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

Letter to the Hon. Ben Chandler, member of the House of Representatives for the Sixth Congressional district of Kentucky

Mr. Chandler - I was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky and have lived in Frankfort most of my life, excepting the time that I spent overseas in military service in Germany and when I worked in Saudi Arabia.

My father, Shelby Riggs, was a member of your grandfather's Kentucky State Police security detail in the 1950s. I used to get chewing gum from Happy when we would visit my Dad at the Governor's office. Somewhere in my house I still have a pin that reads "ABC in 63" from Happy's campaign for governor that year.
I tell you this so that you understand that I have always been and always will be a Kentuckian, and have known your family and followed your political fortunes all my life. I love this state and its tradition of independence and freedom, as I trust that you do.
While I disagreed with your endorsement of Mr. Obama for the presidency, I understand that it was your duty as a Democrat to do so. That, and Mr. McCain was hardly any better. I held my nose to vote for him, but I was voting against Obama, not for McCain. However, I did vote FOR you to be our representative to the House.
But now we've seen Obama's true colors. He is embarking on a program that could wreck our nation's economy and ruin our society. It's time to be more critical of his plans and his intentions, regardless of party affiliations.
I was one of the founders of the Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed (KC3) which was the organization that was most instrumental in the passage of HB40, our concealed carry law, in 1996. We worked hand in hand with Rep. Bob Damron to make that happen. I have returned after some years absence to the board of directors of KC3 because I see that we have more work to do to defend our rights, and to do more to expand our freedoms. As one who's been involved in the political fight to defend our personal freedoms I'm deeply concerned about the threats to our right to bear arms that we anticipate will come from the Obama administration. We know that several of those within his group have long histories of hostility to firearms and to gun owners. To believe that he and his cronies won't move to attack our right to bear arms would be the greatest naivete, a luxury that we as adults cannot afford.
I hope that in the months to come that you will remember your roots as a Kentuckian, and when the radicals in the left wing of your party who now serve in the White House and the Congress call on you to support their efforts to infringe our freedoms that you will remain true to our traditions, and will choose to be a Kentuckian and not a lackey to your party's leadership.
We're embarked upon a very difficult chapter in our nation's history. It will be essential for each of us to recall our traditions and the wisdom of the founders of our nation.
Our Kentucky forebears worked hand in hand with the men who carved out the Constitution, and they brought their understanding of those principles west with them when they founded this state and wrote our constitution. It states "All men are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned:' and goes on to enumerate them. The Seventh is: "The right to bear arms in defense of themselves and of the State, subject to the power of the General Assembly to enact laws to prevent persons from carrying concealed weapons.". There is no confusion in the Kentucky constitution, no clauses that may be misconstrued such as are found in the U.S. Constitution. Kentuckians have a right to arms, bestowed on us by our Creator and no man may challenge it.
We are all citizens of this great nation, but we are first Kentuckians by birth, and disinclined to servitude by our nature. Please recall that, and stand fast against any efforts by those in your party who will attempt to dismantle our freedoms. Your state demands that of you and I have no doubt that your grandfather, and my father who introduced me to him, are watching both of us from on high to see if we live up to our heritage.
I will do my best to do my part. Will you?
Respectfully - Charles Riggs, Frankfort, Ky.

Gun show observations in the age of NObama

At the show this weekend, whenever I wasn't politicking for KC3 I was doing my own shopping and watching what others were buying.

