Slow Sunday...

I did not get a single thing I meant to accomplish finished today.

On the other hand, Melody Lauer was passing through town and we met for dinner and caught up on post-SHOT/pre-TacCon news, so that was cool.

More bloggery will be committed in the AM.

PS: A side effect of my switch to Mac is discovering that Safari on the desktop has a hyperaggressive spellchecker/autocorrect.

Hamming it Up.

Hanging out with Bobbi at a hamfest this morning, going to gawk at tables of stuff that is a total mystery to me.

But you never know what you'll find at these things, because the ham radio nerd circle tends to overlap a lot of other nerd circles I belong to.
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A big chunk of the problem...

From @TamSlick
1)Put in the training to win an Olympic gold medal.
2)Study and research to find the cure for a disease.
3)Kill a bunch of classmates.
Which is the fastest way to get your name in the headlines and your own Wikipedia page?

— Robb Allen (Не русский бот) (@ItsRobbAllen) February 23, 2018

From an away game...

From a FB discussion stemming from some of that goofy overheated "Kill the NRA" rhetoric... Specifically, a person stating someone should shoot "the kids of the NRA", like it was some faceless entity someplace and not an organization composed of other people participating in that very conversation.

I commented:

It's turned into a self-licking lollipop. If you're a J-school grad writing for a major metropolitan or national news outlet, you almost certainly don't know any (non-closeted) NRA members. So the NRA is a faceless bureaucratic lobbying organization.

This allows such nonsensical soundbites as "the American people are growing fed up with the NRA" without even the faintest twinge of awareness that, dude, the NRA is a subset...and not an insubstantial one...of The American People.

I'm sitting here watching Savannah Guthrie run her suck on the TV and I'm thinking "Actually, honey, I'm not at all fed up with myself. Feeling pretty good about me today, actually."

As far as the "kill, kill, kill" rhetoric, primates heterodyne off each other's moods. Anybody who's ever shot fast for practice at the range and noticed other range patrons start speeding up and doing mag dumps has seen this behavior in action.

Right now, everybody's trying to out-emote each other. You want the chimp on either side of you to see you carrying your share of the troop's weight in the throwing-leaves-and-beating-branches display.
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Granny Guns & Kilts in the Streetz

A gun that allows you to yell down a dark hallway "You'd better leave! I've called the cops and I have a gun!" and not be lying will put you ahead of the game in probably eight out of ten private citizen defensive gun usages. If the gun will make a loud noise, there's a better than even chance it will solve the ninth.

It's only on that unlucky tenth incident that things like capacity, caliber, reliability, bullet selection and other angels we gun nerds like to set to dancing on the heads of pins come into play.

As Claude Werner is fond of pointing out, we do a disservice when we make people think that unless they're rocking a G19 in AIWB kydex and can shoot an Advanced score on the FAST cold and on demand, they might as well not even bother carrying a gun at all. Better the LCP in a pocket now than the Glock someday.

The great objective is that every man (and woman) be armed.
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Computers, life, and stuff...

So, the big desktop gaming rig had sat lifeless on the corner of my desk for...well, several years now, I'm ashamed to say. The hard drive had shat the bed and I kept meaning to replace it, while using my laptop as a substitute machine.

First it was my cheap 17" HP Pavilion, before going through a couple of more potent, game-capable 15" machines. The irony of the latter is that when doing anything that works the GPU hard, you generally want to keep the lid open for maximum cooling, and so here I'd be, playing games on a 15" screen with a dormant 25" monitor behind it.

I'd been kicking around the idea of a Mac Mini for a while, especially now that I'm using an iPhone and iPad. Being able to get stuff seamlessly back and forth between tablet and phone and working computer would be mighty handy.

I mentioned this in a discussion on Facebook and Marko PM'ed me to say he had a Mini that wasn't being used for anything right now. Further discussion developed that he had a MacBook Air that was also surplus to requirements at the moment. He made me a good price on the pair and so now I'm doing all the stuff involved in setting up a new desktop for work.

Except this one isn't going to have games on it. It's strictly for work stuff during the day. At 6PM I can rack the keyboard and hang up the mouse and lift the lid on the gaming laptop, pull out my Razer Naga, and get my WASD on until bedtime.

The MacBook Air is because, after dragging this six pound beast of a computer and its ginormous power brick around SHOT in my laptop bag, I'll be damned if I'm doing that for NRAAM. Or SHOT next year, for that matter. It doesn't take a lot of machine to do word processing and some simple Lightroom work, or blog updates.

I hadn't used a Mac as my primary machine since...what? OS X Snow Leopard on a G4 eMac? So there's some learning curve going on here as I get back into the groove with the shortcuts and menus and the whole driving on the left side of the road thing.

