Happy Early Birthday to me!

The January Indy 1500 is the fun show closest to my birthday, so it's usually where I do my birthday shopping. This year was not a disappointment, as I picked up a couple of the oddest platypuses (platypii?) in the S&W family tree.

At the risk of revealing future Sunday Smiths, behold:

The top is a Model of 1896. It's the first Smith with a swing-out cylinder and the first gun chambered in .32 S&W Long. The lack of a cylinder latch is because you pull forward on the knob at the end of the ejector rod to free the cylinder. It's also unusual in that, rather than the patent dates and whatnot being rollmarked on the barrel, here they're marked between the cylinder flutes.

Below it is a .38 Double Action Perfected Model. It's a top-break with a thumb latch as well, and the only top-break with the trigger guard integral with the frame. It has the sideplate on the right, like a hand ejector, and the lockwork is more or less straight I-frame. They were made from 1909 to 1920.

They're neither of them the kind of guns you run into in the wild every day. Even at a big show like the 1500 I can't recollect seeing many Model 1896s, and this show had the first two nice Perfecteds I'd seen roaming loose in years. This one's in roughly ~60% condition; the 95%+ nickel one was way too rich for my blood, stickered at more than what I paid for both of the above guns.

Incidentally, that Model of 1896 demonstrates nicely the basic soundness of the S&W Hand Ejector action. It still times and locks up fine, which is something I would not necessarily take as a given from a top-break Smith or a Colt of similar vintage. That's the same basic mechanism scandium-framed, 8-shot, moon-clip-fed Smith revolvers still use today; that is the very definition of "mature technology".

At the movies...

Went with Shootin' Buddy to go see Lone Survivor.

You'd think movie theaters would have HEPA filters to cut down on the dust in the air, but it got awful dusty in there, and more than once.
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Fun Show Time!

Flintlocks and Flop-tops
And Number Three Russians
Black-powder Mausers
From jackbooted Prussians,
Shiny Smith PC's from limited runs
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Socketed bay'nets
On Zulu War rifles,
Engraved, iv'ried Lugers
That make quite an eyefull
Mosin tomato stakes sold by the ton
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Rusty top-breaks!
Smallbore Schuetzens!
And all of Browning's spawn
I just keep on browsing my favorite guns
Until all my money's gone.

Looking for a cheap top-break Smith to keep the others company, but I'm open to suggestions.

Sorry!

Sorry for the lack of blogging the last couple days. I've been doing work-type-work, helping get S.W.A.T. Magazine's SHOT Show video coverage out onto the intertubes.

I've spent two days pretty much glued to the computer monitor except for lunch breaks, and I had the iPad with me at Fat Dan's, so, you know..

Anyhow, several people have been very complimentary of our coverage of the show, and that gives me the warm-'n'-fuzzies. (And we've still got more video to sort through and see what needs posting!) It's good to get such immediate and positive feedback on the work.

The best part? This was just a shakedown run for S.W.A.T.'s SHOT coverage in 2015. It will be... and I hate this word, y'all... it will be epic.
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Weather changes

The "dusting" of snow with "no accumulation" we were supposed to get turned into an inch or two that stuck just fine to unsalted roads when it hit right after morning, catching the DPW off guard.

I noticed an interesting phenomenon when driving to the bank in that people will habitually drife slowly and carefully on side streets, but then when they get to a thoroughfare like Keystone, they just step up to a normal pace by reflex. Uh, no, even wide roads are slippery when the plows and salt trucks haven't got there yet, sport.

The number of cars sitting slightly cattywampus with somewhat varying distances between the cars fore-and-aft at the red light at Kessler indicated a few might have tuck-and-roll upholstery in the driver's seat that they didn't have five minutes ago.

College Ave. was slightly better when I got there on foot to grab a burger from Twenty Tap, and the plows and salt trucks came by while I was eating.

The biggest indicator of how wrong the weatherman's prediction was could be seen in the Fresh Market parking lot. I don't think I've seen snow on their sidewalks and asphalt since they opened, but they had a couple kids out there furiously shoveling and salting, and the plow and salt trucks showed up as I was walking home.

