Multi-Gun

USPSA Multi-Gun offers the opportunity to shoot rifle, pistol, and shotgun in a safe, competitive environment. I shot a match last Saturday and it was a lot of fun. Moving and shooting, with multiple weapons, making transitions, and being scored on both time and accuracy, is hard to do, and harder to do well. Here's a run by a real champion.

I wish I could go that fast and still make good hits.

Fast is fine, but accuracy is final.
--Wyatt Earp

Echoes

It starts with street protests in a Middle-Eastern country. Angry people, mostly young men. The problems are economic and political. The leader is seen as a dictator, the police corrupt. As events unfold, U.S. support for the regime in power wanes and the protests become more bold and violent.

The U.S. government, led by a left leaning President is caught flatfooted, unable to to catch up with unfolding events, but unwilling to support the amount of force necessary to turn the tide. Finally, the inevitable end comes and the government is overthrown. New power structures begin to solidify, and whatever the young people were really hoping for, what emerges after an election is a Muslim theocracy.

The President? Jimmy Carter. The year it began was 1978, it ended with the taking of our Embassy and the hostages that were held 444 days by the Ayatollah and his followers.

There's not a lot of clear news coming out of Egypt right now, foreigners trying to flee the chaos, Mubarak trying to maintain a grip on power, and underneath it all, the rising power of Egypt's banned organization, the Muslim Brotherhood. Here's a photo gallery from Der Spiegel that tells as much as anything I've read yet.

The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
--Mark Twain

Last Call

Last Call is the title of a book about the Prohibition Era. An interesting time in America, because it represents a near total disregard for the rules and laws concerning the production, use, and consumption of alcohol.

Yes, the Amendment passed, and laws followed. What didn't happen was compliance. Booze flowed into every port, major transshipment networks were set up, home brewing and stills became commonplace, and people drank anyway.

It didn't just fail. It failed so hard that it was repealed after a decade of enforcement. All the effort, the law enforcement, the courts and punishments just amounted to nothing. Because the people were not having any part of it. All it did was increase the power of organized crime and contribute to the corruption of police and government.

For every prohibition you create you also create an underground.
--Jello Biafra

The Uprising in Egypt

Egypt is in the midst of chaos and as part of the response, the Egyptian government has shut down access to the internet. In response, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called forEgypt to restore access to the net, especially Facebook and Twitter , two sites that are being heavily used by the protesters for coordination and planning.

Tell me again why the United States would want to give the President an internet kill switch.

The Internet has become an integral part of America's economic, political, and social life.
--Bill Clinton

______
Update: Egypt has add the shutdown of cell phone service to the blackout.

25 Years

25 years. I remember the shock of seeing that video. Everyone was following it because they were sending a civilian, a teacher, into space for the first time.

Now they are a memory and the subject of a memorial in Arlington.

Reach for the stars.
--Christa McAuliffe

_________
Update: From a commenter at Marooned, the video of Pr. Reagan's speech 1/28/1986

The future belongs to the brave.
--Ronald Reagan

I'll Bet They Thought It Was a Student

Now this is a real pissing contest.

I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is: ‘What are they in a position to do about it?’
--William S. Burroughs

Back When The Smelt Was Bait

We used to overcome obstacles. We used to figure out how to use the land. We used to feed the world. We were proud of it, and taught our children how it was done.

Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.
--Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Protecting The Delta Smelt

Green Mountain Homesteading has a post about water rights, rain and snowfall, and water allocation that everyone needs to consider. There is no other conclusion possible, this is deliberate planning for failure.

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt

Infringing

Let's say legislation was proposed that said anyone who was under 5 feet tall and over the age of 18 could be enslaved.

The backlash would be tremendous. You could shrug and say, but it's a reasonable compromise, we're not enslaving any particular group, and it won't affect most of the population.

No, they cry, there's no room in the 13th Amendment. for compromise. Infringing on the freedom of any one individual is infringing on the freedom of all.

But there must be room to compromise, you say, there's precedent on the other Amendments. Look at all the laws made in direct infringement of the 2nd Amendment.

Besides, you continue, the Constitution is a living document, open to interpretation. Who know what the people meant that wrote that old stuff? Let's compromise, you give a little, we'll give a little, how about just indentured servitude? Is the age the problem? Let's modify the height requirement. Or we can just let the States decide. If you don't like the law, you can always take it to the Supreme Court on appeal, after you're convicted.

Let's just pass the bill so we can see what's in it.
___________________________________

Understand me clearly. Any law that violated the 13th Amendment to the Constitution would be as wrong as any law that violates the 1st, the 2nd, or any of the others. It's just that we have just been hearing about reasonable gun laws and "common-sense" proposals for so long that it is necessary to step outside and look at the Amendments to the Constitution in a different light to see what is happening.

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.
--Patrick Henry

BOHICA

White House official: Obama will tackle 'very important issue' of gun control. Any takers on a bet that he'll come out and say that all gun arms control, every law since 1934, is unconstitutional and he'll be fighting to have it all overturned?

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
--Abraham Lincoln

Blogroll Maintenance

One of the tasks you don't really anticipate when you start blogging is the blogroll. Updates, removing links that have gone dark, taking time to add new sites that catch your interest, a blogroll is mostly a maintenance task. I bring this up because I went to A Trainwreck in Maxwell, probably from Bloviating Zeppelin, and liked what I saw. Then I noticed I was already on his blogroll.

So if I'm on your blogroll and you'd like my thousands hundreds twenty-three regular readers to see your blog on mine, leave me a comment and I will add you like I just added A Trainwreck in Maxwell.