The Mac Mini desktop had another, unexpected benefit. Moving that huge tower case out and replacing it with the tiny mini-pizza box of the new computer caused me to start excavating the hideous mess on the back of my desk. I'm about halfway to a clean desk and starting to eyeball other notorious clutter areas. If I can quit smoking cold turkey, then turn around and lose some seventy-plus pounds, who knows what other things I can find the willpower to do?

Age related issues...

So the Zed Drei is twenty years old this year. That's the chronological equivalent of a 1966 Jaguar E-type (Or a BMW 1600 coupe) when I was in high school. I've been driving it for seventeen of those twenty years. And age is starting to catch up with it.

There are a host of niggling issues: The car's been needing a new top for years. The HVAC fan only works on the highest of the four settings. The windshield washer packed it in last summer and I haven't gotten around to figuring out why. The power steering pump leaks (a known issue). The headlight covers need replacing or polishing.

Of late, the car's developed a tendency to want to stall when it switches from cold to warm idle, so I guess it's time to take it into the shop to see what's up, and probably get the front brakes done while it's in there.

It's definitely time to decide what I'm going to do about the top; replace it? Or get a transportation pod for foul weather and roadtrips and just have the Zed Drei for top-down days?

I don't think you've thought this through.

I'm the NRA. What were you planning on killing me with? pic.twitter.com/gu7OUQedf2

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) February 20, 2018

As George Washington said when he burst into the Hessian commander's room in Trenton, "Prithee, what now, bytches?"
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Stew night...

Steak tips, oxtail, sweet Italian sausage, turnips, carrots, yellow onion, Anaheim and DulceFina peppers, beef stock, salt, pepper, and a dash of Italian seasoning and paprika.

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Feb 19, 2018 at 6:56pm PST

I ran by Fresh Market after lunch today and picked up a few ingredients which Bobbi turned into a fabulous stew for dinner. The turnips are a great lower-carb stand-in for potatoes in this application.

In other news, my weight loss app on my phone says I've lost a hair over twenty pounds since I started using it in September. I'm only three pounds over what I wanted to weigh at SHOT Show time. Onward!
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Self Betterment

From discussion elsewhere: People should seek (firearms) training because they desire to be excellent, not because they're prodded into some lowest-common-denominator syllabus in order to exercise a fundamental human right.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) February 19, 2018

But-heads.

Gun Owner Butts get on my last nerve.
"I'm a Gun Owner Butt!" You sure are, buddy.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) February 19, 2018

The brown stuff is obviously worse.

Sebastian brings a fantastic analogy for the "assault weapons" debate. You should go read it right now.
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Remember...

In a world of home CNC machine shops and 3D printing, if you "ban guns" you're only going to keep them out of the hands of the law-abiding.
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Gun Store Find

Even though I used to work there, and even though I'm in there three to five times a week to shoot, I never darken the door of Indy Arms Co. (or any gun store, really) without spending some time scrutinizing the showcases to see what's new.

It paid off last Thursday when I spied with my little eye a Gen2 Glock 19 in pretty decent shape with Meprolight night sights and sporting a price tag of $375. "What's up with this one?" I asked.

"It's old," was the response.

"Well, hey, set it back with my name on it and I'll scare up something to trade in and come back for it tomorrow."

I was back the next morning with a couple gats that were excess to requirements and traded straight across.

The gun ran fine. The above target is a hundred rounds of that Winchester steel-cased stuff at seven yards against the upper A-zone. The lower is fifty rounds from my trusty Gen3 19 former carry gun.

Getting home, I broke out the spares box and set to putting things straight on the new acquisition. It had had a ClipDraw on it at some time in the past and, while the clip itself had been removed, the slide cover plate with the mounting screws was still in place. I swapped it out for one of the spare slide cover plates I had lying around and placed an order for a Striker Control Device from Tau Development Group.

The trigger in the gun is a smooth-faced trigger from a full-size gun. Whichever previous owner did this knows what time it is. I like that, and both my other 19s sport that modification. I might put an SSVi Tyr in this one, and I might leave it like it is.

The gun had a metal aftermarket guide rod and recoil spring assembly in it. I had several Gen3 19 recoil spring assemblies in the parts bin, and tossed one into the gun. Lastly, I ordered a Tango Down Vickers slide release to replace the factory extended unit in the gun. I'll pick up a Vickers mag release at Indy Arms Co. tomorrow and install it.

