RIFLEMAN'S JOURNAL - JULY 2010
The World Sucks
More on Kagan. Don't worry, our stalwart spineless RINOs can be counted on to confirm her appointment to SCOTUS in a Grand Display of Amity and Bipartisanship. >:-[
Let's not forget one of the other unstable freaks in black robes already there.
Related, Dr. Pournelle on the Constitution & stuff.
More infringements, promoted by collaborationist "mainstream" media. (OMG he's using one of my images! Which I placed in public domain almost nine years ago and did not mark with my URL, it's probably traveled all over the intertubes... well that's what I made it for.) And special treatment for the sadists-with-badges, of course.
Speaking of collaborating. Sharia ain't got no 1st Amendment, you short-sighted self-destructive hippies. Okay, in the specific case the circulation of the newspaper in question has actually gone up, but the precedent is - what's the word? "Chilling"?
Like this deliberate censorship and discrimination. So much for the intellectual ideal of freely exchanged opinion.
Who's "racist"?
Yet more evidence that police are sadistic conscienceless murderers, and getting worse every day. They're acting like rabid animals. They should be treated as such. We did not start this war.
They're also blatant thieves who hold themselves unaccountable to the laws they enforce on us. The highlight of their small, pathetic lives is throwing their weight around on any flimsy excuse. That's why they become cops. That's the kind of people they are. "And this seems sensible to some people...."
And a lot of Our Kind are ready to do something about it. We have been pushed too far.
Related, Quote o' the Day: "Only a fool wants war, but once war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy...."
In Lighter News
This man was described by instructors in the lunchtime storytelling at the last two Appleseeds I've attended, and possibly the other two as well, can't recall.
Science-fiction-y universal translators? Working on 'em.
Waitwhat? A hint of Constitutional Carry in Oregon? I know OFF has tried before.
And Chicago always will.
Yeah we know who's racist.
"Why would NRA do that?" That's a damn good question.
Again with jack-booted thuggery in Wyoming (of all places). What the hell is going on over there?
BTR has more on Kagan.
And these people tell us how to live.
Maybe I'll move to Virginia instead.
Or Switzerland. We could use more of that kind of European influence.
More hints of common sense in Wisconsin.
Heh. I shoot .45, and occasionally .357.
Correia again has the LOL o' the Week.
Finally finished Flynn's Up Jim River, which is very good indeed, with many vivid word-images and skillful constructions of phrase. One must read The January Dancer first of course. Evidently he's not done telling the story.
Now beginning Citizens, the MilSF anthology edited by Ringo & Brian Thomsen. The first story is one of Laumer's Bolos, of which I have always been fond. Most of these I'll have read before, somewhere or other, but most will bear re-reading. These are the classic definitive formative stories of the genre.
Cops. Were there ever any "good" ones? It's like the badges are made of some kryptonite-analogue which radiates egomania and reduces intellect. 99% of everything cops do is indistinguishable from armed robbery. We used to HANG people who did that.
Sipsey St. rants on more politically correct damnfoolery endangering the lives of our troops.
Remember the Contract with America and the Republican Revolution back in '94? Remember when Gingrich promised to dismantle the Department of Education? Who can I sue for breach of contract?
ZOMG SMLE Fan posts something!!!1!!!!!11!! And then has a picture of a kitteh even. :D
Ditto. Except for the sub-MOA part, that still eludes me.
Ringo & Thomsen's Citizens collects fifteen military-science-fiction stories. Some could be counted among the very first of their kind, others were written recently for the occasion by modern authors such as Michael Z. Williamson. The collection fittingly ends with Heinlein's "The Long Watch".
-I expect Heinlein would have approved of the Oath Keepers. If he lived today he might've founded the organization.
Click to read the Declaration of Independence
Show & chat every Sunday 1100PT. First hour, interviews with Alan Gura, lawyer for the Heller and McDonald SCOTUS cases, and Sen. Inhofe of Oklahoma; then SAF's Alan Gottlieb, financier of those SCOTUS cases, and among others later, Clint Smith of Thunder Ranch.
Quotes o' the Day from Conservative Examiner.
More on Gerald Fox, Jackson Co., WI, DA. Do click through for PSH from the local badgethug and rebuttal from one of the few public employees who actually reads the Constitution instead of wiping with it.
The Education of Brigid.
Another fine piece from Oleg.
I've said before that one thing Larry Niven can't be accused of is thinking small, nor can his frequently-awesome coauthor Jerry Pournelle. Behold Space Battleship Michael from Footfall. Frickin' Iowa-class turrets hung off it! Do not tick off the hairless apes of Sol III. Especially the American ones. We will find a way to kill you and break your stuff.
I should reread that....
The World Sucks Because These Principles Have Been Abandoned
Go back up and click the big link. Read carefully. There's not much difference between then and now.
Via Sipsey St., today everyone celebrates a particular document drafted by Thomas Jefferson and chopped up by Franklin, et. al., but go back one more year and read something else he wrote. Again, compare to the present situation.
An Americasuckage roundup from Pravda of all places. How did this happen? Who won the Cold War?
PSH and discrimination in Iowa. And New Hampshire.
We're in trouble. I'm in trouble, completely out of money, car insurance and electric bills due, still no income.
There are no good cops. If there ever were, the kind we have now drove them to extinction long ago.
2A rally in Chicago! (...What are the odds their permit will be revoked at the last minute?)
More McDonald from Denver GRE and Tucson GRE.
"The current system of public education in this country is not working...." I escaped public education, dropping out early in the eighth grade. Two years later I went to Job Corps, where I got a rather high score on my GED in a mere six weeks, in a system similar to the linked example. Some people are catching on.
One must get the math right. Long ago, when I was wasting time and money at technical school, I discovered the formulae for calculating distance over time at acceleration. I'm having to go back and adjust Aurora's flight times in a few places, and to decide on a hyper limit.
The World Sucks and I Hate It
THERE. ARE. NO. GOOD. COPS. "...I have at least a dozen more in this email alone and I just can't get to them all." And these sadistic perverts actually think they're the good guys. They believe the "laws" they enforce are legitimate. They think what they're doing is right.
These scum make me sick.
So NASA's primary mission is no longer to secure mankind's future in the universe, but to make throat-cutting child-raping mass-murderers feel good about themselves. -What the heck, NASA shouldn't exist anyway.
Bellesiles again? Didn't he get lost in a flood or something? -Oh yeah, that was his data.
Finished Citizens. Excellence of the old and the new. Starting Eric Flint & Ryk Spoor's Threshold, sequel to Boundary, about ancient space aliens whose civil war caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Wyoming again. I hate Oregon....
Holy Crap: "A generation from now, legal and policy discussions will look back and see gun control for the sham that it has always been. The real shame is that it took decades of political action, millions of dollars in litigation, and thousands of lives lost to end the preposterous idea that governments can reduce the number of victims of violent crime by first taking away their means of resistance." From NPR?! (via WoG)
Ummm, science fail? The material in question does not occur naturally, and I expect 200kg of it in one lump would have gone critical in short order....