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

______
Update: New additions from the comments.

They Want Them All

Oleg Volk poses a question that deserves consideration.

If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in, I would have done it.
--Senator Dianne Feinstein

Hope n' Change

Because my snark on the topic was unworthy, I offer you Hope n' Change on the subject of the spending freeze. Full octane, I promise you.

A sense of humor is needed armor.
--Hugh Sidey

The Spending Freeze

Let's say you collect guns, and last year some of the guns on your life list came along. You couldn't resist. You shuffled money around, took thousands of dollars out of an equity line, quit putting the matching funds in your work 401K, took out two new credit cards and maxed them out. And she caught you.

You lay the truth on the table and tell her, "That's right, baby, I spent $17,000 more than I made last year, and don't have any idea how to pay it off. But I have a plan. We'll keep paying the minimums on all this debt, and we'll have a spending freeze." She nods thinking at least you won't be be adding to the crisis. You smile and finish, "I'll be very responsible. I'll only spend $17,000 more than I make every year for the next five years, not a penny more!"

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
--Theodore Roosevelt

The Panama Canal

I watched a show about the Panama Canal on PBS last night. You can watch it online here. It has the expected bias, but the history of a uniquely America triumph still shines through.

In the opening years of the 20th Century, the United States took over a failed French project, dug and blasted a trench, built locks, and created a 57 mile waterway to join the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It is still one of the most audacious projects in human history. We wouldn't build it now, our time is past.

All the resources we need are in the mind.
--Theodore Roosevelt

Meanwhile, A Lesson

The bombing of the Moscow airport is a lesson. We won't learn it, but it is being taught. It was even pointed out in the New York Times article in this quote from a former Homeland Security official named Steven Baker:

"Monday’s explosion pointed to the continuing fascination with air travel for militants and the difficulty of carrying out an attack aboard a jet", said Stephen A. Baker, "They’d like to be bombing planes and they can’t, so they’re bombing airports."

That's absolutely true, we've made it hard to blow up planes. At great cost in personnel, time, and money, we have made it hard to get a bomb on a plane. We've ignored the Constitution, tied ourselves in knots to be politically correct, searching blond, blued eyed children and old nuns with the same scrutiny as the known terror suspects. So now they blow up airport terminals, and they could blow one up here tomorrow. Nothing we have done would prevent it.

The lesson here is that it is not the particular target or the specific weapon that matters. It is the ideology. In 1941 it was Nazism and Imperial Japan. It didn't matter what they attacked or what tools they used. We found a strategy to destroy them, bomb them, kill them, until their will and ability to do the same to us was eliminated.

That is what we need to do now. Declare war, establish an alliance with Russia if necessary, and China if possible. Announce our goals. Identify the enemy. Identify where he comes from. Identify the ideology that motivates him. Then destroy it.

Because otherwise, we can spend another 3 or 4 years making airport terminals as safe as the planes and find out that the enemy is smart enough to move on to blow up other things, like schools or churches. We can't make the country safer by searching everyone, everywhere, all the time, that isn't America. We make the country safer by eliminating the enemy and his will to fight.

We aren't going to do that, so slowly but surely your rights and mine will be infringed on further and further in the name of safety, the terrorist attacks will continue, and when it all said and done, there won't even be a memory of what America was.

Although, personally, it would not surprise me to see Putin take some pretty decisive action. I doubt that he is going to treat this like anything but an act of war.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
--George S. Patton, Jr.

The Internet Kill Switch

So there's a renewed interest in giving the President the power to shut off the internet? This is a bad idea for all sorts of reasons, but I am unsurprised. They took over health care, why not the internet?

Just remember that two years from now, the President might be a Republican. Hell, for all you koolaid drinkers know, the Republican ticket might be Palin/Limbaugh. But go right on, concentrate more power in a single person, just remember.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
--Lord Acton

The Ruins of Bethlehem

Bethlehem Steel made a ship a day during WWII, made cannons and shells, made the steel that built the Golden Gate Bridge, provide steel for rails and locomotives, and built much of America. It faltered and then folded in the 1990s. The equipment was shut down and the people that knew how to use it were sent away. This photo essay, one of several I found online, tells the story.


Part of the land is now a casino. Nothing is made there, but at least it brings in some money. The furnaces stand like pyramids, monuments to another time.

Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
--Yip Harburg

Koan

A koan is a question, given to a student of Zen, to serve as a focus for meditation. Koans do not lend themselves to logical thought, some of them seem completely nonsensical. The most commonly known koans are "What is the sound of one hand clapping?", and "Show me your true face, the face you had before your father was born."

Chasing links today from Aikido Journal, I found this post and in the comments was this question,
"We die for our beliefs, but that need not be the end of us. Do you see how?"

I do not have an reply to this koan, and if I did, it would not be "the answer", as such a question has no one answer. I spent some time reflecting on it, and was reminded of this scene from one of my favorite movies.

At birth we come, at death we go...bearing nothing.
--Chinese proverb

On A Cold Day

Sometimes it's nice to curl up and sleep in the sun.
Whatever is happening out there in the world, it will wait until tomorrow. Not doing anything beyond feeding the wood stove and catching up on some reading.

To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world. --Charles Dudley Warner

Marooned Clarifies The Issue

There been a lot of discussion about TJIC and his comments. Marooned has a post up in reply. Here's the money quote for me.