Last Thursday, a few days after the big snow.

Monday, after the weekend's thaw.

Yesterday, and Ma Nature delivers a Thursday touch-up with more in the offing.

Attention, Gunsmith Bob:

Some interesting precision rifles at SHOT.

From Kimber:



...and Robar:

Overheard in the Kitchen...

Me: "I prefer squalene."

RX: "I like hexane."

Me: "Squalene: Otherwise known as shark liver oil."

RX: "So it's a real thing? So's hexane, although witches don't use it."

Me: "You'd think it's what Nanny Ogg used to run her barbecue grill."

The conversation had come about because of the headache-inducing effects of toluene fumes first thing in the AM. Naturally, "toluene" led to the discussion of other "-enes" and "-anes", like it does in most households, right? Right?

A fine domestic whine.

Dick Metcalf is still running to anybody who'll drape a crying towel over their shoulder for him.

Jesus, Dick, have some frickin’ dignity. This is beyond unbecoming.

Take your medicine like a ****ing grownup. People have stood in front of firing squads with more aplomb than you've shown getting a column taken away from you.

...but I still refuse to say "kit".

You have been warned!

Just kidding.

Actually, I have some of the Vickers/Tango Down baseplates and they're pretty cool. The extended mag release, though, is just absolutely Goldilocks.

The standard one on Glocks is stubby enough that it often doesn't release the mags cleanly for me, and the factory extended unit is too long and pointy and easy to push accidentally. I wholeheartedly endorse the Vickers unit; I'm happy I put one on my G-lock.

Mentally disabled commenter of the day.

Meet "Becky S."!

So you claim to be pro-second amendment, but then you bash people for being pro-second amendment? What's your stance, exactly - that we should all carry but on Facebook we should pretend like we don't? That we should all be ashamed of the fact that we'd die to protect our families? I don't think you really get to claim to be pro-gun if you're so obviously anti-gun. 

Although Becky obviously knows what the windows on the short bus taste like, she's apparently been allowed outside to play without her Special Helmet!

Yes, Becky, you have unmasked me. I am really anti-gun. I am totally against people letting anyone know they own guns on their Facebook page, especially.

Where do these lackwits come from, and how can we get them to go back there?

UPDATE: Someone apparently commanded the monkeys to fly!

"Juliet" says "Perhaps you are repulsed because you would rather see women as victims."

Curses! They're on to my plan! Someone else is patiently and politely explaining to me that it's okay to have pictures of guns and Second Amendment stuff on Facebook. I totally did not know that.

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This modern life...

Allow me to open this post by quoting one from 2012:

People have funny ideas about manners these days.

For instance, yesterday I went with Shootin' Buddy to see Iron Man 3 again at the local cineplex. In the row ahead of me, two seats to my right, was a woman who spent the entire movie using her smartphone to post Facebook status updates, apparently along the lines of "zomg totally at the movie pissin off everybody around me luv u l8r"

Because I have manners, I resisted the temptation to wash out her little screen with 80 lumens of Fountain Valley's finest and then when she turned around, say "Annoying, isn't it?" I didn't do it mostly because it would be rude, and partially because it could have had unforeseen consequences, like her boyfriend getting all physical and then where do things go from there?

Sure enough, given 300+ million monkeys in the cage, someone came along to make the story come true:

In a dimly lit Florida theater, Curtis Reeves got into an argument with another moviegoer over texting. The two men exchanged words that gradually became more heated and Reeves felt something hit his face.

Reeves, who minutes earlier had gone to seek a manager's help to stop the texting, this time reached into a pocket in his pants for, police say, a pistol.

He later told police he feared the man was going to attack him.

Look, texting in a movie is unbelievably rude. 