The show was JAMMED on Saturday and still busy on Sunday. People were buying both days and not just gandering on Sunday as they sometimes do. ARs were still high on everyone's list, but people weren't springing for $1500 S&Ws, Bushmasters, Rock Rivers and the like which had been marked up to ridiculous levels. They were trying to stay under $1000-1200 in price, and buying basic guns. The people at Double Star/J&T Distributing were selling lots of stuff, including top ends in various configs, and lots of accessories and parts and add-ons which their armorer was installing on the spot. The impression I had was that the initial buying frenzy for ARs at any price was over. People were shopping for bargains and reasonable prices, not willing to dole out big bucks for just any AR. If you had a quality brand at a good price, though, it was snapped up. However, if the seller had loaded up the carbines with rails and lights and collapsible stocks and all that, and driven the price to $2000 and beyond, people didn't even pick them up off the table to look at them. They were BUYING those gee-gaws for their own guns, but a piece at a time, not as a package installed on a pricey gun. Handguns were surprisingly hot. Lots of folks were stopping at Bud's Guns' tables, apparently buying more handguns than long guns. They were spending real money, too. There was less haggling than I'm used to - if the price was reasonable (and most shoppers had obviously done some research before coming to the show) then they bought the gun without much discussion. Bud says that his internet business is booming. AMMO was still the thing. The vendor next to our table was selling ammo by the case lots, a lot of that to dealers. One dealer trucked off with 10 cases of 124gr Federal 9mm ball at $10 the box/50 rounds for resale in his store. Apparently the wholesalers are still not stocked up as well as they should be. But again, people were shopping prices and not just buying the stuff at any price. While our neighbor was selling ammo hand over fist, the guys down the aisle with the same stuff at higher prices weren't. People were paying attention and when he ran out, they quit buying from anyone. It appears that the initial surge of "survival and fear" buying has passed, or at least until NObama decides to do something else rank. Some ammo was still overpriced, but the major calibers - 9mm, .40, .45, .223, .308 - were available in ball loadings again in addition to the JHP/defensive/hunting types and at prices closer to what you'd expect to pay from the online vendors. A lot of people had guns of their own to sell - saw several CETMEs, Dragunovs and ARs of different configs, but those were going begging for the most part. People seem to have spent much of the cash that they could allot to things that weren't necessary to their core holdings. Older guns and traditional guns were trading among the older guys as per usual, but not as much as the newer or milspec guns were among the younger crowd. AR magazines were more available. I saw the C-products aluminum black-Teflon-coated 30 round AR mags for $15 each, and they were moving fast. The MagPul P-mags with witness windows that had been marked up to $25 weren't moving and neither were the steel C-products mags at $20 or the GI-spec aluminum mags priced over $15. I saw ZERO basic P-mags without the window - none. Basically, mags for any platform, AR or AK, that were priced over $20-25 weren't moving nearly as well as at the previous two shows. But the ones that were priced at the right point were FLYING out of the boxes. FAL and M14 mags were scarce and the FAL mags I saw were ratty. I did see some really neat European/Combloc surplus stuff that was new and different, such as a complete spares/arsenal trunk for the CZ58. Seeing it made the militaria nut in me wish that I could afford to add another platform to the collection right now but alas, such is not the case. Saw some interesting new AK mags - made of steel but lighter than most Combloc mags, finished with a light grey parkerized finish, very clean lines and crisp corners with steel followers. They appeared to be well made and well finished with very precise spot welds holding them together. The story is that they're US-made for a contract to equip the Iraquis, and that these are overruns or that the contract had been cancelled. I bought one to evaluate, but neglected to find out where they'd acquired them so can't do more research on them. At $20 each the price is okay, now that any AK mag costs almost as much as an AR mag, and they're enough lighter than most surplus AK mags to be worth considering. My impression is that most folks have gotten the things that they HAD to have, the guns and mags that they thought might be legislated against the most quickly, and now they're filling in the gaps in their supplies as they can afford to do it. They're also holding onto their money because the economy is scaring them. They're still buying, but they're not buying blindly or spending money they're not sure that they can let go and they're trying to winnow down their collections to generate funds.
I can identify with that!

You were warned

My apologies to those who've been checking in here to see what's shakin' only to find that nothin's happenin'.
I really do get the winter blahs, jus' like I toldja, and when that happens I hole up with the critters and read a bunch and drink coffee and eat ice cream and whatever else tickles my palate. Just can't get ginned up to do much writing, don't want to hear what people think about what I think. Just an ole hermit and curmudgeon.
During all this cold nasty weather I've been seriously preoccupied with the Engineer Trilogy by K.J. Parker.


It's an absolutely BRILLIANT fantasy series (and I say that as one who absolutely loathes most fantasy literature!), three books of great complexity and completely unapologetic examinations of the lives of the characters. I found myself again and again re-reading a passage and saying 'damn' - just plain old 'damn'. There were so many situations that really hit home. Even though it's set in a fantasy world, the manner in which Parker plots the evolutions and the individual events that dot the story line are so very bleak and unequivocal, so hard-edged with unblinking reality that it's unsettling, compelling. Parker makes no attempt to soften the edges of the narrative. Lives are wasted, fortunes destroyed, nations wiped away - just like real life, with no pretending or gilding to make anyone the least bit comfortable about any of it. I've never read anything quite like it.
So while I've been having the blahs and Bloggo has been absent from the keyboard, the time hasn't been squandered, at least not from my point of view. There're going to be things to read and think about on the ol' blog in the days ahead. Just didn't want anyone to think that I'd vanished or anything like that.