We stand for liberty, or we do not. We support all speech as free from government retribution, or we support no freedom of speech. The Second Amendment is under fire in the wake of the tragedy in Tucson - and now, as evidenced by the actions taken against TJIC, so is the First Amendment. We don't have to like what TJIC said - in fact, we can loathe it with every fiber of our being - but we need to recognize that the government punishing a citizen for speaking their mind is dead-set against everything this country stands for. Distasteful does not equal illegal. One does not need to agree with the speech involved to support the freedom of the speaker to say it.

I still stand with TJIC.

--Marooned, 1/22/2011

The Way It Was

Ford's manufacturing at the height of American industrial might. Back when we believed we could do anything.

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.
--Henry Ford

Safety Rules -- Not So Much

Newton will not be mocked. Those bullets land somewhere.

In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself - nature does it for you.
--Frank Wilczek

All Those Normal Mags You Own?

If the proposed McCarthy legislation passes, the normal sized mags you own will be deemed illegal. No grandfathering. Snowflakes in Hell has it covered. Go. Read.

Arms are the only true badge of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave.
--Andrew Fletcher, 1698

Taking It Apart

We're not building industries anymore. We're shutting them down and auctioning them off. We sell the pieces to the highest bidder, and sometimes a manufacturer someplace else in the world decides that a 50 or 60 year old stamping press that weighs in at 1,000,000 lbs, give or take, still has life in it.



Here's a book excerpt, from Punching Out: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant. It tells the story of the riggers that come in and pick apart the factories to ship them overseas. When these men are gone, there won't be anyone that knows how to even take the things apart and the last factories to close will sit like mausoleums until they finally just rust away.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
--Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias"

A Slice of America

Wonder Bread was everywhere when I was a kid.


One of the places it was made was in a bakery in Queens. Not any more. Citing the cost of needed upgrades, Hostess is closing the factory and idling 200 workers.

Advertising is the 'wonder' in Wonder Bread.
--Jef I. Richards

If You Read Gun Blogs

Or write a gun blog, or a conservative blog, this is chilling. It makes you think about what you might have written two years ago, or left as a snarky comment back in the days of Kim Du Toit. You can't go read Travis Corcoran's blog Dispatches from TJICistan. It's gone. So I recommend you look at Borepatch's comments and think about where you stand on free speech and the right to bear arms.

Now, I would say that having to get a license from the state to possess a gun makes it a privilege, not a right, and that the citizens ,err, subjects of that Commonwealth had already given up the 2nd Amendment, and so as surely as water runs downhill, the time has come for them to give up the 1st. But here, for my friend Borepatch, seems to be the place he has decided to stand. So I'll stand with him.

You don't have free speech when it's only the speech that makes people comfortable. Dr. Martin Luther King said many things that made people uncomfortable, and we just celebrated a national holiday in his honor. Patrick Henry made a speech I remember from school, although I bet it doesn't get taught much anymore, it would make people very uncomfortable. You don't have to like Mr. Corcoran's writing, you don't have to agree with him, or me, or anyone in particular. You just have to understand that your right to do and say things you think in a free and open way is inextricably tied to everyone else's right to do the same.

The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.
--David Ben-Gurion

The Chinese State Visit

The Chinese state visit as interpreted by the Taiwanese.

For years, reality has been nipping at the heels of satire. Now, it's finally caught up. I don't need to make this stuff up.
--Paul Krassner

The War on Drugs Is Over

The War on Drugs has really been a war on the 4th and 6th Amendment anyway. A precursor to the current War on Terror. Now we have forfeiture of property without convictions, no knock warrants, urine testing, street gangs that can afford to be well armed due to the profits of the trade, robbery and burglary to pay for the product, and hundreds of thousand of people arrested every year for pot alone. But this cinches it.

This is proof that the War on Drugs has jumped the shark. If Pat Robertson want to legalize marijuana, it's over.

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging than the drug itself.
-- Jimmy Carter

Angry Rhetoric

From Hope n' Change. There's a commentary about protecting the right to free speech, even speech that others find offensive or threatening, in here somewhere.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Obvious Lesson

I posted about a lynching yesterday, and have been thinking about other events involving minority populations in recent memory, and there is an obvious lesson.

In the American South after the Civil War, laws were written to ensure that it was much more difficult for blacks to own firearms. When I went searching for a reference, I found this research paper at GunCite. Never intended to be applied to whites, the Black Codes made it difficult or impossible for freed slaves to own or carry arms.

Laws written to criminalize the ownership of weapons by blacks only served the powerful. Whatever wrongs and atrocities occurred, they all followed after the first action of ensuring that the natural right of self-defense was denied to the people that were being oppressed.

No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
--Thomas Jefferson

_______________________
UPDATE
In the comments, Greybeard points to the Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership site and a video called "No Guns for Negros".
Part 1

Part 2

Out To The Range

I went out to the range yesterday. I was planning to meet a couple of friends, sight in a Garand for an upcoming match, maybe put a few rounds through a pistol. The one thing I wanted to have with me that I forgot was my camera.

The place was crowded. Members with guests, folks I haven't seen in months, old friends. There were all sorts of rifles and handguns in use and being shared.

The highlight of my day was getting to shoot an FN Special Police Rifle. Chambered in .308, it is truly a one hole gun with good ammo. Not that I put them all in one hole, but I watched it done through a spotting scope.

Only accurate rifles are interesting
--Townsend Whelen

God, Guns, and Grits

One of the blogs I read for gun nut stuff is God, Guns and Grits. He likes Sigs, but that's diversity. Anyway, he's been in my favorites, just not on the blogroll due to my oversight. I went to see if he had posted and found out he was in the hospital.

