History can happen fast.

So Prigozhin has had all charges dropped in return for hieing himself off to exile in Belarus, with Lukashenko apparently vouching for his future good behavior.

Well, it looks like the ex-hot dog vendor-cum-mercenary commander has a future life of indeterminate length that will involve wearing gloves to open doors, staying on the ground floor of buildings, and wanding his tea with a geiger counter before drinking.

Meanwhile:

I find students often struggle to understand how centralized power in post-Roman Europe could fragment so badly.

But ask yourself: if you are a Russian oligarch right now, what lesson did you just learn about the value of having your own private army?

— Bret Devereaux (@BretDevereaux) June 24, 2023

There's been a lot of renewed attention on what would happen if the world's largest accumulator of strategic nuclear warheads should slide into civil war or splinter into a bunch of rump states.

Thing is, it's already happened once, so we have a partial roadmap of what it might look like.

There's one big difference between Then and Now, however.

Back when the Soviet Union broke apart, deals were cut with former Soviet republics to turn their nuclear weapons over to Russia, aided by promises of security and territorial integrity backed by both Russia and the USA.

Now, after events in Ukraine and Georgia and Moldova, do you think some hypothetical future Republic of Karelia or Free State of Primorsky are going to turn over any nukes to some rump Rus in Moscow, no matter who pinkie swears to do what? Fat frickin' chance. If there's one thing that recent history has taught everyone, it's that nukes mean people won't mess with you.

Sixgun Saturday

Here we have a Smith & Wesson Model 19-5, circa 1988, in a very uncommon configuration: A 4" barrel with a factory round butt frame. The 4" RB configuration and AYY serial number prefix matches the one used for the 680 guns shipped to the U.S. Department of State in March of '88.

With a 4" barrel and a round butt, it can be carried concealed IWB or OWB without too much trouble, provided care is taken with holster selection. Being able to handle a range of cartridges from .38 Special shotshells all the way to 158gr .357 Magnum loads (I'd avoid some of the more esoteric heavy hunting loads in a K-frame) makes it extremely versatile.

There aren't a lot of problems a competent shooter couldn't solve with this thing.

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Big Facts

Politics turn us into mood-affiliated dummies. Culture war politics turns us into utter idiots. https://t.co/GeXp0Oov2l

— Paul Matzko (@PMatzko) June 24, 2023

Yesterday's armchair epidemiologists, today's...

Great Thinkers of 2022

I mean, in fairness, almost nobody in February of '22 realized just how jacked up the Russian military was, but Benny was wrong with such smug confidence.

You gotta love it.

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Akin to Godwin's Law...

We now have a new measurement of time on the internet.

The Goebbels Gap: The amount of time between something terrible happening in the world and someone figuring out a way to blame the Jews for it. https://t.co/8ht5ZuxKxE

— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) June 23, 2023

Pocket Popper Days

I remember my Beretta pocket popper days. Here's a photo from late 2001...

I carried a Beretta 950BS Jetfire in the flap pocket on the front of my leather bomber jacket back when I used to commute on motorcycles. Looking back, it was probably largely a "ballistic rabbit's foot", since I carried it hammer-down, necessitating thumb-cocking on the draw. That's always an iffy proposition when in a hurry, especially with such a tiny gun.

Further, .25ACP is pretty much the only handgun cartridge that deserves all the bad press it gets. There isn't any really "good" load in the chambering, just some that are less bad than others. If you gotta carry a deuce-five, load it with ball.

I replaced it with a Beretta 3032 Tomcat, one of the early skinny-slide models. I sometimes get nostalgic for the Tomcat, but if I were to get another one, it would definitely be a newer stainless "Inox" model with the chonkier slide.

If you want a real otaku-like deep dive on the history of the Tomcat, there's one at this link.

I still have that little CRKT K.I.S.S., and it still has the scuffs on the pocket clip from that motorcycle wreck on Peachtree, those twenty-three summers ago.

(I still have that Kershaw Chive, too, but it lacks the emotional significance that the scars give the CRKT. Plus I got to meet Ed Halligan at BLADE Show back in '02 and show him the K.I.S.S. and the scuffs on the clip.)

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Gas Gun

"Smith calls it the “TEMPO” operating system, but it is really a classic gas-operated, locked-breech operation, except the barrel itself is the op rod and piston. When you have the barrel out of the sleeve, you notice there are six radial fins on the barrel that act as piston rings, three skinny ones out by the muzzle and three fatter ones toward the breech. There’s also a gas port out toward the muzzle end of the barrel. When the bullet passes this port, gas passes back into the space between the barrel and the sleeve, driving the barrel rearward until it meets a lug in the frame which causes it to rotate through 90 degrees, unlocking it from the slide."

The whole review is online at the link, no punches pulled.

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Wish in one hand, poop in the other...

One thing I've noted when visiting Marko in New Hampshire is the difference in the scale of politics between here and there.

The Granite State has just shy of 1.4 million people and a state legislature with 24 senators and 400 state representatives. The City-County Council here in Indianapolis/Marion County has 25 members for a population of over 977,000. 