Aurora, Part XX. Your Charitable Contributions are Deeply Appreciated!
Ohhh yeah, your tax dollars NOT at work. Have I mentioned how much I hate the public education system?
Gaming the system in Iowa. "Most of the Hancock County officials who were quoted expressed some level of surprise over the actual wording and effects of the ordinance. This is somewhat difficult to believe, given that the ordinance had been read twice before prior to today's meeting." This is one small symptom of a nationwide epidemic of willful ignorance. The servants have forgotten their place. Ditto Chicago.
An official government policy of racial preference. And they call US racists.
It's not about safety, it's about control. And armed robbery.
And power for power's own sake. Do click through for tidbits such as: "The integrity of the legal system depends on people believing that the police are relatively honest and, to at least a reasonable extent, aren't just making this stuff up. The integrity of the legal system is at risk, because they are just making this stuff up. We all know it. When are we going to acknowledge it?" Anyone who, for the past decade or more, even wants to become a law enforcement officer, is by definition an enemy of civilization. It is past time they were dealt with as such.
Armed self-defense works. Anyone who infringes in any way upon this natural human right is the moral equivalent of a murderer themselves.
Speaking of such infringers, once in a very great while one gets a tiny bit of what he deserves. But that's not the way to bet.
It's not clear to me; which way is galactic east? -This is somewhat useful, though it doesn't answer the specific question.
"Enemies of civilization" I said. Lemme share with you even more wisdom from my screennamesake: "The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." Disarmament laws are illegitimate by their very nature. Those who enforce those laws are the true criminals.
More game-playing in Chicago. We're not people to them. Just game pieces.
"Pure" libertarians can be expected to oppose the idea of fire marshals and government-mandated building codes. And they have a point. We used to HANG people who did these things.
Speaking of the illegitimacy of "laws".
Still unemployed. Moneystress....
More bigotry, and a history lesson written, as usual, in the blood of the innocent.
When a European reader sent me this outrage, my first thought was "Sink the Island"... until I realized the report was not from Britain but from Colorado. You see why I don't want to get out of bed?
Speaking of reasons to pull the covers over one's head, Pournelle's entire entry for today is packed with them, from global warming cultism to totalitarian Big-Brotherism to atrocious government incompetence.
Another step on the road to Logan's Run. And on the other end of the equation, I... can't come up with a dystopian SF reference for this. Anyone?
"A taxpayer funded criminal enterprise."
And they call us racist.
Injustice. First comment: "Cops are digging graves with their badges, some of those graves will be theirs." Personally I think we should bring back some of the old ways. Pour encourager les autres.
Another very small and faltering step in the right direction. With many still to go.
Hah, another: "Justice Bennett ruled that Sheriff Weber infringed on Mr. Dorr's First Amendment rights, and that if he could do so, he would require Sheriff Weber to take a remedial college course on the First Amendment." In yer fascist face you two-bit badgescum!
Flint & Spoor's Threshold is a bit of a slow starter, with IMO insufficient recap of the previous volume, Boundary, released more than four years earlier. (How many books have I read since then?) Fortunately, if you go to this link advertised in the inside front jacket blurb, you'll find instructions on how to download a free e-copy of Boundary, which I'm now skimming through before resuming the hardcopy second volume. Jim Baen probably deserves the title of Electronic Publishing Pioneer, and Eric Flint appears to be his philosophical heir. Yay Baen.
[thought=random] Putting aside the worldsuckage and the unfreedom and The Law Is Wrong... this is still the Best Country Ever. Putting also aside the cancellation of the program, would it not be unutterably cool for the USAF Thunderbirds to transition to F-22s? With the vectored thrust and the sideways flying and all that greatly expanded flight envelope to explore? And how awesome would that shape look in exhibition colors? They'd have to come up with a new pattern of appropriate awesomeness.
Speaking of random awesomeness, have some more.
$7.76 in checking, $21 in my pocket. Car insurance $56.74, junk storage $40, both due next week. Electricity $46.95, but that at least can slide another month if it has to since I was caught up previously. Selling more stuff I'd rather not sell. :( But, much of it was donated by a particularly shockingly-generous reader specifically for that purpose.
...Just barely made enough for the first two bills. I'm in trouble....
Wikipedia's main page, "In the news" section:
Looky, I'm for the troops and their mission. But, if the Bungler-in-Chief is pulling the plug anyway, thereby negating, practically overnight once our guys are gone, everything the best men in the world have accomplished for most of the decade... we're gonna have to go back and finish the job someday. Next decade, next century, Kratman's Caliphate, whatever, job ain't done.
I see only two ways to get the job done. Stay in great numbers for a very long time, which is not feasible politically or economically; or carpet-nuke the entire region.
Srsly.
Meanwhile.... "In this case, Osceola County Sheriff Douglas L. Weber was found to have 'retaliated against a citizen of his county who used this important freedom of speech and association precisely in the manner envisioned by the founding members of our nation.'" Never trust a cop of any kind. The moment they put on the badge, they become enemies of civilization.
Related: Half a century of Prohibition FAIL. And the response from the disconnected, elitist rulers and their eager thugs? "Do it again, harder." We're not getting out of this without bloodshed.
I should be at a CMP Garand match today, but I need to liquidate stuff to pay immediate bills. But: Knowing my situation, the directors of the particular match offered to cover me and even extended the offer to the 29 August match. Previously they offered me a ride to Lone Oak, which is way far away from the hovel at ~$3/gallon. Gunfolk are the nicest and most generous people ever.
At the show I encountered Wheeler, regional coordinator for Appleseed. (Which I need to attend more of, judging by my embarrassing performance in my last couple of rifle matches. -No, Appleseed ain't about shooting competition, but my current skill is such that Appleseed always improves it.) Anyway he's taking a run at self-employment with little stainless-steel camp stoves which he makes, and he mentioned something about eventually offering complete ready-to-grab Bug-Out-Bags.
Wyoming again. And I'm trapped here....
Back here I speculated on an angled inner surface for an interstellar slowboat, to combine radial and linear acceleration for a perceived constant without worrying about the soil inside shlumping aftward. I may have been subconsciously inspired by Boundary, which describes an alien slowboat almost exactly like what I proposed, a flying torus. -And with the skimming re-read done, Threshold becomes more readable. Actually picks up some speed.
