Way of the Gauge

Darryl Bolke, who is a veritable fount of clue, drops some knowledge bombs to dispel the myths you hear about shotguns on the internets...

"One of my personal favorites is “you just need to rack the shotgun and criminals will run”. This is utter nonsense. In my first shooting, the two carjackers I was up against both told investigators individually in interviews that they heard me rack my Remington 870 as I exited my car. The effect it had was exactly nothing. They did not surrender or change their actions at all, other than to prepare for a fight."

You should go read it. Now.
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Just shooting.

I had a box and most of another one of that CCI Blazer Brass 115gr FMJ...you know, the stuff that won't run the Canik or the Steyr reliably?...and so I took it and my Robar Custom Gen2 Glock 17 to Indy Arms Co. yesterday morning.

Robar-ed Glock with Ameriglo CAP sights, Vickers mag release, and Zev Fulcrum trigger, UpLULA, and Raven Eidolon holster.

Unlike the Canik and the Steyr, the Glock happily chewed through all ninety rounds without a malfunction.

I fat-fingered the target carrier controller and poked in 31 feet instead of the usual seven yards. Despite not being able to distinguish individual 9mm holes at that distance with my sunglasses on (let alone the faint lines around the scoring zones) I decided to go ahead and shoot from 10.33 yards anyway.

On the upside, I seem to be finally getting accustomed to the Zev Trigger in the Glock. Since I was by myself out on the range, I didn't feel bad about breaking the 1-rd/sec speed limit, and the whole reset-during-recoil/"flip and press" is coming a lot easier now.
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Automotif CXXIX...

Seen on my trip to the corner grocery store yesterday...

 ...a nice-looking butternut yellow '67 Camaro RS convertible.

Fender badges say it has the base 250c.i.d. inline six-cylinder, which means it would have a hard time matching the scintillating performance of, say, your typical Chevy Aveo rental car. Still, I wouldn't kick it out of the garage. If you're going to be in a pig-slow car, it may as well be a gorgeous one with a folding top.
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What difference-at this point what difference does it make?

It matters when giving speeches on income inequality in a coat that cost more than my BMW.https://t.co/CmDo55ec6C https://t.co/AHY2Z6cQg1

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 7, 2016

What Media Bias?

So, late in the East Coast day yesterday, and TOTALLY COINCIDENTALLY just in time for the six o'clock news in places like, say, LA and San Francisco, NBC announced Hillary Clinton as the prospective Democratic Party nominee.

I'm sure whoever wrote the headline woke up this morning and was all like "Oh, shit! I totally forgot that the California primary was today! I hope nobody thinks we were trying to put our thumb on the scales!"
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Light strikes twice in the same place...

I took the Steyr C9-A1 and a hundred rounds of TulAmmo 115gr FMJ ammo to Indy Arms Co yesterday to work on running up the round count.

On the one hand, the TulAmmo had a good track record of having enough steam to run the gun and not cause cycling or feeding problems. On the other hand...

...I might have mentioned before that while the Glock 19 had one light strike during its test and the P320 had three, this Steyr just does not like hard Russian primers. Two more light strikes this trip on rounds #42 and 65 of the day (#672 and 695 of the test) bring the total to seven failures to fire. That's 3:200 with TulAmmo, 4:50 with Wolf Polyformance, and one with regular ol' CCI Blazer Brass for those of you keeping score.

I fired one box at seven yards, and then backed the target out to ten yards and fired the other one at the head zone. The gun's easy to shoot well, and there were no failures to feed, extract, or eject.

This makes 730 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with seven failures-to-fire (#8, #472, #535, #555, #558, #672, #695), seven failures to extract (#234, #266, #276, #531, #535, #543, #558), and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,270 rounds left to go.
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Pretty much, yeah...

"Well, it's like political discourse, except for...hey, let's go ride our bikes!"#ExplainTwitterToA4YearOld

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 6, 2016

Automotif CXXVIII...

A common sight around Broad Ripple is this '64 or '65 Chevy van with the Fighting 31 insignia on both front doors and a host of veteran and 2A stickers in the back windows...
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Safety Is For Always

Everybody with a logo-embroidered polo shirt wants to come up with a replacement for Cooper's Rule One: "All guns are always loaded." It's a target for the ire of everybody with the slightest hint of Aspie tendencies, because they plainly know that there's such a thing as an unloaded gun.

The entire point of Rule One is that when you are handling a firearm, you need to be mindful. You need to be constantly aware of the fact that what you have in your hand is not a banana or a can of soup but an object that can, under the right circumstances, discharge a projectile with lethal consequences.

Chuck Haggard says that one shouldn't have separate habits of handling for "loaded" and "unloaded" guns because when one is tired or distracted, one can inadvertently default to the wrong one. ("How do you dry-fire, Tam?" As though I'm expecting a loud noise at any moment. And I sure don't have that gun pointed at anything I'm not prepared to pay for if I'm wrong about the gun's status.)

That's why stuff like this sends me completely around the bend:

I could have snapped this exact pose, or a variant of it, a thousand times at the NRAAM. Ignoring for a moment the way his finger has migrated right to the trigger the way the swallows return to Capistrano, what in the name of sweet baby Odin is up with the way people pick up a purportedly "unloaded" handgun and immediately plop the muzzle into their offhand paw?

Remember the small-town Indiana police chief who creased his leg with his duty Glock because he holstered it along with the drawstring on his jacket? Go watch this video for a refresher. What's the first thing he did when he got the Glock 42 handed to him by the gun store clerk? He cradled the muzzle in the palm of his left hand. His left hand which he had put a bullet through some years earlier.

