Bambi got run over by a Volvo...

Heading out towards Premier Arms, my route takes me past Indianapolis's sprawling Eagle Creek Park, a forested area just north of 56th Street that is almost five times the size* of NYC's Central Park.

Needless to say, this huge stretch of urban woodland has a... somewhat out-of-control deer population.

Broad daylight, just shy of lunch hour, joggers on the sidewalk along 56th Street, and you could lean out the window of your moving car and harvest a doe or two with a tee ball bat.

Sitting at the traffic light at the corner of Reed and 56th the other day, with the packed parking lot of the Indianapolis Colts' training facility to my right and light planes on short final to Eagle Creek Airpark overhead, I could have leaned out the passenger window and hand-fed the three deer that were standing there dumbly staring in the passenger window of the stopped Subie, no doubt wondering if I was about to do just that.

Naturally, the bunny huggers love these hoofed rats, these plush traffic hazards, and go bezonkoids when anybody suggests doing anything about them, and so we let nature, red in tooth and bumper, take its grisly course.


*Not counting the 1900-acre reservoir, which is Indy's primary water source, and along the base of whose dam I have counted as many as ten deer at a time, cavorting in broad daylight, visible from the interstate.

House Divided...

From a recent WSJ bit, complete with map:

Gun-control advocates have scored victories in states like colorado [sic] and New York since the Newtown, Conn., shooting, but more states have expanded gun rights than restricted them since the December tragedy.

The data come from the "Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence" who seem to be a little sad panda-esque about this state of affairs.

I haven't checked the tenor of the editorial page at The Metrocon Daily lately to see how they're feeling about our current national distraction from it's the economy, stupid, but it was all they were talking about on Chris Matthews'* echo chamber this morning. They even did a little homage to the opening montage of Mad Men, showing a cartoon Barack tumbling past screens flashing images of all the great current threats to the republic: Kim Jong Un, high gas prices, Wayne LaPierre...

(h/t to WeaponsMan.)

*...or, as Bobbi calls him, "the Baghdad Bob of the Obama administration."

Worlds within worlds...

Seen today while walking in SoBro...

A bonsai evergreen sprouts in the nook of a sweetgum's roots...

Farmville...

In World of Warcraft one's character can engage in a little farming on the side. Not real-life hard-working farming, mind you, which wouldn't translate well into a video game format anyway (well, who knows... video golf games have traditionally been big sellers) but you just stick some seeds in the ground, come back the next day and harvest your plants and stick more seeds in the ground.

The plants are a little fanciful, especially squashes and pumpkins, which appear rooted to the dirt at first glance.

Anyway, in the sleep theater I had by way of dreams last night, I had to get Bobbi to come to the post office to help me pick up a huge pumpkin which Nanny Ogg had shipped me. Even gutted and deflated-looking, the pumpkin was a double armload that had to weigh fifty pounds.

Plus, it was some weird dream-slash-WoW variety of turnip-like pumpkin where the bottom half of the pumpkin was actually the roots of the plant. The whole thing was vaguely anthropomorphic-looking, too, with its bifurcated root... pod... things; shaped sort of like a giant orange vertically-ribbed deflated ginger root.

Anyway, it arrived already gutted, and I needed Bobbi to help carry the big galvanized bucket of seeds and pulp.

Also, there was air travel, flying back from visiting Marko on an 0300 flight out of MHT in a Fokker Trimotor.

Doing it again, only harder...

So the media is practically decorating its collective cupcakes over the "sweeping gun legislation" passed in Connecticut and Maryland.

Thus far, with the exception of "swing state" Colorado, this rash of "sweeping gun control legislation" has just seen blue states with bans ban things even bannier. With double secret bans on top.

Meanwhile other states continue moving in the other direction; here in the Hoosier state, for instance, some Democrats in the statehouse may want gun bans, but they want them in much the same way people in hell want ice water.

We are truly a House Divided, and if you're a gun nut living on the wrong side of the duplex, you might want to give serious thought to moving your bed unless you think you can serve the cause better by becoming a test case.

Like civil rights in the '60s, this is going to come down to the Feds in the end, barring a black swan event like balkanization or somesuch.

You can't pretty up getting punked.

So the story is that a US Attorney has withdrawn from a case, citing "security concerns".

Friend Staghounds is... how to put this delicately? ...not at all impressed. Neither am I.

You knew the job when you volunteered for it, Mr. Government Man; at the foot of the trench ladder is a hell of a place to decide to take the white feather.

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #58:

A little rushed this morning...

Have to take the trash out and then run my membership renewal check over to MCF&G, and you know what's liable to happen if I find myself at a shootin' range on a fine spring morning. Especially if I accidentally threw a shotgun and some ammo in the Subie before I left.