Here's his profile:

Internet Photojournalist John W. Myers is a North Carolina native farm boy, U.S. Navy Vietnam War veteran, Sunday School teacher, avid Bible student, long-time member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy even before Hillary noticed it, NRA-certified pistol instructor, lifetime member of "Sharpshooters 'R' Us" and he loves grits.

Here's the news he had to report:

Doctor arrives shortly with more questions then orders a lung xray and a head CT. After tests, returned to ER and wait for a while. Doctor returns to report tests reveal a mass in my right lung and "spots" on my brain.

And here is the request he made in his recent post:

Your prayers are all coveted, this is not the end, just another step in the eternal journey toward Home.
--John Myers; God, Guns and Grits

What Are We Celebrating?

Perhaps most of us are too young to remember how the country was before the Civil Rights movement. I only wish to offer one example of how much things have changed.

On June 14, 1920, a 19 year old white woman, Irene Tusken, claimed that she had been raped by a group of black circus workers. The local police collected about 150 black circus personnel and asked the woman and her boyfriend to identify the attackers. They picked out 6 men who were arrested.

Rumors grew in absence of facts, including one that said Irene had died as a result of the attack. A mob collected outside the jail. The police were ordered not to fire and the mob eventually entered the jail and took three of the men, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, to a main intersection in town where they were hung from a lamppost.

It took the National Guard to secure the rest of the accused men, both the ones remaining in the jail and some others from the circus. In the aftermath, when they were finally tried, only one was convicted of the rape, and medical testimony given makes it unlikely that any assault took place.

The town closed ranks around the men involved in the lynching, although some men were convicted of rioting and several were indicted for the murders, no one was ever convicted of the lynching of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie. They even sold postcards of the event (warning: this is a graphic image) for 50 cents apiece.

Where did all this happen? In Duluth, Minnesota. The mob was at least 5,000 people. They hanged the men in the center of the downtown, at the same site where a memorial now stands.

One story. Part of the history of the country that I love, that I believe is the last best place on the planet. Things are not perfect. Things are better. That's perhaps as much as we have to celebrate today.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Something New

A scandium frame Smith experiences a kaboom. No one hurt. Factory ammo. Click the link for the full report.

The thing I just found out is that S&W had made a scandium framed revolver in .45ACP. It was apparently just a short run made one year.

Doing some looking around, I think that scandium as gun frame material is not fully ready for prime time, although a .45ACP revolver that only weighs 23 oz. is interesting.

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.
--Alice Kahn

Between Two Rivers

Between Two Rivers is sending me traffic, and I went to look at his site. I looked at a few good posts, but I am adding him to the blogroll without question because of the awesomeness of the quotes he has selected for his sidebar. Here's one.

After America, there is no place to run.
-– Kitty Werthmann

No, It's, Um, Like, Original

Nothing like anything I've ever seen, especially not over at Borepatch. See, it's a different color and everything.

Full disclosure: I made this entirely by myself, without any help from Al Gore's Intarwebz ...
--Bore Patch

Ever Buy a Gun?

Rob Doar points out that Jared Loughner did not legally buy the Glock he used in the Tucson shooting. He was a felon at the moment he signed the form. Don't lie to me and tell me he legally acquired the weapon. He did not.
H/T to The Smallest Minority and Papa Todd

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
--Albert Camus

At The Logical End of Things

They only have one goal. There is no tragedy that they will not exploit. All at once or incrementally, at the logical end of things, they want the citizens of the United States to be disarmed.

Disarm the people. That is the best and most effective way to enslave them.
-- James Madison

Logical Conclusion

I had a conversation with a coworker a while back that explored the idea that the 2nd Amendment referred to single shot flintlock weapons. Weapons like the ones available to the people at the time the Constitution was written. His point of view was that, since he only wanted reasonable restrictions, as a citizen, I should only be allowed to own single shot rifles, pistols and shotguns. They could be modern designs, use a cartridge and all that, but only load one round at a time, since that was all that the Founders could possibly have meant.

Ignoring the question of cannons and sabers, buckets of boiling oil, tomahawks and spears, I decided to see if he meant what he was saying. I asked him if he really thought it would be acceptable for me to "keep and bear" a single shot pistol. He said yes. Interesting, I said, and you support a movement that would allow a citizen, in every state to keep and bear such a weapon? Yes, he agreed.

Great, I said. I accept. Everywhere, all the time, airplanes, courthouses, Washington, D.C., bars, schools. I'm willing to be limited to a one shot pistols, as the Founders were, as long you make no law infringing on my right to keep and bear arms.

Sadly, no, he didn't really mean it. At the logical conclusion of his thinking process, he decided that even a single shot pistol was too dangerous to allow citizens to carry without infringements.

I go further and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government.
--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, Number 84

Channeling George Washington

Over at HuffPo there is a revival of the old idea that the Founders didn't mean it when they all agreed that our right to keep and bear arms should not be infringed. Because they didn't have autoloading pistols, or high normal capacity magazines, or the shoulder thing that goes up, or any of the other things that modern firearms have, and they should be banned, banned, banned.

There is fail, epic fail, and OMG LOOK AT THAT!!! ELEVENTY ONE11!!! FAIL. The time has come to stand up and say so. When these failed ideas float past, do not let them go unchallenged.

A plain reading of the 2nd Amendment, and the natural right of self-defense that underlies it makes one thing very clear. If someone had offered George Washington a Glock and some magazines, he would have taken it. He would have used it. George Washington was selected to serve at the head of a rag tag militia in rebellion to the established authority of the day. He and his "army" damn near lost. If they had lost, he would have been hung, and we would live in South Canada.