So, by comparison, the municipal government here is really...streamlined. Things can happen fast when it's just the mayor, backed by an overwhelmingly Democratic-controlled council.

Due to the levels of violence in town (which are still pretty sporty, but down from 2020-'21) there's a lot of pressure on the mayor and city council to Do Something, and so the Something the mayor wants to do is gun control.

The mayor presented a package of proposed city ordinances to the Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee of the council, including the following:

• A ban on "semiautomatic assault weapons" in the city.
• Raising the age for all firearms purchases to 21.
• Ending permitless carry in Indianapolis/Marion County.

Which is entirely a theatrical gesture, since Indiana state law says that no political subdivision of the state can pass its own gun control laws. These ordinances would be toothless and unenforceable and Mayor Hogsett admitted as much:

“If state preemption is overturned by the legislature or by the courts, there will be no delay in implementing the most basic safety measures," Hogsett said. "That is why, today, I am announcing that we will submit to our City-County Council a package of gun safety measures that, if passed, will immediately become law, should state preemption be abolished for the city of Indianapolis.”

Considering the legislative makeup in the statehouse, with its Republican supermajority, and the judicial climate in post-Bruen America, Hogsett might as well have wished for a gold house and a rocket car while he was at it.

The proposed ordinances sailed through the Public Safety Committee and are probably a cinch to pass the whole council...in a purely meaningless symbolic gesture, since any attempt to enforce them would just be a jobs program for Guy Relford.

However there were a few items in the mayor's proposal that weren't entirely dumb.

For one, there was a proposal to increase the pay of IMPD officers. In an era where departments are hemorrhaging good cops, every little bit helps, I guess, but what would help even more is better training and convincing them they won't be hung out to dry after any use of force.

The other good proposal was freeing up city money to pay three federal prosecutors to go after local felons when they violate various federal firearms statutes. Maybe if there were an actual chance of catching hard time for some of this stuff, word might get around.

It's a long shot, but hey, it might help.

Sunrise, Sunset

Today is the first full day of summer, since the solstice occurred yesterday morning, shortly before noon local.

Days are getting shorter from this point. According to Weather Underground, tomorrow will have four seconds less daylight than today.

Paradoxically, however, the sun will set ten seconds later tomorrow than it did today. In fact, sunset will continue getting later in the evening. Here at roughly 40º North latitude, the latest sunset happens about a week from now in late June. The days are shortening, but they are shortening for now because sunrise is starting to happen a few seconds later each day.

The days don't really start contracting noticeably from both ends until early July.

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Sorry…

Taking a sick day here.

Got kinda banged up yesterday.

I’ll try to get back to normal content tomorrow.

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Hey, look!

The big difference between the regular Defender 856 and the T.O.R.O. variant is the two large, threaded holes milled in the sight channel on the topstrap, and the contents of a little plastic bag included in the cardboard box from Taurus.

The contents of the bag include an optics mounting plate, a pair of screws to secure it to the topstrap of the revolver and replacement screws to attach a Holosun 507k optic to the plate, since the Holosun factory screws are an incorrect length for the plate.

The entirety of the review is at the link.

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About that missing sub...

Someone quipped that if these sorts of deep-diving sub expeditions continue as expected and become even more frequent, it won't be long before the sea floor around the wreck of the Titanic turns into a waterlogged version of the upper slopes of Everest, strewn with the corpses of well-heeled adventure seekers.

https://t.co/yEEi9OX8iA pic.twitter.com/nBl4BY0iuS

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 20, 2023

Going back and looking at the CBS reporter's junket on the sub, the whole thing becomes a huge "Oh, hell, no" in my book. Especially reading some of the tweets that David Pogue made recently. Pogue's set himself up for some subpoenas if the sub's passengers are, in fact, croaked.

incredibly funny when the overly-industry-friendly tech journalists don’t realise they’re saying some really damning stuff. https://t.co/vXo9yaZeZ3 pic.twitter.com/TQdkT5ruAH

— Richard (405 Mi16 era) (@halkyardo) June 20, 2023

I am shocked, shocked!

French investigators searched the headquarters of Paris Olympic organizers on Tuesday in a probe into suspected corruption, according to the national financial prosecutor’s office.

Corruption related to the Olympics? Clutch the pearls!

Dude, if FIFA and the mafia had a baby and gave it to Bernie Ecclestone to raise, it still wouldn't grow up to be as corrupt as the International Olympic Committee.

The entire host city selection process is nothing but an extended festival of palm-greasing and log-rolling that would make Jimmy Hoffa's corpse blush. (Source: Lived in Atlanta in the '90s.) 

The IOC so sleazy they make Ken Paxton look like Fred Rogers.

David Burge has a bullseye in this tweet:

Every international sports committee is a bunch of unelected 73 year old, 350 pound Belgians of indeterminant portfolio with names like Fromp Schmugo, murky ancestral ties to Nazi gold, and closets full of Speedos on their Riviera yachts

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 20, 2023

Automotif CCCLXXXVI...

Without a look at the VIN plate, this one is tough to call for certain.

It certainly could be a de-badged 1968 Pontiac GTO ragtop.