Of interest in the above photo:
The 2006-vintage Gen3 19 on the left sports the bevel on the leading edge of the chamber hood which is one of the suite of modifications done in response to the NYPD's "Phase 3" malfunction issues, whereas the Gen2 on the right, dating to 1996, doesn't have that.

The Gen3 also has a shinier finish, replacing the dull phosphate of the earlier gun. Glock did that back in 2000ish in response to complaints that the matte phosphate didn't collect fingerprints. Yes, when we were playing defense against the Clinton DOJ, Glock went to a more fingerprint-friendly finish to mollify the antis. I remember all the yelling and hollering and "ZOMG! BOYCOTT ALL THE THINGS!" from the gun boards like it was yesterday.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
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That's handy...

NCStar, purveyor of airsoft-grade optics and garbage mounts and accessories to the "Just-As-Good-As/Works for me!" crowd, has finally succeeded in making a product that looked intriguing enough to me to shell out some of my own hard-earned dough: The Magpopper.

With my pathetic lack of grip strength, getting Glock magazine floorplates off has always been a challenge. See, the way you're supposed to do it is to take the magazine in one hand and squeeze the sides in hard. Then use your other hand to depress the retaining button in the floorplate with a Glock tool or other similar punch. Then you slide the floorplate off with your third hand.

There are workarounds for us weak folk with only two hands, such as using a c-clamp or the corner of a countertop or desk to aid in squeezing the mag tube. This tool promised to let me do it with only one-third as many hands as before.

And they weren't lying. It works dandily.

The hook folds away and is retained in its stowed position by a little magnet, and the tool also has a bottle opener built in. Recommend.
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QotD: Culture Wars Edition

McThag's most recent:

"How do I know the gun culture is superior?  I know and am friends with stone killers.  People who've killed in the military and sleep soundly at night; but whom own so many guns you'd need a semi to move them all.  Yet they've never murdered single person once removed from the military and war.

So, let's try something new.  Since guns aren't going away, not even "evil black guns" why don't we inculcate our children into the gun culture and reject the victim culture which has no respect for life or property?"

Thursday at the range...

Thursday's range day was just for fun, no work-related stuff at all. I brought the Wilson, because I hadn't fired it for a while and I wanted to check the install on the new light pipe in the front sight. I also brought my former carry gun, the Gen3 Glock 19, which now gets used as a practice substitute to keep the round count down on the Gen4 19 I'm currently carrying.

Generally, if you see a Phlster Flatpack TQ carrier on the range tray, it means there are other customers out on the range. I have trust issues...well, "trust but verify" issues...with the gun-handling skills of John Q. Public. Better safe than sorry.

Both guns ran fine. I was trying to get my Ricky Bobby on with the Glock and let one get away from me, there.

While I was shooting it, I realized that the last time the Wilson was cleaned or lubed, Donald Trump was still the GOP nominee. I hadn't done so because I need to take detailed macros of the filthy interior for a 2k-round wrapup for an online article elsewhere, and I keep not getting around to that.

It doesn't malfunction, despite me never adjusting the spark advance or degaussing the heads or whatever this "periodic maintenance" the internet tells me I'm supposed to be doing to 1911s is...especially snugly-fitted ones like a Wilson.
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Tab Clearing...

• Your open-carried gun is not an empowerment tool, it's just a gun. It doesn't tell everyone you are strong and determined, it just tells them you have a gun. It's not a deterrent, it's just a gun. People get to decide if they feel deterred or not.




• Real talk about realism in basic handgun classes.


• Reno police ask residents to stop leaving guns in cars. Related: Mass smash-and-grab car burglary event in Indy. Also related: "Felony Lane Gang" car burglary ring targets Indy drivers dropping off kids at day care. Please stop arming bad guys, y'all.

Dirty Laundry

Notice how this lady is holding the mic herself, with no on-the-scene reporter standing next to her? This is a straight up setup. Find a grieving parent, hand her the mic, and stand aside to let 'er rip and edit the raw footage later so it begins and end at the right spots.

This was probably edited with one hand on the console and the other down their trousers, with visions of a News & Documentary Emmy dancing in their head.

And that's the only reference you'll see to this here.
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Weather or not.

Joel's getting freaky and much-needed rain at his desert hermitage.

Here in Indy we enjoyed a brief intermission from winter yesterday, with temperatures rising into warm (if damp) low sixties.

After my morning errands, I parked over by Sam's Gyros and grabbed lunch, only to discover I'd left my wallet at home. I drove home to get it and decided I might as well grab an umbrella and walk back to settle my bill, since it'd likely be just as quick as driving back and circling the block to park.

Here's a picture of an Audi S7 I drooled on before lunch...

