Formative experiences...

You want to know why I'm a little OCD when it comes to chamber checks on firearms? Allow me to share a story:

At the first gun shop at which I worked, which was also a pawn shop, we had a relationship with a pawn shop owner down in the city. Every few months, he'd drive out to see us with a briefcase containing a few old Colt Police Positives and Smith .38/.32 Terriers and Browning Vest Pockets and suchlike and we would swap him a big box of Lorcins and Hi-Points and Jennings and cash to make up the difference.

One time he came up, the sticking point in the negotiations was a PPK, an early Interarms-marked stainless example. Initially he was thinking about keeping it. Then he wanted too much for it. Then he relented and we added it to our side of the pile.

He handed the Walther to me, and I locked the slide back and checked the chamber, and passed it to a coworker over at the computer. She printed a trigger tag out for it and handed it, slide still locked back, to one of the other salespeople, who put it in the showcase.

Then our buddy the pawn shop owner crawfished. I sighed and pulled the gun from the showcase, removed the trigger tag, and laid it on the counter between him and my boss. About the time pawn shop guy was leaving, I was walking out of the store to cross the street and get lunch for everybody.

When I came back, there was the PPK, sitting on the counter by the computer. "Arthur changed his mind again?" I asked, and was told that, indeed, he had sat in his car for a moment and then came back in and threw the Walther in on the deal at the last minute. Sweet! I still had the trigger tag handy, so I put it back on the gun and passed it to the salesman who put it back in the showcase with one hand while eating his hamburger with the other.

I wandered off to a far corner of the showroom where I could eat my burger in peace, back turned to the sales floor, when *KA-BAM!*

A customer is standing there with the PPK in his hand and an appalled look on his face, smoke wisping theatrically from the barrel and a divot in the linoleum at his feet containing a flattened Winchester Silvertip.

That's right, Arthur had loaded the PPK back up in his car, and then brought it back in to add to the trade, and not one person who handled it from the time I picked it up and put the trigger tag on it to the time the customer made the loud noise had bothered to inspect the chamber because, hey, we had already done that when he brought it in the first time, right?

Lesson learned: I don't care if I set the gun down and just look away for a second; that gun gets checked again when I pick it up. Period. Unless it has been in my field of vision the whole time, I don't know what might have happened to it while I wasn't paying attention.

QotD: American-Occupied America Edition

"By every account the response by every responsible entity - Mayor Ballard's outstanding police and fire forces - our own Indiana State Police, the security force of the State Fair itself, emergency management personnel, was instantaneous and highly professional. It's equally important to say what I heard over and over and over again last night - that individual Hoosiers ran to the trouble, not from the trouble, by the hundreds, offering in many cases their own professional skills. I've heard it from everybody I've debriefed this morning. People rushing up, 'I'm a nurse, I'm a doctor, I'm a trained EMS responder.' But also people who simply pitched in," -Gov. Daniels

You are your own First Responder.
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Books 'n' Tunes:

Driving around with the top down on the Zed Drei the other day, running errands. After the sauna that was July, the weather felt wonderful. Temps in the high seventies, low humidity, and nothing even remotely cloudlike marring the sky.

The iPod in the Zed Drei served up "Fly Me Courageous" by Drivin' 'N' Cryin', Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll", and Van Halen doing "Panama", all of which are perfectly cromulent convertible-piloting songs. I was going to drive around the block again just to see what else would come up, but decided not to push my luck.

Then yesterday I sat on the porch finishing up Mark Steyn's After America (Thank you, Masked Reader!) before starting in on American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Do you know, I've never read a solo Gaiman novel before? Roomie says I'm in for a treat.

Stumped.

While talking on the phone yesterday, I idly field-stripped a Colt 1903 that happened to be at hand. You know, the way you'd twirl a pencil or something to keep your hands busy.

Now I've got a pile of Colt on my mouse pad (it's a big mouse pad: one of those Glock armorer's pads, so there's room for both the mouse and the pony.)

I'm just not motivated to put it back together right this second. Plus, I really should oil it before I do. And maybe I should take a picture while it's still apart, for an eventual Arms Room post.

