What, 2010 already?

I'm baaaaaaaackkkkkkk! Didja miss me?

Since that last post in July the world has turned almost upside down. In Haiti it DID turn upside down. But I've been holding back from posting anything because I was busy with new dogs and having surgery on my knee and KC3 and work and you name it. Plus, I always get nervous whenever I feel like I'm under pressure to perform. This blog is supposed to be fun, right?

So now we have SEVEN dogs in the pack, with the addition of Josie from the Holly's Place rescue, and of Teetee who was rescued from her life on a chain out in the boonies. Both of these lovely girls weigh 100 pounds and are as gentle as the day is long, and you'll see more of them here.

Aside from that, I've lost 20 pounds from a combination of deliberate dieting and of lack of appetite from pain pills after surgery. They used to call it "the heroin diet" when celebrities and supermodels became ghastly gaunt from their drug habits. Nothing so very interesting here - you take pain pills, you don't eat. Simple. But now the knee is moving wonderfully well and the pain is much less, thank you. Got to keep that weight loss going, though, toward a goal of 40 pounds down.

The Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed (KC3) is moving to introduce a bill in the legislature that will extend the right to carry to college campuses, where they can at present ban it in defiance of common sense and logic. If you follow our blog then you'll be able to see how we're doing with that.

There's lots more, of course, including thoughts on the political process as it's being played out here in the US, but no time to write about it now. Just wanted to say 'hi!' and tell you that we're still here and getting ready to get back into it once more.

Sinking to the lowest common denominator

What bothers me about all this business with the black Harvard professor, and about the race situation in the US in general, is that many of what SHOULD be the better, more educated elements of the black community have decided that their 'identity' is defined by adopting the habits and demeanor of the lowest elements of black society.
I recall the elegance and grace of men like Duke Ellington, and compare that with Al Sharpton. There is no comparison.
While most whites of my acquaintance would be intensely embarrassed to be represented by the redneck jerks in our racial demographic, and most of them wouldn't adopt their mannerisms other than to growl 'git-r-done' or some other comic slogan, the black community has decided in their leap to the left that the worst of them have to be embraced in toto, as a statement of solidarity against "the man".
So while black America was once represented in the public mind by some amazing people, people with style and manners and quality, now they're content to let Ice Cube or Snoop Dog be their public face. I grant you that standards have slipped a lot across the board, and whites are too content to let Britney Spears be the face of white America, but not to the degree that black America seems to have fallen.
For a college professor to sink to a phrase like "yo mama" in dealing with a police officer, aping the style and words of a ghetto thug, is proof that they really do need to 're-calibrate' their thinking. He could have and should have tried to impress the officer with erudite phrasing and quality of behavior, but he was conditioned to act like a moron by his own doctrine of resentment.
I was raised to be embarrassed by such conduct. There was a time when black America was as well, but it's slipping away with the rise of the race pimps and the entitlement generation.

Where's Bloggo?

When even the bloodhounds can't find him, you know it's serious!

So what's going on? Well, I'm working a lot in the hospital and staying busy with that. I've been corresponding on the Gunsite alumni email list with the amazingly well-informed folks in that group, and have been spending a lot of time with the dog pack at home. I've even been putting in some time for the Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed, the personal rights group I helped to found back in 1995, the outfit that got concealed carry passed into law here in Kentucky in 1996.
This is also the season that I make a kind of attempt at doing a little gardening, and with the usual maintenance chores that go into keeping up a house that dates back to about 1850 it's enough to keep me busy.
But I also have been spending a lot of time just watching things happen. I keep up with the news and try to spend a good bit of time online, running down current events.
With the Obamanation working overtime to run this nation into the ground and impoverish us while reducing us all to the same level of misery in the time-tested socialist fashion, there's a lot for me to follow.
I didn't start this blog to spew out my own take on every damn thing that happens in the world, and I'm not compelled to write each and every day. For those of you who enjoy the work of really good writers, see the links at the left of the page to Frank James blog "Corn, Beans, Spent Brass, etc.", and to Brigid's "Home on the Range". Both of them can write. Both of them LIKE to write!
I write when I see something I really want to talk about, even if it's only a blurb, or to point to a photo that I like. Unlike some who inhabit the blogosphere, I'm not compelled to natter on about every minor item that crosses my mind. For one thing, I'm still a pretty private person. There are things that routinely end up on some blogs that you will NEVER see on this page. I might share some thoughts and opinions with close friends, but this blog is not a confessional.
I spend a lot of time just thinking about things, and absorbing information. I read voraciously about subjects that interest me, just for the joy of reading and learning and seeing what's out there. I have no illusions that I'm some kind of genius who will lead you to the light about every damn topic that crops up. Ain't gonna happen, and I'll be the first to tell you that.
I started this blog to be part of the 2nd Amendment Bloggers Bash at the NRA convention in Louisville in 2008, and to have fun with writing about guns and dogs and people. I did NOT start it to make a living at it. I don't have ads on here. While I'd like to test more gear and get more notice for that, it doesn't compel me. I'm taking my own sweet time on the Para LTC test, but it will be a GOOD and complete test when it's done, not something whizzed out for a deadline. I also have a lot of political news to keep up with, and things to do in support of KC3 which occupy my time. There are some here in Kentucky who still haven't gotten the word about our rights and our freedoms, and we have to keep reminding them, keep them off our backs and out of our way.
With all the new Tea Party groups and more being done to take back our rights at the personal and state level, there's always something more and something new to take up my time, things that can't be ignored and that require diligence on the part of every citizen.
I used to draw a lot when I was younger, and a lot of people encouraged me to become a commercial artist. I never gave it serious consideration. One, I knew that I didn't have that special spark that I see in the best work of the best artists, and didn't want to turn out mediocre work.
Two, I was doing if for myself. It was to help me get through a long string of difficult years while I was growing up and I did it for expression and for an outlet for my emotions and my growing pains. I refused to put myself on a deadline, and to have to work to the demands of a third party to do something that I loved and needed to do.
This blog is like that. When it starts to feel like work, when I have to sit down and force myself to post items to it, I balk and withdraw. I read for days, and scan news online, and spend time with the dogs. I will not do this blog as a chore any more than I would sell my art work, or my photographs.
I will continue to post here, and hope to have several items to put up this weekend. Sorry if I've disappointed anyone, and hope that you keep checking back and that you'll find something here that piques your interest and stirs your soul.
Yr obdnt srvnt - Bloggo.

Why do Mini-14s get such a bad rap?

This question was asked on an email list to which I belong -

"Why is it that Ruger Mini-14s that typically group 3 to 5 MOA for the older model and 2 to 4 for the new & improved model are such bad rifles, yet AKs that typically group 3 to 6 MOA, have bad triggers and funky safety levers are good?"

To which I replied -

My own take on it is that we expect that any gun chambered in .223 has to match the benchmark for semi-auto accuracy in that caliber, which is the AR platform.

The AK gets a pass on accuracy because of its reliability and the effectiveness of the 7.62x39mm round both in wounding and in shooting through things. Not a lot of people bother with AKs in .223, and the 5.45x39 AK hasn't been as popular as the .30 version. Even the Russians are switching back to the 7.62x39 in some cases. I'm of the opinion, which I think the majority of gun buyers share, that if I'm going to have to put up with the deficiencies of the AK as a platform then I'm going to choose it in the caliber I prefer for fighting at the distances that I envision using it for fighting, not just plinking.

People assume that you can reach out further with the .223 than you can with the 7.62x39, which is generally true. For longer ranges, the AR is a better platform and the .223 a better round than the AK and its cartridge. Not necessarily more effective when it hits you 'way out past Fort Mudge, mind you, but easier to use to make the hit. It's a varmint shooter mentality, really.

Will most of us ever employ the intrinsic accuracy of the AR and the .223 at really long ranges? No. We keep carbines for engagements under 200 yards, pretty much. But if we are going to shoot a .223 it damn well better be capable of those long shots or we spurn it.

Ergo, if you're going to settle for a .223 it has to be in a gun that has enough inherent accuracy to justify that selection. The Mini-14 doesn't make the grade in that respect. It's not as accurate as the AR, so not as many shooters want it.

That, and Americans have always leaned toward choosing the same guns that the military uses. Shooters idolize M1 Garands and M1As, from whence sprang the Mini-14, so it isn't that they don't like the type or the mechanism. But until the Marines or the Army adopt the Mini-14 it will lack style points, no matter that George Peppard and the A-Team thought it was hot stuff.

Then, of course, there's all that crap about the magazine ban and Bill Ruger, may he rot in hell, etc. but that's another subject and not part of my own decision-making.

What would be wonderful is a gun that has the ergonomics of the AR combined with the reliability of the AK that shoots a bullet that lands with a solid whack. I believe that the FN SCAR Heavy is that rifle, but only time will tell.

And that's what I think about it. But what do I know? I'm just a white boy lost in the blues.

Guns go to church

No one gets shot.

God does not strike them with lightning.

Amazing (but only to a hoplophobe).

200 citizens showed up at the New Bethel church in Louisville, Ky. to celebrate our traditions and history wearing firearms openly on their sides. More info and a photo here.

Blowing holes in the sky

A view from space of a volcano blowing a hole in the clouds as it erupts.

Amazing clarity. See it here.

Pit bull on an innocent cyclist's back

A guy can't even ride his bike without a pit bull jumping on him!

Ghosts!!!

Last night there was a sudden scurry and flurry through the middle of the room that sent the dogs scrambling to their feet in alarm, and then it went under my feet and sent me out of my chair.

It was white and flapping like a sheet in a windstorm and it spooked all of us before running out of the room. I shouted at the dogs because I thought they were chasing a cat or something, and they were looking at me because they knew that they weren't doing it and it had to be some trick that I was pulling!