There's a front moving through right now, with the temperature having tumbled twenty degrees in the last few hours. Today'll be in the mid-30s all day and we'll be back to normal winter by nightfall.
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Not preps.

As an aside, using the word "preps" as a plural noun for freeze-dried food and spam cans of Russian ammo grates on my ears like fingernails on a chalkboard. So, next time we chat face-to-face you now know how to get on my last nerve in a hurry.

Anyway, the thump was just heard on the front porch announcing the latest delivery, of work supplies. I mused aloud to Bobbi "You know, the UPS driver probably thinks we're squirreling this shit away in the basement in case of zombies, when in reality it gets burned up about as fast as it comes in."
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Cue See Part Three

After yesterday's allusions to QC and the link to Og's post on the topic, I thought I'd throw this into the mix: An older article on "The Walmart Effect".

Remington and Winchester arguably both felt negative effects by having to drive costs lower to meet theses sorts of demands.
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Clarification.

Regarding the P2000SK post yesterday, it wasn't meant to be a solicitation of aid but rather a recounting of events.

The point behind it, which I apparently conveyed poorly, was that when issues crop up with recoil-operated pistols, one of the first things I do is toss a fresh recoil spring in it. This is because it's usually among the cheapest wear parts in the gun, not because it's necessarily the likeliest source of the problem. Eliminating "out-of-spec/worn recoil spring" as the cause of problems is often a sub-$10 part away, and for personal guns I usually have a spare recoil assembly or two on hand.

This is likelier to be an out-of-spec hammer spring or too-tight extractor claw.
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I can't tell which is funnier...

The hilariously awful "research" upon which this Duke University professor is basing her theory that Libertarians are a pack of autistic meanies, or the predictable reaction to her claim."ARE YOU SAYING MY MANDATORY GOVERNMENT VACCINATIONS CAUSED ME TO BELIEVE TAXATION IS THEFT?"

Dude, the proper reply is to laugh at her and walk away, not to sperg out in response, but the internet's gonna internet.

It's real-life clickbait. She's going around and giving her little talks at Unitarian Universalist churches to audiences of a dozen people, and if it weren't for Reason going full-on lolcow over it, nobody but those couple dozen people would know or care.

nobodycares.jpg

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Speaking of QC...

...Og has some thoughts.
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"Remington files bankruptcy, let's blame Trump."

The headlines on Remington's bankruptcy are pretty funny. Not a sparrow can fall from a tree without Cheetoh Jesus catching the blame.

It can't have anything to do with shittastic QC, questionable product decisions, failed gun launches, or massive overleveraging by Cerberus (who is...thank God...losing control of the company.)

I remember being so excited when libertarian darlings of Cerberus first stuck their toe in the gun biz back in the early Aughties. I think Bushhamster was their first acquisition? Anyway, a decade and a half or so later, I have to ask: If a group of wealthy investors decided to try and destroy the domestic firearms industry, how would it have looked any different?
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The price of snowflaking...

I'll preface this by saying that I bought the P2000SK used, and therefore have no idea what its round count was before I got my hands on it. I consider myself a fair judge of round counts on a pistol, and this one looked lightly used.

At any rate, the first hundred and fifty rounds went off without a hitch, and then came Federal 124gr +P HST. Recoil was snappy, with that distinct feeling of the slide bottoming out the recoil spring, and then stopping a fraction of an inch out of battery.

It did that a total of six times in a box of fifty rounds. I tried standard pressure 124gr HSTs the next day and managed to induce it four times in a box of fifty. It doesn't do it with mild-shooting range ammo.

My first diagnostic here would be to replace the recoil spring assembly, which with a Glock or 1911 or even a Sig or M&P is a twenty- or thirty-buck transaction with Brownells or Lone Wolf or whoever. But the P2000 series is almost stereotypically German in its complicated multi-part, multi-spring recoil reducing guide rod and spring parts package, which is $120-$140 and out of stock almost everywhere.

So the P2000SK test is called off before it really started, while I look into what the factory recommended maintenance interval is on the RSA.
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Goldilocks...

I have stumbled on a Micro Four Thirds setup that will actually ride in my shirt pocket like a compact camera. The Lumix GF3 body was only $85 at KEH Camera Brokers. I already had the little 12-32mm pancake lens. For once, I'm not mad about a lens being all plastic, because that compact and light lens makes it small enough to go in the document pocket of my gun burka.

The NEX-5T isn't much bigger, and sports an APS-C sensor rather than Micro Four Thirds, but the bigger sensor needs bigger glass, and the smallest zoom lens for the E mount is the 16-50 PZ, and it weighs almost as much by itself as the whole GF3 and lens combo.

