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?