"I told you I'd come for you."

Wow. Talk about your non-stop slam-a-matic movies.

Liam Neeson's new action flick "Taken" winds up just a bit slowly in the beginning, but when it busts loose it just keeps on rockin' and rollin'. I'd read some positive reviews of it from friends, so I took a chance on the roads being passable and went to see it at the matinee this afternoon. I'm glad that I did.
Basic story line is simple - Neeson is an ex-spook whose daughter is kidnapped on a trip to Paris. He goes to get her back. Along the way he lays waste to a significant number of bad boys. It would be easy to nit-pick some things in the movie, such as the fact that it's hard to accept that one man can take down so many guys, especially at the last of the movie. On the other hand, the violence that he employs is so direct and believable that you can cut him some slack on some things. His gun handling is good - solid, no weird techniques, no messing around - very direct and businesslike. That's pretty much how he handles it all. He's smart and has experience with the technical side of the business but when he goes at the guys who've stolen his daughter he goes HARD and never lets up. From what I've learned about this stuff over the years, that's what works.
Then there's all that footage of Paris, which is my favorite city in the world. I don't like cities, but I love Paris and going back there this spring after almost twenty years away from La Belle France was great fun for me, despite some problems with one of the folks who was along for the trip.
More than anything else, the movie speaks to me on a personal and emotional level. I have a daughter whom I love to distraction. If anything ever happened to her I would want to be able to go after her just like he does, an avenging force of nature - implacable, unswerving. That's not realistic, of course, but it's what every dad would like to think that he'd do for his girl if she was counting on him to bring her home. When he says "I told you that I'd come for you" deep down in my gut I know it's what I'd want to tell her. Not just to say it, but to mean it and to deliver on it.
Great stuff. I loved it. I recommend it to you - especially to you dads.

Speaking of 9mms

I would have loved to go out to the range during all this crappy weather but the roads were the pits.
It would have been grand to take some of the guns out to see how they performed in the colder temps we've been having. But the road to my gun club where I shoot isn't in the best of shape and I don't have an SUV nor nuthin' like that. Both my station wagons - excuse me, my station wagon and the DOGS' station wagon - have road tires on them so they don't go in the snow like they had oughta. Sideways, sometimes, yes, and without phoning ahead to let me know.
But all that sliding around (and my screaming) annoys both the dogs (it IS their car, after all) and my insurance agent and since right now I'd rather be buying mags and ammo and a really nifty little steel-framed Commander (that is going to be a limited edition from a major maker who agreed to make them that none of you know about yet - heh, heh, heh), I just can't afford to be paying higher insurance premiums.
So I'm staying at home except for rare forays out onto the more well-maintained roads. I am getting in some dry-fire on the Para LTC and the Noveske carbine, dropping the hammer on the talking heads on cable news shows (I never shoot Fox News - they're on our side) so this weather isn't a total waste. Maybe all this front sight - press will have them slicked up when I can get back out to the club, and then we'll see if I can still remember that stuff about sight alignment and trigger control and all that jazz.
The Para feels nice. I like it. Wish I could shoot it here in town without annoying the neighbors. They wouldn't say anything to me, but I'm purty sure that nice young patrolman just up the street at the PO-LICE station would wanna discuss it with me. So I won't.
Hope you guys are staying warm. Front sight - press.

Name this pistol - and win it.

Our friend Bill Wilson has a new gun over at his web site at Wilson Combat firearms. But it doesn't yet have a name.
(click photo to enlarge image)