You are surrounded by other patrons who paid their own money to come enjoy the movie experience and you are metaphorically climbing atop your seatback and giving the stinkeye to the entire rest of the troop. In a state of nature, out on the African savannah, this would result in the movie being paused and the rest of the monkeys giving you the beatdown and returning to their bananas. A mere thirty years ago (coincidentally before the era of widespread CCW) this might get you asked to step outside and receive a poke in the snout.

Now? Now, as much as I'd like to tell you just what I think of your disgraceful lack of consideration for your fellow patrons*, the potential consequences of any escalation by Captain Entitlement are simply too great. It is not worth the risk of life in prison to ask you to turn off your cell phone, and so I just don't go to the theater as much and the barbarians have won another round.

I'm afraid that a lack of manners is an inevitable side-effect of modern civilization. Just as improved medical science has shielded the human race from the cruel effects of natural selection, so does the ceding of all order-keeping functions to the state protect the self-absorbed idiot from the consequences of his actions. To suggest that some other state might be desirable marks one as some loony-toon throwback; a sort of "behavioral eugenicist".

Ah, this modern life.

*"Fellow patrons", hah! Like "fellow anything" is a concept that would have any resonance in this world of movie stars.

Perhaps apropos...

Jeff Cooper: "Be sure of your target and what is beyond it"

Joe Biden: "[J]ust fire the shotgun through the door" 

Listen to Jeff, not Joe: Avoid negligent homicide*!

Let us hope the young man did not have a history of talking about how he was "dyin' to try that baby out", or folks might think he was just looking for an excuse.


*Fortunately the gentleman in question only winged his kid sister, but that was just fate looking out for morons.

I'm not sure how I feel about this...

So, somebody or another had a link up to a provocatively-titled hit piece called "The Startling Paranoia of the Gun-Loving 'Armed Mommy'", and I followed the link, expecting to point and laugh at the anti-rights types getting the vapors over a woman daring to think her children were worth protecting.

The article is chock-a-block with Facebook internet "posters" of women holding guns variously captioned

• "Don't be fooled by that sweet smile... She'll shoot you dead if you mess with her family"


• "I don't call 911so there won't be anyone to save you if you break into my house."


• "My gun is loaded with Christmas cheer... in case you had plans to break in this year."

Okay, anybody could go cherry pick a few posters to make it sound like these people spend an inordinate amount of time coming up with new daily variations on clever ways to talk about shooting home invaders. Let's go check the Facebook page for ourselves.

Let's see... Pictures of people with guns, political stuff, abortion and global warming, the usual background noise of the parts of the web I'm most often on... and... again:

• "How do I feel about gun control? Break into my house one night and find out!" 

Pictures of people posing with targets, NFL playoff chatter, anti-Obama immigration jokes, and... again:

• "Why a handgun that shoots shotgun shells? Because wrong house motherf***er". 

And... again:

Jesus wept.

Did George Zimmerman get horsewhipped through the public square in vain?

I mean, look... I own a pistol and have a carry permit. I carry that pistol with me everywhere I go. I have spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time and money learning how and when to use it, and I've spent a fair amount of thought on why. I would like to think that implicit in these facts is what I would do with it should someone threaten my life and/or limb. But I do have one or two other topics of conversation I sometimes touch lightly on, you know?

Conversely, well... Gosh, where could that liberal writer have gotten the idea that the author of that FB page was a little obsessed with the idea of shooting people breaking into her house?

In the end, I'm torn. I'm always glad to see more people taking their Second Amendment rights seriously and getting hip to the idea of taking responsibility for their own safety, but at the same time, I'm vaguely squicked, and I can't put my finger on exactly why...

Please let them not really be that dumb.

National television personalities are monsters of narcissism, it being something of a prerequisite for the job, hence the various montages and retrospectives of "The world as seen through our eyes!" and "The year in review as reflected off us!"

There's a current "Aren't we important?" promo spot for the today show that features snippets of the the cast members doing Serious Journalism with very serious looks on their face. It includes Savannah Guthrie asking President Obama back in April "Is this the closest we've come to war...on your watch?"

