Must be springtime.

Neighbor warns us by text message, as we're in town today, that a mama moose and her new calf have decided to spend the day in our driveway, and the yearling is hanging out as well, most annoyed at having just been kicked out for the new arrival.  Oh, and a bear has been spotted moving from one neighbor's yard into another.

Must be spring.

Very well then.  Eyes up, girls reminded to constrain themselves to the deck unless we're with them, and Kerflättenböömer moved into the first-reach position.

Is .45/70.  Shot go through.

Dang, I do love that rifle.  I'd rather it draw blood under different circumstances, but if push comes to shove, she stands ready, and will do her part if I do mine.

Five weeks Outside...

...can actually have a rejuvenating effect, even while being both physically and metaphysically exhausting. 

We got back home today, with selves and stuff intact.  (Not a given in the age of Teh Stoopid, so I'm calling it a win.)  We started with a week in Montana visiting my folks, then two in Minnesota visiting the outlaws and getting a sister-in-law married off, and finished with two in Colorado visiting friends and running various errands of impressively variable magnitude.

I don't miss commercial air travel;  not one bit.  An entire industry hijacked by people so scared of their own shadows that the very concept of usefulness is seen as a threat to the universe only they have convinced themselves that we all live in.  Jeez, those people are aggravating, and of course far more dangerous than anything they claim to be protecting us from.  (By complete contrast, air travel within Alaska is very nearly civilized, but that is a topic for another time.)

But of course most of that nonsense can be willfully ignored when necessary, and the trip was mostly high points.  Excellent visits with friends and family, a few important administrative matters, musicking with D. (truly the single thing I miss most about life in Colorado), and even some useful gunnie things.

On this trip I picked up the deer rifle that my wife's grandfather told me he wanted me to have before he passed away a couple of years ago.  Based on just a couple of never-detailed conversations with him, I'd figured this would turn out to be a Winchester 94, but to my complete surprise, instead it is a Remington 760 in .300 Savage!  Now it has truly been a long time since I've seen a slide-action rifle, and entirely aside from the honor of his specifying me as its caretaker, I get more tickled by the day that this is now in my stable.  Once I get some range time I'll be sure to post further here.

I was also able to pick up a couple of completed projects from Gunsmoke in Denver.  (Unfortunately, the '03 Springfield Scout is not yet done, nor is the slimline 4" LW 1911, but in talking directly to Rich Wyatt this time, we'll see if we can't get those "expedited" and complete by the time I need to speak at a conference in July.  Fingers crossed!)  One of these is my own grandfather's old shotgun, which I had done up as a defensive/general purpose piece.  It's an old Ithaca M37 in--get this--16 gauge.  The work, as I've come to expect from Gunsmoke, is beautiful, and ammo availability aside (not a trivial consideration), I'll be happy to use this as my primary "serious" scattergun.

The other completed project was the Browning Hi-Power, functionally dolled up with a ducktail tang, improved sights and safety, and a most amusingly blue (not blued...blue) finish, which will make for good photos when range day comes.  I don't lean on 9mm much any more, but if you do this is a great piece to have.  Invariably, people that I work with love this gun when they see it in action.

Anyway, more details to come...when they come.  In the meantime, I'm back and actually quite full of ideas.  We'll see how that manifests itself here. Posting had been really light for a while anyway, what with trying to lay low and take a break from all the stoopid for a time, and I'm going to try and continue that practice as much as possible. 

Good to be home.

Your Friday giggle.

Via the useful Gunmart Blog, this funny for gunnies:

Ha!

Now anyone who has read me for a while (no snickering, you two) knows that I've got little personal use for full-auto fire, but since it seems to perturb the priggish out of all proportion to its actual utility, it's also easy to get behind and defend on principle alone. (Oh, and I'm sure it's all kinds of fun, too.)

Jeff Cooper used to say that he never understood the setting on some select-fire guns that provides for a three-round burst...but he might understand the desire for a two-shot burst.  Then again, with an understanding of how to ride the disconnector and just a little attention, effective "hammers" are certainly available to mortals on semi, without having to be Jerry Miculek.

Still...for anyone that has seen him run a revolver, you get that joke instantly, and for a reason.

Redneck action targets.

Tried a new idea for Airsoft targets today:  steel can lids suspended with baling wire.

An old paint can lid, two punches with a nail, a couple of twists of the wire:

A baked beans can top, done up the same way:

 
This strikes me as very workable.  They should be easily movable and weatherproof, should interchange easily as they get shot up (note the two minor dents in the second picture, a test pair from the green-gas 1911 from very close--maybe three yards), and should respond well to spraypaint when visibility or contrast is required.

They're inexpensive, obviously, but they solve some other problems as well.  Ricochet is much, much better than with heavy steel (e.g., steel spinners for .22 rimfire) or other fixed surfaces.  With the baling wire attached at two points, they actually seem to strike a nice balance between reactive feedback (the ping sound and movement) and not spinning so much that you can't put a pair on it at speed.  The wire loops should be friendly to tree-branch attachment, without being so heavy or tight that it would dig into the tree.  And of course there are all kinds of sizes for steel can lids.  (The paint can lid, actually, produces a most satisfying sound on being hit, and being larger can be used at greater distance with normal perspective, rather than being used at closer distance with reduced perspective.)

