It begins...

Last night was the start of ECQC. Eleven hour day at the range today...

Relevant...

This was initially posted on FB a year ago by Phil Wong. It's still applicable, and I'm reprinting it here with his permission:

"I'd personally say that the SJW-equivalent in 2A advocacy would be an overweening, all-encompassing inclusiveness of anything and everything involving the ownership and carrying of guns, to include even the most egregious derp;

That any substantive criticism of someone's choice of gun/gear/caliber/ammo(as opposed to intentionally-facetious troll-play like 9mm vs. 45, 1911 vs. Glock, AR vs. AK, etc.) is tantamount to bullying, and a crypto-infringement on their 2A rights;

That anyone who advocates too strongly for training to a level of knowledge/skill/proficiency higher than the lowest-common-denominator, is a tool of the Government-CCW-Instructor Complex who is un-Constitutionally creating backdoor-restrictions on the polite, armed Utopian society envisioned by the Founding Fathers, where real American men all taught their families how to shoot better than the Redcoats and Redskins, so that they could stand their ground in their castles according to doctrine without having to worry about pesky matters like being judged by twelve;

That any purchase of guns/gear/accessories is a necessary and justifiable expense, but training classes and competition shooting are frivolous luxuries that only rich playboy trust-fund shooters without families to care for can afford;

That physical limitations, medical restrictions, age, and the perceived inability to afford high-end training, place a gun owner into a "protected class" whose choices cannot be questioned with respect to guns, gear, carry mode, or tactics;

That "talisman thinking" and as much plinking as one can afford, is just as good "on the streets/in the real world" as spending thousands of dollars on training and/or competition, which can never be like a real fight;

That the shortcomings of certain individual instructors/organizations/programs can be used as a blanket strawman argument to justify avoiding any and all formal training over and above what one has already experienced from the military or an adult mentor;

That any discussion of self-defense or "gunfighting" can be reduced to one or more of their favorite clichés (happy, Tamara?), such as "Situational Awareness!" "Don't Bring A Knife To A Gunfight!" "Judged By 12, Not Carried By 6!" etc.;

That gut feelings, hearsay, secondhand anecdotal evidence and personal preference are equal or superior to scientific testing and informed opinions and evaluation when it comes to anything having to do with guns/gear/ammunition;

That those who have spent significantly more money on high-dollar, high-round-count training and/or competition than on purchases of guns and accessories are a privileged elite, who are oppressing the downtrodden gun-owning proletariat with little or no formal training or experience with their arrogantly-informed opinions, and who need to check their privilege and allow their preferred flavor of derp to be expressed freely and given equal or greater weight of authority, in order that their favorite biases may be more firmly reinforced;

That anyone speaking from a position of privilege as being a better shooter or more highly-trained/-experienced than they, can and should be silenced, shunned and ignored if the "Church Ladies" can find even the slightest momentary deviation from the canonical commandments and Party line of gun safety, tactics or the Constitution/Federalist Papers - because it's so much easier to find and point out minor details and insignificant flaws to denounce great shooters and instructors, than it is to actually train, practice and work hard enough to reach a comparable level of skill and expertise..."

People will argue passionately for their own mediocrity. And god forbid any crab tries to climb out of the bucket. Why, who do they think they are, anyway?

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She works on a starship...

Bobbi has fresh short fiction up on her other blog! Hooray!
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Sad But True

If they designed a pistol that would crumble to dust on the fifty-first shot, the statistical majority of firearms purchasers would never know. (And the people who did discover it would be decried on fan forums as "haters".)
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Weirdness...

Safari on the MacBook Air will not let me stay logged in to Blogger. I mean, it logs me in automatically every time I click the logo in the top left, but I never see the "Create New Post" option in the top right.

It works fine on Safari on the iPad. I hadn't even checked that for a while because when I first got the iPad 2, several iterations of iOS ago, trying to use Blogger in the mobile browser was a mess. Works fine these days, though.

Notes from a conversation elsewhere...

People google “is the blastomatic 9000 a good gun” not to decide if they should buy one, but to confirm that the Blastomatic 9000 they just brought home is a cool gun.

The funniest manifestation of this is when dude has just bought his new Sheepdog Tactical Mk.IV carbine, and he runs home, without having even shot the thing and googles “does the sheepdog tactical mark four suck?”

The third post he runs across is a thread on a gun forum for another state, say westdakotagunownersforum-dot-com and our boy lives in Oklatucky. But here’s this thread on a forum that is running down the gun he *just bought*, calling it garbage and saying that the company that makes is is a bunch of no-customer-service-having scam artists...

Nine times out of ten, Marlon Rando will register an account at that forum so he can jump in and defend the gun he *just bought and hasn’t even fired*.

#triggered

Ambulance Driver has some comments on the Langdon Beretta and Grayguns P30L he got to try out at Blogorado. There is a level three beverage alert attached to the post, so get a drop cloth on that keyboard.

Stubborn...

Even this late in the season, this tomato plant refuses to pack it in for 2018...

Olympus OM-D E-M5 & 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro

"I'm helping!" /Ralph Wiggums

I mean, I don't even hate the idea of "Everybody dress nice, leave the goofy slogan t-shirts at home, strap on our pistols and let's go fishing. Be polite if anyone asks questions. Here are fliers to hand out" fishing events to try and reform Florida's messed-up restrictions against open carry. That can be an effective tool for the political process.

But that's not what happens. Instead you get autists LARPing with rifles and their army man gear.