Speaking of spin-weight, one thing that's been bugging me for a while is the limitations of Aurora's grav-rings. The obvious solution would be to make the cables longer. Storage space for the cable wouldn't be a real problem; by 2139CE, the date of her class' introduction, we can presume to have developed something like Niven's Sinclair monofilament. But there's the problem of the collapsible, inflated tunnels - no matter what those are made of, they'll take more space, and there's only so much available on a warship. Maybe I'll rewrite with elevator cars, and if I do that I might as well rewrite for longer cables on which to extend the ring-sections from the hull, thereby giving one Monticellan gravity (1.111... Terra) at a non-puke-inducing 2rpm. Hm. -Ah, of course! I can make the elevator cars themselves collapsible! Yes, some rewriting to do. (Ugh, some rewriting to do.)
Comes out to a 248.something-meter radius, call it 250, for a half-kilometer diameter at 2rpm. Less than half that at 3rpm though, for 10.9mps2. The other figures, like slightly over Lunar surface gravity at 3rpm with the rings retracted to the hull, need not change.
The World Sucks a Little More Every Day
Destruction of small arms, like the ones these women could have used to save the lives of their loved ones, is now the official policy of the United States government.
Show & chat every Sunday 1100PT.
"To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face" (ref)... in California?! (From comments: "...a nice hand to the cops who did not freak out and handled it as business as usual." I thought cops freaking out was business as usual....)
Orwellian revisionism from, as usual, The New York Times.
More on the arbitrary murder of Oscar Grant by a sadist-with-a-badge, who of course is getting a wrist-slap and in a very few years will probably be eligible to do it again.
(Whatever did become of Lon Horiuchi...?)
Related in Iowa, cops still hate citizens and want them to die.
Is it any wonder we return the sentiment? Thirteen in today's batch, and two are child molesters. Let's review: Four of 24, two of 14, (only! ...so to speak) one of 10, two of 11. It appears one in 7.5 law enforcement officers are child-rapists. It seems reasonable to ask if that's why they become cops - for the opportunities. Remember, that's only the ones Codrea has the time (and stomach) to report, out of bushels he gets every day; not counting the ones who "only" rape grown-ups; and only counting the ones who get caught.
And: "But when the State's response to a call for help is one of arrest, seizure, and indictment of the victim, it encourages disrespect for the rule of law. Because, where is the benefit of being compliant?" Where have I heard that before...? Oh yeah: "There is no advantage in cooperating with the Japanese. A man obeys all the Japanese laws. When he's taken at random and shot, his next-door neighbor will think, 'It does a man no good to obey.' He might as well die fighting." These are not the actions of keepers of the peace or defenders of public safety. They are the actions of an occupying army with an agenda of conquest and plunder.
Meanwhile in the "Religion of Peace"....
A pointed reminder from Ayn Rand. Not perfect... but not wrong. Look around.
Not sure it belongs in "Lighter" News, but another view of Mehserle and Grant.
Next time someone asks you why RKBA should include national parks, rub their nose in this. Nice kitteh.... 8-|
Finishing Threshold, which ends with some actual action. I'm amazed to discover the library doesn't have Footfall.
Over here I had the Decorative Humanoid Alien Chicktm wearing jodhpurs for freefall practicality. Dude. Jodhpurs.
From the lists: There's a community which, after allowing concealed carry of weapons, experienced a steady six-year decline in crime. And what was the response from that community's "law" enforcement? They wanted to turn back the clock to a time and a set of conditions under which there was more crime. Following up, I'm reminded they failed to put the welcome mat out again for muggers and rapists, but my observation stands: Police hate citizens and want us to die. -With vanishingly-rare exceptions like Alderden.
More on NYT. (...You mean someone still reads it?)
There are legitimate reasons why the UN is so often the villian in the anarcho-libertarianish SF novels I prefer.
Goose? Golden egg? Never heard of 'em. If I ever gain the means, I am so out of this Founders-forsaken state.
And cops wonder why we hate them. Srsly an epidemic of "Blue Flu" would vastly improve public safety.
And here is another in a too-long list of graphically-infuriating examples why. Murderers should be hung.
Cliffhanger ending to Threshold BTW, so one can expect more. One hopes it won't take 4+ years.
Found an ancient paperback of Orphans of the Sky.
Chicago still sucks, but some citizens are trying to fix it.
Perspective and precedent in Iowa.
Not all "laws" are illegitimate.
Yet another entry in the obscenely-bloated 1911 marketplace, which I wouldn't have bothered linking except for the MSRP Actually Within Reach of Mortal Taxpayers. -One wonders exactly how many 1911 assembly lines there are in the Philippines. Could be just the one, with a bunch of different distributors' names stamped on them. Mine's from there and it does work, though it needed attention.
Okeh, so, dere wuz dis squirrel plasticized abomination. I've owned five shotguns; the antique double, a Remington 870, and three Mossbergs including an M590. The latter was stolen, the others liquidated for need - I rarely do anything with shotguns (though I would if I ever got into 3-Gun (for which I'd need an AR-type device)). But I do have opinions on them. Here is a charity auction, with which there ain't nuthin' wrong a'tall. But... if yer gonna have a fightin' shotgun, it needs certain things. I do like rifle-type sights on such a tool but they're not completely necessary, so this one gets a point for that. I'm quite fond of handguards on any long gun - that protection goes both ways. The auction item has not this feature. I'm particularly enamored of the Mossberg M590 because it has a bayonet lug - a shotgun is a close-range weapon, ya know? And that little bit of metal makes authoritarian parasites wet themselves. Another missing bit. With exceptions like the Saiga (there are other examples but they're constructed from finely-forged unobtanium), the feed system on a fighting shotgun will be a belly-fed tube, so you might as well have the thing go all the way to the end of the barrel - encore l'FAIL. But I think the thing that turns me off the most about this particular specimen is the stock. Dudes. Where is the safety on a Mossberg 5xx receiver? And how are you supposed to reach said safety with a pistol-grip stock? -And that doesn't consider bayonet drill (except I've already noted you CAN'T FIX A BAYONET TO THIS MODEL): where do you put your hands? I sense a great wrongness in the arms room.
This is pretty much the model Big 5 Sporting Goods has been advertising the last few months around here, BTW. No I won't be putting one on layaway.
Folks, I need money, badly. I'm still unemployed and the money is about gone - certainly there's not enough for rent. I've sold about everything saleable except the Queen, my 1911, my GP100, and a couple customized bolt-action rifles which really aren't saleable.
But:
I'm not the only curmudgeonly republitarian gunblogger who needs money badly. ( I wouldn't turn my nose up at... just about anything he's offering (back when I had a fistful of VZ24s I'd dreamed of building several custom rifles, and 7mm-08, with a reputation for accuracy and mild recoil, was high on the list) except the Mossberg bullpup, which is ergonomically incorrect for H. sapiens Terra. I tried one once and It Don't Fit.) (As for the ParaOrd, the FLGR and the big fat grips would have to go of course, but the rest seems fine. One wonders if it has a Series 80 firing-pin safety though.) (Maybe Tam can make an offer on the Mauser .32?)
Business as usual in D.C.. Alternate viewpoints need not apply. ...Rather like the Warmist cult.
