Guns & Pr0n...

"InRange TV, another channel devoted to firearms, wrote on its Facebook page that it would begin uploading videos to PornHub, an adult content website.

“YouTube’s newly released released vague and one-sided firearms policy makes it abundantly clear that YouTube cannot be counted upon to be a safe harbor for a wide variety of views and subject matter,” InRange TV wrote. “PornHub has a history of being a proactive voice in the online community, as well as operating a resilient and robust video streaming platform.” PornHub didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the matter."

Karl and Ian have hit on a creative solution. If you have a fetish for elderly French veterans like Ian does, you might want to check them out.
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QotD: Enough Room In The Toes Edition

From PDB in a Facebook discussion:

"Why are we even expected to listen to kids? They're all idiots. Five years ago they were watching the Backyardigans with their fingers up their noses, and now we expect them to have meaningful opinions on natural rights, constitutional law, and criminology? They know less than nothing about the world and bear no costs for interpreting it incorrectly.

Using kids as political puppets is grotesque emotional manipulation and should be called out as dishonest bullshit at every opportunity."

Indeed.

Florence King's quote bears repeating:

If we want to regain the respect of the world, we should begin by announcing that children have no business expressing opinions on anything except "Do you have enough room in the toes?" -Florence King

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

Cards on the Table

MSNBC had not been shy about having a leftward editorial slant in the past, implicitly since '07 and explicitly since the "Lean Forward" campaign of 2010. It was their schtick to pass CNN and go after FOX News, by basically setting themselves up as the "AntiFOX".

By 2014 it was costing them viewership, as they'd pushed too far past the center-Left, and they were losing viewers in the crucial "Crackers in their prime spending years" demographic. They officially tried to steer a course back towards hard news back in 2015, but it's obvious that there's still an agenda, as is witnessed by the lavish promo spots for the Children's Crusade:



So, yeah, basically a straight-up commercial for gun control. Such evenhanded, very journalism, wow.

Of course, if you are a journalist working the Acela corridor, gun control is a very Centrist idea! Everyone knows that the NRA is funded by giant shadowy arms companies and nobody is actually opposed to "Assault Weapons Bans" and "Universal Background Checks" except a handful of camo-wearing kooks in Idaho. All our polling data tells us that!

Please let the Democrats make November 2018 a referendum on Gun Control rather than on Donald Trump.
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As it turns out...

...there are rather a lot of photographs here to sort through.

And that's just off the Pen. I still have to offload the pics on the OM-D.
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Unplugged...

The best part about Tactical Conference 2018 was that it was three days of being more or less entirely  unplugged.

We were leaving the hotel at 6:30 so as to arrive at the range before 7:00, in time to get signed up for some of the more in-demand classes. Lunch was on-site and we didn't head back to the hotel until after five, and then all three nights I had dinner with friends and colleagues (some of whom I hadn't seen face-to-face since last year) until late.

While I did my usual motel room habit of letting the TV drone softly with cable news while I slept, I didn't pay it a ton of attention. I'm also now three days behind on work and email, but it was worth it.

My batteries are pretty charged, and I added at least one more class to my training roster for the year (Gabe White in Missouri in June). Plus I have more stuff to write about. I may even try the novel tactic of pitching it to editors instead of waiting for them to come to me.
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This was a good weekend...

Can't wait to start going through all the pics...

Look for write-ups on stuff I saw, both here on the blog and elsewhere.
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At gun school...

Students taking Claude Werner's Snubby Skills block of instruction at Tactical Conference 2018.
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It's the lens, not the camera...

So, I really like my Sony a7. It's two generations out of date, sure, but that makes it pretty much the cheapest way to get into a full-featured pro-grade 24 megapixel full-frame camera.

I would have loved to use it at Tac-Con '18, but the longest full-frame E-mount lens I have is the Zeiss f/4 24-70mm, and that's just not long enough to hack it for outdoor shooting class photography. I need to start rolling my pennies for a Sony f/3.5-6.3 24-240mm lens before Blogorado gets here. (The fast 24-70 will make a fine walking-around lens for NRAAM.)