Whatever. Anyway, now I have a pile of gun taking up half my mouse pad...
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When everybody's a millionaire...

At the Indiana state fair, the International Hall was hosting a "Willkommen to Germany!" exhibit (last year was Japan; I'm betting next year will be Italy...)

The owner of Heidelberg Haus had lent the exhibit his framed collection of old German banknotes. Because they were behind glass, I was unable to see if they were as soft and absorbent as they looked, but I have a sort of sinking feeling that we'll get a chance to find out for ourselves before long.


Check out the five billion Mark note there in the middle. Just think how quick we could pay off the national debt if everybody had a few of those in their pocket, eh? I know Bernanke and Geithner have.

Hey, is that smoke coming off those printing presses?

Death and taxes and books and buses and potholes and Peyton Manning.

When Franklin Township in Indianapolis discontinued free school bus service due to budget shortfalls, from the reaction in the media you'd have thought that the lights of civilisation were going out. Never mind that a private company picked up the busing contract and would be happy to tote your spawn to and from the schoolhouse in exchange for cash; obviously right after we stop the school buses comes the part where we're huddled in the ruins, cooking rats over bonfires made of English Lit textbooks.

Instead, many parents (who had already voted down a tax increase to keep the buses running) decided to drive their kids to school. Chaos was predicted! Children would be ground to paste under the unfeeling tires of Gaia-raping SUVs in the Parking Lots of Academe! It would be like Somalia! If only all those private schools would share the magic teleporter technology that they use to get their kids to Mrs. Grundy's 1st period English class safely and on time...

Also on the municipal tax front, Adaptive Curmudgeon weighs in on his opinion of government-funded sports arenæ:

Profitability doesn’t make wrong into right. Popularity does not make wrong into right. Using the force of government to build a toy for a private franchise owner is immoral, it’s wrong, and it’s not the proper role of the government.

tl;dr version: He's agin' it.

Meanwhile, the pavement on Indy's streets is so bad that all four wheels on the Zed Drei have now lost their little glued-on plastic BMW roundels from the center. But we've got a swell new $720 million retractable-roof china cabinet in which to store our Peyton Manning.
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Trained and qualified.

Stephen at Standing Outside Looking In writes of an encounter with a dude with a bad case of Only One-itis. If I hadn't once had a similar conversation, I'd accuse him of fictionalizing, but they are indeed out there. It's rare to run into one of those types at a gun shop or range, however; apparently they get pumped full of all the knowledge of firearms and shooting they'll ever need at the academy and somehow retain it 'til their dying day, and therefore have no need to take any particular extracurricular interest in the subject.

When I was still living in Tennessee, Knox County Sheriff's Dept. had a particularly embarrassing little incident involving a few deputies, a dude who was trying so hard to commit Blue Suicide that he'd helpfully drawn a bullseye on his chest, and the better part of a box of ammunition. The score at the end of l'affair du nutcase was one grazing wound to the shoulder at about 15 yards, and a few dozen gutterballs perforating the landscape of suburban Knoxville.

The next morning, one of our regular customers, also a deputy, came into the shop while on break. Shannon and I looked up from behind the counter.

"Hey," he held up his hands, palms out, "I wasn't there last night. If I was, did you think I'd be in here today without a bag over my head?"

"I didn't think you were," I replied, "I know you can shoot better than that. But who all was there?"

He sighed. "Let's put it this way: Nobody you'd know from a gun show or a shootin' range."

Ah. That kind.
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Do The Right Thing.

Via The Silicon Graybeard comes this morning's Morality Play.

(It's okay if you get a little lump-in-the-throaty towards the end. I know I did.)
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Big Boy Rules.

Meet the men and women of American Defense Enterprises:



(EDIT: Tired of being mocked by everybody on the internets with more functioning neurons than a banana slug, A.D.E. apparently pulled their YouTube video lest it cut into their lucrative market of bilking Angelenos of their hard-earned currency. Luckily, the internets are forever!)