With a little more thought, I wonder if I could get even fancier with the concept.  Different-colored disks could be brought together for shoot/no shoot scenarios, or maybe I could fashion Airsoft Pepper Poppers (maybe by tin-snipping open the can itself, and using the whole thing) and learn how to calibrate them for a given power level.  I hadn't thought about this before now, but if ranges are kept Airsoft short, target resets for thing like falling Poppers may not be nearly so annoying.  :-)

Their big dependency, really, is that they presume that the BBs really are biodegradeable.  I'm still running my first test on that, but if these things really do break down reasonably well, this may be a great poor man's solution to fancy reactive targets. 

Next:  get in a few serious testing sessions, and see how they hold up.

I shoulda known better...

I was checking up on one of David Codrea's Examiner articles, of the "call-out-Master's-intrasquad-shenanigans" variety that he has become so deliciously good at over the last few years.  I confess, I love these articles, even though I think their primary value isn't in "improving" the system so much as simply showing people in lurid detail how hopelessly broken it is.  (Who knows, maybe that's David's point too.)  At any rate, it's always fun to laugh at the pernicious piddlewits when they can't even navigate their own morass without fudging everything.  A cheap thrill, perhaps, but nonetheless real.

This particular article was about asking the perfectly reasonable question of just how this new fancy-pants Armatix pistol managed to get OK'd by the Bureau of Thou Shalt over in Respublika Kalifornia...without the microstamping requirement.  Huh.  Surely they didn't resort to...shenanigans in order to make it happen all legal-like...naw!

Anyway, in that article David thoughtfully links to the URL for the pistol's "features" (which don't include microstamping), and I figured I'd take a look.  So I did.

I shoulda known better.

Oh, it's not like I was expecting anything legitimate, or anything crazy like that.  Far from it.  But among the list of "features" (that nobody who actually trusts his life to a pistol would ever accept), this one actually stuck out at me:

an operating distance of up to 10 inches

Wait, am I getting this right?  The whole system is based on simple proximity to an RFID watch?  And here I thought the whole point behind this "smart gun" thing was to make the piece proprietary to the user...

But maybe I shouldn't lose faith.  After all, changing course in midstream is something this crowd is certainly known to do--and they do have to make sure that after they mandate this technology for everyone, that the next outrage becomes possible, timely, and above all enabling for the next round of Hobble Us All Some More, Please, Really We Like It.

Maybe they're not content to stop at regular people getting killed due to dead-battery failures, electrical malfunctions, or interference hacks, whether by freelance cretins or (far more likely) the enforcement apparatus (sporting weapons with no such limitations in them) which simply decides to shut everything off at a really bad time for the "legitimate" "owner".*

Nah, the next "loophole" will need to be something more...gruesome.  Hey, how about going back to the "murdered with your own gun" trope?  Let's say all batteries and electronics are working, and the po-po are too busy ventilating pets two doors down from the bogus address their paid CI gave them.  Home invaders with edged weapons swarm in and overwhelm the homeowner, who manages to get one of the attackers (with 6-7 rounds of .22) before being konked from behind by another.  Seriously irritated by the loss of one of their own, the unconscious homeowner's execution is simple:  place his watch-bearing hand over his eyes, and shoot him through it.

Bingo!  The final proof that gun owners will just shoot their eye out if they try to use the piece defensively, even with a state-of-the-art "smart gun".  That's it, we'll just have to get rid of them once and for all.  (The guns, I mean.  Of course it's the guns.)

Oh sure, laugh.  Laugh like you did lo those many years ago, when you first heard that those stupid Russkies and Germans had to--get this--show government tracking papers just to travel within their own borders.  And lived in constant fear of being spied on by their own government...and....



_________________________
* Anyone wanna bet against the idea that this won't become a game for enforcement types?

Quote of the day.

What would we do without William Norman Grigg?  The man is quite simply a treasure.

Only in a universe in which the rules of logic follow the contours of a Salvador Dali painting would that warrant be considered “reasonable,” if the objective had been to avoid unnecessary violence.

I have a love of language and the construction of a good mental image, and Grigg regularly qualifies for wizard status in this regard.  When I need to point someone to an example of how to describe the world as it is, rather than as viewed through the beer goggles that so much of society insists on wearing, I go to him.  He combines razor-edged ridicule and sarcasm with a straight-up delivery style (it'd be deadpan if it weren't quite so sizzling with scorn) that reminds me of what we were all taught a "reporter" (remember those?) is supposed to be like.

That is:  it's a regular story, only told straight, without all the bullshit, and with terms and comparisons that are, like, contextually accurate.  (And it's hard to describe how refreshing that is, to someone who doesn't already understand.)

The world is not just more tolerable with him in it.  It's better.

Score one for Facebook.

Oh, it's nothing institutionally flattering, what, do you think I've gone crazy or something?  :-)

Quite the contrary.

It's just that were it not for Facebook I might not have seen this.  So I'll give credit where credit is due.  (It happens so infrequently these days, that it's actually kinda fun sometimes, being the target market and all.)

I love it.  It's not just (gasp!) anarchy--hell, that gives nearly everyone the vapors already--but the word that even scares many tentative anarchists:  chaos.  You know, the singular operating principle of the entire freaking universe.  Well, except for us, who--work with me here--"know better".

"Nothing is under control"?  Eeeek!  What will we dooooo?