The pancake collapsible 12-32mm isn't exactly a superzoom, but it'll snap a picture of a car parked on the other side of the street, which is about all the zoom I usually need.

Automotif CXLIV...

Scion, Toyota's attempt to create a young, hip, sporty division to appeal to Gen X'ers and Millennials who had come to associate Toyota with the bland Camry and its plushbottom cousin, the Avalon, only ever succeeded in producing one model that was young, hip, and sporty. And they needed Subaru's help to do that. Then the division folded.

Sisyphus in the Styling Department

I'd never paid much attention to the '80s-'90s Buick Century. It just wasn't the sort of car someone in their teens or twenties pays a ton of attention to.

Built on GM's A-platform, darling of rental car lots everywhere, it's what happened when you took a Chevy Celebrity and added plush velour and plastic woodgrain. (If you added alloy wheels and fog lamps you got a Pontiac 6000.)

Going to school for automotive design and winding up at Buick in the Reagan/Bush Sr. years must have been like getting picked last at kickball and parked way out in the outfield: A sign that others were less confident in your abilities than you were.

So I'm walking through the parking lot at Meijer's yesterday and really looked at the prow of a late fifth generation Century (I had to look them up on Wikipedia to verify the year) and I felt sorry for the guy in Buick's styling department.

The model received a mid-cycle facelift in '89 and from the leading edge of the hood forward was actually a sharp-looking car.

The thin, dangerous-looking bumper and reverse-sloped front end have a sort of Eighties BMW 635CSi thing going on. The grill has a hint of that throwback Buick waterfall and it's framed by narrow, mean-looking flush glass headlights that flow into wrap-around glass for cornering lamps. The whole thing is obviously supposed to generate a bit of brand identity that marks it as being from the company making the Reatta.

That fascia is actually pretty nice. Some dude worked hard on that. And then it's bolted to one of GM's dullest, most plebeian transportation boxes. Because the rest of the A platform is the Brutalist architecture of automotive styling, carrying forward the torch originally lit by Ford's Granada. "There will be no fun to be had behind the wheel of this car," is emphatically stated by its lines.

And scratch that.

It looks like the indoor range today instead.

Today in the glamorous life of the gunwriter I discover that the manufacturer wants me to ship the test gun back so they can send me a fresh copy. It wouldn't make sense to get the chrono data from this one and then do the accuracy testing and the rest of the writeup on the replacement.

At least I don't have to play in the muddy snow, so...yay?
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Oh, well...

It looks like this is the best outdoor chronograph weather I'm going to get in the next week or two. So be it.

There'll be snow in the pistol bays. I'm debating whether I should bring the tripod and mount the chrono on that, or just set it on the table like usual.

"Hurr durr a bad day at the range beats a good day at the office!" Yeah, no. I'd rather stay here and write and futz around on Facebook than go out there and get my nose froze off getting chrono data. You can turn anything into work, ask a porn actor.
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Deadlines...

I seem to be up to my ass in deadlines post-SHOT. On the one hand, it's good to have the work. On the other, staring at the blinking cursor on the blog after sweating out a couple thousand words to make an editor happy is daunting.

My skull is positively devoid of anything to write about. Well, that's not actually true. I have things I want to write about, but I can't put them to text. It's a weird feeling.
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I wrote a thing...

"Yes, that is a guy running around and blazing away from the hip with a semiautomatic shotgun while wearing a ghillie suit. No, we don’t know why he’s wearing it, either. It would seem to be rather counter to the principles of stealth and camouflage to be jumping through doorways in a shoot house, doing 12 gauge mag dumps, but we’re not marketers."

New 2k Test Gun...

So, if I switch to AIWB carry of the P30L, as appears to be underway right now, this little fella is a strong contender for a more-concealable backup. It's got the LEM trigger (V1 style). I have a temporary holster solution in the form of a Blade-Tech Klipt with Melody Lauer's little life hack done to it, but I'll be ordering a better one if this turns out to work.

I lubed all the indicated spots with Liberty Gun Lube and ran fifty rounds of Aguila 115gr FMJ through the gun on Monday morning. There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

As you can see, despite the last time I shot an LEM trigger being ToddG's HK45 test gun back in 2010, the gun shot pretty okay for me.

This makes 50 rounds since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated with no malfunctions. 1,950 rounds to go.
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Still Standing...

Despite being exposed to the muzzle blast of a thousand rounds of .357SIG generously donated to the cause of science by Lucky Gunner, the Surefire XC1B is still working fine. I'm thinking that whatever durability issues the original XC1 had, they're pretty well worked out in the new version. Plus it's half again as bright.