So Bill is running a contest on their web site where you can suggest a name for the pistol and if your entry is selected you win one. Such a deal!
When I first found out about this I contacted Bill to get more info about the gun, since there weren't any specs on the web page, just a nice photo of what appeared to be a slick polymer 1911. I was curious to know if it was intended as a replacement for the KZ45 polymer framed .45 ACP that they sell. I reviewed a KZ45 a few years ago in an article in a Harris magazines publication. I took it with me to Gunsite for the GAS (Gunsite alumni shoot) and I liked it so much that I bought it after the review was done. While I was very positive about the one that I T&E'd, the gun hasn't been a big seller for Wilson Combat and has received mixed reviews in various quarters. It's a shame, because despite being a double stack it fits my hand well, more like a Browning Hi-Power than a 1911. It's also lightweight and gives you 10+1 rounds in the gun while incorporating all the major attributes of the classic 1911 platform in the design. If the one you have runs right, it's a fine pistol.
So the question was, is this the gun to replace the KZ45? I fired off a quick email and these are the answers that I got back from Bill.
First, it's a double stack pistol but it's chambered in 9X19mm, not .45 ACP. It has a magazine that's a completely new design and has a capacity of 17 rounds. The slide is narrower and lighter than a traditional 1911. The lock-up barrel-to-slide is like that of a Sig, but it retains the swinging link of the 1911 design. The frame is a new design and is made in the USA, unlike the KZ45 which is made under contract for Wilson Combat in the Republic of South Africa. (I forgot to ask whether this one is made of Kevlar and Zytel like the KZ45 is, so I'll have to get back to you on that.) The frame is smaller in diameter than the KZ45, which should make the folks who like slim guns happy.
As yet there's no price point set, but Bill says that it's going to be hand-made alongside their custom 1911s so it won't be cheap. And as of this moment, there's no plan to produce it in .45 ACP. (Somehow, I think that will change in future, but that's what he said in his email.) Finally, they plan to start deliveries of the new pistol in July.
It's going to be an interesting gun. On the one hand, it reflects the new interest in the marketplace for 1911s chambered in 9mm, which is fueled both by a desire among shooters for guns that are easy to teach with because they're easy for novices to shoot, and that use less expensive ammunition while allowing the shooter to keep his 1911-specific gun-handling skills intact. Being a high-capacity gun it's right up there with the Glocks and others in the number of rounds that you can take to a fight.
On the other hand, it's going to be more expensive than other 9mm 1911s such as the Para LTC. While people who own and shoot Wilson Combat guns tend to be very satisfied with them (and Bill has an absolute guarantee that you WILL be satisfied with your gun, no matter what he has to do to accomplish that), will people pay custom pistol prices for a 1911 with a polymer frame that's not chambered in .45? Does this gun fit some niche in competition that I don't recognize? If so, that would be typical of Bill since he knows all about the ins and outs of action pistol competition.
Among some folks with whom I correspond there has long been a stated desire for a single stack, lightweight polymer 1911 in .45 ACP. The Glock G36 didn't fill the bill, and to date no one else has ventured to produce one, so far as I can recall. All the polymer .45s have been double stacks and, excepting the K45, aimed mostly at the competition market. They've been criticized, sometimes unfairly, for being too big in girth. That hasn't stopped some excellent shooters from burning up the ranges with them in IPSC matches, but those folks who carry pistols for personal defense don't want heavy or bulky .45s. How else can you explain the continued popularity of the basic, original M1911 design among serious pistoleros after all these years? I carried and competed in USPSA with a Para Ordnance P14-45 with a steel frame for awhile several years ago. It weighed a TON. With an extra magazine along I almost needed a gun bearer to tote the thing for me. I gave it up muy pronto and swapped over to an alloy framed P13-45 that I absolutely loved. The S&W 1911PD I carry on occasion now has a scandium frame and is a single-stack. I gave up the extra capacity in trade for the lighter weight, and I don't list to starboard or give myself a herniated disc when I carry it.
I hope that I can get one of these new no-name pistols while I still have the Para USA 9mm LTC in house so that I can compare them side by side. In any case, I'm going to get in my entry so that I have a shot at wining one, and you can enter your suggested name for this new Wilson "Wunder 9" here.

Bloggo say - shut you face!

Climate alarmist and professional Chicken Little James Hansen has now been rebuked by his former boss at NASA - read it here.

Seems that his now-retired boss, Dr. John S. Theon, says that computer climate models such as those that Hansen and his chums are using are unreliable. He has announced that he, Theon, now aligns himself with the climate skeptics who don't accept a human-based cause for climate change.
Now if only NObama and gazillions of wailing left-loonatics can stir themselves to start paying attention to this kind of info - naw, it'll never happen. On the other hand, folks such as you and I can take comfort in knowing that more and more of the world's rational scientists are making their voices heard in opposition to The Goracle and his minions.