He'd have taken as many Glocks, magazines, and wagons of ammo as were being offered. Same with M-16s and 30 round magazines. He would have distributed them and put them to use. If he had been offered air strikes with high explosives and napalm, once he understood what that meant, he'd have taken that, too.

The Bill of Rights was written by a group of men who had risked their lives, their families, and their property to gain a measure of freedom, and they were not in any way interested in having it limited by a new government. The weapons of the day were all they had, if better had existed, they would have been carrying them. Anything else is a lie.

Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and the keystone under independence. The rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that is good.
--George Washington

Metaphors and Fear

Here's something from my own archives. I thought I hit the bulls-eye when I wrote it, but with new concerns being voiced about the use of gun related metaphors I wanted to reconsider. I quote myself, with edits for today's news:

It's a violent reference to guns!!11EVEVENTY1!! Let's go ballistic!

What I am about to do here is like shooting fish in a barrel. I think they is going off half-cocked on this one. Hopefully it will be just a flash in pan and they won't keep Sarah under the gun. I think they would get more bang for their buck focusing on criminal behavior. That would be their best shot at making a difference. When they dropped the hammer on Sarah and the Tea Party, I don't think they were on target. They looked like an easy mark, I'm sure, and I hate to be the one to drop a bombshell on them, but the reality is our language is loaded with gun related metaphors.

I'm just trying to be a straight shooter and when I looked at her website I did not see anything that resembled a smoking gun. I think the MSM has swallowed the anti-gun agenda lock, stock, and barrel. They should have kept their powder dry until something more important was in their crosshairs.

I hadn't even got into all the military and naval references,let alone boxing, football, and the like that are part of our language. But I guess we can just keep punching until we deep six the idea of sanitizing our language out of fear.

We know the battle ahead will be long.
--Barack Hussain Obama

A Random Act of Patriotism

Because she's right, it's time. Get involved, be one of the 12.

We can't all be Washingtons, but we can all be patriots.
--Charles F. Browne

A Link For All Reloaders

I know the name of the site is Cast Boolits, but it is a comprehensive forum that includes sections on reloading equipment, reloading, gunsmithing, as well as every aspect of bullet casting. Got a question? Here's a forum with members that having been doing this for decades. Just want to spend some time reading about presses? There's a sub-forum dedicated to it, and the information is from people that really use the equipment.

Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise. View life as a continuous learning experience.
--Denis Waitley

Bottleneck Cases, Headspace, and Pressure

Here is a great article on bottleneck cases, what happens in the chamber of a rifle, why cases stretch, things that effect pressure during firing and more. Just a primer on the subject, of course, but enough information to get you thinking about reading more. It's from Hornady, so they have some experience with the subject matter.

If you're reloading, more information is always good, and learning should be an ongoing process. Just about the time you think you have something figured out, Murphy will show up. Understanding and avoiding the things that cause chamber pressure to spike up out of the range your rifle and case are designed for is as important to a reloader as Col. Cooper's Rules.

If new to the art and practice of reloading, use only moderate loads until you gain experience with the cartridge, your firearm, and your loading equipment.
--From Speer's Load Data Rules

The Price of Your Time, Part VII

I am going to give those of you that have been following the reloading posts a link to an article to read. It's an article by Ken Miller, detailing the process he went through when he wanted a new rifle to compete in NRA High Power long range competitions. It covers the process of selecting the cartridge, having the rifle built, and most importantly to our discussion, developing a load to shoot in the rifle.

He talks about bullets, case selection, case prep, powders, troubleshooting, all with nice pictures of a rifle I could only dream about. He spent four months doing research before he decided on the cartridge he wanted to use. It's a concise case study of the sorts of things you learn about as a handloader.

This whole experience has enabled me to learn a great deal from a lot of fine rifle shooters who are also very experienced and skilled reloaders. I guess that's what makes High Power such an addictive hobby and sport.
--Ken Miller

The Ed Show

You're going to have to put up with a lot of bombast to get to it, but the end will be worth it. Near the end there is an interview with one of the men that stopped the shooter in Arizona and he absolutely nails it. The only reason to listen to all of it is to get the flavor of the interview before Joe Zamudio gets to speak.

You can make as many laws as you want, people who want guns are going to get them.
--Joe Zamudio

Four Minutes

When Jared Lee Loughner pulled out his gun and started shooting, people in the area pulled out their own weapons and shot him before he could kill six people cell phones and called 911. Four minutes later the first police arrived on the scene. In the meantime, unarmed citizens had taken the shooter down while he was changing magazines.

Deputy Jason Ogan gave the following account. Patricia Maisch was at the event, in the rear of the line, waiting to take a photograph with Rep. Giffords when the suspect began shooting. When the suspect tried to load a fresh magazine into his weapon, Maisch was able to grab the bottom of the magazine and prevent it from being inserted. This pause in shooting allowed for two men, Roger Salzgeber and Bill D. Badger, to tackle the suspect to the ground and restrain him until deputies arrived. An additional male, Joseph Zamudio, also assisted in restraining the suspect's legs.

I am not saying anything negative about the response time. Police cannot teleport, they still have to drive to get to a location. Four minutes is a very fast response. It's just a very long time while someone is shooting at you. The lesson here is that bad things can and do happen in broad daylight and that you are on your own.

Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self-defense.
--John Adams

The Tone of the Rhetoric

In spite of the hate still being directed at Pr. G. Bush, the Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin, and conservatives in general, I don't think the Arizona shooter was influenced by anything other than his own insanity. If the left wing kool-ade drinkers want to keep on spreading hate, I think the 1st Amendment protects their right to do so. MSNBC, the Huffington Post, and Keith Olbermann can not be held responsible for the actions of others, no matter how reprehensible their rhetoric is.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
--The 1st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States

Before I Move On

I did not even scratch the surface of reloading. All I hoped to do was point in a direction and if you were interested enough to look, maybe you would investigate further. I want to close that series of posts with a cautionary tale, told by a reloader about his experiences with a fast burning pistol powder and what almost certainly was a double charge. He first posted this in January 2005, but I'll bet he thinks about it every time he sits down at his reloading bench.

That is until you realize a few things. 9.0gr in a .44 magnum case is, more or less, a drop in a bucket. In subsequent tests I've recently performed, it's all too possible to double charge a round and have it go unnoticed in a progressive loader.
--From the linked post by an anonymous reloader

Like Winter Follows Autumn

Here it comes.

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
--James Madison

The Price of Your Time, Part VI

Casting bullets. Or boolits, if it pleases ya'. Because once you have a progressive set and running smoothly, you're going to notice that most of the cost of reloading is bullets. And you got into this to save money, remember?

Now this is a whole new level, involving hot lead, safety equipment, moulds, lubricators, and more. Click that link, it's what you want to know, in detail, with pictures.

There are good books on this, and a great forum called Cast Boolits. Start in the FAQ and stickies. Focus on the safety warnings.

When you are successful casting bullets and using them to make ammo, you have gone just about as far into manufacturing your own ammo as possible. If you can find sources of free or very cheap lead, be it old wheel weights or the keel of an old sailboat, and make your own bullets, you can make 100 rounds of .45ACP for five dollars.

Just don't put a price on your time.

A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.
--Louis Nizer

The Price of Your Time, Part V

The Ultimate Reloader is a site for someone considering their choices in progressive presses. Check out some of the posts on the sidebar, look at the top tabs for more info on the various offerings from Lee, Dillon, Hornaday, RCBS, and Redding.

Here's a video detailing reloading of .357Magnum on a Redding press.
There's lots of videos on the site, I picked this one because it breaks the process down and uses a press that allows each step to be clearly seen on camera.

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution.
--William A. Foster

The Price of Your Time, Part IV

Now that you can do all steps necessary to successfully make safe, reliable ammo on a single stage press, it is time to stop and reassess. Because the road forks here, once, and then again.

You might look at the time and effort you have invested and decide that reloading is a time consuming chore and not for you. Plenty of people decide this, and I understand. Just look at the equipment for sale on E-Bay. I assure you not all of it is up for sale because the owner upgraded. Most of them decided the price of their time is more than the value they got out of reloading.

You might also decide that reloading is a hobby in it's own right. You don't consider the time, because it is something you enjoy. You want to learn more, get a subscription to Handloader Magazine, begin to read old books, consider buying a new rifle that shoots an interesting cartridge just so you can work up a load to try in it. You have carefully labeled boxes of test loads waiting for your next range day.

A third path is deciding that settling in on one or two particular loads and making it in bulk is what you were interested in all along. Now you want a progressive press and all the attachments, you want to automate the process as much as possible and make up the ammo you are using in competition, maximizing your efficiency to manage your time. Now you have an idea of what your equipment costs are, what you are spending on components, and you know how many rounds you need to load to break even, and what you are saving on every box of ammo you make. You can put a dollar value on the hours you spend reloading and have decided it is worthwhile.

One question to ask yourself is this, "If the cost of ammo did not matter to me, would I still be reloading?" The answer to that helped me understand what I doing with my time. Either way, if you are really into working up interesting loads, or really into maximizing your savings, sooner or later, the idea of making your own cast bullets will come up. We can talk about that next.

Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't
own it, but you can use it. You can't keep
it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it
you can never get it back.
--Harvey MacKay

The Price of Your Time, Part III

To recap how we got here, we have learned enough about how to load to safely make our first rifle rounds. We have bought equipment and components. We have cleared out a space in shop or garage and mounted the press to a table and set out everything else in an organized fashion. We have read and reread the manual. And as a result of spending somewhere in neighborhood of $450-500 and dozens of hours, we have 25 rounds of ammo.

On some free day, take that ammo out to the range. Set up targets at 100 yards. Set up a scope, get out a notebook. Write down everything you know about your ammo. What sort of brass, the type and amount of powder, the bullet vendor and weight, the overall length, the primer brand. Write down the rifle you are using, the temperature, the wind, sunny or cloudy.

Fire a test group with factory ammo that you like. Record your target, where the hits are, group size, etc.

Now, do the same with your handloads, in groups of 5, starting with the lowest powder charge. Let the rifle cool between shots. Take your time. Look at each piece of brass, examine the fired cases for signs of pressure. Borrow or buy a chronograph, you should be using it. Muzzle velocity extrapolates back to pressure, and if you are exceeding the velocity that your manual predicts for that cartridge, that would be reason to stop and regroup. This is another thing you need to read more about and understand.

Look at the shot groups. We are looking for a load that returns a good group. If everything is safe, and none of the groups you made stand out as tighter than the others, and velocity is clearly safe, you can collect your brass, retire to your reloading bench and make some more ammo. Cautiously moving up the range recommended as a safe load, starting .2gr above where you left off, make groups of 5 again until you have 25 more. Do not approach the upper powder limits of the cartridge, it's unnecessary and dangerous.