The Glock 32 is probably due for another cleaning and lubing, and I guess I'll move the light over to my Glock 29 and see if 10mm Auto does anything to it. (And if that doesn't rattle it, I have a 9x25 Dillon G29 barrel and some Double Tap ammo sitting here...)
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Will you look at that?

I leave the blog alone for a day to catch up on some paying writing and the stock market craps the bed. This would have been prime blogfodder and yet here I am with my word tank on "E".

I need to refill it.
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E'rrbody loves an underdog.

Poor #TomBrady. As the clock ran out he looked so...deflated.#SuperBowl

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

I'm just watching for the commercials. Honest.

Best surprise #Superbowl end zone appearance against the Patriots since Refrigerator Perry ran one in.

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

This. This right here. A thousand times this.

Kathy Jackson is spot on here:

"When you hear someone try to talk women out of firearms ownership because the gun a woman purchases might be “more likely to be used against someone you know”, remember that [number] many women are killed every year by someone they know.

Self-defense isn’t just about protecting yourself from random strangers who jump out of the bushes to grab you off the sidewalk in the middle of the night. It’s about protecting your life from a violent attacker, no matter who that attacker might be or where that attack might happen. Someone you know can kill you just as stone cold dead as someone you don’t.

That’s the harsh reality we need to face whenever we talk or think about self defense."

Go and read the whole thing and share it widely.
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Post Title Goes Here

 Thursday's session used up another hundred rounds of .357SIG from Lucky Gunner.

950 rounds in and the Surefire XC1B continues to function just fine, with all switches and levers working correctly and the mounting screw hasn't even loosened.
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It's not lying...

I have to get chrono data for a magazine test gun. It's not going to happen today, I can tell you that.

The downside is that looking at next week's forecast, there aren't many balmy days in the near future, and we're into the part of the season where anything north of freezing feels pretty doggone balmy. By early February, 35°F and no wind is practically sunbathing weather.

I should have asked for a Labradar for my birthday. Being able to shoot my mandatory 25-yard groups in indoor comfort just down the road at Indy Arms Co has done wonders for foul weather testing, but I don't have an indoor chrono solution yet.
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Hey, look!

I wrote a thing.
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Overheard in the Kitchen...

Me: "'♫♪Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, stronger than the Old Man Joe!♫♪' When I was little, I always wondered who the Old Man Joe was, and why was he noted for being particularly strong?"

RX: "He's the cousin of Round John Virgin. I think one of them was the guy Jimi Hendrix kissed."

BOOM!

In what has been a daily tradition this week, Wednesday morning saw me at the range with another hundred rounds of .357SIG, generously donated to the cause of science by Lucky Gunner (so go buy stuff from them), in an attempt to break the Surefire XC1B.

Also along for the ride was a magazine test gun and some ammo I'd purchased to feed it. While Lucky Gunner occasionally sponsors some ammo, I also buy a ton of it from them. The reason for this is because not only are they good folks with whom I enjoy doing business, but also that when I put my order in before 3PM and select FedEx Ground delivery, the ammo shows up on my front porch the next morning before the range opens. That's handy.

Anyway, the test ammo for the other gun was Speer Lawman 200gr FMJ +P. If I knew this load existed, I'd somehow forgotten about it. If you carry 200gr +P JHPs in a .45, it's definitely handy having an FMJ practice load that's a ballistic twin.

I shot one box of .357SIG in big, lazy mag dumps at the lower A-zone, keeping the light on the whole time. The second box I used up doing Mozambiques, checking the light's function after each one. The light continues to function normally and hasn't loosened on the rail. This makes 850 rounds of full-house .357SIG muzzle blast that have failed to cause issues.
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And so it goes...

A train full of congresscritters derails and who gets killed? Some poor random taxpayer.
If I had any religion left to lose, this would do the trick. pic.twitter.com/g1xc3Ke3kE

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) January 31, 2018

Zero Context QotD...

Zero Context QotD: "The Venn diagram of people who own "drone" trainer blades and people who own pistol bayonets looks like the business end of a coach gun."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) January 31, 2018

Another hundred...

Another hundred rounds of Lucky Gunner's .357SIG ammunition got sent downrange yesterday morning in the ongoing effort to make the Surefire XC1B say uncle.

Also seen in the picture is a review gun for an upcoming Shooting Illustrated piece.

Four back-to-back mag dumps of .357SIG leave the slide too hot to touch, for what it's worth. The XC1B continues to work, and the mounting screw hasn't loosened.

Yesterday's shooting brings the total round count on the light to 750 rounds. There's another three hundred rounds from Lucky Gunner yet to go, and if the light's still running after that I'll just have to bolt it to my Glock 29 or something. If .357SIG won't do the trick, maybe 10mm Auto can.