Anyhow, here's some gratuitous gun pr0n from a failed photo session* for an upcoming Sunday Smith:

Perspective skews the size difference between the diminutive No. 1s and the monster .44 Hand Ejector

Starting in the back, we see the familiar shape of a Second Model .44 Hand Ejector (given its rough re-nickeled shape, those mother of pearl stocks are probably worth as much as the rest of the gun...) and in front of it is a tiny Number 1 Second Issue, probably dating from just after the Civil War. In the foreground is the subject gun: A Number 1 Third Issue from, and I'm guesstimating off the serial no. here, the late 1870s. I found it early last fall for, like, $125 in the showcase at a local gun store and I'm all but certain that's the original nickel.

The plated Aguila .22 Short round next to it is the right size to chamber, but despite the fact that the gun is mechanically sound and as tight a tip-up as I've encountered in a while, you'd never shoot a modern smokeless .22 Short in it unless you had a burning desire to wreck the gun.

I may run some CB Shorts through it, though, just to say I did...

*I just haven't found a new regular "spot" for Sunday Smith photos since I moved up here that has the gun up high enough that I don't have to get on hands and knees to take the shot and has ample available light with the sun high in the sky. Between the penny and the wooden railing, there was a handy built-in sense of scale to the old photos, despite the setting being less than artistic. Incidentally, I discovered that the latch on the battery door of the Oleg hand-me-down Coolpix 990 that took all those old Sunday Smith photos has finally failed. Sic transit gloria...

...I didn't have to use my AK.

Which is a good thing, because Iggle Crick does not, at this time, allow centerfire rifle calibers. Also, I don't have an AK.

...and I was all like Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew!... 'Merica.

Sunday was almost perfect shootin' weather.
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Might I have the pleasure of introducing...?

This morning I discovered that fellow Mencken fan Bobbi had thus far not crossed paths with the fabulous H.L. Mencken essay on gun control, "The Uplifters Try It Again."

Isn't it always a pleasure to introduce two dear friends who you know will hit it off well?
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Hey, wait a minute...

So, when I was much younger, Johnny Carson was the host of The Tonight Show and I thought "This guy's not even funny. Why is he considered a comedian? I guess old people think he's funny."

And then Jay Leno became host, and I thought "This guy's not even funny. Why is he considered a comedian? I guess old people think he's funny."

And now they've named Jimmy Fallon the new host, and my first thought on hearing the news was "Finally! A Tonight Show host that's young and hip and funn.... oh. my. God." It was like seeing the Cadillac commercial with the Led Zeppelin soundtrack and realizing that the choice of tunes does not necessarily signify that Cadillac's target demographic is getting younger.

Please, somebody in the under-25 age bracket, tell me that you also find Jimmy Fallon at least moderately droll.

Difficulty Level: *EASY*

The spare M&P 9 is being used to test stuff, like that Leupold Deltapoint.

A few hundred rounds of shooting and a couple of months banging around in the range bag and the Leupold Deltapoint's still holding zero... and I have to admit that the slide-mounted red dot is kinda growing on me a little.

I was wanting to get the slide cut for Unity Tactical's ATOM mount system,  but the M&P variant remains vaporware. I guess I should get the thing cut into the slide and then shoot the bejabbers out of it some more and see how long it takes to make the zero wander (or if I can find that much 9x19.)

Note metal magazine baseplate from 10-8 that Caleb scored for me which has cool little finger indents so that if your gun has some horrible double-feed malfunction you can go all operator on it and tear the stuck mag out with less chance of breaking a nail. Also, the extra weight makes the empties exit the gun quicker, which is good, because I need all the help I can get with my reloads.

Does this make me a bad person?

So, here in the neighborhood there was a big tizzy yesterday because an eighth grader late for school at the local parochial kiddie warehouse* said that his absence was caused by "three masked men kidnapping him in a van".

Fortunately "he was able to escape, but not before riding around with the suspects in the neighborhood."

The response to this... tale of woe was to send the neighborhood to DEFCON 1. The school went on lockdown, letters were generated and mailed to parents, detectives patrolled the streets, reporters ran around feeding on gushing emotions, kids walked home in skittish herdlets, and...

...and am I the only person whose initial (and continuing) response was "Wow, I told some whoppers in my time, but I generally had the good sense not to double down when they threatened to get the cops involved"?


*Which happens to be the polling place for Roseholme Cottage.

Random Musing...

The Subie is the "L" trim variant and is all-wheel drive, so there's a little badge on the back that reads "L-AWD".

I want them to come out with a hybrid variant so I can buy an "L-AWD-e" badge.

Thank you! I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

When it comes to collectible firearms...

...one piece of advice I've often heard is that "You can't really pay too much, you can only buy too soon."