Then it came roaring back through the room and I could see that it was a plastic grocery bag, sailing along over the floor, crackling like a spinnaker in a hard blow.

I figured it was one of the younger cats playing with it, pushing it ahead of them. But BOY, was it moving! I'd never seen one get going at that speed!

It went back and forth through the downstairs on and off for another couple of hours, and I thought boy, that cat's having a good time with that thing.

Then it came by my feet again and I could see that it was NOT having a good time.

It was Nikita, running like the Devil had her by the tail. She'd gotten her head through the handle of the bag, and it was around her waist and when she ran, it was chasing her, flapping like a drag chute behind a jet and spooking her. The harder she ran, the more it rattled and flapped and the harder she ran, under the bed, through the living room and under the couch and over the dogs, who were leaping up to get away from whatever it was that was trying to eat Nikita.

Then she'd stop, worn out, and just lie there and it was okay - until she started to walk and that bag started trying to eat her again and ZOW! she was off, making the rounds like a steeplechase and the whole joint was in an uproar once more.

Everything settled down later and I figured she'd gotten it off of her. The dogs weren't really amused but they got over it. The other cats just went to high ground and stayed there. I was snickering all night when I thought about it and I could see in my mind that bag running through the room. It was funny to me, anyway.

But Nikita has been looking daggers at me all morning, and she won't even go into the kitchen where the grocery bags are lying on the floor.

What a complete and total IDIOT!!!

I have rarely seen anything as stupid as the photographer is in this video.

He's squatting down, DOWNRANGE, next to a group of targets being fired on by a shooting class. Live fire, live ammo, amateur students - what a recipe for disaster.

I'm a graduate of the Gunsite training center and other firearms training, and I would NEVER countenance this on any range where I was training or conducting training. The potential for disaster is too great.

The person who is teaching this class fancies himself to be a high-speed, low-drag kind of guy. In my trained and experienced opinion, he is a dangerous idiot who does a disservice to his students and to the shooting community at large with this insanity.

We should be ashamed

Last night, while watching the news I couldn't help but notice the contrast between what's happening here in the United States and what's happening in Iran.

In Iran, which is almost a police state and a theocracy, the people are furiously marching in the streets in protest against the recent elections, which they perceive as corrupt. In a nation that barely has a tradition of democratically elected leaders, they're defying the government to speak out. They're risking imprisonment and death to demand that their votes be counted fairly and honestly, and the scoundrels be turned out of office.

By contrast, in the USA, which has for two centuries enjoyed the fruits of a republican form of government, the Obamanation is busily destroying our economy and transforming our political system into something that the Founders would never recognize - and we sit on our collective butts and let him do it. We should be out in the streets every day, just like the Iranians, but doing that might mean that we'd miss the latest editions of our favorite soaps or reality shows.

Sure, many of us are holding Tea Parties, and more people are starting to wake up and speak out and contact their representatives, but if we had half the spirit that the Iranians are showing, we'd already have been camping out in the offices of all of our elected officials, sleeping on their doorsteps and banging on their doors and windows, never letting them rest until they took action to STOP this madness!

The sad part is that, only a few decades ago, we did have that kind of spirit in the USA, and people in other lands looked to this country for inspiration while they took those first baby steps toward a representative form of government.

It's time to stop pissing and moaning about how bad it all is, how someone needs to do something about it. It's time to reach down deep inside and find the spirit that once energized this nation, that made it a beacon to the world and the arsenal of democracy, and to get out into the streets, onto the internet, into the mails and faxes and EVERYWHERE and end this slow awful careening slide into corruption and destruction.

And we, my friends, are the only ones who can do it. It's OUR COUNTRY and we're the ones who must do it. The ghosts of the Founders are hovering about us, waiting for us to rise up and speak out and demand that our elected officials do their proper jobs. Their hands are on our shoulders, urging us to be the men and women who deserve to inherit this great nation, and not some namby-pambys who stand by while it's stolen from us by a pack of unprincipled thieves.

When we see what's happening in the streets of Iran and then turn our eyes to events in Wall Street and Washington, DC we should be ashamed.

Gun store recon

Went to Bud's Gun Shop in Paris, Ky. yesterday to drop off some KC3 newsletters and took a couple of hours to look at everything in the place to see what was available.

I spent some time handling and manipulating one of the Sig 556 Commando carbines. I like the gas-piston system that's in it, but the pistol grip angle is too steep (almost like the original FAL grip), the safety lever is hard to reach if you're gripping the gun, the trigger is very spongy and the overall feel is very clunky, just for starters. I have yet to examine any version of the Sig carbine that felt handy in my hands. Despite my belief that the gas-piston system is the way to go in modern carbines, the Stoner direct-gas-impingement system AR in its present form has evolved into a very user-friendly modular platform and the Sig just doesn't measure up to its ergonomics. I understand that it's reliable as all get out, but it sure is a brick to hold and those itty bitty flip-up backup sights are a bad joke!

Speaking of ARs, I handled one of the new S&W M&P15 MOE types with the Magpul furniture and BUPS on it. The rear sight is really sleek and is made almost entirely of a resin of some sort. It folds down readily but has to be unlocked to be raised. I guess that's good so that if you bash it really hard it'll just flop down rather than break. The sight is well designed and has a small profile. The question now is will it hold up to hard use, being made as it is? The other furniture is very good stuff, being Magpul, natch, and the shape of the Magpul fore end is excellent. It fits my hands very naturally, and it should retrofit to any carbine with the slip ring. You can add Picatinny rails to it if you must have lights and such, but if you DON'T need or want those things you won't have the rails in the way, messing up the gripping surface. Good idea. S&W has a very nice carbine in this one, IMO. It feels good in the hands, a marked contrast to the Sig!!!

ARs are cropping up everywhere in stores and gun shows these days as the supply lines start to fill up and the initial panic buying is subsiding, and ammo is starting to come back into the system. I bought some of the 200gr solid copper Corbon DPX .45 defensive ammo to try out in the XD45, and some basic 9mm Remington JHP stuff to shoot in the long term testing Para LTC. The 9mm is part of the effort to see what will work in this gun since JHPs aren't uniformly feeding well in it, with either the factory mags or the Wilsons on loan. Found the Winchester generic white box 9mm 115gr ball, 100 rounds, $27. All the ammo I saw was at pretty much normal pre-panic prices, no huge markups in the pistol stuff that was available.

They even had primers! Wow. Remember what primers looked like?

Lastly, I handled one of the Mossberg M930 SPX semi-auto 'tactical' shotguns (scroll through the versions on the web page to find the 8-shot with the standard stock). It's very much like my FN SLP, fitted with the LPA iron sights and a fiber optic front inside the protective wings, but the buttstock is very slightly too long and the very soft rubber butt pad snags on clothing. I'd like to have one here to shoot for T&E, but to date the people at Mossberg haven't shown the common courtesy to respond to my emails or phone calls to discuss it. Nonetheless, it looks and feels good.

And that's all for today - Respectfully, Yr obdnt srvnt - Charles "recon wanna-be" Riggs

A quiet moment observing nature

Early one calm morning I found this group of very delicate new mushrooms growing out of a patch of dead grass from where the field had been recently mown.

(click on photos to enlarge)

You can see the fragile structures that.....wait.
What's that noise?
What's that rumbling and crashing?

AIYEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
DOGZILLA!!!

There goes Tokyo.

So much for the delicate mushrooms.

(and he slobbered on my camera lens, too.)
Oh well.

Put a little smile in your day!

Got the link to this video from a friend. Too sweet!

Click on the link here to see it, then you can go to their home page after that to see what the group is all about. Pit bull lovers especially will be interested in their efforts to stamp out animal cruelty and support Best Friends, among others.

I'm sure they probably have some softheaded stuff in some of the things that they support in there somewhere, but I'm still grinning from watching the video so I don't care!

Prvi Partizan ammo test

I'm not a bad marksman, but my riflery skills are kinda corroded.

So when I wanted to know what kind of accuracy could be expected from the Prvi Partizan and Fiocchi .308 ammunition that I had bought, I enlisted the assistance of fellow Raven Eric Eisiminger. He's been to a couple of long range shooting classes at Thunder Ranch as well as a passel of other courses out there, and has a really nice box-stock Remington light tactical rifle topped with a Leupold scope that is just the thing for this sort of shooting. We fired two loads in his precision .308, a 168 grain open tip hollow point match load by PP and a 150 grain soft point hunting load from Fiocchi. The results were very surprising.

(click pictures to enlarge)

While it's true that the two initial groups fired with the 168gr load were the first of the day when Eric was just warming up and getting into his groove, nothing prepared us for the accuracy of the 150gr loading in the third and fourth groups.
After seeing the results, he decided to try again and bear down with that load, and came very close to putting 5 rounds into 0.5 inch in the next group. I was spotting for him and I said nothing to jinx him and tip him to how well this group was going, right up until the flyer with the last round!

Bummer!

Still, a very nice group. Note that three rounds went into that one large ragged hole!
Properly motivated by then, Eric loaded up with the 168gr cartridges again and gave it one more try, getting this group in his last attempt -

At slightly over one inch, it wasn't nearly as amazing as the groups from the 150gr load but would be adequate for general purposes and for training use. Precision marksmen (okay, snipers) generally demand accuracy of under one inch with their duty loads and in some rifles this round might do that, but not in Eric's Remington and not on this day.
I didn't have either my .308 Remington 600 or Savage Scout with me, having brought the FAL in order to test some other basic milspec ball that I'd bought at the same time as the two other loads, but given that my Savage is a very accurate rifle I would expect it also to do well with any of these.
In the FAL with iron sights the accuracy of the 150gr PP ball ammo was typical and it functioned without any stoppages, so we can add that to the data base. We'll have to conduct accuracy testing on it another time.

And what may we conclude from this abbreviated exercise?