It still lights...

Monday morning was back to the grind with the Surefire XC1B-equipped Glock 32 and a hundred rounds of Lucky Gunner's Remington 125gr FMJ .357SIG ammunition in an attempt to see if this light will wilt in the face of all that muzzle blast.

I had wiped the grease (and powder residue) off the lens after the last session and I was too lazy to head down to the basement to get more, so as I headed out the back door, I dabbed a fingertip in the bowl of congealed bacon grease in the fridge and dabbed that on the lens instead. I figure that if Pam and Crisco both work, why not bacon fat?

With the fresh recoil spring in the gun, it ran fine. I function-checked the light at several points during the range session, and it continued to function normally.

With this session, it has put up with six hundred and fifty rounds of .357SIG with no hiccups.

Also, the mixed smell of burnt gun powder and bacon fat borders on intoxicating.
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Overheard in the Office...

RX: "Organic yogurt? I like it a lot better than that inorganic yogurt."

Me: "I hate mechanical yogurt. Also, Mechanical Yogurt is the name of my next band."

"Black is the New Pink"

Wherein the guys from InRangeTV host a panel of experts discussing the best way to pander to a very important market demographic...
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What did John Farnam tell us?

Big shootout in Indianapolis! Bar fight turns into shooting! Two dead, three wounded, and two of the wounded are critical. Also, the bar's security guard was among the wounded.

This is what the TV was blaring at me as I woke up this morning, and so I hit the intertubes to see the details.

Oh. I knew something was up when the newsreader referenced the nearest big intersection as 16th and Sherman, and the online story corroborated that as having the incident occurring in the 1300 block of Sherman Ave.

This isn't technically The Swamp, but it's Swamp-adjacent. "The Swamp" being the near-Eastside neighborhood traditionally largely populated by the unemployed descendants of the unemployed denizens of Appalachia who flocked to the factories of the North and Midwest during WWII and the postwar boom years.

The near-Northside, once known as "War Zone D", is pretty gentrified these days. There's a wine bar at 16th & New Jersey, where there used to be trash fires and bum fights thirty years ago. But venture too far east or west on 16th from the enclave between Meridian and College, and you're back in the hard 'hood again.

If you were to ask me "Hey, Tam, I'm in Indianapolis for a week and I'd like to get into a gunfight. Where should I go?" well, 42nd & Post would be at the top of my list, but the parking lot of a bar at 13th & Sherman at 0200 on a Sunday would be pretty close behind it.
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Leaving Las Vegas

So, along about Wednesday, I got to wondering how I'd miscalculated my packing so badly. I always pack enough socks and underthings for fresh ones every day, and enough shirts to have a clean one every day, plus an extra shirt in case I spill something on myself.

But by Wednesday it was pretty clear that I was going to be one day short on socks and underwear...until I checked my itinerary and noticed I was leaving at 12:05 AM on Saturday, not 12:05 PM.

Anyway, I didn't get any sleep last night other than a couple thirty minute catnaps on the plane, and I'm flat wore out. I'll write stuff for y'all tomorrow, when I'm coherent.
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Prose and cons...

So, I did a quick straight up report on Mossberg's 590M.

More thoughts later.
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That went well.

Another day at SHOT, another RECOIL story (or two).
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I don't want to grow up...

Let's see if I can hold off doing so for another year.
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More writings...

• You can't swing a Galco Miami Classic without hitting a 10mm Auto pistol at SHOT this year.


• If you're gonna snowflake, snowflake all the way. (And yes I would.)

Happy JMB Day!

Today is the day we celebrate the birthday of the guy who invented the basic operating systems of half the stuff out there on the SHOT Show floor.
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Another thing I wrote...

...can be found here.

Share and enjoy!
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Day One

I wrote a thing last night instead of partying. Actually, a few things, but that's the only one up so far.

Now to get my game face on. I don't want to mess this up.
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So, this is a thing that happened...

Waking up and finding a still-in-the-wrapper Pmag in the pocket of the jacket I was wearing the night before, with no recollection of how it got there, is the most #SHOTShow thing that has ever happened to me.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) January 23, 2018

Long day...

Ow, my legs.

I am told by my phone that I've covered over four miles today, not counting all the standing around.
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I wrote a thing.

It can be read at RECOIL's site.

I had fun writing it.
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Verklempt

I got a notification from my friends at Indy Arms Co. that a package had arrived for me. A reader had sent me a birthday gift, and would I like to come and pick it up or should they hold it 'til after SHOT?