While the literal-minded will poke all kinds of fiscal holes in that, those who enjoy collecting the old and the rare will hopefully get the underlying gist.

Gun-related content pilfered from Facebook...

While I'm trying to find the USB dingus for my Canon ShowerPot, here's some gun chatter from elsewhere on the internets, (Namely, pdb's Facebook page):

On the PPK: We're looking for a gun that A)Fits in a pocket and B)Works. Not a sexy-looking malfunction-prone brick that would have ceased production decades ago if not for Ian Fleming.

On the J-frame vs. the teeny polymer .380s: All-in-all, I like a J-frame, too, but it's a bit large for true pocket carry (at least in my clothes.) If it'll fit in your trouser pockets, I'd climb over a pile of mini-380s to get to a six-shot .32 H&R/.327 Mag J-frame.

My recurring Ron Cohen rant: Why SIG came out with their recent abortion of a Colt Mustang knockoff when they already had the P232, which is the Cadillac of .380s, in their stable is beyond me. I used a P232 for vest pocket/coat pocket/purse carry for years before I went over to the S&W Centennials. ...oh, I forgot: P238 = PROFIT! Easily changed fancy grips and blingy controls and funky finishes and laser-etched froofery appeals to the customer base they're trying to steal from Kimber.

I swear, jackdaws with CCW permits must be a more lucrative target market than I would have thought.

Protip:

When you wake up in the morning feeling ghastly ill from what, in retrospect, was probably a li'l touch of the norovirus, make sure the charge indicator on the iPad reads more than 12%, because you're not going to have the energy, coordination, or desire to go around the house looking for laptops to schlep.

Yesterday was consumed in napping, interspersed by brief periods of wakefulness during which I muzzily attempted to puzzle out daytime TV, which reached a sort of apogee of WTFery when Dr. Oz took a time-out from being worried about the perils of artificial sweeteners in chocolate milk to have this "Snookie" person tell us her diet tips, in return for which he taught her a cocktail recipe.

If Kim Jong Un wants to get froggy with his nukes, may I suggest starting with wherever that show was being filmed?

Things I wonder about...

Why does Kim Jong Un have three telephones on his desk? Are there three other people with phones in North Korea for him to call?

If there are, what is there to talk about?

"Still resolutely awaiting the treachery of the running dogs and lackeys of the Yankee imperialists with revolutionary fervor?"

"Yes, Glorious Commander!"

"Still keeping up the training of the 1-matches-100 valiant soldier?"

"Yes, Respected Comrade!"

"Sawdust and dirt clod rations prepared well this morning?"

"Yes, Maximum Leader!"

"Good."

*click*

Still, North Korea was a lot more risible before they had missiles. For much of the world, a conventional war on the Korean Peninsula would be like knocking over a cup of coffee on a table with a raised lip around the edge: you could be fairly certain that any spill, while messy, would remain fairly localised. Bluntly, (and absent a draft) for your typical western hemisphere type it'd mess up the delivery schedules for the Galaxy S4 and the Veloster Turbo, but life would go on.

But the Hermit Kingdom with nukes on missiles, even if they're only "intermediate-range" ones? I can't get this picture out of my head.

North Korea engages in so little conventional interaction with other nations that you have to wonder if they really understand the idea of what is considered acceptable behavior at the grownup table. Kim Il Sung's philosophy of "Juche" has created a nation where the national mindset makes the most ardent isolationist of a Bircher look like a frothing transnationalist one-worlder; armed with nukes,  the DPRK becomes the geopolitical equivalent of the profoundly autistic young man with the body of a linebacker and the emotional continence of a three-year-old.

Tick tock...

Last day for the Honored American Veterans Afield fundraiser over at Walls Of The City. If you want in on the drawings, you gotta make your donation today.

Fabulous prizes and a good cause!
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Future Collectible...

Seen parked up out front of 20 Tap the other day:

I didn't like their looks at first...

The Saturn Sky is only half as common as the arguably better-looking Pontiac Solstice, with less than 35,000 sold over its 4 (really 3) year run. By comparison, Ford built 84,000 Edsels during the course of its production run, and over half a million Mustangs in 1965 alone.

This and the Pontiac G8 are the sure-thing investments from the dead GM divisions, if you ask me. (I mean, if you happen to be looking for something to stick under a car cover in the garage...)

Here comes the boom...

First range trip in weeks coming up this morning. Here's hoping I remember from which end the bullet emerges.

I briefly toyed with the idea of bringing the gauge, but I think I'll hold off a little longer on the shotgun; that scar on my cheek is still pretty fresh for me to want to snuggle it up against the stock and touch off high-brass buckshot loads. You know my training motto: "No pain, no pain."

But first, Shootin' Buddy and I will grab breakfast at the SoBro Cafe, because yum.