Far more likely, though, someone has added an Endura nose, scooped hood, and GTO taillights to a 1968 Pontiac LeMans or Tempest. Ethical people who do this (especially if they go whole hog and add GTO badging) will call the resulting rides "GTO Tributes". Unethical people will try and pawn them off on unsuspecting buyers as real Goats.

These shots were taken on Saturday with a Nikon D7100 & 16-80mm f/2.8-4E lens, probably the best crop-sensor general purpose zoom that Nikon's yet made.

Training opportunity...

Next month, on the weekend of the 15th & 16th, John Johnston of Citizen's Defense Research will be teaching his Contextual Handgun: Tests & Standards class in Denver, Colorado.

This is a two-day class with a ton of individual coaching. It's not a tactics class, but a pure shooting mechanics class. John's an excellent coach, and I recommend this class highly.

You can sign up here.

Individual coaching is the core of this class.

Picking nits, large and small.

The "Large Frame vs. Small Frame" post from the other day got a lot of really...interesting feedback. 

One reader asked if I would consider Beretta 92-type pistols to be "Large Frame". Another asserted:

I think of "small frame" and "large frame" more from the perspective of the gun's overall dimensions. To me, a Glock 17 is a "large frame" and a Smith & Wesson 4516 would be a "small frame." Similarly, a Government-sized 1911 in 9mm would be a "large frame" and a Para P-12 in .45 ACP would be a "small frame".

I can see where the confusion stems from.

The whole large/small thing only applies to pistols where the same basic gun was made in two separate frame sizes, one for shorter cartridges and one for longer ones. The most notable example there would be the Glock. 

From the introduction of the G20 and G21 in '91 until the launch of the little .380 G42 in 2014, Glocks only came in two basic frame sizes, which Glock referred to as "Large" and "Standard". While they used a large number of common parts, certain things like firing pins* or magazine releases were specific to the .45/10mm guns or the 9mm/.40 guns. (There was the  quasi single stack G36, but it was just an asterisk; a large frame gun that couldn't use the magazines or magazine releases from the other large frame guns.)

This same situation applied to other recent families of handguns like the Springfield Armory XD and the Smith & Wesson M&P line, where there was a whole group of 9mm/.40/.357SIG pistols that were all dimensionally identical, and then a bigger brother chambered for .45ACP.

The granddaddy of this would probably be back during the Second Generation era of the Smith & Wesson traditional double action autos, when the Model 645 debuted as a scaled-up Model 639 for the classic .45 caliber. From then, all the way through the Third Generation of Smiths, you had one set of pistols in .45 and 10mm, and then another in 9mm and .40. If you were shopping for anything from grips to holsters, that was the first, most basic division in Smifs.

With SIG Sauer, this whole era came to an end with their current era of polymer-framed pistols with removable lockwork. All P250's or P320's, regardless of caliber, use the same chassis. The P365 uses another.

Glock, who traditionally tried to make as many different sandwiches with as few ingredients as possible (back during the Gen3 era, the G17, G17L, G22, G24, G31, G34, G35, and G37 all used the same recoil spring assembly) must be itching at the number of variants currently in their catalog and aching to consolidate things back down again.

*Yes, you know it's a striker and I know it's a striker, but Glock calls it a "firing pin".

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #239...

I normally do my chrono testing at Marion County Fish & Game by setting my chronograph on a table in one of the pistol bays. Alas, the pistol bays are closed for maintenance and I was despairing of getting the chrono work done for the Reflex article in time. There was just no way to set up a table out on the main range.

Then I remembered that the chrono I use, an old Shooting Chrony Beta, has a standard camera tripod socket on the bottom, and Bobbi got me a lovely portable tripod, a 3 Legged Thing Travis, for my birthday a few years ago. Problem solved, especially since nobody else was using the main range on Friday morning, so it was easy to trudge over to the chrony to scribble down the data after each string.

I really need to get one of these self-illuminated ones that are compatible with use on an indoor range.

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Death and Resurrection

Seecamp resurrected .32 ACP, Kellgren killed it again.

Seecamp killed the .380 Auto, Kellgren (with a big assist by Ruger) resurrected it.

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Automotif CCCLXXXV...

Tooling down Central Avenue on the way to the range yesterday, I had to pull over to the curb, hop out, and stand in the middle of the street to grab some shots of this 1973 Pontiac Bonneville in Buccaneer Red.

The row of gauges atop the dash, the big Sun tach on the steering column, and the B&N floor shifter tell us this owner likes to party and that the 400 cube motor under the hood is likely way healthier than the 230 SAE net it was rated at when new.

It's certainly got enough meat under the rear to get the power to the pavement.

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QotD: End Of The Internet Edition...

"We are living through the end of the useful internet. The future is informed discussion behind locked doors, in Discords and private fora, with the public-facing web increasingly filled with detritus generated by LLMs, bearing only a stylistic resemblance to useful information. Finding unbiased and independent product reviews, expert tech support, and all manner of helpful advice will now resemble the process by which one now searches for illegal sports streams or pirated journal articles. The decades of real human conversation hosted at places like Reddit will prove useful training material for the mindless bots and deceptive marketers that replace it."