The Prvi Partizan and Fiocchi ammo I've examined to date in all calibers appears to be of very high quality and is at least the equal of commercial ammo currently being made in the USA.  Fiocchi is now producing a lot of their ammunition in the United States in a bid for more of this market, and they appear to be quite serious about this effort.

The cases in all of the three types were annealed and clean, the bullets were free of visible defects and the accuracy ranged from adequate to amazing! There were no failures to fire and no problems noted with any of the ammunition.

The PP 150gr ball ammo would do very well for general tactical requirements in a semi-auto such as the FAL.

The PP 168gr would suffice for training for precision shooters and possibly actual duty use in some rifles.

The Fiocchi 150gr load would do for just about anything you'd like in a .308!

I'm gonna get more of all three of these, and the Fiocchi ammo in particular, if and when I can ever find any of it!

Sinuous sleeper

The pack on our porch

I've never had anyone try to steal my yard signs when these guys were out on the front porch, watching the passing parade.
Wonder why?

Top to bottom - Churchill, Sunny, Fooss, Seamus and Bodi
(click on picture to enLARGE it)

Fuzz filter, feline, foto, Mk 1, mod 0

(klik pic, make big)

Kings of the hill

"Harken, Sir Churchill, dost thou hear the rumble of troops massing to lay siege to our hilly bastion?"


"Naw, it's just Bodi barkin' in the front yard."


"Oh. Well, you coulda fooled me."

Truth in packaging

Peach(es) segments, in box, no syrup.

Lord, how I miss that dog

Seeing a post on another blog today made me think about Vanya, the Fox.

Vanya was running around loose in a neighborhood in Louisville where she'd been dumped, literally. A guy in a pickup truck slowed down and threw her out. She was about six months old.
I got a call from a co-worker who knew that I loved Huskies, asking if I could catch her. She wouldn't let anyone touch her in the two weeks that she'd been running around in her mom's neighborhood. I used a Golden Retriever to decoy her in close and grabbed her by the legs and brought her home with me.
Vanya was SMART. We guessed that she was a Golden and Husky mix. To me, she was 'dog' personified, exemplifying all the things that make up those complex and wonderful creatures. She was really sweet and affectionate, very much in tune with what you were doing and how you felt. She was very gentle with people and small creatures. She didn't pick fights with other dogs, preferring to observe and make decisions about what would best benefit her, but she would NOT back down from a challenge.
She would trick other dogs into abandoning a toy so that she could get it by making a big fuss over another toy or bone and then when the unsuspecting pooch came over to see what was going on she'd swoop in on the one she wanted and scamper off to her den with it.
We called her kennel 'the Vanya cave' for all the things she cached in it and the fact that it was where she hung out all the time. She even carried her food bowl into it at feeding time so she could eat in peace.
She loved stuffed toys, and whenever we were at a yard sale we'd bring home a stuffed toy for her to adopt as her 'baby'. I would have loved to see her mother a litter, but she was already spayed when we got her.

She was my daughter Julia's favorite dog from the very start.

But for all her gentle nature, when she hunted she was a stone killer. And she NEVER stopped hunting, from the moment she first came to our house. Whenever she was awake, she was listening and watching and scenting - especially scenting. She found things that the other dogs never knew were there by following her nose. No mole was safe from her if the air and ground were the least bit warm so that she could follow their scent. If we got near the woods and I wasn't watching her like a hawk to call her back, she'd get her nose down on something, bolt off on the track and there was nothing I could do but wait for her to come strolling back in, tail wagging and that big grin on her face about the deer she'd just run to exhaustion, or the raccoon she'd treed.
She had no vices. I expected her to live forever, because in my heart I could never think about what I'd do when she died. But she did, after collapsing one day in a field like she'd been struck a blow. She was diagnosed with hemongiosarcoma at the age of ten years during an exploratory laparotomy done to see what was wrong with her. We let her go and she never woke up.
I still grieve for that sweet lady. After almost two years, her kennel still stands empty with her toys in it. I can't stand to let another dog sleep in it. Maybe someday, but not yet. Not yet.
I have a tuft of her hair that I found a few weeks after she died in the grass in the field where I take the pack to run, left there from when I was 'plucking feathers' from her undercoat poking through her outer coat.
It sits on the desk, a sad little 'Vanya ghost', next to Julia's picture.

I do miss her so.

Think those Para mag springs have marinated long enough?

Chef Bloggo does.

So at the end of the week we'll try to get out to the range to see how the long-term test LTC and all the mags are going to handle JHPs now, after a couple of weeks of compressing the springs by leaving them fully loaded per the suggestion of John May at Wilson Combat. It would help a TON if ammo prices weren't still through the roof and if I could actully FIND any 9mm JHPs, but that's how it goes. We might have to content ourselve with shooting ball just to get some rounds through el pistole, and defer the JHP testing bis spater.

Ain't it the truth?

Pinocchio, Snow White, and Superman are out for a stroll in town one day.

As they walk, they come across a sign: "Contest to find the most beautiful woman in the world."
"I'm entering!" said Snow White.
After half an hour she comes out and they ask her, "Well, how'd you do?"
"First Place!" said Snow White.

They continue walking and they see a sign: "Contest for the strongest man in the world."

"I'm entering," says Superman.
After half an hour, he returns and they ask him, "How'd you make out?"
"First Place!" answers Superman. "Did you ever doubt?"

They continue walking when they see a sign: "Contest to crown the greatest liar in the world!"
"I'm entering," says Pinocchio.
After half an hour he returns with tears in his eyes.
"What happened?" they asked.

"Who the hell is Nancy Pelosi?" asked Pinocchio.

One good thing leads to another

Got a comment on a post that led to all kinds of good things this morning.

"Come on Bob, don't die on me now!"

I'm still just barely posting here at the ol' blogstead because of a new job that keeps me away from home, and not having a laptop I can't post from out on the road. Bummer.
But this morning I got a comment on the photo of the Rottie puppy doing CPR and that led to the photo above from Smartdogs' blog, which led to another couple of dog blogs and now they're posted on the 'blogs we like' link on the left of the page. If you love dogs, give 'em a gander.
'Blogs we like' is a reference to an album called "Things we like" that Jack Bruce, best known for his work with Cream, did in 1970. The album cover is pictured below. You can imagine why Bloggo likes it.

I always liked Jack Bruce's work, most especially his voice.
So check out these blogs. Some really amazing things on them about dogs and dog training and pit bulls and other breeds, and in the case of the LASSIE, GET HELP blog a very beautiful design and format.

In memory of our fallen warriors

I served several years in combat arms in the Army and then as a nurse in the Kentucky National Guard, but I was fortunate in that I was never called to war.

I came close to being killed in a couple of training mishaps while on active duty, but I never had to serve under fire. That can be counted as a mixed blessing, though most who've spent time under fire will tell you that they'd just as soon have skipped the experience.
But on Memorial Day, we remember those who not only served, but who paid the ultimate price and made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation.
God bless those who have given their lives so that our freedoms endure.
May God always bless those who serve our nation now in their struggle against the savages who would destroy our way of life.


God give victory to our fighting forces and bring them safely home.
God save our Republic!

When riches are gone and friends have fled....

Your dog will still be with you.

(homeless man on the street in Toronto with his dog)

Not just working on our tan 'round here.

Okay, so the weather has been really nice lately, even with all the rain that's blown through, and it's been a great time to be a bit lazy.

Truth is, I just started a new travel assignment and had to go to orientation all one week, then work a bunch of night shifts in the last two weeks. All that driving, working both days and nights and keeping up with all the stuff that goes with a new gig with a new company has tied up my time. When I get home, I just want to collapse.
All kinds of stuff going on - the NRA annual meeting just concluded and the Second Amendment Bash Bloggers were in full view this year, even had an article posted about them in the MSM.
Woulda been nice to be there, but things didn't work out.
Gotta go! Catcha later!

Dogs now being trained for CPR

A new generation of specialized companion dogs are actually being taught how to perform CPR on their owners if they have a cardiac arrest.

They have to start them in training as young puppies in order to be able to accomplish this.

"Don't you die on me, damn you!"

Beeee Happy

"It's wonderful to be alive,

To be a bee in this beehive.

It's tough as nails, it's smooth as silk.

It's milk and honey - without milk."

(Loudon Wainwright - "B-side")

Not just another pretty gun

I was able to get out to the range with the Belleau Wood 1911 despite the intermittent rain that came and went all day.