If you read their promotional material, you'll find that the Department of Homeland Security rated them the number one trainers in the world*! And have you seen their "American Warrior Test"? It's the ultimate test of skills. Forget a sub-5 second FAST or a 280+ on the Hackathorn Standards, it takes seven hours just to take the American Warrior Test, which is apparently almost as expensive grueling as earning a Four Weapons Combat Master ticket!

The firearms training industry has grown from a handful of guys in the desert thirty years ago into a behemoth, surfing the wave of the ongoing Global War On a Noun and the popularity of shows like 24, Top Shot and The Best Defense and movies like... well... every summer movie out there. Every idiot with access to a berm and a shirt with epaulets is hanging out their Flat Dark Earth shingle these days, it seems.

It is only a matter of time until some chiropodist at a weekend SWAT fantasy camp gets his kidneys blown out his navel by the Bushhamster of the stranger behind him in the stack preparing to practice breaching and clearing, and somebody like 20/20 or 60 Minutes is going to have a frickin' field day with it. (Quick: Name five big-name trainers you'd leave alone in a room for five minutes with Chris Cuomo and a cameraman, knowing that a hostile hand would be driving the editing controls...)

The complete lack of a self-regulating accrediting body is going to bite the training industry in the ass sooner or later, and the irony is that even having one wouldn't do much good, since there is always a certain subset of trainers who would market themselves as outlaws, teaching SPECOPS SEAL Contractor Dynamic 360° Combat tactics too extreme!! for the other guys, who are a bunch of nancy milquetoasts.


BONUS!: PDB gives an excellent point-by-point breakdown of the suckage, as well as general tips on how to identify and avoid being taken in by the hucksterism and flash of a Mall Ninjas 'Я' Us sales pitch.
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*Which claim came as a surprise to the DHS, who issues no such rankings. Incidentally, I know I have some SOCOM types in the readership. Anybody able to vet ADE owner Bill Beasley's claims of being ex-SF?

Overheard at the State Fair...

RX: "Oh, look! The Department of Homeland Security has a booth at the fair! 'Fink on your neighbors...'"

Me: "'...and win a kewpie doll!'"

Tab Clearing...

• "Hey Boo-Boo! We can't find a pic-a-nic basket! Why don't you go get that bird feeder?"


• New Charter Arms .40 cal revolver doesn't need moon clips. I guess that Smith's patents from the Model 547 have expired, then.


• iPhone 4 vs. My Roomie's Ultimate Luddite Cell Phone.


• What color is the sky in this guy's world? Seriously, other than British Malaya and Hong Kong, what Japanese-held territory had the Brits not retaken by August of '45? (via Kevin.)


• Wild Weasel Moth: Their fur absorbs sound waves and they chirp on a frequency designed to jam bat echolocation. If they launched chaff and flares, they would be the coolest creature on the planet.

I've solved the dependence on foreign oil thing...

On learning the news that a second grandiose FDR Memorial is going up (apparently the one in DC isn't enough for our beloved Benito from Hyde Park) I propose that we grab a bunch of copper wire and wrap up my grandmother's coffin in the stuff. Her grave will be easy to find, since I'd imagine that 15,000 r.p.m. emits a fairly piercing whine.

I never heard her refer to him as anything but "that liar Roosevelt" with a venomous tone that made the one used for people who tracked mud on her nice carpets sound like a conversational chirp by comparison.

It's a poor craftsman that blames the tools.

The Place Where Great Britain Used To Be, having already confiscated the guns and invented the anti-stab knife, still has a problem with howling mobs of angry yobs torching city blocks for recreation. What to do?

What do you mean "what to do"? They know what to do. This is Jolly Olde England, where (just like Jolly New England) the knee-jerk response to problems these days is "Ban Something!"

[Prime Minister David Cameron] said the government, police and intelligence services were looking at whether there should be limits on the use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to spread disorder. Authorities are considering "whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality," he said.

Looking at limits on Twitter and Facebook? That's your answer? Buddy, I hate to break it to you, but they almost burned Los Angeles down back in the '90s, when cell phones were the size of bricks and didn't even have custom ring-tones, let alone 3G internet connections. Hell, the Watts Riots of the '60s happened half a decade before you could play Space War over ARPANET, let alone Farmville on Facebook.