More on Oakland's Blue Flu - which, as was pointed out in comments at Sipsey St., is very curiously timed after one of their own was convicted for manslaughter. Personally, I want to live somewhere there are no cops. They're the real danger to public safety.
You want examples? I got enough examples to make you hurl, every single day. Police are enemies of civilization. A time is rapidly approaching when shooting law enforcement officers on sight will be a morally-justified act of self-defense.
More MSM PSH in Iowa.
Yeah we KNOW who's "racist".
Speaking of California.
You may have heard of the raging bigot in Virginia, whose name I will not type nor URL link. VCDL is, as usual, on top of things. I wish I were a Virginian....
Speaking of Iowa, that darn pesky 1st Amendment thingy. :D
LOL. ...But srsly, for some time I've had the idea for a midsword, which would be little more than a 21st Century gladius. While the Roman blade is straight, mine would have a taper, though not dramatic; it would retain the armor-piercing point. There would be no tang; blade and hilt would be one uninterrupted piece of metal for strength, rather like certain fighting knives I've seen - I can't recall the maker but I think he's from Idaho and the blade had a cameo in one of L. Neil Smith's novels (not the graphic adaptations I've seen), either The Probability Broach or The American Zone. Advanced material of course, like cermet or a titanium alloy; hollow hilt for tool storage and spear/pike conversion; etc.
Growing replacement organs? Anti-radiation meds? Working on 'em. -The second also strikes me as having anti-aging, and more general anti-cancer (cancer is runaway cell division, innit?), applications.
Yes I know it's Bastille Day. On my front page I keep a month's worth of historical tidbits, and in the scrap file where I keep the HTML for them, I have a placeholder for Bastille Day - I haven't come up with something that feels right. SMLE Fan has. Also see.
Speaking of SMLE Fan, he's gaining momentum on the 'blogging thing. -Hey, I've been at it near eight years now. We learn by doing.
More writing tips from Correia. Whose novel Monster Hunter International is now in it's fourth printing in one year. "It's not art until it sells."
The Guru on Liberty. Timeless.
Speaking of murderous-by-default cops, more on the Danziger Bridge atrocity from WoG and Seattle GRE.
Dear Al-Qaeda: Please nuke Hollywood. kthxbai.
Bigotry on campus is a well-documented phenomenon. Now it's spreading to before you reach campus.
Crucifying the victim in Colorado.
Losing surrendering 1st Amendment ground in Iowa.
Trash police. Permits and fees for making art on your own land. Banning soft drinks and old books and imported cheese. Dictating what you can eat. Taxes on everything. Kidnapping ("arrest"), robbery ("confiscation", "fines") and the threat of summary murder ("shot while resisting") for exercising common sense.
This country got along just fine for well over a century without these "laws". And look at us now. "Law" enforcement is from it's very conception operating on false premises. That is the terrible truth too many sheeple cannot stretch their minds to grasp - they close their eyes, throw out their hands, and turn their heads away with a wail of despair and denial. This nation was created on the principle of not asking government's permission. These laws should not exist.
The. Law. Is. Wrong.
Those who enforce it, those who write it, those who vote for it, are evil.
Powered exoskeletons. "On the bounce, trooper!"
Related: Heinlein bio on the way.
SMLE Fan snarks on the PopMech article on the new M24 sniper rifle, and experiences schadenfreude toward SPLC.
Depending how one calculates it, the Atomic Age began on this day in 1945 with the first fission explosion in the New Mexico desert. ...A case could be made for figuring it earlier, with the first controlled chain reaction on 2 December 1942.
The hypocrisyometer is pegged in Iowa.
There's a trend of home invasions by fake badgethugs. Since the tactics are indistinguishable, and the risk to citizens of being arbitrarily murdered is the same, they should all be treated as immediate dangers to life and limb. Anyone coming through your door uninvited should be met with instant lethal force. Because whether they're getting their paycheck out of your taxes, or from fencing your TV, they are morally-equivalent robbers and murderers.
...The lesson there is supposed to be, "Stop breaking into people's homes and killing them." The lesson is supposed to be directed at the actual government-approved badgethugs. The problem is, they are not capable of conceiving that what they do is wrong. What will really happen is, they'll just "Do it again, harder" - until we kill enough of them in self-defense. We did not start this war.
Slavery is still slavery even when proposed by a race-baiting professional victim presumably descended from slaves. (In my utopia, national service is not mandatory. Largely inspired by the Swiss system, and of course one of the first half-dozen books I ever read on purpose.)
There's been much chatter lately all over the gun'blogosphere about NRA's ideological impurity. Meanwhile, SAF has actually been doing stuff.
The fastest revolver shooter alive (who admits he's not the fastest who ever lived) pops a Zit. ...BTW, back when I was still doing plate matches, I heard from guys who would know that the magazine disconnect on the Ruger MkIII can be disabled. *&^%$ lawyers.
More Stranger!
More censorship in Iowa. From the people who claim to be for freedom of speech.
Dear Al-Qaeda: Please please nuke the ever-loving crap out of DC. I will &^%$in' buy you a #*@!in' goat.
Again I ask those "information wants to be freeee" hippie hopey changey imbeciles: HOW'S THAT WORKIN' OUT FOR YA!?
Hollywood is teh suxx. We know. Has been for decades. But this is a very cool movie trailer. It's been... some years since I saw a movie in a theater.
Brigid vents.
When writing science fiction and guesstimating future computer capacity, however much you think you might be over-guesstimating, you're probably falling short. Remember when 500 megabytes was a Honkin' Huge Hard Drive? It wasn't so long ago.
And powered exoskeletons.
More on the latest citizen publicly murdered by sadistic perverts with badges.
Parts of Iowa are starting to sound a lot like Chicago. And there is no good way to mean that.
SMLE Fan has more on Bellesiles. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at what any institution of "higher" "education" accepts as credible....
Buying gold was illegal once. That was fixed, but it may soon be regulated. As we've seen with firearms throughout world history, regulation leads to prohibition. Don't ask. Don't tell. Use cash.
Show & chat every Sunday 1100PT, featuring interview with Guy Smith of Gun Facts.
LOLz o' the Day.
If this goes on, we'll have to include firefighters in the Only Ones category.
OFFICIAL. GOVERNMENT. RACISM.
Has anyone ever actually asked, in so many words, the prohibitionists to explain this? Everywhere their policies have been implemented, crime goes up and more people suffer and die. Everywhere their policies have been rejected, crime goes down and stays there.
Of course, if the question ever is asked, we know what the answer will be. You can't reason with these people. Their minds don't work right.
You know that internet kill switch in Hussein's sweaty little hand? And you know a certain independent senator and former VP candidate who some people might have thought wasn't such a bad guy? Do some math.
I linked this the other day from WRSA, and it's worth revisiting and discussing. We did not start this war. Stop poking the rattlesnake if you don't want to get bit. -And yes, I get the film reference.