I set up one of the Riposte-1 targets, designed by our friend and Gunsite alumnus Jim Higginbotham for use by the Kentucky National Guard, at seven yards. I figured that was about the range that most soldiers would have used a gun like this in the trenches of WW1.
I loaded the plain Jane Colt factory magazine with seven rounds of S&B 230gr ball, chambered a round and topped off the magazine. I took up a basic one-handed offhand bulls-eye stance of the sort that they likely would have taught to doughboys in 1917, took aim with the front sight obscuring the 'A' on the target and pressed the trigger. This is how the target looked after the first 8 rounds - (click on picture to enlarge)

It seemed to be hitting just a bit high and to the right, even at seven yards, but eight rounds of hardball in a group that size would likely have sufficed to unsettle even the most determined German shock troop, I venture.
Loading up again, I fired another 17 rounds, for a total of 25 fired at 7 yards. Here's how it looked then -

Okay, so I got a little sloppy and let two shots drift high and right. I was shooting at a fairly brisk pace, about the cadence of rapid fire in bulls-eye competition, and the front sight was picking up some glint even in the diffuse light of this overcast day. Still, while Higginbotham will never forgive me for such sloppy shooting, I suspicion that even those high hits would have inconvenienced or at least annoyed our imaginary German infantryman.
Moving the target out to 25 yards, I fired the remaining 25 rounds using a two-handed grip and a slightly more deliberate cadence, though still not as slowly as slow fire in bulls-eye. I began to notice a problem -

When I wasn't seeing the hits in center mass like I wanted them to be after I'd fired about five rounds, I deliberately held low and aimed at the center of the bottom line of the 'B' zone where the 'X' is marked on the target.
It became apparent that the pistol was printing about 5-6 inches high and 3-4 inches right at 25 yards. Some of the error might have been the light on the front sight, but I would attribute most of it to the short front sight, of the type that some refer to a the classic 'thumbnail'. Still, once I'd found where it was hitting, it wasn't that hard to bring the rounds down where they should have been and get hits that would have done for most combat situations.
A doughboy issued this pistol wouldn't have won any formal pistol matches with it, perhaps, but if he'd taken the time to find out where the sights were regulated he'd have been able to get adequate hits at what would have been considered any reasonable range for a pistol in that era. And at close range, belly-to-belly and nose-to-nose in the slop and slime of the trenches he would have had no trouble hammering down an enemy with it.
Other observations from today:
The trigger was crisp and predictable.
While I sometimes have problems tripping the standard grip safety on a 1911, this one worked for me in the limited and controlled firing done today.
The tang on the safety chewed a nice blister on the web of my hand the same way that every stock 1911 I've ever shot more than seven rounds through has done.
The fall of the hammer is magically musical on this gun. It must be the combination of solid carbon steel that's blued, not parkerized, and the harmonic convergence of the parts of Browning's genius.
With a little practice and a little tuning, I could have used this gun to win the pistol matches that my Dad and brother and I used to shoot in with the KPOA (Kentucky Peace Officers Association) long ago.
And right now, today, I have no doubt that I could pick it up, charge it with hardball and go out into the dark to win a fight with it.
It has the feel, it has the accuracy, it has the power. It's a 1911!

Belleau Wood 1911 pistol

In the late 1960s Colt's Mfg. company released a 50th Anniversary commemorative set of 1911 pistols, comprising four pistols for four battles - Belleau Wood, Chateau Thierry, Meuse Argonne and the 2nd Battle of the Marne.

My father ordered a full set, but somehow by the time I inherited them in 2006 one of them, the Meuse Argonne, had gone missing. I vaguely remembered a story about how the other one got away, but since it won't be coming back it doesn't matter. What does matter is the three that remain.
Over the last few months I often thought about selling them in order to raise funds for more modern gear as a hedge against the anticipated Holder-Dark Lord axis. I'm not much for fancy guns and commemoratives as a whole never set me on fire. I started researching the prices being offered for them on the web and was surprised to learn that they were only going for about $1000 per gun, even if you had the entire set of four. Mine were still in their cardboard shipping boxes and brand new, but how would I settle for getting only $1000 each when a current production Colt 1911 pistol, which is nowhere near as nice as these guns, is going to fetch about that much anyway?
Then I got them out, looked at them and handled them - and changed my mind. Let go of three 1911s of this type, made the way that Colt used to make them, for that little money?
No way.
These pistols have a beautiful deep almost-black bluing. The surfaces are polished almost mirror-bright. The metal is solid and the hammer falls onto the firing pin with a ringing musical sound like no other 1911 I own. Where would I ever replace them for that money?
Straight out of the box, they'd do to fight with.
They're staying here.
The pistol shown here today is the Belleau Wood version - a classic 1911 with a solid long trigger, lanyard ring, straight mainspring housing and small but usable sights. There's no checkering on the grip frame anywhere, and the stocks are smooth dark wood of an unknown species.
Later on today I hope to take it to the range.
If I'm gonna keep 'em, you better bet that I'm gonna shoot at least ONE of them if not ALL of them, friends!

After opening the carton and unfolding multiple layers of cardboard, like a Russian doll, you come to this very plain and unadorned paper box.
Nothing in it hints at the treasure hidden inside.

(click on pictures to enlarge them)



Lifting off the lid, you see a brochure that could have been printed many decades ago, with drawings and text which would have been consistent with those enclosed with the first 1911s.

And here it is, the Belleau Wood Colt Model of 1911 Caliber .45 pistol -

The gun is gorgeous, pure and simple. When lighting conditions permit I'll have better photos of all three of them here on the blog. The overcast on this day just doesn't do justice to the polish and lustre of this pistol.
These guns commemorate the actions of the American Expeditionary Force that went to the aid of the Allied powers in 1917. Their vigor and determination turned the tide of the war. They were more than the German army, exhausted but still dangerous after years of trench combat, was able to handle, and they earned the name "Teufel Hunden (Devil Dogs)" from the Germans who fought against them. The Marines in particular were regarded as fierce, savage fighters.
Retired Colonel of Marines Jeff Cooper is said to have owned and carried one of these Belleau Wood commemoratives at some point in his life.
I like to think it's true.

Neues accessories fur den Obama Jugend

All those who will be part of the Dark Lord's Youth Legions in future will be required to have snappy uniforms, I bet.

And what's snappier than your very own Obama Jugend dagger?

(photo courtesy of Mr. Fixit)

Somali souvenir

Stand up, speak out, fight back!

It's hard for me to decide which is more chilling - the blatant attempts by the Obama administration to transform the character of this nation, the arrogance and shamelessness of their maneuverings or the apparent total lack of concern on the part of the Congress and the majority of the American public.

In a story at the Investor's Business Daily (here) they lay out what has already been done by the Obamas, both the Dark Lord and Michelle, to lay the groundwork for the new 'voluntary' youth indoctrination program that's sailing through the Congress even as you read this.  From long before his ascendance to the throne, these two have been working to twist the minds of young men and women, teaching them to hate their own country.

There's more about it here on the National Review blog.

As bad as the plain implications of this program are, what is worse is that no-one seems to give a damn about it!

How hard would it be for someone in the House or Senate to stand up in front of the TV cameras and spell out, one by one, the individual elements of this systematized brainwashing so that people could see it and know how dangerous and insidious it is?  Surely to God some brave souls in the Congress can muster up enough reporters at a press conference to denounce this, or at the least start releasing a blizzard of press releases and going onto the talk shows!

Yet this dark hulk of a death ship glided through through vote after vote in Washington, like a ghost in the night, under a fog of willful indifference on the part of our so-called representatives.

We know already about the corruption and rank illegality of the actions of ACORN in the last several years, yet here's a program that will do exactly what ACORN has done, and more, and all of it funded by the taxes we pay.  We are buying the chains that will enslave the minds of our children and in the end reduce this nation to a holding of vassals to socialism.  And it's all happening right in front of our faces while we gaze on, chewing our cud, content as cows mindlessly awaiting the hammer blow to the head that begins our trip to the slaughterhouse!

Some days I'm in awe of the sheer audacity of what Obama and his allies are methodically doing to this country, but that awe is rapidly transformed into fury. We are standing by with our hands in our pockets while a coterie of anti-capitalism maniacs is dismantling our system and using our money to pay for their wrecking crew.

Read the article and ask yourself how, in the name of all that's holy, can we be duped into paying for a system that will teach our children, is already teaching our young men and women, that the ills of this nation can all be laid at the feet of white men and capitalism, and that the government is the balm for all our ills?

We sit like frogs in a pot of slowly warming water, being cooked in increments, contemplating where to put our favorite lily pad while these radicals in nice suits slowly turn up the heat beneath us.  We are acquiescing in our own destruction and unless all of us wake up and begin to resist this rolling wave of legislation and regulation with all of our being then when we do finally open our eyes, we won't recognize the country in which we find ourselves.

It will be too bleak and hostile and drear to bear.

Read it.  Get mad.  Get ACTIVE!

Some things make me wanna SCREAM!

I carried a pistol openly on my person for several years, back before we passed our concealed carry law.

Now that I can carry concealed, I do so the vast majority of the time.  Sometimes people were a bit concerned to see that .45 on my hip, most times they ignored it.

Very rarely did I have any encounters with law enforcement who weren't happy about my being armed.

I'm glad to see the numbers of people who've started carrying openly in the free exercise of their right to self-defense.  Being unafraid to speak out and advocate in public for your freedoms is an essential first step to educating the public and to preserving those rights.  If we don't start pushing back, making the non-gun-owning gun public and the gun-haters understand that we're not going away and that we're tired of their phobias, then we WILL lose our rights.

But in the process, people, PLEASE don't make yourselves out to be MORONS.

I refer to the phrase that some who are big in the community of open-carry advocates are using, which is usually expressed as "I open carry."

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We will NOT make a positive impression on the world at large if we continue to use this stupid phrasing.

'To carry' is the infinitive form of the verb 'carry'.  I CARRY a gun.  I CARRY it openly.  I CARRY it concealed.  I OPENLY CARRY the pistol.  I CARRY the pistol OPENLY on my person.  The words 'open carry' describe an act or action, they are NOT a verb!!!

I've event contacted the national group that's doing the most for this effort, Open Carry.org (their web site is here) about this VERY sad misuse of the language, telling them the same things I've written here and they basically said, 'Yeah, so what, we like it.'  They plan to carry on with this ignorance!

Friends, when we use bad language and bad grammar we look like morons.  Let the LEFT butcher English and invent stupid phrases and bad usages.  No matter what your cause, you should first maintain certain standards of intelligence and quality.  Saying "I open carry" makes you sound like a DUNCE, and the media will damn sure take advantage of whatever you do wrong to make fun of you and your cause.  Why give them an opening by which they can attack and ridicule us?

We would all make fun of a gang-banger wannabe for saying "I be packin' heat." but he's not one damn bit more stupid than the doctor or lawyer who says proudly for the camera "I open carry."

It's WRONG - it's BAD ENGLISH - period, zip, end.

"I carry a pistol openly" uses the verb and ADVERB in the proper manner.  "I open carry" means that you OPEN a CARRY - for what?  What IS a 'carry' in the first place?  Well, firstly it is NOT a noun.  Properly used, 'Carry' is the VERB and 'openly' is the ADVERB.