Go and RTWT.

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Dead Letter

I was an enthusiastic user of .40S&W in the 1990s.

My first "name brand" pistol, which I bought in 1993, was a stainless double-action-only Ruger P91, and I pretty quickly traded it in on a Glock 23, still a fairly new pistol back then.

I largely carried one variety or another of the Glock 23 for the next ten years. I eagerly bought into the "stopping power" hype and could quote the percentages of various loadings from the Marshall & Sanow books faster than your eyes could focus on the page to check my answers. I was pretty sure that a hot 155gr .40 caliber bullet was the next best thing to Mjolnir when it came to flattening bad guys.

Ah, youth.

As it turns out, the thing that .40 cal is best at is prematurely wearing out pistols that had originally been designed for 9mm. That and making Major in USPSA.

The revolution in tiny high capacity guns like the Reflex and the Hellcat is because manufacturers no longer feel constrained to make them compatible with .40 cal, which is rapidly becoming a cartridge used by nobody other than gamers and by people who enjoy being different for the sake of being different, like .38 Super has become. There's something poetic about that, since .38 Super was originally designed as a sort of ultimate law enforcement cartridge as well.

I carried 155gr Hydra-Shok because of its 93% OSS rating. Seriously.

Big Gun, Little Gun

For the longest time, in the realm of duty/service pistols, I've been using "Small Frame" and "Large Frame" in a specific fashion.

Large frame and small frame compact Smiths

I used "Large Frame" to refer to the pistols designed around the cartridges with a ~32mm overall length: .45ACP, 10mm Auto, and .38 Super. "Small Frame" was for pistols built around the ~27-29mm OAL: 9x19mm, .40 S&W, .45 GAP.

So a S&W 4516 would be a "compact large frame single stack Smith" and a Glock 17 would be a "full size small frame double stack Glock".

In general, manufacturers spun all their guns off their duty-size guns. The aforementioned compact Smith .45 was essentially a full-size 4506 with the slide and grip shortened, while Glock created the subcompact small-frame 26 by essentially shortening the 17 likewise. The little guns would even eat out of the magazines from their larger siblings.

But starting with the P365 and now extending to most manufacturer's catalogs we now have a category of even smaller small-frame guns, ones that don't share magazine dimensions with their duty-size catalog mates. To further confuse things, there are now upsized versions of these guns, like the Hellcat Pro and the P365 XMACRO.

My terminology gyros are tumbled.

I have no idea what to call this.

Automotif CCCLXXXIV...

One of the all-time most beautiful automobiles, a Series 1 Jaguar E-Type in British Racing Green. Simply gorgeous.

A dual overhead cam 4.2L straight six with triple SU carbs, back in the early Sixties when twin camshafts in the head was still pretty exotic race car tech, would push the E-type to 150mph, which must have been exciting on those tires. Fortunately it also had power-assisted four-wheel discs to haul you back down, something that was also super high-tech for the era.

Changes Over Time

Looking back over the years, do you find that your opinions on firearms or self-defense-related things are still fluid and changing? Or did you finally reach that point where you have things pretty well figured out?

Like on things like tritium sights, or ambi safeties on 1911s, or 9mm versus .40/.45/10mm/whatever?

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Automotif CCCLXXXIII...

Super clean 1969 Chevrolet Camaro. I think that color was called "Garnet Red"? I'm not sure. Fender badges say it's got a 327. Seeing as how the exterior has been kept looking all fairly factory original, no reason to assume that's not what's under the hood.

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Unsafe Dreams

I've participated in a fair amount of force-on-force training of the "sims guns and dull knives and inert pepper spray" variety, but I'm certainly not qualified to conduct any. Not only do I not consider myself an instructor, I have absolutely zero desire to be one.

Yet in my dream last night, I was conducting this force-on-force scenario for a group of people, and it was a fairly complex one. There was a narrow street, lined with shops and cluttered with market stalls and populated with role players, and the participants would navigate their way from one end of the street to the other, with a couple role players who would interact with them in varying levels of annoyance, insistence, and even aggressiveness if sufficiently mishandled.

All fairly normal, except people kept wandering through the middle of the scenario. Various TV reporters and their camera crews would come traipsing in, or people who wanted to watch the class, or whatever.

Now, if you've done this stuff, at least with a reputable instructor, you know that the scenario area is supposed to be completely sterile, with nobody in it who hasn't been patted down and had their pockets emptied of anything even vaguely weapon-y. Yet here I had people just wandering through and I kept having to call the whole thing to a halt and shoo them out and try and restart the scenario.

I woke up feeling maddeningly frustrated and the day hadn't even started.

"Whaddaya mean there's someone behind me?"

Concealing a Cannon

Carrying a jumbo-size blaster like a Glock 21 or the new FN 510 discreetly can be a chore, especially since concealment-oriented holsters for large autos are sometimes difficult to find.

One solution has been to use light-bearing holsters that index on the light and thus accommodate a wide variety of pistols.

The FN 510 is actually too big for the Bawidamann Gotham, which will swallow a P220 or Brigadier-slide Spaghetta with ease.