In the meantime, I'll be using my hipster street photography Micro 4/3 gear for Tac-Con. The OM-D E-M5 and Pen E-P5 are both solid bodies, and most importantly I have a good "walking around" zoom in Micro 4/3 format.

It's not the fastest lens in the world, but the 28-300mm equivalency makes it a super-useful outdoors 10X walking-around zoom.

Florida, man...

I have some thoughts I need to unpack on that goofy Florida armed teacher thing, and some of the idiotic commentary I've heard on the topic, but it's going to take more pondering in my head.

Like diet tips from Jabba the Hutt...

Apparently China tut-tutted the U.S. about gun control saying that we had a gun violence problem that violated our citizens' civil rights:

“The US has no other choice but to adopt gun control,” [the Chinese propaganda organ] said. “The right of life is the most fundamental human rights. The right to bear arms cannot overpower the individual’s right to live.” 

Funnily enough, Xi Jinping, we don't have a real big problem with protesting citizens getting run over by tanks in this country. Nobody's set themselves up as President for Life here, either, like you have.

I'm not saying correlation equals causation, but I'm not saying it doesn't either. Come to think of it, dudes like Xi are why we have a Second Amendment in the first place. Deer hunting is just a side-effect.

Overheard in the Office...

*ring* *ring*

"Hello?"

"Hello! My name's Jenny McSomething, and I'm a volunteer calling on behalf of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Can I speak with Roberta, please?"

"She's not available. Also, I work for the NRA. Have a nice day!"

*click*

#allthelumens

I can’t imagine going back to a time when a flashlight was not a tool to see what that movement is in the neighbor’s yard half a block away.#surefire #edcl2t #allthelumens pic.twitter.com/cr9Ghrb94O

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 12, 2018

The EDCL2-T is same size as the E2D Ultra I used to carry, with over double the output. You can light up a critter half a block away, no kidding. The low-beam is a lot better integrated, too. No separate button pushing is required. You gently press the button for five lumens, push harder for all twelve hundred.

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Automotif CXLVI...

This is the first time a car...well, a truck...has really made me feel old.

I saw this thing waiting at the traffic light at 54th & College and was interested enough to snap a picture. The shortbed GMT400 was a clean-looking truck and my thought as I was deploying the camera was "Cool that someone is still running one of those old things and keeping it nice and straight..."

And then I realized that when young, fresh-faced 20-year-old me got a job at a Chevy store back in 1988, these things were brand spanking new and were for pickup truck styling what the Ford Taurus was for domestic sedan styling. And then I felt old.

I'd still drive a short-bed GMT400. A C1500 Silverado, preferably, with an L05 5.7L V-8, a five-speed, and a gnarly short rear end.

Atomization?

The other day was supposed to be some sort of "unplug from sundown to sundown" event, where people were going to put aside the tablets and smart phones and walk away from the keyboards and commune with real human beings.

There's kind of a problem with that, though. The power of social media means that for a lot of us, the people we want to commune with are inside those devices from which we were supposed to unplug.

Of the people I consider friends who I know well enough to like to unplug and spend time with, there's one in this house, another in the north 'burbs, and then it's an hour or more's drive to get to the next closest ones.

I need more tribe close-by.
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That's a change...

When last I left Mac OS to go back to Windows machines for my day-to-day work, I lamented leaving the easy integration of Image files behind. I guess I was running Win98SE at the time?

Anyhow, fast forward to today and going from Win10 to High Sierra was the exact same feel.  Scrolling through usefully-magnified image files in a folder just doesn't happen in Mac OS...well, I'm sure there's a way to do it, but I haven't figured out the right combination of Shift-Command-Clicks. Ironically, I didn't need to seek any tutorials in Windows to learn to "Open" -> "Scroll Arrow".

#noplebgunstoday

No pleb holsters, neither!