I've been involved in the politics and media circus of gun rights for a good while. I'm acutely aware of how crucial it is that you put forth a good message and a good image.

Using this utterly stupid form does nothing to enhance our image.  It makes us look like semi-literate redneck dolts.  Why would ANYONE deliberately advertise the fact that they don't even know how to speak the damn language if they're out there trying to make a positive impression for their cause???

If you agree with me, that this is STUPID and something that we as gun owners and advocates for our rights need to fix in our own house before the media uses it against us, please contact the folks at OpenCarry.org and tell them about it.  If enough of us do this then maybe they'll start to pay attention and speak English as it's supposed to be!

Getting back into the swing of things

I spent the most wonderful weekend at the wedding of some friends in North Carolina, so no posting on the blog.  Wonderful people, amazing food and some very stimulating discussions with some very smart folks.

They even let me join in and didn't make me stand in the corner.

Of course, the world kept spinning and things were happening and there's ample fuel for observations and discussions, so I'll be getting back to it.  Most of the last two days since coming home have been spent getting documents together for a new job with a new company, and since a reduction in cash flow makes it hard to think about hobbies like this page, I tend to believe that the pursuit of employment has a higher priority.

But there will be things to read later today.

New Navy flag

Tea Party postscript

The Frankfort, Ky. Tea Party went really well - an enthusiastic crowd showed up with lots of signs and flags and attitude!

There's no other way to say it - people were pissed! The crowd was unhappy with Washington, DC, and with the legislature in Frankfort and with politicians in general. They brought their children, who had signs of their own, and sounded off loudly in response to the speakers who addressed the gathering.
We didn't have any counter-protesters, but then, I didn't expect any. The left isn't that energetic around here, and they damn sure know better than to try anything physical with Kentuckians.
I plan to post pictures of the event later on, have several irons in the fire just now and am hopping around going crazy. For now I just wanted to say that the turnout was good and that the people of this state were in harmony with the tens of thousands of others who turned out nation-wide to tell the government to get off our backs!
For those of you who support this kind of effort, don't forget to go to the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solution's event at Applebee's park in Lexington this Saturday, April 18th - The Bluegrass Tax Liberation Day! See their web site here for more info.

Yo, skinny, say 'cheese'!

Here's a video that shows what the pirates off Somalia were up against.  They never had a chance once these men were in the loop.

Shoulda left well enough alone.

                          

(hat tip to Michelle Malkin for the video link)

RIP Deputy Jack Weaver

This just in from Jim Shepherd at The Shooting Wire

Jack Weaver, from "leatherslap" to legend.

On a completely unrelated note, the shooting world lost one of its best-known names last week. Former Los Angeles County Deputy Jack Weaver, 80, died Tuesday in Carson City. Weaver, for those of you not familiar with the name, is the man for whom the Weaver Shooting Stance is named.

After experimenting with a variety of shooting stances and modifications, Weaver decided the best position for reaction shooting was simple: two hands on the weapon, gun up a foot or so above the vertical centerline of the body, and head slightly dropped. This gave him what he called a "flash picture" of the target. It also gave him the 1959 "Leatherslap" gunfighting title. As he explained "it looked kind of stupid, and everybody was laughing at me, but it worked."

After three years of losing to Weaver, Guns and Ammo writer and legendary shooting expert Jeff Cooper proclaimed the Weaver Stance "decisively superior" to anything else. In fact, Cooper incorporated Weaver's stance into his Modern Technique of the Pistol.

On Saturday evening, I spoke with Weaver's son, Alan, about his father and learned that this last year of his life had been one "of a rock star" after American Handgunner published a story about Weaver and his stance in its May issue. "All last year," Alan said, "Dad got letters, videos, patches from police departments and shooting clubs, tons of mementos that made him realize that people did remember him and his contributions."

We all remember Weaver's contribution to shooting -every time we take a two handed Weaver, or modified Weaver or whatever you call it. - Jim Shepherd

Tax Day Tea Party in Frankfort!

We're going to have our very own Tea Party on the steps of the state capitol this Tax Day!

It kicks off at 12 noon and runs till 2 PM on Wednesday, April 15th. Bring your signs and your tea bags and your outrage at what our elected representatives are doing to our country with this profligate spending and unjust taxation! See you there!

(I was going to post a graphic that I received, but Blogger doesn't want to let me post a .pdf file for some reason.)

What kind of scum kills a man's dog?

(Luttrell's dog Dasy, shown here as a puppy)

Even worse, the dog that was given to him to help him forget his losses from his duty as a Navy SEAL?

Marcus Luttrell has written a book, "Lone Survivor" about his experiences as a SEAL in Afghanistan. He's been through hell. Friends gave him this puppy four years ago to help him get over the grief.
Then these low life scum killed her. For kicks.
You can read one of the news stories about it here.
There is no punishment in the legal system of this country commensurate with what these sub-humans deserve to receive.
May they rot in hell.

TEA party in Richmond, Kentucky this Saturday, April 11th!

T.E.A PARTY
(TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY)

Come out and join in Richmond's first T.E.A. Party this
Saturday! Come be seen, heard, and counted as we have
a peaceful protest of corporate bailouts, the trillions of
dollars the Federal Government is putting our country in
debt, and other tyranny that is running amok in
Washington! Join fellow Americans and enjoy a great line
up of special guest speakers, best costume and best
protest sign contest and lot's of fun!

WHERE: Wallingford Broadcasting parking lot
128 Big Hill Ave. Richmond (across from Swifty)
WHEN: Saturday, April 11,2009 from 4-6 pm.

Pirates? We can fix your stinking pirates!

Amazing story of a dog's resilience

I love dogs. Every day my pack shows me their amazing intuition, loyalty and devotion. They force me to think about my responsibilities to them and to being a better person.

This is a great story about a cattle dog lost at sea, who survived on her own until returned to her family. Read it here.

Excellent piece about guns and responsibility

Over at the Winds of Change group blog, "Armed Liberal" writes an extremely intelligent piece about why more laws restricting guns won't change the environment in which we live.

It's one of those bits of clear thinking that come along only so often.  Very well written, concise and tight.  It's as well-stated an argument with which to rebut the anti-gun crowd as any I've read.

Read it here.

With the present outbreak of all these mass shootings we need something like this to state the case for principle in guiding our actions and responses.

New advisor to the President coming to DC

Rex the giant worm will soon be moving to Washington, DC.

In keeping with the tradition begun by many already serving in the new administration and by well-known Democrat consultant Bob Beckel (frequently seen sliming up the airwaves on Fox News) , Rex will be advising the president and his cabinet on lapses in ethics, broken campaign promises and egregious misconduct.
Rex has previously worked with members of Congress such as Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Harry Reid, Chris Dodd and John Murtha among others (many others) but will now be concentrating his efforts in the White House.
"The Dark Lord will require all of my time for the immediate future since he has so many things he hopes to have the audacity to have the courage to say 'yes we can' to in order to be clear about his determination to change. He'll need my full-time input to know how low he can go." hissed Rex in an interview. "Transparency in government, the ruinous budget, bankrupting the nation - all of those things will require a level of slime and sleaze and belly-crawling that only I can bring to the cabinet. Then there's all those additional trans-nationalist slugs we intend to put into vital government positions. They'll have to be oozed and schmoozed through their confirmation hearings. And that doesn't even mention the obsequious groveling to foreign despots and America-haters during this last trip overseas. I'll have my work cut out for me!"
Rex will soon have his own salt-water tank in the Oval Office so that he and the Dark Lord can mind-meld at their leisure.
No comment was available from NObama at the time of this interview because his teleprompters were out of service.

They who also served with honor

Lies, damn Lies and Holder's statistics!

Everybody who knows anything about guns knows that the full auto weaponry being used in the drug wars in Mexico and shown on the nightly news in all its gory grandeur didn't come from the USA.

You can't just amble into the local Dick's or Walmart and toddle out with armloads of rocket launchers and explosives and full auto weapons.
No, those things are being sold to the drug lords by other nations who have no scruples about taking their money, or by the Mexican army soldiers who are going AWOL and stealing the guns from their own arsenals on the way out the door.
The mainstream media have have once again been complicit as organs of state propaganda by parroting the false statistics being spouted by Clinton, Holder and others in order to push the drive for a re-enactment of the so-called assault weapons ban. The claim that 90% of the guns used in the drug wars in Mexico is a crafty distortion of the numbers designed to stampede the unwitting public into supporting the new ban.
Fortunately for those who care about the truth and our freedoms, the Fox News Network has investigated this disinformatzia and has put the story exposing the lies on their web page here!
They've analyzed the BATFE data and taken the time to get more of the story from the Mexicans themselves in order to tell us that it's more like 17% of the guns being seized come from the US, and that is only the ones with serial numbers that they can trace. The other, full-auto guns don't come with serial numbers and they don't come from the USA!!!
Fox will be running this story all day on their TV news network, so keep following the story!

Get your TEA party postcards to mail in to the taxation tyrants!

Go here - http://www.wrock.ws - and buy postcards printed with an image of the US flag and a tea bag that you can mail in to the Congress and to the Dark Lord's administration and anyone else you want to tell that we're TEA - "Taxed Enough Already!".


I bought a bunch of them today and they're a great way to get your message across. You can't send a real tea bag because it won't be delivered but this postcard will be!

"Of those men who have overturned the liberty of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants." - Alexander Hamilton

Kentucky Bluegrass Tax Liberation Day!

I'll have more info about this in the days to come, but I wanted to put something on here now to so that people would know about it and start passing the word!

There are going to be all kinds of activities for kids and adults at this thing, and if you want to start taking back our country and our future from the control of the morons who're running things in DC right now, come out and meet a lot of folks who share your point of view!
You can get more information at the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions web page here.