It works in the original PHLster Floodlight with the shock cord set at its loosest. We're fixin' to give it a whirl in the Floodlight 2.

FN 510 Tactical with Holosun 508 & Surefire X300U

Counterterrorism

As the Global War on a Noun wound to a close, US defense priorities swung back toward conventional fights against near-peer opponents and counterterrorism funding was cut back.

However with the Great Game heating up in the global South, this is having some foreseeable consequences:

"As Washington pulls away from counterterrorism, the Kremlin has leaned in to fill the resulting void and reap benefits outside of the terrorism domain. Russia used the guise of counterterrorism support to justify its meddling in Libya, for instance, while actually pursuing other objectives in the country and on the African continent. In April 2019, U.S. forces withdrew from Libya after defeating the local Islamic State branch—but just over a year later, Russian fighter aircraft were in Libya alongside 800 to 1,400 Russians linked to the Wagner Group and other Russian private military companies (PMCs). Today, these forces are concentrated around Libyan oil facilities where Russian state-backed oil and gas companies own stakes.

Moscow has likewise leveraged its military and PMCs to woo other African governments struggling with growing insurgencies. They offer military hardware, training, and even mercenaries to help with no restrictions on use nor lectures on civilian harm in exchange for gold, natural resource concessions, or other forms of payment. As in Libya, Russian troops help secure these resources rather than actually fight al Qaeda or the Islamic State. Moreover, the combination of human rights abuses by Russian and local state security forces, authoritarian rule, and bad governance often inflames rather than suppresses a local insurgency. Russian counterterrorism assistance ultimately has little to do with terrorist threats and much more to do with sanctions evasions, buying votes at the UN, and otherwise securing Russian interests abroad."

China, too, is hip-deep in subsaharan Africa, of course, and not even bothering to use mercs as a cutout.

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Overheard in the Office...

So I'm pretty addicted to the Spelling Bee game at the NYT, and I was playing this morning...

Me: "What do you mean it doesn't know 'wadi'?"

RX: (from down the hall): "'W-A-D-D-Y' or 'W-A-D-I'?"

Me: "The latter. I know it's a foreign word, but it knows 'tatami'."

RX: "The Times like Japanese better than Arabs."

Me: "They sell tatamis at Ikea, but not wadis."

RX: "They sell wadis in California."

Bully Boy

In cameras with two card slots, I generally have them both set to record RAW. That way if one card takes a dump, I have a spare.

There's one exception, though. Fujifilm's digital cameras will record files that emulate the look and feel of various Fuji films, and so on my X-T2 I have one slot set to RAW and the other to a save faux film JPEGs.

Lately the emulation setting has pretty much just been left on "Fuji Acros B&W film with a yellow filter" and left there.

Black & white, after all, is photography's mother tongue.

 

Strange and Unusual...

"There’s a large slice of the shooting demographic that just loves something a little novel, a little different. Internet phenomenon Ian McCollum has basically made a career out of catering to this interest in the unusual with his blog and Forgotten Weapons video channels.

If you really want to perk up the attention of these folks, a firearm that’s a little off the beaten path is a sure-fire way to do it. Whether it’s revolvers that fire from the bottom chamber or work with shotgun shells, pistols that fold, or derringers with an unusually large number of barrels, you’ll find enthusiasts for it. Unusual operating systems are also a guaranteed crowd pleaser here."

Some gun hipsters are hipster-er than others...

photo by Oleg Volk

Ducking Autocucumber

Predictive text on my various iThingies is really quite good at analyzing my frequently-used phrases. 

For instance, on Facebook I can type "Still waiting on that eyeroll react, Zuck" entirely using predictive text just by typing "Sti".

On the other hand, while I have never in my life typed "ducking shirt" intentionally, autocorrect would have me doing it twice a day if not manually overridden.

Supposedly, though, the latest updates to Autocucumber are going to fix that.

"In 2014, Naomi Campbell congratulated “malaria” on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. (She might have meant “Malala.”) According to Wired, employees at Goldman Sachs were upset that Microsoft Word corrected their company’s name to incorporate a profanity. The phrase “autocorrect made me do it” has become a way of explaining away embarrassing substitutions such as “sex” instead of “sec.”

Jillian Madison, who curated a website of autocorrect blunders, released the book “Damn You, Autocorrect!” in 2011. “If you say, you know, ‘I’m going to run and pick up the kids,’ it often turns into, ‘I’m going to run and pick up the LSD,’” she told NPR."

Automotif CCCLXXXII...

Honey Beige convertible, photographed 6/23 with Canon EOS 1D Mark IV

1958 was the 50th anniversary year of General Motors, and they commemorated it with special anniversary versions for each division.

Chevrolet's was the Bel Air Impala, which became the first iteration of the long-running Impala nameplate at Chevy. From then until 2020 (with short gaps from '86-'93 and '97-'99) there was an Impala somewhere in Chevrolet's catalog. 

Sport Coupe, photographed 9/21 with Nikon D800

If the earth is flat and space is fake...

...then this guy's got some weird looking dust flecks in his lens.

