Tab Clearing...

• Caleb wrote a piece on "Expanding your lane".


• David Merrill set a SureFire WML ablaze while restomodding a W. German Sig P226.


• It's true. All of it.

"Tactical Fantasy Band Camp"?

It was interesting to be in a class with David Yamane of the Gun Culture 2.0 blog last weekend. Going from never having fired an AR-15 to moving through a shoothouse with Daniel Shaw in the space of a week's time gives him an interesting viewpoint on the class.

QotD: Fundamental Right Edition...

From a great post at Antifragile Training:

"At the core there is my belief that the weak, the disenfranchised, the outnumbered and unpopular should be able to defend themselves against the strong, the bold, the legion."

Go RTWT...
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Part of the Problem...

Bobbi on the media response to the dead jackass in California:

"I'm not sure there's any conscious individual intent past the cynical awareness that "If it bleeds, it leads." And this unacknowledged, unrecognized hunger may be a far worse problem than deliberate malice could ever be."

It's a bunch of factors. There's an element of crusading ("We're going to shame the nation into action this time!") that heterodynes with the unconscious "This is ratings gold!", which all combines with an underlying current of "Well, if we don't cover it, those guys at $COMPETING_NETWORK will, so if we're gonna cover it, we might as well do it first and best!"

I mean, watching a grieving parent bawl his eyes out over his dead son in front of the camera? That's GREAT TELEVISION.

And we're all...to a greater or lesser degree...a little vulture-y. The meta-conversation here is still paying attention.
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Attention Neptune Spear cosplayers...

Brownells is going to be putting HK416 parts kits out for sale this weekend, if you really want to flex on the poors.
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Overheard in the Office...

I come moping into the office, shoulders slumped, head drooping, coffee in hand...

T: *sigh* "Has a sad..." 

RX: "What's wrong?" 

T: "I'm depressed." 

RX: "But you were just laughing and making fun of stupid people!" 

T: "I can do that while I'm unconscious."

"Why didn't anybody just shoot him?"

OOCQOTD: "I didn't see much about the Florida yoga studio shooter because I was too busy practicing shooting f**kknuckles like him in the face at the time."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) November 8, 2018

Very Tacticool...

View this post on Instagram

Also had the @fnh_usa #fn509tactical with the @surefire_llc #xh35 there this morning. Look for a review in an upcoming issue of @shooting_illustrated #indyarmsco #pewprofessional #igmilitia

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Nov 7, 2018 at 12:21pm PST

The gun comes with one seventeen-round magazine and two 24-round ones. You can stuff a box of ammo into the mags in the box and still have room left over.

Automotif CXLX...

Parked up out front of the salon where the old Ford Falcon sometimes is parked, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this F100 belongs to the same person.

Looks to be a '73 or '74. I want to believe that there's a 390cid V-8 under that hood.


Photos snapped from across the street with the Samsung TL500. It's an absolutely brilliant little enthusiast's point-and-shoot. Fast glass, a 10MP 1/1.7" sensor, full PASM controls and RAW shooting... It's too bad Samsung decided to bail on the camera game.
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My weakness...

Be me.

Get email sale flier from KEH.

See that they have Canon EOS 40D's in BGN condition with battery and charger for $89.

Have fond memories of all the shooting you did with your old EOS 20D.

Very nearly do something dumb before sternly reminding yourself that you need a crop sensor Canon body like you need a hole in your head.

...

...

Still, though, that's a screaming deal on a solid prosumer body if someone wanted to dabble with a DSLR...
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That Time of Year

This morning is the morning that the cotton socks come out of the drawer and the wool socks go in. With this next load of laundry, the short-sleeve tees will come out of the dryer and go on hangers in the basement, to have their space in the drawer filled by long-sleeve ones. The long johns came out of hibernation for the New Mexico trip already, as did the warm and water-resistant Asolo boots, replacing the trail shoes of summer.

Late autumn, the time of falling leaves and cold rains and air that smells of woodsmoke, is my favorite season, but it's also the one most ate up with nostalgia and melancholy.
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The Only One Qualified Enough...

What's weird is that the police use cars and radios a lot more than they use guns, but the general public doesn't expect them to be automotive experts or broadcast engineers.

And yet "My Cousin, the Cop" is the most oft-quoted authority on any firearm-related topic.
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This sling is so fast it makes you blink faster!

OMG, these retardate paracord slings. JFC. FML. WTF. BBQ.

If you're sitting there thinking "I can use my paracord weaving skills to make revolutionary new rifle slings!", you should instead think about using them to make David Carradine cosplay kits, and then thoroughly test your merchandise.
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Plenty of learning occurred...

View this post on Instagram

I used the light-bearing variant of the @ravenconcealment Perun holster in the class. It worked well. Holstering while wearing a plate carrier is much better with a @taudevgroup #strikercontroldevice #alliancepolicetraining #surefirex300u #edcl2t #glock19x #taudevgroup

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Nov 5, 2018 at 4:27am PST

Thank you to my Patreon patrons. Y'all's contributions paid for the Gen5 Gadgets from Tau Development Group, one of which went on the 19X that I used in class this weekend.

Holstering in a belt holster (as opposed to a drop holster on a war belt) while wearing a plate carrier is holstering blind, and having that Striker Control Device under the thumb is really reassuring. If you're blasé about holstering up a striker-fired gat in circumstances like that, you probably shouldn't be.

It was a long day yesterday.

Arrived on the range at 8:30AM, class started at 9AM, and we knocked off at 1:30AM, having gotten in two nighttime runs through the shoot house.

Even with the DST fairy giving back my missing hour, I am still caffeinating heavily this morning.
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One End to the Other

From one end of gun school to the other, I hear creative excuses from people why that particular thing doesn't apply to them and they shouldn't attend.

 "Entangled gunfights never happen!"

Do people ever get held up at arm's length, or do armed robbers generally square up at 21 feet and yell "Toss your wallet over here!"?

"I'm never going to need tactical fantasy band camp!"

Ignore the safety apparel; the plates and helmet in the shoot house are as necessary as eyes and ears on the square range. Do you think that moving in a structure and problem-solving with a gun in your hand is a skill that might someday be necessary?

Oh, well...

My new zig-zag clavicle...

This will be important in my writeup of some rifle plates here this weekend.
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Learn something new, every time...

Joe Weyer is a talented diagnostician. Also, I learned some new stuff about recoil mitigation...via a metaphor I hadn't heard before...that I'm looking forward to trying to implement.
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It's that time again...

Time to take all the lumens into the shoot house in Alliance, OH.
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Track Record...

Watching Brian Williams' late night news shown MSNBC last night, he interviewed a GOP dude who was explaining how Trump was screwing everything up for the midterms.

The GOP dude's credentials were that he was a former advisor to Romney, Jeb, and McCain. Hell of an electoral resume, bro. You ever advise anybody who won?
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