Related in a less-murderous way, never trust a cop of any kind.
Meanwhile in DC: "I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do." "The unaided human mind, and the acts of the individual, cannot assure excellence. Health care is a system, and its performance is a systemic property." "Young doctors and nurses should emerge from training understanding the values of standardization and the risks of too great an emphasis on individual autonomy." Holy. #@&%ing. $#!*. They are actually saying this crap out loud. Wrap Orwell in wire and hook him up to the grid, 'cause he's a'spinnin'.
Gettin' uppity in Massachusetts.
McDonald fallout in Arkansas.
ON THIS DAY.
The last couple days, I've been watching NASA documentaries on library disc - For All Mankind, When We Left Earth. One of the guest commenters was Dr. Issac Asimov, who wrote a bunch of stuff about a bunch of stuff fictional and not. For a contemporary NASA film on Apollo 8, the first manned Lunar orbit, he said: "In 1939, I wrote a story describing, in essence, this flight. I placed it in 1973." He went on to say how, if asked at the time, he would not have thought his story plausible; and how happy he was, in 1968, to have been off by half a decade in the unexpected direction.
I was going to use this as another example of underestimating the future when attempting to write science fiction (look at the computer you're reading this on now, then look at Star Trek: TOS)...
But the World Sucks Today
...because we haven't gone back for nearly 38 years.
...My feelings on space exploration are expressed, in part, by Tam, and in another part by David Scott as he stepped onto Luna during Apollo 15: "...[T]here's a fundamental truth to our nature: Man must explore." Apollo was the exception, not the rule. The men who accomplished those unparalleled deeds no longer exist in government. Government destroys all such minds and spirits. Government must get out of the way. Like my sister said, years before that Tam post, give the job to a Vegas developer and folk'll be raking in the profits in two years.
"...[D]eclaratory and restrictive Clauses...." "...[T]o prevent Misconstruction or Abuse of its Powers...." "Congress shall make no law...." "...[S]hall not be infringed." "No soldier shall...." "The right of the people to be secure... shall not be violated...." "No person shall be held to answer... nor shall be compelled...." "...[T]he accused shall enjoy the right...." "...[P]owers... are reserved... to the people."
Restrictions ON government! Declarations of INDIVIDUAL rights! [reaching through the intertubes, grabbing statist parasites by the scruff, shaking until their eyeballs click together]
GYAAARRGGHH!!!!!
We could round up 90+% of all government employees at all levels, feed them all into Mad Mike Williamson's chipper (or to John Ross' hogs, or....), and experience an immediate, dramatic, and lasting increase in quality of life, coast-to-freakin'-coast.
Lemme re-revisit this discussion on how to deal with the thugs. I object strongly to the notion of burning the cop's house down around him. Fires can spread. Poor old Joe Taxpayer next door, it's not his fault a lying thieving murdering child-molesting sadistic perverted fascist moved in next to him. We must be more precise. As the original poster pointed out in comments, slaughtering the wife & kids & the little dog too is what they do.
Which of course is why people are starting to burn their houses down....
Tossing granny into the chipper. Remember, AARP says their own membership shouldn't be allowed the means of self-defense.
Bush NRA Derangement Syndrome.
THE. LAW. IS. WRONG. Even Constitutional Scholars On Our Side have trouble wrapping their minds around it.
More from Arkansas.
The World Still Sucks
Ya know, every time I get just a little bit ahead, the universe craps all over me. Like clockwork. I can't plan ahead for any damn thing 'cause I know something will happen to prevent me going. And I'm getting damn tired of it.
"...[S]our grapes from a few Sheriffs who do not want to give up their absolute authority to deny a citizen the right to carry a weapon." Cops hate citizens and want us to die.
And the Huxley-esque conditioning is working. Everyone has the right to self-defense, but some people just don't deserve it. Pollutants in the gene pool.
Speaking of pollutants: Yet another moment of cluelessness involving Lon Horiuchi and H-S Precision. Ya know, folks, there's this thing called the internet, and people use it to share information....
Thieves should be killed. NEVER call the police. Their one and only mode of operation is to get someone on whatever charge they can fabricate. They are not capable of presuming innocence or exercising judgement. And they wonder why we want to burn their houses down with them inside.
Dear Al-Qaeda....
Fight back. Always.
Sometimes, "Do it again, harder" is the right answer.
Stossel on space.
Query o' the Day from Florida (and a startling exception to the rule of Unstable Freaks in Black Robes): “Just as a kind of a query, what legal authority does the sheriff or anybody have to walk in to someone’s home and take property?” [Broward Circuit Judge Dale Ross] said. “Don’t we call that, in the business, stealing?” (Yes. Yes we DO. And thieves should be killed.)
TFB guest post smacks gamers.
Leslie Fish, filk singer, at-least-honorary gunfolk, and general curmudgeon, suggests that an anarchist society need not be anti-technological. Williamson explores the possibility extensively (what, five or six volumes now?). And I can see a minarchist society working, especially if you have Cheap Energy and most especially if you have fabbers, which as I've pointed out are in their infancy early cell division with those $600 ChiCom mill/drills at Harbor Freight.
How do you get Cheap Energy (and fabbers and starships and the immortal M1911 pistol) in the first place? How does really advanced technology get developed without, for example, a Bureau of Ordnance for John Moses Browning and John Cantius Garand to demonstrate their inventions to (because the other government's Armaments Bureau is tinkering with some newfangled thing which may Upset the Balance of Power and We Just Can't Have That)? When and where and how would the Manhattan Project and it's myriad PEACEFUL spinoffs have happened without the pressure of war caused by great big governments? When would the first moon rocket have been built without the Cold War Space Race as motivation? How many millennia of men would be condemned to scratching a living out of the dirt without government-driven wars booting our technology curve in the butt every generation like clockwork, like fuel units in an Orion?
Now regular readers should understand, without my explaining, that I am in no way advocating for government. I'm asking a serious question. Nothing advances technology like war and wars happen between governments, however one defines that word, all the way back to Chief Og in the Western Caves vs. Headman Ug from the Northern Hills and some clever dude on one side coming up with the first bow and arrow and some cleverer dude on the other studying a captured sample and making improvements. In WWII humanity went from biplanes to suborbital spaceflight in a mere six years. How can any society, composed of beings whose minds work like ours, achieve the hypertechnological minarchist utopia without traveling through a period, more likely several, of authoritarianism?
Is that even possible?
Every government in history - even ours; ask my putative Sioux and Cherokee ancestors - has proven that all governments are evil. But how necessary is that evil? If we are ever to be more than the pre-Monolith ape-dude in 2001: A Space Odyssey?
...And even Clarke had even them roughing each other up in organized fashion, before and after said tool-use-inducing Monolith.
This is what I think of when I can't get to sleep.