Bloggo no likee recoil

I recently bought a Hogue overmolded shotgun stock which has the Knoxx recoil reduction system in its innards.



Hogue no longer lists this item in their catalog, which may be because Blackhawk now owns the Knoxx stock company - see their web page here. I got this thing used but almost new, and yesterday I gave it a whirl at the range. I mounted it on a Remington M870 that's pretty basic - 20 inch stock factory barrel with rifle sights, Mesa tactical sidesaddle and a sling. The Knoxx stock has the same dimensions as the Speedfeed unit I took off of it, though I wish it was a bit shorter.
I compared the firing characteristics to a Mossberg M500 that I've had for a long time - factory ghost ring sights, an 18.5 inch barrel, sling and TacStar sidesaddle. It's been through a couple of classes with me, is stone reliable and is close enough in size and weight and stock geometry to the M870 to be a reasonable type for comparison.
I fired 4 rounds of Fiochhi plated 00 buckshot through each gun. The difference between them wasn't remarkable, with the M870 seeming to have a slightly reduced impulse. It was hardly enough to make a scientific comparison, but time was tight and I only had so many rounds of the same type on hand that I could afford to use up. I'll do this again and fire more ammo next time, but for now I can say that the Knoxx system seems to work though not as dramatically as I'd thought it might.

The murderous hypocrites at PETA

Ingrid Newkirk and her fanatical minions at PETA would like you to believe that they exist only to benefit animals. They spend millions of contributed dollars to persuade you not to eat meat or wear fur. You'd think that any critter fortunate enough to be taken in by them would be set for life.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, they have killed THOUSANDS of animals that were surrendered to them so that they could place them for adoption. Instead, they euthanized almost 95% of them at their headquarters. Last year, some of their employees were caught dumping the bodies of dozens of dogs into a garbage dumpster, and were prosecuted for it.
Now a group has done the research to get their records showing the extent of their treachery. You can read it here.
You can see the web page of the group that released this info at - http://www.PetaKillsAnimals.com/
The explanation seems to be that PETA would rather kill a dog or cat rather than have it be adopted and become the slave of a human master. Better dead than under human dominion. However, PETA isn't talking or responding to questions about their activities, so we can only guess about their motivations. I don't have to know what they're thinking to know that they're a bunch of filthy murderous bastards.
If you know anyone who contributes to their cause, pass this on to them so that they know the truth about these foul scum.

Hillary makes the case for gun ownership!

... And she doesn't even have a clue that she did it!

A really good piece that explains how by contending that the problem with violence in Mexico has to do with guns from the USA in reality makes the case for gun ownership by citizens - really clever! Read it here.

The Para feeding problems - talking with the pros

When you get bogged down and can't find the answers, go to the experts.




I spent some time on the phone yesterday with John May at Wilson Combat, getting his input on what might be causing the feeding problems with the Para LTC. Along the way he told me some things about magazine design and the peculiarities of the 9mm in the 1911 which were very helpful.
I told him that when the mags were fully loaded that the nose of the cartridge was almost horizontal, so that when a hollowpoint came off the stack it went straight into the ramp, stuck the nose in and failed to feed. He wasn't surprised. Seems that the tapered case of the 9mm makes for trouble because each succeeding round loaded in forces all the rounds to lie more horizontally, tipped down by virtue of the case taper. After two or three rounds have been fired, the nose magically comes up and the rounds will feed. Not a problem with ball ammo at any point in the sequence, but a real hassle with most hollow points. In addition, trying to get the magazine capacity up to 10 rounds in a 1911 pistol can exacerbate this situation, but he and Bill Wilson agreed that fewer than 10 rounds wasn't enough. He said that they worked a LONG time to get that magazine right!
He suggested that I load all the magazines up to capacity and leave them that way in order to put some fatigue on the springs and take out just a bit of their tension, and see if that gave any relief.
He also suggested that the problem with the last round staying on the follower was a function of the cartridge case rubbing up against the slide stop, and to look for brass marks on the slide stop. Sure enough, there was a small bright stripe on it, just barely visible. I'm going to have to think about taking just a smidge of metal off of it and see if that fixes it. This doesn't happen with the Wilson mags, which allow ZERO lateral movement of the cartridge in the feed lips, but the Paras let the round wiggle just a little bit and that might be all that it takes to trip the stop.
I hadn't talked with John in a long time, not since way back when I used to shoot IDPA and we ran into each other at the Nationals where I worked as a Safety Officer, and later when I was writing about the match for the now-defunct 'Gun Games' magazine. Guys like John made the sport fun. They were good to talk to and were always ready to help you out with technical problems. If all the folks in the shooting sports had been like John and Ken Hackathorn and some others I'd likely never have dropped out of it. We yacked about guns and gun companies, the new Wilson 9mm pistol and our mutual love of the Wilson synthetic-frame KZ45, a 1911-pattern gun with great potential that never quite took off in the marketplace. We could have burned up a lot of phone time on those subjects.
We'll wait and see if the mags lose a little of their 'oomph' after a week or two of full compression, and in the meantime order up some other brands of hollowpoints to see what WILL feed in this puppy. Thanks, John!

New York Times cuts jobs, pay

Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with their arrogance, disdain or condescension toward ordinary Americans?

I wonder if anyone here in Kentucky is getting the message? Newspapers cannot mock and ignore events such as the Tea Parties that are springing up around this nation without paying the price. Story is here.

Still feeding problems with the Para 9mm LTC

I took the LTC back out the range after its cleaning, feeling fairly good about the likelihood that it would feed the 124gr Speer hollowpoints.

No such luck.  In both the Para and Wilson brands, the first few rounds in the magazine are presented to the feed ramp almost horizontally and the hollow points run up against the base of the ramp and stick there.  The ball ammo, with its pointy ogive, toddles up the ramp and does fine.

As shots are fired and the ammo is expended, at a certain point the rounds are presented with a more nose-up attitude, which allows the hollow points to slide on up the feeding ramp.  The problem is the first three or four, which don't sit at the angle necessary for proper feeding.

I've tried loading one round less than capacity, but that doesn't fix it.  You have to be not less than three down in the mag before the nose tilts up enough to make a difference.  

I'm going to try some other hollow points, such as a box of Corbon 115gr solid copper DPX I found in the ammo locker, as well as some others with a more pointed nose if I can find them.

I'm not sure is this isn't a magazine problem as well, so might be consulting with Bill Wilson to get his input on it and any suggestions that he might have.  More to come.

Coulda been worse, I guess

Well, the two mini-reports that aired last night on WLKY were a bit of a let-down.  

The coverage was reasonably fair, although they gave one of our resident anti-gun hacks, a professor of criminal justice at U of L, more time than they should have.  I used to demolish this guy in debates when we were passing the concealed carry bill in 1996, and in subsequent discussions about it later.  He just doesn't have any legitimate arguments, only his vague, free-floating 'feelings' about violence and all that.

They interviewed me for 30 minutes and used about 5 seconds of it in only the first segment, nothing at all in the second.  It's better than nothing, though I did have a good bit to say about the issue.  The best thing was that it wasn't blatantly anti-gun and gave some pretty good air time to some other folks on our side of the issue.

The decline and fall of the paper media

Now even NObama, the Dark Lord, is part of the dissing of the print media.

In his press conference he did not call on ANY of the reporters from the major traditional newspapers for a question. Read about it at Politico.com here.
Here in Kentucky, we're at day FOUR since the Tea Party rally and still no mention of the event in any of the three papers in Frankfort, Lexington or Louisville.
What troubles me most about this is the apparent lack of ethics and conscience demonstrated by the people running these rags. Do they think that they control the news anymore? Do they think that they can get away with this kind of arrogance? Newspapers no longer control public opinion. They don't make events happen, nor make them go away. How do they reconcile their purported interest in truth and facts with this deliberate shunning of an event of significant public interest?
Pretty soon they'll join the ranks of the buggy whip makers in yesterday's news.

On local TV for KC3

WLKY channel 32 TV in Louisville, Ky is running a program about the economy and firearms and politics for which I was interviewed on behalf of KC3.

The segment will air at 5 PM and again at 11 PM on Wednesday, March 25th, in case any of you who get that station are interested in watching.
Don't know how much of what I said they'll use, but it could be interesting.

Walmart and ammunition shortages

A lot of people have become accustomed to buying their ammunition at Walmart. Good brands, good prices.

For instance, the Winchester 'white box' value packs have been a staple for those of us who attend pistol and rifle training classes. It's a convenient way to get ammo in bulk without paying shipping charges. But in the last year, since it began to appear that NObama (all hail the Dark Lord!) would be elected people have been buying ammunition even more than they've been buying firearms. After all, if you can't feed 'em, what's the good of having 'em?
The fact that the shelves have been mostly bare for the last couple of months in most of the Walmart stores which my friends and I frequent has led to fear and speculation: fear that no more ammo would be forthcoming, and speculation that Walmart had decided to get out of selling ammo the same way that they had dropped the sale of firearms in some of their stores.
On some email lists there have been stories of men coming into the local Walmart not less than twice a day to see if more ammo had arrived on the trucks, and then buying every round that was delivered - not just .40 and 9mm and .45 but everything. The assumption is that at least some of that was being resold, but who knows? Maybe some guys just have really big garages where they're storing this stuff!
In addition, other big box stores such as Cabelas seem to be getting ammo into stock again, as have some vendors that are only a fraction of the size of Wally World. If they're finding ammo to sell, why can't Walmart, with its incredible buying power, get more into the pipeline? Is something nefarious going on?
So today I called the media relations number at Walmart corporate. The young lady there took my name and number and said someone would return my call. Sure as shootin', this afternoon I got a call from Jason Wetzl, a spokesman for the company. After I told him who I was and something of my bona fides and history, and outlined our questions and concerns, he very forthrightly responded.
The bottom line is this - Walmart is buying all the ammo that they can get, but the manufactuers simply can't make it fast enough to meet demand. He pointed out that Walmart sells vastly more than anyone else, including Cabelas and all the rest, and that with the traffic that they get in their stores they just have more people buying whatever is there.
In the end there are two salient points to what he told me:
One, Walmart has its buyers out there buying all the ammo that they can get so they can stock their stores, and:
Two, Walmart is NOT getting out of the ammo business, has no intention of that, isn't doing anything fishy. They just can't sell what they can't get delivered to them.
Big thanks to Mr. Wentzl for taking the time to call and answer my questions, and to Walmart for continuing to support American gun owners.