Oops, I did it again! This time from Netherlands, during Steve Bowen & Woody Hoburg spacewalk. The full solar transit lasted 0.75 second 😎

Each frame is a single shot at 1/32000s with the OM-1 on the CFF200 apo: I never make ISS transits from stackings or assemblies! pic.twitter.com/94y644q4bI

— Thierry Legault (@ThierryLegault) June 10, 2023

Automotif CCCLXXXI...

1976 Pontiac Grand Safari. Last year of the full-size GM wagons before downsizing.

455 4-barrel, nineteen and a quarter feet long, 5200 pounds of road-crushing weight.

These had the funky power-operated tailgate where the lower part would retract into the floor and the glass would slide up into the roof.

First pasture pool, then futbol...

In their continued effort to "sportswash" the shady rep of their government, the Saudis are spending jillions recruiting slightly past-their-prime big name soccer stars for their national league.

For a hilarious take on how this is going to work, here's a good rundown:

"Welcome to Bins Fulla Moolah, Saudi Arabia’s premier retirement community for world soccer stars. We’re here to hijack…your hearts!

You must be here because you’ve heard about the Kingdom’s plans to recruit you and other global soccer sensations whose contracts in the most competitive leagues are running out..."

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Once in a Lifetime

Some people go through a whole newspaper career without getting to write a headline like this one:

Supreme Court rules for Jack Daniel’s in fight over poop-themed dog toy

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"Are you a gun hipster?"

This piece is laugh-out-loud funny...

"Where others embrace threaded barrels, modern optics and tactical pants, you may feel a strange attraction to cold war battle rifles and cleverly engineered fixed-barrel actions. In extreme cases, you may have even considered purchasing a DSA FAL or an HK P9S.

But fret not, fervent friend of hammers, decockers and non-tilting breech-lock mechanisms. You are not alone. There are others like you. Others who think, feel and live like you. Others who know German date codes by heart. Others who feel that same sense of rage, loss and emptiness when they see a Beretta 92 with a red dot.

We call ourselves…

Gun Hipsters."

You should go and RTWT.

I think my own creds are solid in that department...

Tab Clearing...

• Gorillafritz: "Why won't my revolver cylinder turn?"


• Tactical Professor: The Charlotte, NC Bus Shootout


• On Her Own: Why guns can be a bad idea for self-defense.

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Automotif CCCLXXX...

The DeLorean is one of those cars that is much cooler in the mind's eye than it is in real life.

Build quality was godawful, as cars from boutique manufacturers usually are. Owners of everything from Lambos to Lotuses put up with fit and finish issues that would outrage the buyers of a Camry or Taurus.

It was notoriously underpowered, with a 130bhp SOHC Peugeot-Renault-Volvo V-6 struggling to move roughly 2,800 pounds of car with anything approaching verve. (That's about the same weight as my Z3 with less than seventy percent of the power.) Acceleration was tepid, with Road & Track unable to crack the ten second barrier in 0-60 acceleration, well short of the manufacturer's claimed 8.8 seconds.

Among a host of build quality problems was one unique to long commutes in cold winter climates. Condensation would form on the underside of the engine compartment lid, drip onto the throttle cable, and then freeze. The driver would discover this when they tried to exit the freeway and lifted their foot off the throttle to no noticeable effect on the rate of speed...

You'll note that Indiana's seven-digit license plate left this DeLorean pilot unable to squeeze the entirety of OUTATIME on his vanity plate.

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Heh.

"I don't like the term 'woke,'" Trump said during his speech at the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, a suburb of Des Moines. "I hear the term 'woke, woke, woke.' It's just a term they use. Half the people can't even define it, they don't know what it is."

Like "fascist" and "communist", it's become a content-free snarl word that just means nothing more nuanced than "someone I don't like".

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Change in the Weather

A front moved through last night with a sprinkle of rain and, after a long hot dry spell we get to look forward to several days with low humidity and highs in the Seventies.

It could be like this year 'round and I wouldn't mind. I also wouldn't be able to afford to live here.

Of course, if you really like this weather, you could just buy a mobile home and chase it.

Rocinante has been saddled.

So Mike Pence has officially thrown his hat in the ring.

I'm not sure who he thinks his constituency is, but it's a free country, I guess. Maybe he's hoping that Jack Smith or Ronald McDonald will clear Trump out of the way and then, I dunno, aliens will come take DeSantis back to the homeworld when his human suit malfunctions one time too many.

Still, it's wise not to make too many predictions this early in a presidential race. This time in 2007 I seem to recollect hoping that Fred Thompson could upset front-runner Giuliani for the GOP nomination and go on to defeat sure-thing Dem nominee Hillary in 2008.

I believe in the American people, and I have faith God is not done with America yet. Together, we can bring this Country back, and the best days for the Greatest Nation on Earth are yet to come! 🇺🇸 #Pence2024 pic.twitter.com/A8EkqgCDAm

— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) June 7, 2023

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Automotif CCCLXXIX...

Dodge has gotten a lot of mileage out of the "Dart" moniker, and not just figuratively. They introduced the Dart name in 1960 for a newer, slightly-smaller Dodge model based on a Plymouth that would fill out the catalog with something cheaper to buy and thriftier to drive than the full-sized Matador and Polara models.