Quote o' the Day: "[Cops] are and always have been a self ego stroking mutual masturbation society. Anyone with any sense of honor would prefer to work for the mafia rather the the Gov. The mafia at least has a basic honesty of purpose and doesn't try to convince their victims that they are acting for the public good." It's exactly like that Harry Browne quote: "Government is good at only one thing: It breaks your legs, hands you a pair of crutches, and says, 'See, without us you wouldn't be able to walk.'" Except they bill you for the crutches, charge a crutch-permit fee, and electrocute you if they catch you actually using the crutches because they "might be used as a weapon".
They actually think they're the good guys. That is too perverted for words.
Keeping an eye on the UN treaty thing. Blue Helmets Make Good Targets.
"There ain't no place you can go to get away from 'em."
No place at all. Boycott airlines. Need to fly somewhere? Find a private pilot going that way and do some neither-asking-nor-telling. With cash. Prolly save money anyway.
In the Dear Al-Qaeda files, I might suggest Haiti as a target to nuke the effing crap out of... but would anyone notice?
It looks like Codrea is just taking some damn days off. He's been going nonstop for how many years? For The Cause. And I'm okay with that.
RKBA means knives too.
Speaking of fighting shotguns. I could be quite satisfied with something very much like that. -That's a gas gun, right? I would have to investigate the gas system, see how it handled a variety of loads. One real selling point for the shotgun as a fighting tool is the ability to handle anything you can cram into about 0.7something".
WHATEVER THIS IS I WANT ONE.
And I want these too. Specifically the Gadsdens.
As does Hollywood, incessantly.
"...[W]e can assume the [Arkansas State Police] will be a principal opponent to Arkansans having their rights returned to them." Well of course police are opposed to citizens doing anything without permission. That's what police are.
And here's yet another infuriatingly-graphic example. The law is wrong.
Boycott airlines. -Think about what kind of people want to work for TSA. First, just don't fly, 'cause airline security is repugnant to the Constitution and human dignity; second, continue not flying until the airlines suffer enough financially to demand change. If you must fly, find a private pilot and make a private deal.
Remember: It's not about safety, it's about control. Yeah we know who they're "protecting and serving" and it sure ain't us.
And remember: They're the Only Ones who should have guns! Because they have all that traaaaiining, and the Magic Badge Granting Powers and Abilities Far Beyond that Constitution Thingy.
And they actually wonder why we hate them.
It's not about health either. (And Sink the Island.)
Re-re-examining the lifetime prohibition. The law is wrong. Too many "felonies" on the books today - like the actions of that poor guy in Colorado - were Upstanding Patriotic Civic Duties a century ago.
90+% of U.S. Code can be safely scrapped. Most of it boils down to armed-robbery-in-uniform.
Government schools. I didn't graduate, I escaped. >:-[
Utilities bill, $90.30. I ain't got it. Rent I have, barely, counting pay for some work I haven't done yet.
Guns & Coffee sez: "That is correct, the Mossberg 930 is a gas system, pretty much the same setup as the FN from what I've read. The only ammo I've had any issues with to date was some bulk Winchester No. 8 low walled rounds I picked up from Wal-mart on the cheap, some short cycling and failures to eject (I have a feeling this may have been due more to the hull sizing more than the load itself.) It's run the same load from Federal with no issues however. 00 buck and slugs have had zero issues (mainly the cheap Federal and a handful of the Mil-surp green hulled buckshot rounds.) Overall the gas system seems to be far less picky than a recoil operated system in regards to light loads. I do want to try some reduced recoil LE loads out in it, but I haven't been able to find any around here though." I'll be keeping an eye out for a 930 at the shows, and I'm studying the manual. (Not that I expect to be able to afford one soon....)
Codrea's GRE column from late yesterday. Yeah we know who's racist.
This right here is how it's supposed to work.
Well duh. -Thanks to a donation from SMLE Fan I have a WiFi-g card in the hovel's ancient HP box. And I know it still works, 'cause it detected a signal from the ancient NEC laptop's -b card just now. But there are no usable WiFi signals, encrypted or otherwise, in range of even the Cantenna. Sigh.
Since I'm incomeless and broke I'm shooting much less than I used to, but this right here is a Fundamental Truth of the Guniverse and cannot be overstated. I use McCormick.
Never ever tick off the Americans.
FRICKIN' ALIEN PLANETS!!1!!1!!one!1!! ("Sweet Mother o' God, hunnerds of 'em!")
And this is the kind of thing I mean when I write about "miniaturized personal computers/comms/libraries/entertainment centers, now as ubiquitous as wristwatches". Not there yet, but you can see it from here. Just like Asimov in '68, talking about writing a story in '39 about a moon shot in '73, when writing SF, you'll typically undershoot. Probably even this.
ÜBERPR0N.
2010 is... less hard. But not offensively so.
I suppose I'll have to read the third book now... oh there's a fourth, sigh.
Orphans of the Sky is a short and rather fast-paced book, not heavy. Anyway it's Heinlein. He's the gol-durn JMB of SF. -Srsly he invented half the SF tropes in use today. First.
While at the library yesterday, waiting for my ancient NEC laptop to load Firefox so I could download the latest digital edition of Guns magazine in less than two hours (it took a heck of a lot longer to boot than to download the 24Mb file) (that reminds me, Yuri sez Xubuntu might work on the ancientness, must investigate), I was sitting next to the periodical rack and there was The Wall Street Journal and just above the fold was this story about the totalitarianism Orwell was warning us about. -This is not a Wal-Mart bash, it's an unintended-consequences pay-attention-dammit face-slap.
-You know that scene in Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor is having the nightmare about trying to warn her happy-mother-self about Judgement Day and sheeple-Sarah smiles and laughs and turns away? Too many people are like that. Gonna get bit.
To further illustrate: In the September Rights Watch column, Codrea deftly fisks an anti, smacking him in his upturned nose with a rolled-up Document. Government monopoly of force is the most basic antithesis to the founding principles of this nation. America was created in violent rebellion. It will be recreated the same way. We are beyond the possibility of peaceful resolution. Choose a side.
GOVERNMENT. #@$%ING. SCHOOL. [Typing &^%$ 200 times, adding indent to suggest a paragraph....]
AUTHORIZED. JOURNALIST. OF. THE. YEAR. And somehow these people actually dress themselves and blunder their way to the office each morning. -Probably the reporter was simply reporting what the cops reported. "Blind leading blind" seems an inadequate term.
Meanwhile on the border.... -IIRC, Texas, when annexed in 1845, was at the time a sovereign and independent republic. Did they not reserve the right to secede? Now lemme tell ya, if Governor Perry calls up the Texas National Guard and tells 'em to secure that mother*@#%in' border right the hell now and don't spare the &@$%#^* ammo, I will buy a Texas flag and fly it over the hovel. This crap has gone too far. And it's not just me saying it.