Totally normal and not at all attention-seeking cosplay. *nods*

"i'M nOrmaLiziNg gUns!"
"No, you're making gun owners look abnormal."

I LOL'ed...

From I Rate Your Gun Page's review of Kait's Unsafe Space:

"If there was a video game where you fight attention-seeking gun bunnies then she would be the final boss."

I almost pulled something, I laughed so hard.
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Realism

I had a weakness for the pulpy adventure tales of The Survivalist, The Executioner, and others back in the day.

Jerry Ahern, legit gun writer and author of The Survivalist series, sent a letter to the editors at Gold Eagle (a Harlequin imprint!), publishers of The Executioner series and its spinoffs, regarding weapons choices for Mack Bolan and his proteges. It's reprinted here. If you like guns and fondly remember Jerry Ahern's writing and the glory days of Eighties shoot-'em-up pulp series, it's worth a read.

It did give me something of a legit LOL, on reading it, however...

Jerry Ahern: "The AMT AutoMag is a ridiculous weapon for Mack Bolan. It's notoriously unreliable!"  

Also Jerry Ahern: "My boy John Rourke carries a brace of Seattle Detonics because COOL!"

MY GRUDGE IS REAL

Excuse.

Today is absolutely terrible and only looks to get worse. Sorry for the no-show on posting.
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Cloud Laboratory

Straw Instructors

I've read a few internet posts (as well as a couple books) lately that are pimped as "giving you the information most firearms instructors won't!" or, in other cases, claiming to offer you new stuff that boldly contradicts what all those other people in the industry are teaching.

In the former case, the information was pretty conventional legal-oriented stuff that I've heard referred to, to a greater or lesser degree, in pretty much every CCW-oriented class I've attended. In fact, I've even had it brought up tangentially in pure shooting classes. (Yes, there is a difference between a "self-defense" or "tactical" class and a pure mechanical shooting class. Although the latter can be very useful in the former.)

Todd's AFHF class was a shooting mechanics class that tangentially touched on a lot of practical self-defense matters.

In the latter case, the stuff the writer is trying to debunk is stuff that hasn't been mainstream for twenty years or so. It's like a new band coming out and marketing themselves as an alternative to that "grunge music" everyone's listening to. Er, okay.

You know, if you're gonna bitch about "the industry", it might behoove you to hop out of your echo chamber and take a tour around the industry to make sure your protests are related to reality. How can you realistically complain about the drinks selection here if all you ever swill is your own bathwater?
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Amateur Sports...

I love amateur sports. The very root of "amateur", whether in sports or photography or writing or whatever, is "someone who does a thing for the love of it."

This doesn't necessarily signal competence, but it does signal enthusiasm, as well as a certain level of love of the game.

Nineteens

View this post on Instagram

Eenie meenie minie moe... #glock #glock19 #glock19gen4 #glock19x #pewpewlife #igmilitia

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Oct 18, 2018 at 9:10pm PDT

Pictures...

This first image was taken on my first visit to the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos, back in 2013.

This is the .jpg I have saved from then. At the time, I didn't have Photoshop or Lightroom. I used a Canon Rebel XTi and an 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens. Clicking the "get info" on the image says it was 1/60th of a second at f/5, with the lens zoomed to 60mm.

The XTi has a 10.1 megapixel APS-C sensor. It was Canon's entry-level DSLR in 2006, while the 18-135mm IS zoom was the kit lens that was bundled with the more upmarket two-digit "prosumer" Canons.

Yesterday I cropped the image and used the "auto" button in Photoshop for exposure and color correction. The result is below...

The image below was taken on this year's visit, five years later. I was using a Micro Four Thirds camera, an Olympus OM-D E-M5. The lens was the fantastic M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro.

Unlike five years ago, I do have editing software now and shoot RAW instead of JPG. The image below is converted from the raw camera output into JPG by Lightroom, with no corrections applied.

That's 1/80th of a second at f/2.8 with the lens zoomed all the way to 40mm.

Again, I cropped it and just poked the "auto" button in Photoshop for exposure and color correction.

The E-M5 has a 16MP Four Thirds size sensor, and was introduced six years after the XTi, in 2012, as a "prosumer" grade camera. The 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro lens is an extremely well-regarded piece of glass; it retails for $999, generally, although if you want to gamble with non-warrantee gray market imports, it's cheaper. If I'd bought both brand new...well, let's say there's a reason I shop the used racks.

This was with the E-M5 and 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro, too...

ZZZzzzZzzzz...

TAM: "I'm going to fix myself a Manhattan and stay up late and watch this movie after getting four hours of sleep last night!" 

NARRATOR VOICE: "She did not, in fact, stay up late."

On the other hand, I'm nice and caught up on sleep now.
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Cloud Laboratory

From elsewhere...

Because I hate wasting good stuff at an away game...

Someone had referenced being on "team gun rights" vs. "team anti", to which I wrote:

"Most aren't "on" teams. The person with all the New England Patriots swag and the Tom Brady jersey doesn't actually *play* for the Patriots, they're just "his" team and therefore he hates on the rival teams.  

Similarly, most people don't volunteer for their sociopolitical team's organizations, volunteer to be poll watchers, man phone banks, run for local office, or generally do anything other than vote desultorily and write the occasional dues check. They're no more "on" Team [GOP/Dem/NRA/ACLU] than the couch potato in the Pats jersey is a f***ing quarterback."