After a quirky-looking second generation that only lasted for one model year, 1962, a new downsized third generation of Dart debuted as something called a "senior compact", a name meant to reflect a car that was slightly larger and roomier than the '61-'62 Valiant/Lancer Mopar compacts.

Unlike the Valiant/Lancers, the new-for-'63 Dart models rode on a 111" wheelbase, which was a four-and-half inch stretch over the earlier car. While 111" was indeed compact by the standards of early Sixties Detroit, where full-size behemoths like the Dodge 880 rolled on wheelbases nearly a full foot longer, by the time the Dart was discontinued after the '76 model year, it was feeling distinctly mid-sized.

Originally introduced with your choice of Slant-Six motors in 170cid  displacement with 101 SAE gross horsepower or the classic 225 cubic inch version rated at 145 gross bhp, an all new engine was added for 1964.

If the fender badges on this super-straight Dodge Dart 270 sedan aren't fibbing, it has the brand-new-for-'64 273 cubic inch V-8. With a 2-barrel Carter carb, 8.8:1 compression, solid lifters, and a single exhaust, the 273 was rated at 180 SAE gross horsepower and gave a noticeable performance bump in these relatively smaller, lighter cars over the regular six cylinder mill.

The 273 was the first in a long line of what were dubbed Chrysler's "LA" series of small blocks. It was produced in 318, 340, and 360 versions and eventually morphed into the fuel-injected 5.2L and 5.9L Magnum V-8's of the Nineties, powering a host of Mopar trucks. It also served as the basis for the 8.0L V-10, which was basically a 360 with a couple extra cylinders.

While the '64 Dart was the first year of the new LA V-8, it was also the last model year of a quirky old Mopar artifact, the pushbutton gear selector. If this car has a three-speed Torqueflite automatic transmission, then rather than having a conventional lever on the floor or column, it has a set of pushbuttons to the left of the wheel. 

Cost of Style

The Gunternet: “Why doesn’t Smith & Wesson bring back the 3rd Generation Autos?”

Me, A Scholar: “Well, in 1990 the MSRP for a Model 1066 was 730 bucks, which translates to 1700 in current money. How many 1700 smacker blasters did you buy last year?”

In a way, this makes the introductions of pistols like FN's new High Power or the Dan Wesson DWX important. Marketing types keep an eye on things like this. Tooling up for an all-new metal pistol ain't cheap. The market keeps saying that they're bored with yet another plastic striker gun and they want some classic metal-framed action...but if people don't buy them, they aren't going to make more.

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The Great Crusade

Seventy nine years ago today, "Festung Europa" was breached on the beaches of Normandy.

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A Dam Shame

So the Kakhovka dam has collapsed, flooding towns and cities downstream on the Dnieper. (Its impoundment was one of the fifty largest reservoirs in the world, comparable to Fort Peck Lake in Montana.)

Ukraine claims that Russia destroyed it. As of this writing, I don't think Russia has claimed that Ukraine did, but give them a minute or two and they will. 

As likely a culprit is the damage caused by Russian attacks last year combined with the fact that the Russian army is probably as terrible at operating a dam as it is at fighting a war.

Anyway, it's ugly.

Russian terrorists. The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land. Not a single meter should be left to them, because they use every meter for terror. It’s only… pic.twitter.com/ErBog1gRhH

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 6, 2023

When Editors Attack...

So, Dave Workman wrote a piece for GUNS magazine on revolvers entitled "The Long, Short and Round of It". The opening paragraph went thusly:

"One of my colleagues in Florida who has been a semi-auto guy probably from day one admits he’s not that adept with a wheelgun, which is fine, because I’ll take his share of revolvers … and the ones with five, seven or eight chambers in the cylinder as well."

Did you catch what happened there?

I absolutely guaran-damn-tee you that his original text read "...I'll take his share of sixguns..." but whoever copyedited the piece was like "Nope, only one clichéd synonym for 'revolver' per sentence" and proceeded to remove the one that made the rest of the paragraph make any sense at all.

It's at times like this that I understand why the compilation of Florence King's NR columns was titled "STET,  Damnit!"

Left unexamined are Mr. Workman's opinions of nineguns and tenguns.

If the editor did their part, the correct way to have pruned the piece to an acceptable cliché accuracy level would have been "One of my colleagues in Florida who has been a semi-auto guy probably from day one admits he’s not that adept with a revolver, which is fine, because I’ll take his share of sixguns … and the ones with five, seven or eight chambers in the cylinder as well." 

That would have kept things brisk but manageable.

The Why Behind the How

Craig Douglas explains the reasoning behind why the draw is structured the way it is. Not flagging yourself or anyone else with the muzzle is important.

Optimizing the presentation for confined and crowded space to reduce the possibility of flagging. Live fire practice should only be conducted under the strict supervision of a qualified instructor.

Posted by Shivworks on Monday, June 5, 2017

Censorbot Bait

Boy, if you really want to see a post's engagement get crushed flat on Facebook, include the words "terror", "bombing", and "Muslim", among others.