The Union Switch & Signal M1911A1 pistol

My father was a man who loved military weaponry.
He served as an infantryman in World War 2 and never lost his interest in the guns that equipped the American and German armies. He paid scant attention to collecting the guns of the Japanese, British and Italians although he was conversant with their technical specifications. Pretty much all guns interested him to some degree, but the personal weapons, the small arms of WW2 absorbed him. I acquired the bug from him.
After he passed away my younger brother and I inherited several of his firearms, and one of those which I was fortunate enough to acquire was this M1911A1 made by the Union Switch and Signal corporation - (click on photos to enlarge them)


Generally speaking, military issue M1911s are judged to be more or less collectible based on the number that were made by a particular manufacturer. By far the most collectible from WW2 are those made by the Singer Sewing Machine company. Singer produced only 500 to prove to the US Ordnance Board that they could meet the specifications, make the gauges and pass the inspections. After delivering the pistols and all the required parts and dies to the board they then decided that they'd rather make other materiel for the war effort - and they never made another M1911A1. That fact, and the fact that many of those 500 were issued and then lost in the war makes them supremely collectible. A Singer M1911A1 can fetch $30,000-50,000 at auction!
In contrast, other makers turned out hundreds of thousands of M1911s, so their basic production models have less cachet and less collectible value. Of course, Colts that are uncommon because they were limited runs, commercial production or had special features or unusual characteristics also fetch high prices.
But Union Switch and Signal made only 55,000 M1911A1s in 1943, which makes their guns second only to the Singer pistols in scarcity among production M1911A1 models. Every other maker - Ithaca, Remington-Rand and Colt - produced more pistols than USS did.
I believe that this pistol is one that my Dad had had since the early sixties. It's in excellent condition, with minor blemishes to its exterior finish. The interior is spotless. It's possible that the only time that this gun was fired was when I shot it for the salute to Colonel Jeff Cooper on the anniversary of his death in 2007, done in concert with a number of other Ravens, which is what some of us who've graduated Gunsite like to call ourselves since that's the symbol the colonel chose for his school.


This pistol has all the correct markings and so far as I can determine from the reference texts which I've consulted is a true and correct USS M1911A1.
The pistol is shown in the photographs with a Boyt military issue holster from 1942 and a British-made magazine pouch from 1943 carried on a genuine military web belt. Those belong to my brother, and have a history of their own which I plan to relate to you in future.
Compared to the newest generation of whiz-bang 1911s that's on the market now, with every conceivable gadget and "improvement" built into and onto them, the gun seems almost primitive.
Almost, but not to the discerning eye. These guns were built to a very high level of precision for a firearm in mass production. The lines are clean and the parts are tight, made to close tolerances. The finish is durable and had to meet very specific standards. The slide fits tightly and glides smoothly on the frame, closing with an authority compelled by the sixty-five-year-old recoil spring. The trigger is crisp and light.
The sights are small, yes, but for the uses to which this pistol would have been put, fighting at close quarters and often in the dark, hand-to-hand and nose-to-nose, the reliability of this pistol would have been far more important than the size of its sights: that, and the caliber for which it was chambered. Alone among the armies of the world, the United States relied on a caliber pushing a wide, heavy bullet that dealt a solid blow to the enemy. The British also had large-bore pistols, but their velocities and impact energies were anemic compared to the .45 Automatic Colt Pistol (ACP) round.
Hefting this gun you have an appreciation for the men who carried them on patrols, in the trenches, through the mud and everything the weather could throw at them. You can understand why they held this solid fighting pistol in such high regard, even to this day.
All that, and it was my Dad's. It stays in the family.

Haiku Feb. 2009

Tiny yellow cat -
lying still in padded box
she snares a sunbeam.

Dark, sleek and lethal

For doing down your foes there's no finer hammer than John Moses Browning's great gift to the world, the M1911 pistol in .45 caliber.

There are other guns that will do the job, but none quite so graceful and pleasing to the eye, so balanced and well-proportioned as the 1911, the apex of his career. Glocks and Sigs and XDs and all the rest will launch lead and run reliably, but they're just so much industrial hardware compared to a well turned-out M1911. Now this smooth dark S&W 1911PD with the scandium frame that I wrote about before is even more the sleek black lethal witch with the addition of these fine stocks from brother Bill Jeans of Morrigan Consulting. Bill's a Marine combat vet, a SWAT officer and one of the best and most practical firearms instructors in the world. Not least in his resume is the time that he was director of operations at my alma mater, the Gunsite Training Center in Paulden, AZ.
He's also a lover of all things Celtic, which is where he gets the name for his company. It's from him that I bought these stocks with the interlinked Celtic symbol on them. See his web page for a full explanation of what it means and how he uses it.
Made of G10 laminate and textured with small round holes, they stick tight to your hand when you grip the pistol, no matter how sweaty or wet it may be. More than that, they just make it look wicked. It was a good gun before these stocks. Now it's even better.
Contact Bill for training. If you care enough for your own life and the lives of those you love to arm yourself, you should take the next step and let Bill teach you not just about shooting, but about fighting and the will to prevail.
Good stuff, good man. Wicked pistol.