks now. Of course, if we hadn't pitched so many of them back in the day, they wouldn't be, so...)

Shooting the 32 fast is rather harder than shooting the 19 at speed. I feel like I'm wrestling the gun more. To get a scattering of holes like that with the 9mm Gen4 19 I carry, I'd be shooting at a wheels-coming-off pace, whereas this was probably mostly done at a .4-.6 clip? Anyway, the flashlight still works, the Apex trigger is still too fat for my tastes, and I still like the Trijicon HD XR sights. (Enough so that I want to get a set for my carry gun.)

Also, this recoil spring is starting to close the slide a little sluggishly, especially when having to fight the striker. The 20# CrSi IMSI recoil spring has 2,070 rounds on it. I may replace it to see what effect that has.
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The last warm day...

Monday last week was sixty degrees and sunny, most likely the last day of its type until late March unless we get some truly unseasonable weather. I drove up north and got in one last fair-weather outdoor range trip with Mike Grasso out at Atlanta Conservation Club.

I finally got to run some ammo through that Grayguns-built HK P7M8 longslide. It shoots exactly like you'd think it would: Like magic.

I had some leftover 9mm ammo with my, ten rounds of Estate 115gr FMJ and eight Speer 124gr +P GDHP. Mike was burning up some surplus Winchester Ranger and so I fired eleven rounds of that, which meant a total of 29 more rounds through the CZ.

I also function tested the Smith & Wesson 745 to the tune of 40 rounds of 230gr Winchester White Box FMJ. It ran fine, too.

I'm pretty pleased with the way that CZ 75 is running.

There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

This makes 1159 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 841 rounds to go.
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Actual Improvement.

When Surefire first started shipping their original XC1, I was completely uninterested. At 200 lumens, it was almost twice as bright as its closest competition in the low-profile CCW weaponlight category, Crimson Trace's LightGuard, but the switchology on the thing was a complete soup sandwich.

The rocker switch on the back of the light was momentary only; for constant-on, you needed to manipulate a little nubbin of a crossbolt-style switch on the light body.

Well, Surefire has fixed that with the new XC1-B, thankfully.

For starters, it's now putting out 300 lumens from a single AAA cell. That's as much as the TLR-1s I used in the Pistol Shoothouse class back in '15, albeit in a much tinier package.

The switchgear is upgraded as well. The rocker on the back can be tapped for on/off or push and hold to use it as a momentary. The crossbolt is still there to serve as a positive on-off.

These two upgrades transform the light from one that seemed kind of pointless into one that is a lot more viable. It's small enough that it adds no meaningful bulk to make concealed carry more challenging, the switchology is 30% less dumb, and it's bright enough to be reasonably useful. It's on the .357SIG compact to see how it responds to muzzle blast. I'll report back after I've got more than the one box of Speer GDHP warshots through the thing.

I would personally probably rather accept the challenges of carrying a regular WML, were I to decide to CCW a light-bearing gun again, but I wouldn't give someone side-eye for using this one, the way I would have the original.
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Intent...

Huck is debating whether he wants to fight the proffered pencil or not. Spoiler alert: Yes.

Shot with the Olympus Pen E-P1 and the excellent little Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens, which I heart rather a lot. It's a stupid good portrait lens for the price.
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Blah.

This is the Monday-est Friday I've ever experienced. Getting out of bed was a mistake.

Incidentally, a friend went to purchase one of those Empire Strikes Back coats six minutes after they went on sale, and they were all sold out. My friend did report that you can find them on eBay now for 200%+ of the original selling price.

There's a pimp-slap from the Invisible Hand in there someplace.
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Fair Market Value ≠ The Most You, Personally, Will Pay

I've seen whining around the 'nets about the price tags of things like Columbia's Empire Strikes Back repro coats and the forthcoming CMP M1911A1 surplus pistols. People are in full "REEEEEEEEEE!" mode, demanding that these prices should be set at a "fair market value".

I will point out that both these things will sell out with a quickness. (The Star Wars coats likely within hours*.)

I will further point out that there is a limit to the number of units an individual customer may purchase, in order to keep them from selling out too quickly. This is, if anything, an indication that an item is priced below fair market value, since otherwise someone would buy the lot and sell them at the actual market value on eBay or Gunbroker.

The irony is that this is the same half of the political spectrum who can expound at length on market theory and price signalling whenever the topic is minimum wage or anti-gouging laws. Let the topic of discussion be a tchotchke they desire, however, instead of a generator or an hour of a teenager's time, suddenly we're all about some reasonable restrictions on capitalism.
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*EDIT: The Star Wars coats sold out in minutes, and were promptly selling on eBay for better than double MSRP.

"I'll stay here in the van while Jim poses that tame puma."

Apparently some of the wildlife you see in photos isn't all that wild...

" Audubon has sent me to lots of wild places over the past 31 years, but I’d seen only one wolf and three cougars (a litter) until December 8, 2009. On that day, before noon in the Glacier National Park ecosystem of northwestern Montana, I encountered not just one wolf but two and not just one cougar but two! What were the chances of that?

Well, they were 100 percent, because I’d rented the animals for a photo shoot."

I'll admit, that'd still be a super-fun photo session. 
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Overheard in Front of the Television...

RX: "I don't like that dress she's wearing."

Me: "I dunno, I think it's pretty cool if you have the figure for it, and she does."

RX: "It's unprofessional. She's supposed to be a journalist!"

Me: "Now she's a morning talk show hostess. This is the new warm-'n'-cuddly Megyn Kelly."

RX: "Isn't cuddling why she left Fox News?"

Undocumented Immigrant

Just a little ditty about a man who illegally crossed the Rio Grande to do a job that citizens were unwilling to do for themselves...

Hey, look!

Another piece I wrote is up at NRA Family:

"Weird Question #2: “So, you carry a gun because you think you’re a vigilante? Like Batman?”

First off, let’s address the Batman angle: If Martha Wayne had a CCW permit and a gun, there wouldn’t be a Batman and Heath Ledger never would have won a posthumous Oscar."