If this simpering twit had been running things during the Blitz, he would have formed a committee to study the feasibility of outlawing Nazi bombers. (The Department of Transport would have grounded the Spitfires and Hurricanes as being too dangerous and insufficiently bulletproof.)

I mean, look at Cameron's résumé: He's a blandly handsome guy who went to all the right schools and has never had a productive non-government job in his life... No wonder Obama hates him; they both wore the same dress to the prom.

England used to be a cool place. It used to rule the world. Now it's like an island of California, except without the nice weather and food.

Thoughts on "fit"...

Brigid has a great post on the importance of being able to make sure that you have room to wriggle your toes when you buy that new handgun. Very clearly written. If you can't reach the trigger or the other controls, that pistol isn't going to be as useful as it could be.

About the same time, ToddG put up an excellent post on how the way a handgun "feels" can sometimes be illusory.

Read both.
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I have an idea, formin' in me head...

Who all is planning on being in town for the Indy 1500 fun show the weekend of the 26^th-28^th? Perhaps we could do something blogmeetish?

It would be fun! You'd like it! (And if you haven't been to the Indy 1500, you really should. It's one of the biggest gun shows in the country. Plus, like the machine gun shoot at Knob Creek, it makes an appearance in Unintended Consequences, which kind of makes it a Station of the Cross for good wookie-suiters. You get a merit badge for your bowcaster bandoleer for attending.)

The Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-a!

Feelin' good and apocalyptical this morning, no?

The stock market has shit the bed again, there's Anarchy In The UK, we've got family gangs of bank robbers motoring across the US like something out of a James Cagney talkie...

I don't know about you, but I'm buffing out my colander and mink-oiling the straps. Just in case.

How quickly it can happen.

Wouter's blog documents, among other things, his shooting and firearms collecting hobbies in South Africa. He recently got permits through for several more pistols, including an assortment of Spanish iron that looks like it would be right up my roomie's alley.

Reading through his back posts on the drama involved in getting your hands on a firearm in South Africa today can be instructive, all the more so because, just twenty or thirty years ago, South Africa had some pretty decent gun laws. Then again, so did California.

For most of the US, the nadir of gun rights happened in 1994 or so, and things have been on a generally positive trend ever since, we're still not back to where we were post-FOPA and pre-Bush'n'Bennett's "Imported Assault Weapon Ban". In 1987, you could walk into the sporting goods store at the mall and buy a genuine German HK91 without any background checks or anything. (Of course, in the living memory of someone of my parents' generation, you could just mail-order the thing instead...)

Oh, Bastet...

They're dealing with a sick kitty at the Nerd Ranch. Our very best thoughts here at Roseholme Cottage go out to them; we've been there way too often, way too recently. :(

Owie. Hurtie.

Despite the fact that Almost-A-Doctor Katie is like a frickin' ninja with that Novocaine syringe, it is well and truly wearing off.

My gums feel like they're coming to after a barfight, face down on asphalt and in a pile of broken glass. They're not going to be happy in a few minutes, once they figure out what happened...

It's a good thing I already finished lunch. French onion soup in a bread bowl from Panera was about as challenging a meal as I was up to.

(Speaking of which, what's up with everything they stick in your mouth at the dentist tasting awful? And the awfullest stuff is the stuff they try to make taste good. Take that tooth polish stuff, f'rinstance...

Me: "Ew. Grape? Isn't there, like, a grownup flavor?"

A-A-Dr. K: "Um, I think that is the grownup flavor. The kid's stuff is bubble gum."

Me: "Oh, ick! Couldn't they do, say, ahi tuna flavor? Or French onion soup? Ooh! Soy-and-wasabi flavor fluoride rinse!"

I try and have a good time while I'm there, at any rate.)

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #56: Three Pocket Pistols.

Since I still haven't gotten around to finishing that Arms Room post, here's another photo I took for it.

From top to bottom you have a Colt 1903 Pocket Hammerless in .32ACP, a Pieper Bayard 1908 in .380ACP, and a Colt 1908 Vest Pocket .25ACP.