I talk about gun stuff all the time and get lively threads on self defense topics, but these particular keywords just make the algorithm freak out, like I'm recruiting for ISIS or something.

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READY? FIGHT!

Whoever did this video is a hero of the internet.

Better with sound pic.twitter.com/dwdZ7zoYVU

— Tyler (@Tyler496) May 30, 2023

Partying Like it's 1999...

At least in Kosovo, they have been.

If you're like most Americans, including me, the events of the Global War on a Noun that spun out from the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks have kinda taken your mind off the Balkans.

In 2001, when we changed the channel from the former Yugoslavia to southwest Asia, the Serbian military had been chased by a NATO bombing campaign from the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo, where they'd been busily oppressing the majority ethnic Albanian Muslim population.

NATO troops, including the U.S. military, set up a peacekeeping operation known as KFOR, to make sure the Serbian military didn't come back.

Now that the credits have rolled on Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, it...uh, appears that The KFOR Show is still up and running and is in its 24th season.

For those of you who need a synopsis of what's been happening while we've been tuned in elsewhere, Kosovo officially declared its independence as a country back in 2008, and it's been recognized as such by 101 of the 193 member states of the UN. Serbia, of course, does not. (Serbia is also the only country west of Minsk that's all buddy-buddy with Moscow.)

There have been a couple recent flashpoints that upped tensions. The first (and sillier) was when the Kosovar government in Pristina insisted that ethnic Serbs in the northern part of the country had to stop using Serbian license plates on their cars and use official Kosovar ones.

The more recent, and serious, incident was caused by ethnic Serbs boycotting recent municipal elections in the northern parts of the country. Since these areas are heavily Serb, it meant Albanian Muslim mayors winning elections...that saw only four percent turnout.

The Serbs rioted, claiming that these elections were illegitimate. The government in Pristina retorted that if they didn't want Albanian Muslim mayors, then maybe the Serbs should have, you know, showed up at the polls.

Rioting injured some NATO peacekeepers, and the peacekeeping mission is getting staffed up.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of The KFOR Show!

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Uncoincidentally...

 ...Sunday Smithery has occurred over at the other blog.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #238...

A fairly early-production Smith & Wesson Model 639. The serial number prefix would seem to indicate that it's from the first year of production, 1984. It's old enough that it still has the round trigger guard, but not so early that it has the wide extractor.

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Automotif CCCLXXVIII...

There's a serious snake infestation here in SoBro, I'm telling you...

On the hunt…

I can imagine a baby Holden having this conversation with his momma…

Important Weather Factoid

When someone says “but it’s a dry heat”, there’s a quick and easy way to tell if they’re talking out their ass or not: Go sit in the shade someplace with a breeze.

Out of the direct sun, as long as your perspiration can evaporate and carry away excess heat like it’s supposed to, you can get well into the ninety degree range without being too miserable. Bump that humidity up enough so that your body’s built-in swamp cooler stops working, though, and even the high 70s are awful.

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Cut Along the Bias

Hey, did you hear the one about the sociologist who went to firearms training classes?

No, not that one, this one:

"I did not grow up around guns, but 10 years ago, I started attending firearms training classes. I wasn’t there to learn how to protect myself or my family. I was there to learn what was taught in the classes themselves, which a broad coalition of groups — including many police officers, Republican and Democratic legislators and gun violence prevention organizations — have hailed as a path out of the nation’s epidemic of violence.

I found something very different. The classes I attended trained students to believe that their lives are in constant danger. They prepared us to shoot without hesitation and avoid legal consequences. They instilled the kind of fear that has a corrosive effect on all interactions — and beyond that, on the fabric of our democracy."

That's one Harel Shapira, sociology prof at UT Austin, writing an OpEd piece at the NYT.

Seeing as how they run in the same academic circles, David Yamane knows Shapira and wrote a counterpoint to his column.

Since Prof. Yamane's takeaways from his study of America's gun culture aren't as hip and trendy as Prof. Shapira's, he's had to publish them on his own blog (which just celebrated its eleventh blogiversary; an eternity in blog years) rather than the OpEd page of the Gray Lady.

You should go and read his response.

Sociologist (center foreground) studying American gun culture.

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Saber Rattling

Chinese President Xi Jinping told his national security team Tuesday that they should prepare for a "worst-case scenario," saying that internal and external threats to the country had increased.

I really don't need these times to get any more interesting.

Meanwhile...

China has found its Useful Idiot.

Musk Lavished With High Praise and Feasted Like a King on China Trip https://t.co/ghDvKWnaBz

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) May 31, 2023

Wave of the Future?

For a long time, subcompact CCW autos were either cut-down duty pistols or little single-stack guns. Then came this wave of purpose-designed small high caps that started with the SIG Sauer P365 and now includes the S&W Shield Plus, Springfield Armory Hellcat, FN Reflex, and (arguably) the Glock 43X. 

Not only are these more concealable, but because they're friendlier to people with smaller hands, a lot of them sprouted versions with longer slides and grips that make them attractive alternatives to duty-type pistols for people with tiny mitts.

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