(Now I just have to get out to my local store and find those two guys who've been buying up all the stuff, catch them in the parking lot, knock 'em on the head and slash their tires so the rest of us have a chance at it .....)

Still nothing about the Tea Party

Well, there's still nothing about the Kentucky Tea Party in any of the three newspapers in this area.

There's plenty about basketball, and about global warming and planting gardens, but NOTHING about citizens turning out to raise their voices in protest at the fiscal madness that threatens to engulf this nation and bankrupt us.
I guess they figure that we're gonna need those gardening tips for when there's no food on the shelves in the grocery, or we can't afford what's there.

Good news about the Para LTC

After having feeding problems with hollowpoints in the LTC the other day, I tore it down and gave it the once-over.

I found that there was a significant accumulation of carbon fouling on the feed ramp which had hardened in place, but was still soft enough to wipe off with a rag. I had seen it on the ramp when we were at the range and had assumed that it was contributing to the failures to feed. I hadn't cleaned the gun since we'd started shooting it in order to see if any problems would develop and at what point, so now I know. By the time it choked on the hollowpoints it had run through several hundred rounds of ball ammo, which had left a fair amount of crud on the interior of the pistol. I wiped the feed ramp clean, wiped down the rest of the gun and put it all back together after lubing it with Slip 2000. Like I said before, this stuff is slick. Hope it's this good in the long run. I put a few rounds of the Speer Gold Dot 124gr bonded hollow point +P ammo that had failed to feed properly at the range into the factory magazines and attempted to chamber them. This time, whether I loaded the pistol by dropping a locked-back slide on a loaded magazine, or by retracting the closed slide on the pistol with a loaded magazine in place and chambering the round in that manner, the Speer cartridges fed smoothly into the chamber, straight up the ramp and never a bobble. I plan to take it to the range tomorrow and see if it shoots them as consistently as it chambered them tonight but at this moment it appears that the problem is fixed with a wipe down. Should have taken a photo of the feed ramp before I cleaned it, but didn't think about it until just now. Oh well. I'm not getting paid for this, and I'm buying my own ammo so who's gonna carp about my lack of diligence? OTOH, a visual examination of the magazines failed to reveal any obvious flaws that would account for the occasional failure to feed the last round in the magazine in the one magazine. I was hoping that an irregularity in the follower which would have actuated the slide stop would be apparent, but no such luck. Guess I'll have to keep at it, and at some point put a micrometer on the things to see where there are variances in the dimensions that may cause it. That, or get some rum and a chicken and a cigar and work some mojo on 'em and see if that sets it right.
Now where's that book on Santeria that I picked up in Haiti......?

An OUTRAGE perpetrated by the media!!!

Yesterday, March 21st,

ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED PEOPLE showed up in downtown Lexington, Ky. to participate in the Kentucky Tea Party protest against the continuing fiscal madness in Washington, DC.

And how many front page stories were there in the newspapers in Lexington and Louisville, or in our own home town paper, the State Journal, about this event?
NONE. ZERO. ZIP.
In one of the most blatant examples of media manipulation that I have ever witnessed in my entire life, the mainstream media have chosen to ignore a mass protest by over a thousand Kentuckians, speaking their minds about an issue of major importance in our lives.
When that putrid hate-monger Louis Coleman held a rally at which only a handful of his sycophants showed up, they covered it like it was the second coming. If it had been 1500 NON-CITIZEN ILLEGAL ALIENS demonstrating for rights that they do not possess, demanding benefits for which they have not paid in a country NOT their own, they would have been all over it. But let 1500 men and women who love their country and are tired of being abused by their elected officials show up in one place, hold a PEACEFUL rally and what do they write about it?
NOTHING. RIEN. ZILCH.
You can bet your sweet keister that if there had been violence they'd have trumpeted that fact, but no such luck for the fourth estate - no blood, no foul, no headlines. You'd have thought that in the wake of the very recent Tea Party in Cincinnati which drew FIVE THOUSAND people they'd have been interested in another rally of the same sort, driven by the same motivation, attended by the CITIZENS of this state, part of a movement that is popping up in cities all over the United States that it would have been a natural lead-in to their coverage.
Uh-unh. Not for the lackadaical lollygaggers of the print media in central Kentucky.
Some TV crews were there to witness it, but not even all of the local stations showed up. Couldn't be bothered. And will the local voice of NPR at UK offer any coverage of it on Monday? I doubt it. Too busy droning on about whatever it was that Cheney did half-a-political-lifetime ago.
You want to know what DID get coverage in Kentucky's Sunday papers?
Well, of course, there was basketball. You gotta have that. When there's no bread on the shelves because the fools running the Congress have spent the nation into a sinkhole there will still be roundball circuses for the hoi polloi. And there was an article about a homeless shelter planting a garden, and more about basketball, and an article about the basketball coach and another article about basketball and some guy who did something else of no consequence whatsoever.
God in Heaven, talk about fiddling while Rome burns. In a nation where citizen activism is supposed to be what pushed the new Great Leader into Washington, when the excitement is all about how people are starting to participate in their government again, this is what we get? When citizens get active on the wrong, non-politically-correct side of an issue the editorial grand poobahs just ignore it. "They deviate from the party line, therefore they do not exist" must be their guiding principle. If anyone ever wished for a more glaring example of the arrogance of the archaic intelligentsia, I don't know where they would find it. And they wonder why no one wants to read newspapers anymore?
ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED PEOPLE.
If fifteen hairy-legged women in Peruvian ear flap hats had shown up for a fertility festival for Gaia in Oregon, or to tell us all to junk our cars to save the planet there would have been coverage.
If ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED KENTUCKIANS had turned out to hold yet another anti-war Bush-bashing they would REALLY have been jubilant, jumping up and down to write that story, if only because the last one held around here only drew about 50 people and was really a yawner.
If it had been a rally for the UK basketball program, which by the way ended up in the basement this season, you KNOW they'd have been on that one. You can name just about any inconsequential topic that springs to mind and bet that they'd have had eager scribes interviewing the participants but ZIP - ZERO - NADA. That's what they wrote about the Tea Party.
There will be more to say about this in the days to come, believe me. I am as outraged and disgusted as I have ever been over this. Ye gods, even the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER has written about this phenomenon of citizen activism! See it here.
But the nomenklatura of the press in Kentucky are too good to stoop to reporting to you about a local event signifying a growing phenomenon in a time of national crisis. Might take too much attention away from Rick Pitino or the garden club.
It is to weep.

Kentucky Tea Party on Saturday!

The Kentucky Club for Growth and other groups are banding together for a Tea Party to tell the government that citizens are tired of taxation and misuse of our resources!

See the Ky Club for Growth web site here for more details. It's going to be in downtown Lexington at noon on Saturday March 21st. The one in Cincinnati last week was attended by 5,000 people!
Show up, speak up, shout it out!

The Para USA pistol goes to the range with the newbie

My nephew just turned 21, and for his birthday present I'm going to certify him for his concealed carry permit.

We went to the range today so that he could do his shooting test for his permit and he did great! After some jitters yesterday when he was shooting with his Dad and me, leading to his snatching the trigger and some flinching, he took to heart some pointers I had for him and he was center-punching the silhouette with every round.
Before we left the house this morning I talked with him about the need to concentrate on the basics, to remain focused on the front sight and to use that focus to shut out all the other things around him. I pointed out to him that all the things he takes for granted now - walking, feeding himself, driving a car, EVERYTHING - once were new tasks that required complete focus and total concentration when they were new to him.
Shooting is the same way. You have to bear down at the beginning, but as time goes by, practice (PERFECT practice, not just practice!) and repetition will gradually get it grooved into his brain. But equally important, when he finds himself starting to get sloppy, to throw shots and snatch the trigger and be distracted, all he has to do is to take a deep breath and go back to the basics and he'll find his way. Slow down, shoot each shot as a single event, watch the front sight - easy, basic, necessary.
He apparently listened and took heed. By the end of our session today, in addition to getting a perfect score on his qualifier he was hitting the 3-foot diameter rock set out there at 150 yards on our local range with almost every round he fired, from both handguns we had along. The boy is good. Must be something in the family genes after all. He's not as good as Julia, of course, but hey, she's had more practice so he's got some catching up to do. :-D
(Snicker - now if I can just get him into the Gunsite basic pistol off-site class with Ken Campbell in Indiana in May. Heh-heh-heh.....boy, am I gonna cost his Daddy some bucks......)
After he shot his qualifier, I gave him the Para USA 9mm LTC pistol to try out and like just about every other person who shoots a 1911 for the first time he commented on what a nice trigger it has. Now, his newly acquired personal pistol, a birthday gift from his Dad, is a Springfield XD(m) in .40 caliber, which I think is a fine gun. I've carried an XD45 as my primary sidearm for the last couple of years, and did okay with it at the Gunsite Alumni Shoot (GAS) last time I went. They're solid, reliable guns and the XD(m) has a slightly better trigger than the XD45. Still, it's interesting that he immediately picked up on the greater ease of shooting the SA trigger in the LTC. John Browning rules!
We were both dinging the rock with the LTC, and he was getting good groups with it at 7 yards when we were working on basic marksmanship prior to playing around with some long distance plinking.
Now the down side -
I regret to report that the LTC doesn't handle the Speer Gold Dot 124gr +P bonded hollow point very well in some situations.
I loaded both the Wilson Combat magazines and the Para factory mags with a mix of CCI Blazer 115gr ball, Federal American Eagle 115gr ball and Gold Dot 124gr HPs. When the Gold Dot was the first round in the magazine, regardless of which magazine I was using, it didn't feed reliably. It would go forward into the base of the feed ramp, then stick there. The ball ammo - no sweat. It ate 'em up. When I put the Gold Dots further down in the magazines, the problem went away. Apparently both brands of magazines, Para and Wilson, hold the first few rounds at such an angle that they hit the ramp almost horizontally, and when a few rounds have been fired the angle changes to more nose-up and the hollow points will feed just fine. Not a problem for those pointy-nosed ball rounds but not good for the hollow points. The problem was slightly less present with the Wilson mags, but still there. From three rounds down to the end of the magazine, the Gold Dots would feed and shoot. Loaded higher in the round stack or as the first round in the magazine, they stuck on the base of the ramp. Bummer. I really like that round in 9mms and it runs like a scalded cat in our Glock 19s.
We'll stay at this, give the gun its first cleaning and lube it with some of the Slip 2000 we just started using and see if that changes anything, in addition to trying some other brands of hollow points.
Lastly, one of the Para mags persists in not chambering the last round in the mag. It locks the slide open without feeding the last cartridge, which just sits there on top of the follower until you hit the slide stop or pull the slide back and let it fly, at which time the round chambers and fires. Not sure why, but the mag is marked and I'll try to see if it's a follower problem or us hitting the slide stop or - what? Today it only happened once, and that was with the nephew shooting it, but even so we don't need that.
I still like the LTC. Nephew likes the LTC. Everyone who's shot it likes the LTC. When it's fed ammo that functions in it, which most ammo does, it's very nice. Just gotta get them bugs ironed out.