Meanwhile at the IRS. And down the street at the "Justice" Department. A flaming meteor from the heavens smacking the capitol dome at several kilometers per second would be the best thing to happen to this country since victory at Yorktown.
Got some dry practice with Yuri today, for the IPSC shoot next weekend. It's looking like he'll be spectating and videoing rather than shooting.
ZOMG SMLE Fan IS POSTING STUFF SORTA REGULARLY!1!!!1!eleven!! :D
And finally, Brigid has the Keyboard-Destroying Projectile-Snork o' the Day.
Out of money. Can't make rent (counting landlord utilities bill received a couple days ago).
"Chilling effect" on commerce? Yeah, we got that. Thieves should be KILLED.
Show & chat every Sunday 1100PT. (Rerun from Independence Day.)
On 1 August is a muzzleloading rifle match, which I've done well in previously. Unfortunately I have just enough resources set aside for the IPSC shoot on the 31st. So there's another thing I want to attend but can't. At least I haven't had to sell the Hawken yet....
"It's that last sentence that's the problem." The most important and useful thing government can do is get out of the way.
I agree unreservedly with the original poster's conclusions. Note also this comment.
It's never been about safety. It's always been about control.
Stossel has more on the recent armed robbery of a grocery store.
THE. LAW. IS. WRONG. Evidently there are no meaningful quantity of human beings remaining in Illinois. If there were anything but bleating sheep, the pitchforks-and-torches routine would have swept through Springfield many years ago.
All we want is to be left alone. We've been at war for a long time. Don't be surprised when we defend ourselves.
Microstamping still? Fer cryin' out loud?
Damn. Never met him, never conversed directly with him, but damn. The man had a way with words which will be sorely missed.
Reader sends RKBA column from SF writer Ben Bova. -The last time I read something by him was... I can't remember. Maybe his Asteroid Wars series, which didn't suck I guess. Before that I think was Peacekeepers, a pro-UN anti-sovereignty thing. Perhaps he's maturing.
I don't own an iPhone. I don't want an iPhone. If someone gave me an iPhone as a gift I'd liquidate it for gas money. Here's why.
Submersible. Effin'. Cruisers. The first one, French of all things, carried a ship's boat and a floatplane and two eight-inch guns. The second, British, a single twelve-inch. Mechanical problems with all of course, but that's 'cause they weren't built by Americans....
Moneystress....
Yes I'm still going to IPSC Saturday dammit. Quality-of-life.
Most of the Gun Rights Examiners have had not much of anything for the past week or more. Codrea's taking absurdly-deserved time off of course.
Armed robbery in uniform. Think about what kind of people want to be cops.
There is more than one level of FAIL in this story about a Canadian 911 call, as illustrated in comments. Totalitarians on one side, thoroughly destroying the concept of independence and initiative and taking care of oneself; and on the other side, the result.
Speaking of totalitarianism.
Government healthcare isn't about health or care, it's about government.
Speaking of government, more pointed questions from Oleg.
Reader points out heavily-armed American submarines SS-167 Narwhal and her sister SS-168 Nautilus, two six-inch guns and much actual combat each.
Out of money....
In the news, A Clinton-appointed federal judge issues a stay against Arizona's immigration law. I remain deeply ambivalent. I want the border secured; I want illegal aliens out of my country. But any increase, however small or theoretical, in police power, is horribly dangerous. Power is always abused, always used as one more stick with which to bludgeon the peasants, and the kind of people who become police are the kind who want power.
Speaking of the kind of people who want power, this report from DC illustrates both ends of the abusive spectrum: when the cops are supposed to go in and Protect and Serve, y'know that DangerousStressfulRiskyYouDon'tUnderstandWhatIt'sLike job they're supposed to be doing in exchange for all those taxes we pay, they sit around whining and wetting themselves while their employers are gruesomely murdered (for further examples, look at just about every school shooting ever); and as illustrated by the first comment, when there's not any danger of them having to actually help the peasants but rather an opportunity to rough them up and steal their stuff, they literally charge in, guns blazing.
The law is wrong. The very existence of police is an idea so bad the mind shies away from grasping it. We got along fine without hired thugs for a very long time. And look at us now.
Speaking of laws being wrong, carefully read this post on Prohibition FAIL. Carefully. The whole system is backward.
As Codrea has said long and often, anyone who can't be trusted with a weapon can't be trusted without a custodian. -Which, yes, means most cops belong in jail and many of the people they put there don't.
It's not enough for them to tell us how to live, they also have to tell us how we can't die. There are fates worse than death.
Via Claire Wolfe, a valedictorian blasts government schools.
Flying cars. Want, sure, but I still think the Switchblade is prettier. Market forces exist, man. People gotta want to buy.
A couple weeks ago I mentioned Trinity Day. Today is ENIAC Day, the start of operation for the first computer-we-might-call-such, so beginning the Digital Age.
Craaaap, the rent is due....
Again with MSM and CHLs. Can we expect a requirement to wear special armbands? And eventually "relocation"....
...'Cause we know who's racist.
Fort Smith GRE sucks up to badgethugs. But he's not getting away with it - do note the second comment. Nearly everything cops do these days is armed robbery.
And thieves should be killed.
"The American education system largely exists to preserve the jobs of bad teachers...."
4th Amendment repealed, and you paid for it.
And so much for the presumption of innocence. Police should not exist. Law enforcement is the enemy of civilization. Your enemy. Minding your own business, harming no one, you can be robbed at gunpoint or randomly murdered by this out-of-control gang, and your own tax dollars are paying for your own violation.
Which, yes, makes me even more conflicted on the border issue.
Remember the Jackson Co., WI, DA who refused to prosecute certain weapon-related "offenses" (because he actually realized the law is WRONG)? Guns&Coffee sez he actually means it.
And meanwhile in Arizona.
Speaking of G&C, I'm a would-be photographer as well as a would-be writer and I was not aware that the market is finally beginning to offer ruggedized digital cameras (click through for Amazon links). Which I think is an astoundingly good idea. (I also want a Panasonic Toughbook, and fervently hope other makers will offer more competition (Dell seems to have one at about $5k).) My first camera died of (kinetic) shock. If my Canon A580 gets killed, I'll be going that way for a replacement. -Alas the two linked examples use proprietary batteries instead of standard AA, a deciding feature in my choice of the Canon, but I'm sure there are or will be others.
Rights are rights and laws are wrong.
The moneystress mounts.
Out-of-control thugs with badges. -What's the quote I'm looking for... ah: "...a long train of abuses and usurpations...."
Ya know, back when the PATRIOT Act and DHS were in the works, I'm pretty sure I (and every other 'blogger who was paying attention) warned readers about this sort of thing. But nooooo, nobody listened....
"[T]he purpose of DUI stops in this state is not to keep other drivers safe." It's not about safety, it's about control. Police exist to generate revenue to perpetrate perpetuate police operations. Parasites.