After some extremely frustrating writing time, I made an emergency schedule change and decided that this morning's range visit was just some me time, some sanity shooting, a little recoil therapy. I set aside the work guns and pulled some old favorites out. They're still dirty, and the Wilson in particular still needs to be field-stripped, photographed, cleaned, and lubed, but I was just going to shoot for fun.

I almost packed up and went home with that third shot on Dot 8, the one that's clean off the paper. I'm glad I stuck around, though, because Dots 9 and 10 are pretty solid. This was three yards, untimed, 47/50. I should have cleaned it. Oh well.

The Springfield Pro was drier than a popcorn fart, and I can't remember the last time I fired it, but it has to have been at least a year or more ago. That Black T finish has rather a lot of lubricity, though, and the slide still feels almost like it's had an Acc-U-Rail job done.

The Wilson is so filthy that the slide is noticeably sluggish. It still ran fine though. Apparently it is unaware of expert opinion.

The Springer was at seven yards and the Wilson at fifteen. I was pushing just a little bit with the seven yard shots, and shooting like I was on the clock at fifteen yards. Pushed a little too fast on a couple of those. They're still within the generous USPSA A-zone, but I see four where I'd let my grip come all apart and that high one I hadn't let my sights really settle yet but my trigger finger had already made up its mind.

Automotif CXLV...

I think this is one of the best-looking designs of the '90s. It's a shame it was replaced with that godawful-looking pumpkinseed of a droptop.

The styling, which is super simple and clean at first glance, is loaded with little Easter eggs. Notice how the angle of the stylized "L" in the Lexus logo is repeated over and over in everything from the angles of the headlamps and window corners to corners of the fog lamps and the lines where the styling creases on the hood terminate at the front bumper.

The ten-spoke wheels were only on the cars with the 3-liter six cylinder, which was also available with a manual transmission. Yes I absolutely would drive one of these, even in plush-bottom 4.0 V8 and automatic transmission configuration. This would be a hella good roadtrip car.
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Turning of the seasons...

Yesterday's high was 20 degrees below average. Winter needs to stop dragging its heels on the way out the door. pic.twitter.com/2Bpb3ZjgjA

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 9, 2018

Trying out a new thing...

Trying out the @thyrm #clens to protect @surefire_llc #xh35 #allthelumens #trijiconrmr #glock34mos #ssvityrtrigger #indyarmsco

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Mar 7, 2018 at 1:21pm PST

The CLENS lens protectors from Thyrm & Sage Instruments are like tear-offs for your helmet visor, only for your flashlight. They do the same job as smearing the lens with grease, only much less messily and for more money. Clean-up is as simple as peeling it off after your day at the range, leaving the lens no dirtier than it was 400 rounds ago.

Thyrm sent me these to try, but I'm gonna be ordering a couple more packs. That should be a many years' supply for school guns.
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I don't get it.

So, via this piece at Ars Technica, we learn that the FBI (or at least certain of its field offices) has a pretty cozy relationship with Best Buy, via the latter's Geek Squad service department.

Apparently if the FBI suspects someone of having some kiddie porn on their machine and can't quite get a warrant, they just ask the Geek Squad guys about it when dude brings his computer in for service.

See, since you just handed the computer over to the dudes at Geek Squad and asked them to go rooting around in it, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy for all the smut on D:/shorteyes, you nasty bastard. Or at least this is how the courts have ruled thus far.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, who is as FROM MAH COLD DEAD HANDS about zeroes and ones as Charlton Heston was about muzzleloading rifles, has filed a FOIA suit to see what, if any, kind of Fourth Amendment-violatin' shenanigans are afoot here.

I, myself, have not really dug in far enough to have an opinion. I know that if you'd brought film with kiddie porn in to the one-hour photo lab where I worked back in the day, we'd have called the po-po. Happened at least once that I recollect.

I do have one question, though... Who in their right mind drops off a hard drive full of hard time with the local rent-a-neckbeards? That is, to use an apt term, criminally stupid.
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