Repeat your range visit. When you find the right load, it will be clear. The group will be noticeably tighter than the others. Now you have the start of your first pet load. You have good notes. You are learning something that only a few people, even shooters, ever learn. Now you can repeat this with a couple of different powders, different bullets, different seating depths for the bullets, and so on. With good notes, you will be gathering the information necessary to find the right load for your gun. When you develop one you are very satisfied with, you can set up production and make up enough to shoot matches, go hunting, or target shoot with.

You will also know exactly how fast your bullets are traveling, allowing you to invest in some ballistic table software and begin to understand sighting distances, bullet drop, ballistic coefficients, energy levels, the effects of supersonic flight on accuracy, and so on.

You should note that I am talking about shooting more, building a fair amount of test ammo, using your new press and associated equipment, and spending money of components for testing. No where in any of this have I mentioned saving money. And we are still only talking about one rifle and the load you are working on for it. How many rifles and calibers are you going to load for?

Next time we will talk about making some pistol ammo, and how, maybe, after a while, there is some cost savings.

Old men are always advising young men to save money. That is bad advice. Don't save every nickel. Invest in yourself.
--Henry Ford

Before We Proceed

A side observation about firearms, physics, and trust.

Say you go buy a new rifle, any brand you like, Remington, Winchester, Savage, whatever, in any caliber that suits you. Then you grab a couple of boxes of ammo off the shelf and head out to the range to sight in your new acquisition.

You are going to put your face and eyes right down by a metal container, just nestle right in there alongside, and deliberately set off an explosion inside that container that will peak between 40 and 60 thousand pounds per square inch. In most cases you will be doing this as a hobby activity, just to try to put a hole in a piece of paper a couple of hundred yards away.

Your trust in both gun and ammunition is as absolute as anything you trust in this world. You prove it every time you pull the trigger.

Just a reminder as we talk about reloading.

Trust, but verify.
--Ronald Reagan

The Price of Your Time, Part II

You can learn how to reload from a book. You can fill some gaps with research on the internet. You can buy everything you need from a catalog. It's possible. It's just exponentially harder.

Find a mentor.

Ask at your local gun store or at your range. Call the guys you know that reload. Before you buy anything, you want an afternoon session where you learn to load from start to finish. Ask a lot of questions, talk about equipment, take notes. Write down as much as you can.

Then buy a starter kit with a single stage press. It won't do everything, but it will do what you need to get started. Buy the dies and shellholder for one caliber. Start with your favorite rifle caliber. Pick a good midrange powder and buy a pound. Get enough cases primers and bullets to make a hundred rounds. Get a set of dial calipers. There are starter kits from most of the companies that make presses, they want people to get started, and I am sure that all of them work well. I bought an RCBS Rockchucker kit like this one and have been very happy with it. I still use it for all my rifle reloading.

Follow the book and instructions meticulously. Learn to prep and size your brass. Compare it to the specs in your reloading manual. Compare it to the ammo you've been buying. Use the calipers. Make up a few dummy cases with no primers and powder and see that they will feed through your rifle's action.

Read these warning and safety tips.

Go back and read them again. Print them out.

When everything else is set up, prime some cases. make up five loaded rounds, starting at or very near the minimums in your reloading manual. Increment up your powder measure 2 tenths of a grain and make five more. Do that 4 times, and then stop. You have 25 rounds you made yourself. Keep the groups separated and marked. You will want to shoot each group and be able to consider the results. All your ammo should be far from the upper limits recommended in your manual, and you should be absolutely confident that each one has powder in it, and that it is a safe amount, of the correct type, for the cartridge and bullet you are working with. If so, you're ready to fire your first handloads. We can talk about that next time.

Reloading centerfire ammunition ranks far below children's toys as a source of accidental injury. Overall, it's a remarkably safe pastime, especially considering the volatile nature of some of the components being handled. The potential for accidents is inherent in the man and not in the hobby, equipment, or materials. By the same token, you are your own margin of safety - and mine, if I happen to be shooting on the next bench at the rifle range. And, since I happen to value both readers and my scalp very dearly, I trust you'll heed these safety rules. See you at the range.
--John Wooters

The Price of Your Time, Part 1

So, you like shooting, do ya'? You just bought that wonder gun and you're getting into competitive shooting, going to the range to practice regularly, maybe trying to make a match a month. Right after you bought the gun you ordered a 1000 round bulk pack from your favorite online vendor and it seems to be melting away like a snowman on a warm sunny morning.




You had saved for almost a year to get the gun and that crate of ammo, and while buying more isn't impossible, the idea that you will be doing this every couple of months is making you consider getting a .22 revolver. This is not necessarily a bad idea, plenty of people decide to go this way, but you keep hearing about reloading with cast bullets.

Reloading and bullet casting. It is a number of different things.

1. It can be a way to save a lot of money.
2. It can be a way to create ammo that is more accurate than anything but the finest match ammo you can buy
3. It can be a way to learn a lot about about firearms and ammunition, mostly by making mistakes.
4. It is a way to spend a lot of time.
5. It is a way to spend more money on a bunch of specialized equipment and components that you have to use to break even on.

It was hard to get started. I didn't know what to buy, how to use it, if I could do it safely, or if it was even something I wanted to do. I was finally pushed by one friend and taught by another. I learned how using someone else's equipment before I bought anything. This isn't one post, or even a series of posts, it's a book. In fact, it's several books and better, more experienced reloaders than me have already written them. Still, since everyone likes things for free and I am always looking for blogfodder, I'll write about it.

Here's my introductory observation about reloading.