I allowed as how I had some shopping to get done at the local Meijer store just across the street, and I'd swing by on the way and get it.

I found myself standing in the middle of the gun store with eyes full of tears...

Thank you very much!

I took a minute to get my $#!+ in a sock before heading over to Meijer's for groceries and sundries. While there I swung by the magazine rack to see if the new RECOIL was in. It was.

The first issue of RECOIL with my byline in it. I do wish Pat were here to see it, even though I know what his reaction would be...

Important tip...

I frequently get asked via email or FB Messenger or whatever to offer CCW concealment advice to a male reader's Significant Other.

I'm 5'12" tall, I work from home, and I dress like a hobo. I'm currently wearing jeans a size too big, a nylon web instructor-type belt, and an untucked and unbuttoned overshirt that I like not only for its gun burka properties but also because it has cavernous "document pockets" that will swallow small notebooks and an Olympus Pen E-PL1 and the other things I use in my day-to-day work.

Is this how your Significant Other dresses every day? If not, I probably don't have a lot of specific concealment advice for her, just a lot of vague stuff and hints I've gleaned from other friends.
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Relic of the Past

So, Indiana is the state where you can buy a bottle of Jack Daniels in the CVS with less hassle than a packet of Sudafed, since you need to take a card to the pharmacist who stores the Sudafed behind the counter with the opioids and weapons-grade plutonium but the whiskey is just out there with the soda pop and bottled water.

Indiana is also...still...the only state where you can't buy cold beer anyplace but a liquor store, for some vague and no doubt John Dillinger-related reason.

This leads to the weird sight of grocery stores that have coolers for white wines and champers, but the beer is just sitting out warm.

A bill was advanced to allow cold beer sales in convenience and grocery stores this legislative session, but it died in committee, thanks to stiff opposition from the liquor store owners lobby.

"Alcohol and gas do not mix. So let's go ahead and use Hoosier common sense and be different from the other 49 states," said Knightstown resident Sarah Ward, who is president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of Indiana.

Wait, the WCTU is still a thing? Apparently it is here in Indiana.

At least it looks like we'll get Sunday sales this year. (When I moved here it was only for sale by the drink on Sundays, and recently they added an exception for on-premises sales by breweries, wineries, and distilleries.)

...aaand that's a wrap.

The various testing protocols for magazine reviews leave me with a lot of partial boxes of ammo, and so I grabbed a box of Winchester 124gr NATO FMJ, Federal HST 147gr +P, and TulAmmo 115gr FMJ left over from...I think the XD-E review? Anyway, each box had only 15 rounds left in it.

I needed 91 rounds to finish the test, so those three and a full box of TulAmmo would do the trick.

The COM shots are from seven yards, with the full box of TulAmmo. That was just hosing nearly as fast as I could go, reinforcing not pinning the trigger.

I brought the target in to five yards and fired the fifteen HSTs at the upper A zone, at about the pace you'd use for shooting at the 3x5 in a FAST. Still at fifteen, I fired the fifteen Winchester NATO at the yellow triangle.

Finally, I pulled the target in to four and put the remaining eleven rounds of TulAmmo into the red star because duh.

There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

So this wraps up the CZ-75B Omega 2k round test. The gun was field-stripped and lubed with Lucas Extreme Duty Gun Oil on November the 6th, and has since fired 2,000 rounds, most of it filthy, steel-cased TulAmmo, with no further cleaning or lubrication. The gun has not once failed to go through the complete cycle of operation. The front sight's tritium vial leaked all its radioactive glow-y stuff, but there have otherwise been no parts breakages.

Stay tuned for field-stripping photos and general thoughts on two months of life with the Cee Zed.
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Long session...

In order to hasten the wrapup of the CZ-75B Omega test yesterday, I brought two hundred rounds of ammo with me to Indy Arms Co.: A hundred of the Aguila 115gr FMJ and a hundred TulAmmo 115gr FMJ.

Still using the distal joint but concentrating on getting off the trigger as soon as it breaks so I can be prepping for the next shot. This stuff was all shot at what was nearing "wheels coming off" speed for me. I am okay with this relative to the previous session, considering I was going a lot faster, but got better results.

There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

This makes 1909 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 91 rounds to go.
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I'm not as big a loser as I planned to be.

According to the scale and my little weight loss app on my phone, I'm down 17.8 pounds since I started using the app in late September. While this is the equivalent of no longer having to carry Huck the cat with me everywhere I go, I still didn't quite hit my target.

Unless I lose six pounds between now and Sunday, which seems unlikely without using a Stryker saw, my SHOT Show weight goal will not be met.

No matter. Onward.
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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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