Let me reiterate that: He was resting the muzzle of the handgun inches from the bullet scar where he'd previously shot himself. How many times does one have to blow a hole in their hand to unlearn that goofy habit? More than one, apparently.


What you see there with the chief in the video and with the guy in the picture above is bad gun-handling habits at work. This is why, whether I'm handling an actual firearm or a SIRT or a blue gun or an airsoft or whatever, I am very conscious of where the muzzle is pointing and do not point or wave it around casually. I want the default, habitual behavior for when there is a gun-shaped object in my hand to be caution and awareness. I always want the action of aiming a gun at something to be a conscious and deliberate choice.

And I don't ever want to have to utter the words "Oh my God, I'm sorry! I thought it was unloaded!"

Bastards.

Meet the Press got bumped out of its normal time slot to 0800 this morning, which meant that it was preempted by the local news program here in Hoosieropolis.

I use Meet the Press to get blogging ideas, keep up with politics, and (importantly) pressure-test my cerebral arteries by yelling at senators on a Sunday morning. How am I supposed to pressure-test arteries watching the French Open?

Despite being a very physical sport to play, televised tennis ranks right up there with golf as a soporific, what with the metronomic whacking of the ball... pock!*grunt*-pock!*grunt*-pock!*grunt*...and the carefully hushed tones cultivated by the announcers, as though they knew that if they got excited about what they were watching, they might wake you up.
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That New Shooter Smile...

It's often noted that people seem to have a lot more fun at a gun range than they do at the anti-gun range. Of course they do. "Free Beer!" is an easier sell than Temperance and always has been.

Besides, firing guns resonates on a very deep level, as I mentioned elsewhere*:

"Monkeys like throwing stuff and hitting things with it on a deep and primal level. Guns just let you fling poo like a rock star. You can't not like it."

*You know how I hate using up good material at an away game.

Elevenses.

After brunch yesterday morning, I ducked in at Indy Arms Co. with my last fifty-round box of .357SIG Speer Lawman...

That upper A-zone is hard for me with the junky factory plastic sights.

There were no stoppages or malfunctions of any kind to report.

This makes it 1100 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748), four failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734), and one failure to eject (#1,033). 900 rounds left to go.
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Hooray!

It's Fun Show time! Let's sing the Fun Show Song!

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.

Unfortunately, it's that time of the freelance writer's month where the bills are paid and now one is eagerly awaiting the sound of the postman, in the hopes he might have brought more cashable mail. Therefore I doubt I'll be doing much other than staring longingly at stuff, but it'll be a chance to meet up with friends and keep up acquaintances.
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Overheard at the Restaurant...

Bobbi, who didn't have to go work on starship engines until later than usual, treated me to brunch at Good Morning Mama's this morning.

While we were there I read on Marko's blog that there was an actual official Frontlines novels fan club that had formed on Facebook. I joined, just to get in on the ground floor...

Conversation at the table meandered around various topics of a bookish bent, and at some point, while looking at my Facebook screen, I muttered "I've never been Tuckerized."

The air grew chill...

RX: "That hurt."

Me: "I mean, present company exc... I mean, well, you had to Tuckerize me! You Tuckerized my cat!"

RX: "And she's a more interesting character than you!"

Ow.
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Yum!

I have learned that if Twenty Tap has a special of the day, you should order that thing...

Lunch yesterday was a meatball sandwich on a hoagie roll. The meatballs were in a barbecue sauce that had blueberries in it. I mean, there were a couple actual whole blueberries floating around down in there. It was just delicious.
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Ten-Fiddy...

Fifty more rounds of Speer Lawman 125gr FMJ through the Glock 32 yesterday morning at Indy Arms Co. Had one get pretty much completely away from me there. The sights hadn't yet settled when prepping the trigger turned into breaking the trigger. Ouch. There was much cursing.

There was one failure to eject on round #33 of the day (#1,033 of the test). This looks like a pretty conventional limp-wristing failure. I'm on the horns of a dilemma, here. With the 18# factory spring, I can keep the gun from going fully into battery almost at will, but the 20# spring is going to want a firm grip to prevent FTEs like the one above...

This makes it 1050 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748), four failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734), and one failure to eject (#1,033). 950 rounds left to go.
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Random Pic...

I love the stormtrooper Christmas tree lights festooning the area behind the bar at Twenty Tap...
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Overheard in the Office...

Me: "...the crushing letdown of those comic book gadgets that didn't work..."

RX: "Like x-ray glasses?"

Me: "Sea Monkeys. I was crushed to find out they were just brine shrimp and not these little... For some kids, that moment of cynicism comes when you find out Santa Claus is just your parents. For me, it was discovering Sea Monkeys weren't little homunculi that would build castles in a fishbowl."

Halfway Point

When the AC isn't running on the indoor range and the air temperature's a sticky 88°F, sweaty hands magnify the jumpy nature of the Glock 32. Makes me want stippling, or maybe I'll order some adhesive grip treatment, like TalonGrips or AGrip.

Fifty rounds was about all the fun I cared to have with it yesterday morning, what with errands to run and other work to do.

The pistol went through the complete cycle of operation every time. It's halfway done with the two thousand rounds now.

This makes it 1000 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748) and four failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734). 1,000 rounds left to go.
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Automotif CXXVII...

Here's a puzzler, and no mistake. It was eye-catching enough that I hopped out of Bobbi's car and jogged across the parking lot to snap pics while she was waiting at the pharmacy drive-thru.

 It's a '70s Pontiac Grand LeMans....

 ...whose taillights say '76 or '77...

...but which sports the 12-slot "Endura" front end of a '74 or '75 Can Am. Note that someone included a "6.5 Litre" badge on the decklid trim.

Regardless, it's a pretty cool ride.
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