Those are real values for powder and primers. I'm using cast bullets I make myself and used brass that I tumble. There are some incremental costs for bullet lube, propane, and electricity. Even if that added up to another dollar a hundred, for $50.00 a thousand I am making good quality reliable ammo. I can afford to practice and compete at that price. Everything else that follows circles back to that.

By sowing frugality we reap liberty, a golden harvest.
--Agesilaus

Practical 1911s

Having posted a picture of the Unobtanium Colt a couple of days ago, I wanted to follow up with a picture of a 1911 I would actually consider buying. I found that harder than I thought, as it is not any particular company or model, but more of a general direction and a set of features I would want it to have.

Robert, over at My Tumultuous Adventure has a picture of the new offering from Springfield. Not a bad choice at the lower end of the price range. I have seen others pointing to Les Baer or Dan Wesson, Kimber, Para, etc.

Here's my hard learned lessons. First, figure out what features you want on your 1911 and buy it with those things already installed. So, if it's a beavertail safety and a magwell, checkering, target sights, and a full length guide rod, only look at models that have those things built in.

Second, plan on having it looked at by a trained gunsmith. It may only require a trigger job, but get it done right and make sure it will reliably feed whatever ammo you plan to shoot.

Third, buy good magazines. I like the Wilson Combat 8 rounders, but whatever you use, there's no point in creating a problem where one doesn't exist.

Fourth, there is no free lunch. Yes, 1911s should cost about $200. Gas should cost fifty cents a gallon, I should be paid to write this blog, and politicians should be honest, but none of that is happening either, so understand that a 1911 is going to cost you. Plan on spending between $800 and $2000 and you will be able to get a 1911 you will not regret.

Fifth, do your research. Go shooting with friends, try some different models, read the forums, know what you want before you buy.

Sixth, .45ACP costs somewhere around $40 a hundred for practice ammo, in bulk. If you shoot it regularly, you will spend more than the cost of the gun on ammo in the first year. If you start shooting it competitively, the initial investment in the gun will be insignificant in comparison to feeding it.

Of course, I didn't do any of these things, I bought what I thought I could afford, and had it worked on until I spent as much as I should have spent initially. It's okay, though, I like my gunsmith and he needed the money. If I was going to buy another one, and had the cash, this is one I would seriously consider. It's not the most expensive, or a custom gun from one of the big names, but it comes with all the features I know I would want at a price that is not completely out of the question.

Every decision you make is a mistake.
--Edward Dahlberg

Change That Brings Hope

Keep hope alive!
--Jesse Jackson

Colt's 1911 Anniversary Model

It is number 1 of 1. Current bidding is over $82,000.00.



If it helps, you get a tour of the Colt factory, a bunch of Colt logo merchandise, and the fancy display case to go with it.

A museum is not first-hand contact, it is an illustrated lecture. And what one wants is the actual vital touch.
--D.H. Lawrence

I Want To Get On The Bandwagon

Every gun magazine will lead with an cover article, all the manufacturers will come out with commemorative guns, the gun forums are buying extra servers just to store the megathreads of love/hate posts that will be generated in the next 12 months.

It's 2011, the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Army adopting John Moses Browning's auto loading pistol as the service sidearm. It's an amazing run, really. It was originally outfitted with lanyard loops on both gun and magazine. The training manuals had a chapter on shooting from horseback. That it is anything more than a museum curiosity is a testament to the design. Even if you don't like the 1911, think it outdated, heavy, slow, or dangerous, it influences every autoloading pistol design that follows.

So put me down on the fanboy list. When I bought my first handgun, it was a 1911. I shoot a 1911 in USPSA single-stack, and just writing this post makes me want to go looking... must resist...must resist...

Anytime I shoot any other handgun I am reminded how much I like my 1911s.
--FTG2Voge, writing on 1911forums.com

I Have Found a Resolution for 2011

There could have been a long list, but Breda distilled it for me.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
--Seneca

The Future

Looking forward to what the future might be seem pointless, but it is not. It is a source of future humor for people to look back on. Paleo-Future is a site that mines that treasure trove of material. Go and take a look back at people looking forward.

You can scroll through like a blog, or see all the predictions from a particular decade. I like the ones from the 1960s. They are so filled with futuristic science and a jolly sense that we are going to solve all the problems with technology.

One of the coolest things was cars. There were going to 200 mph and look like this.


If those poor people could see the Vega and the Volt.

I want to close, though, with a prediction from the Associated Press, in an article titled, "How Experts Think We'll Live in 2000 A.D."

How will this land of ours be governed in 50 years?

Much as today, perhaps – with two parties contending against each other and within themselves, with the people free to choose between them, with the winner pressured from all sides yet curbed and guided by a constitution little changed since George Washington’s day.

And yet it is easy to scare ourselves with other possibilities.

Some see us drifting toward the all-powerful state, lulled by the sweet sound of “security.” Some see a need to curb our freedom lest it be used to shield those who plot against us. And some fear our freedom will be hard to save if a general war should come.

What then?

A military dictatorship to restore the nation’s body, if not its soul from the ravages of atomic attack? Some sort of Fascism? Or, in the name of Socialism, some mild or strong control of what we do; directive here, big red “Thou-Shall-Not’s” there?

Some fear the worst. And yet:

We’ve feared the worst, while hoping for the best, ever since we have been a nation. We’ve come through wars and depression. And we’ve come through – free.

Today, almost alone among men, we have the strength – as we may need to prove – to hold the course we choose.
--Published in The Robesonian (Lumberton, NC), December 27, 1950