I'm hoping that the stutter-step half-beat pause was an editing cut where they excised "...with North Korea..." to make it better fit the 30-second spot, because as it sits, it makes Ms. Guthrie (and, by association, NBC) sound a little thick. I'm not saying an RPG goes off in Afghanistan every time they roll that commercial but, you know...

Who could have seen that coming?

So it was a short news blurb, but it had an unexpected plot twist.

It started out pretty typical-like; just your basic everyday middle-age alleged mother of twenty in a tiff with some dude who was babydaddy to some fraction of her spawn. Apparently words were exchanged and he physically assaulted her and held her at a motel, and then the news story dropped the bomb, the totally unexpected plot twist...

Are you ready? You might want to sit down for this...

According to police, the man and woman were intoxicated at the time.

Whoah! Raise your hand if you saw that coming.

Fortunately, despite the woman having so many kids that she'd need to cut five to slide under the NBA's team roster cap, none were at the Motor 8 Inn during the drunken fracas that caused the po-po to become involved.

ETA: The Motor 8 Inn on Shadeland is just south of 38th, right between a liquor store and Weebles Bar & Grill. (I mean, in case you were in town and wondering where would be a good place to find a knife fight.)

Klunk.

High of 48 predicted today. Scribbling on the back of an envelope tells me that that's a difference of 63 degrees from last Monday, but only ten degrees warmer than Sunday the 5th. That's okay, though, because it'll be back in the teens tomorrow night.

This usually signals an enemy counteroffensive in the never-ending war on potholes. There was apparently one over by 86th and Ditch that accumulated a little "Boot Hill" of over a dozen hubcaps set upright in the plow drift along the shoulder; a sight far too photogenic to be missed by the local news.

The weather here is obviously on the side of entropy.

The post is done!

Revolvers are revolving over at the other blog. With many pictures!

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The dollar hurdle...

Neat video for the forthcoming Beretta ARX-100:


I have a vague wantsies for it, in the same way and for the same reasons as the SCAR, but it suffers from the same problem faced by Everything Not An AR: Price.

Don't be fooled: If the AR-15 were released today, it'd probably hit the market at close to two grand as well, but the development costs are long amortized and builders can buy parts from a host of outside vendors and that's why you can get an AR for so much cheaper than the newer guns.

As someone who owned a Beretta AR-70 during the Ban Years, I appreciate the fact that the new ARX takes STANAG mags. We joke now about magazines for this gun or that gun being made of "unobtainium", but that's almost the God's honest truth about Beretta AR-70 mags ten years ago.

I searched and searched and found one guy on the internet who had some 30-rounders he would let go for $160 apiece, with the caveat that you had to buy the rifle he was selling, too; he wouldn't sell any mags separately.

Let's do lunch!

Well, it's not SHOT, but if anybody's in town for the Indy 1500 next weekend, why don't we meet for lunch at the Broad Ripple Brewpub? Say, Sunday at 3:00PM?

What did he know and when did he know it?

We must get to the bottom of this, and right now, and if the answer is bad, we had better begin impeachment proceedings!

What? No, I'm not talking about the thing with the guns and the deliberate arming of criminal gangs in a neighboring sovereign nation, getting friendly foreign nationals and American LEOs killed in a cheap and callous bid to boost the budget of a federal regulatory agency.

I'm talking about the important issue! The one where that guy may have known about the lane closures on The Bridge To The Navel Of The Universe.

Do you know how many Real People that may have inconvenienced? This is crucial! This isn't like dead Mexicans and Border Patrolmen! This is New Yorkers with slowed commutes!

Jesus.

"Bridgeghazi" is the headline story on Meet The Press. Extra Double Tone Deaf Pauline Kael Irony Points for the people in the media calling it "Bridgeghazi" who don't even acknowledge Benghazi as an actual, you know, scandal.

This is the closest I've yet come to actually bleeding from my eyeballs while watching Meet The Press.

What is with the media turning on their darling, here, anyway? I thought Christie was the RINO they'd picked to take a fall in the ninth against Hillary? Were they suddenly worried he might win or something?