Speaking of parasitism, Quote o' the Day: "I submit that twenty consecutive congressional terms is prima facie evidence of pretty much any ethical violation you'd care to throw at somebody."
Another flying car. Clicking through to the official site for their video, it appears somewhat similar to the Switchblade, if they can make all the stuff fit in the available space.
But then there's the FAA, whose laws are also wrong.... (Ross had a whole FAA subplot in Unintended Consequences.)
Sorta related to that, Mad Mike fires up the chipper for the bunny-kissing luddites.
Metaphor o' the Day.
Sipsey St. has been pouring on the Praxis lately. Useful.
And he'll soon be doing something with John Ringo. Mayhap the book should come with a poncho to protect the reader from splatter, yeah-huh!
Aaaand from the front page of the publisher's site it looks like another Bolo collection is available. 8-9
But that's not what you tuned in for today!
MATCH DAAAAYYYY!!!!
Behold HatCam Mk. I:
I started by taking the $1 tripod and chopping off the attachment bit. I used binary epoxy to mount it to the bill of the hardhat, but the hat is made of the kind of plastic to which very little sticks. Or perhaps the epoxy was expired. Anyhow during dry-practice with Yuri last weekend he pointed out the obvious, that I should make a hole and screw the thing on. Which was very easy since the tripod legs were mounted to the rest with a screw.
The next problem was, the ball-joint-thingy wouldn't stay still enough, wouldn't grab tight enough, to keep the camera from flopping around. Which I suspect is damage to this individual no-longer-tripod since I have a couple more which I've been using, with the even heavier Canon A580, with success. Jamming bits of foil into the gaps did not solve the problem and I was disinclined to chop up another tripod. So I chopped up some packing foam instead and found a rubber band of appropriate size. (Which broke... as I was packing up to leave.) Might need a little fine-tuning, and if the band lets go the camera will flop away from point-of-aim, but for the moment it appears to be working.
Excellent weather. Light rain on the drive up, then overcast but dry for most of the day, so neither sunburn nor heat-stress nor slippery-slidery mud were concerns. Nearly thirty shooters. Four stages in the morning, break for lunch while the director and crew reconfigure the bays, then three more stages. 150 rounds plus. Let's see 'em! (Stages do not necessarily appear in the order in which they were shot.)
This is the stage that broke Yuri's heart, 'cause the physicality of it is just beyond his capacity. And me, largely inactive for the past half year, I had trouble too. I'm badly out of shape. Fortunately I brought my prone mat for rifle matches and it probably prevented several meaningful injuries among the other shooters.
Nine standard IPSC targets, two rounds each. Start uprange, move to the long box and from it engage the visible targets, four on the left, two on the right, avoiding the white no-shoot targets:
Then move downrange and go prone to shoot through your choice of the two ground-level ports at the three concealed targets, again two rounds each.
Muzzle control is essential when going prone, as is Rule Effin' Three. I actually engaged the pistol's manual safety while moving forward, disengaging it when I was in position. There were no disqualifications I'm aware of, nor injuries of any kind, though some folks'll be walkin' funny in the mornin' I reckon.
Not a bad start for the day:
The 1911 had one malfunction all day, when I was chambering the very first round, from the 8-round magazine which looks like a McCormick but isn't marked as one. Tossing that one back in the range bag I switched to the real McCormicks and the weapon ran perfectly the rest of the day, uh huh.
Starting uprange of the door, engage six targets with two rounds each. Then move through the door, observin' the effin' rules...:
...and engage the same six targets again with two more rounds each, except whichever are your last three targets must be engaged strong-hand-only. Because of that restriction, here's where I suffered my first of two procedural penalties for the day, the first since I started shooting IPSC over a year ago:
I caught myself and finished the string as specified. I blame Correia for keeping me up late.
Lots of misses in this stage, from the long distances and the sharp angles:
Also, I'm pretty sure I'm going too fast with the pistol and pulling left. Pretty sure it's not the weapon.
On start signal, move to one of the boxes and engage five targets with two rounds each. The target farthest downrange, marked with yellow tape, must be engaged through the port. The white targets above or below the brown targets are not no-shoots, they're just the backs of the other targets, which you engage from the other box after moving to it, including engaging the one farthest downrange through the port.
Do try to keep track of your rounds fired:
Experienced shooters know how many magazines they have, of what capacity, and plan their reloads when doing their walkthroughs - reload here, reload there, reload then. There were several shooters today who had never done IPSC before, and I think this was one of them.
All considered, not too terribly sucky I guess, and many other shooters had misses. The Delta hits were pretty much pulled left:
The scribbles are because I got a re-shoot because some of my targets were prematurely patched before being scored. Neither the first nor the last time that will happen, nor the first or last guy to do it. Note also the slower time; my first run was sucky and I knew it, so I slowed down and used those sight-thingies on top of the slidey-thingy.
The round steel plate just left of center could only be engaged from Box A, that being a sufficient distance to reduce splatter risk according to the rules. While it was possible to engage nearly all targets from Box A, the stage description required that at least one target be engaged from each of the four boxes, one of which has a port.
Not bad at all in this stage. Having all those reactive targets was instant-gratification-y, and reinforced my belief that I, rather than the pistol, am responsible for the leftish misses, 'cause when I slowed down and aimed I got the sweet, sweet clang.
This was the largest stage of the day, with a whopping 30 rounds minimum, two rounds on each of fifteen targets. Start uprange of the door, move through the door, engage targets as visible, this time firing over the wall instead of going prone. Here's where I picked up my second procedural penalty, forgetting where my feet were and firing from outside the designated area. Correia's fault again, I'm sure. This stage will be easier to understand when I get the videos done.
On start signal, move to one of the boxes and engage three of the six targets - the other three being concealed behind "impenetrable" (for score-keeping purposes) pickle-barrel barricades - with three rounds each. Then move to the other box and engage the other three. The targets at the extreme ends must be engaged through the port on that end. After my run, someone mentioned I came close to breaking 180° during my reload, which was as I moved between the two boxes.
This was a rearrangement of Stage Four, with a Pepper Popper placed in front of the round plate. It takes a moment for the Popper to fall, during which the plate is still obscured unless you have exceptionally-fine windage.
I have HatCam footage (it can't really be called "footage" anymore when it's all digital on a very small chip) of all my stages except the first, in which I went prone, which might have caused HatCam to depart, and shot through a small port, which would probably have blocked HatCam's view. YouTubeNess is imminent. It takes time to edit videos with the stuff I have, and uploading is rarely smooth. Hopefully I'll have one stage a day done over the next week, but it might take more time.
Whew. Maybe I'll actually get some sleep tonight.
But Alas, the World Still Sucks
NUKE the Island 'til it glooooowwssss.
The moron sets back race relations by another decade every time he opens his mouth. And he won't shut up.
Aaaaand the line between satire and official policy gets even blurrier.
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