Be ye light of heart

Life ain't all gloom and doom -
Which action super hero would YOU be? Find out by taking the quiz here.
I ended up as Batman, the Dark Knight - woo-hooooo!
Hat tip to Brigid at Home on the Range (one of the blogosphere's top ten, no less!)

There are some things too bizarre for words

I've read some of the stories written in the last year about the Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter in a modern dungeon in their cellar for twenty-four years and forced her to bear seven children for him.

I forced myself to read this story that was linked from the Drudge Report here about this monster and his crimes.  I kept saying to myself, thinking to myself, "this is only a horrible fiction, something that Stephen King at his most insane would write" - but it's not.

It's too horrible even to bring up on this blog, but I feel compelled to do it, if only to ask other people "WHY?".  How can anyone be so depraved, so sick, so cruel to his own child?  And to construct such an elaborate and complex life around such a heartless lie?

I can't find any answers for these questions.  I have to force myself to go outside and breathe in the frosty spring air to clear the mental stench that this leaves in me before I become sick.  Sometimes I hear of evil in this world that's beyond comprehension.  This is one of those times.  Dear God, how can this be?

What does all this mean?

In full view of the world, while the public has watched with eyes wide open, the Obama administration has put into place the most anti-gun, anti-rights group of public officials ever assembled in this country.

This bunch would be right at home in the former Soviet Union or some other Marxist regime.  They believe in the subordination of the individual to the state, the triumph of collectivism over personal rights and freedoms.  Don't believe me?  Do the background reading.  The new issue of the NRA's monthly magazine, "America's First Freedom", has an article about two of NObama's clowns, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and 'regulatory czar' Cass Sunstein, who hate guns, hate gun owners and champion the rights of animals over men.  And just today Glenn Beck on his Fox news TV show was reporting on the socialist past of the new climate change czarina, Carol Browner.  The past hostility of all three of these to what most of us consider to be our traditional way of life is public record, public knowledge, yet there they are, occupying positions of power from which they can wreak havoc on the country.

What I see that concerns me tonight is the evidence that the bureaucratic minions of this cabal are already hard at work, digging through each and every regulation and ruling and rule, seeing what they can change or corrupt or overturn by simply issuing new rules and regs, thus avoiding the legislative process AND the light of day completely.

Anyone who believed that this administration would live up to its promises to be 'completely transparent' was living in a dream world.  If they don't understand that by now, after seeing how these apparatchiks are proceeding, they're either locked in a cycle of denial or a complete (useful) idiot.

Just in the last week, there was a new ruling from the Department of Defense mandating the destruction of all once-fired brass instead of selling it intact to those buyers who'd been using it to make reloaded ammunition for decades.  Read about it here.  Thanks to a veritable storm of emails and calls and contacts with legislators, that new policy has been reversed.

But it reveals what's going on, how they're tunneling away, stealthily sapping the walls of the Republic.  These moles are digging through every policy and where that policy might allow more liberal access to firearms or ammo or the other elements of gun ownership and shooting, the policy is changed.  Hey, Presto!  New policy here!  Screw those gun owners, quick end run around the Congress - until it's noticed and the outcry begins.

But by that time we're playing catch-up, and wars are NOT won by playing defense, by being reactive to the enemy's initiatives.

It's the same thing with the new policy not to allow the use of lead ammunition or fishing sinkers in the national parks system, just announced and to take effect in 2010.  The moonbat 'greens' and animal rights activists already in the ranks of the federal bureaucracy, and their newly arrived, newly appointed and anointed buddies from the far left seeping into every agency, are moving to infringe on fishermen and hunters in every conceivable way.

Lots of them were already in place, but they've been given free rein to indulge in their wildest PETA-inspired fantasies by the NObamanites, and this is just the first of what promises to be many fights with these vile pen-pushers in the years to come.

I remember being furious during the Bush administration at his seeming obliviousness to the necessity of purging all the Clintonistas and their ilk from the government.  He was so intent on getting along with those left loonies that he was unable to understand that the Left long ago realized that this is how you take over a country.  Not by violent revolution that leaves you dead and rotting on the ramparts, but by tunneling into the schools and the government, and gradually eating away at the traditions and the laws of the nation.  Just go back and see how often the Bush administration was fighting rear guard actions against the State Department and other federal agencies, trying to ward off hostile policies enacted or proposed by the leftists in the ranks.

Now we can see plainly how that plays out.  The new batch of lefties and greenies have linked up with the moles already in place, and are busily promulgating new regs every day, working to bury us under a pile of paperwork that's not easily remedied in either the Congress or the courts, and has the effect of law from day one if it's not rebutted and reversed right now by activism on our side.

Forget about preventing it from happening.  It's going to take constant vigilance just to hold them at bay, to keep it in check.  We will be fighting each and every day for the rest of the time that this gang of radicals is in power, and when they're turned out of office it'll be the work of years weeding their agents-in-place out from all the federal agencies.

The nation is in peril as never before but not of being taken down by brute force. Rather, we're at risk of being nibbled to death by ducks, a slow death by regulatory fiat, worn by rules, strangled by policies.  There will be no heroic last stand against that kind of death by attrition.

The enemy knows how this works.  It was Clintonista Paul Begala who said "Stroke of the pen, law of the land.  Kinda neat." in speaking of Bubba Clinton's use of the executive order to circumvent legislative checks on his excesses.

The Left understands all this, all too well.  Is our side going to wake up in time to stop the bastards?

That gang of mine

For those of you who haven't been paying attention or following this blog since I started last year, I should remind you that I'm working with the Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed (KC3) board of directors again.
I'd left the group in a state of mutual disgust several years ago. I was tired of the do-nothings who'd taken over the board, and they were tired of my ranting at them to try to get things shaken up and moving. After watching KC3 spin in place after I left, getting nothing accomplished under their regime, I decided last summer to try to re-join the board. It didn't happen without a fight. The two officers who'd quit without warning and left KC3 dangling bitterly opposed me at the annual meeting. But they lost, and now the new board is moving to get things rolling here in Kentucky again.
If you're interested in politics and human rights and other issues relating to firearms ownership and concealed carry and self-defense, you might want to keep an eye on the blog that we maintain for KC3 here. We'll be rebuilding our web page in the near future and this is how we'll keep our members and friends informed.
We're going to try to keep up with the issues and news items, and eventually work in some kind of RSS or other feed, as well as links to other blogs and pages of mutual interest.
If you want to contact us, please do so via the comments sections at the individual items. But if you're a troll, don't bother. It's moderated and you won't get your spleen published on the page. KC3 - We brought concealed carry to Kentucky. We work to make sure that you'll always have it.

New firearms lubricant

After reading an article by Pat Rogers in SWAT magazine (if you don't subscribe to it, you should) in which he refers to using Slip 2000 Extreme Weapons Lubricant for lubricating ARs, I decided to give it a try.
I wasn't able to get the Extreme version when I ordered a bunch of stuff from Midway USA last week. Instead, I got their Carbon Cutter, Cleaner/Degreaser and the basic Slip 2000 lube.
I took the side plates off of my blued steel S&W M13 3-inch and stainless M66 3-inch and simply sprayed the lube into the interior parts without any other cleaning or prep. I made sure to get it under the cylinder latch slide of the M13, which was sticky, and all over the interior and exterior moving parts of the M66, which was completely dry inside and had a crane/yoke which was sticky on opening and closing .
They are both now VERY slick in operation and in dry-firing. The cylinders spin freely and move in and out of the frame well. The triggers are smoother than before. The cylinder latch moves easily. Both feel more free in every operation except firing, which I haven't yet done.
Don't know how they'll do over the long run or how it'll feel after several months (the M13 had been lubed previously with Eezoxx, which seemed to have dried up and become gummy in the gun's interior) but for the moment this Slip 2000 stuff seems to live up to its billing. It has virtually no odor to mention, either. I'm looking forward to getting the Extreme version to use on the ARs