She Never Calls; She Never Writes...

Britney at the MTV Video Music Awards...it is nearly impossible to parody a joke.

Anyway, first off, I've got to scrape some egg off my face. My Sweetie's bro, Mark, informs me thatyes, our local lion snatched a horse...but it was a miniature horse. So...a miniature lion? A tabby run wild? I interogated Pokke-san, our tailless Manx who is, in fact, a fierce mouser, but he swore he was at home lying on his back playing with a paperclip when the alleged assasination took place, and Alf the Wonder Beagle backs his alibi. In any case, I've downscaled the threat...I'm now carrying a Walther TPH in .22 long rifle. I AM READY!

In some real news, even the Brits are finding themselves hard to stomach. Read this contrarian commentary from Richard Munday in the Times Online:

We are so self-congratulatory about our officially disarmed society, and so dismissive of colonial rednecks, that we have forgotten that within living memory British citizens could buy any gun – rifle, pistol, or machinegun – without any licence. When Dr Watson walked the streets of London with a revolver in his pocket, he was a perfectly ordinary Victorian or Edwardian. Charlotte Brontë recalled that her curate father fastened his watch and pocketed his pistol every morning when he got dressed; Beatrix Potter remarked on a Yorkshire country hotel where only one of the eight or nine guests was not carrying a revolver; in 1909, policemen in Tottenham borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by (and were joined by other armed citizens) when they set off in pursuit of two anarchists unwise enough to attempt an armed robbery. We now are shocked that so many ordinary people should have been carrying guns in the street; the Edwardians were shocked rather by the idea of an armed robbery.

And from our "Bringing a Moron to a Gunfight" category, this from Richmond, VA, via Alpheca:

A man who robbed a South Richmond Baskin-Robbins ice-cream store with a fake gun Thursday night was shot to death by the store's gun-wielding manager.

Well, there you are — evolution in action!

BTW, last week I received a Walther P1 9mm, the alloy-framed version of the famous German P38 from WW2, from AIM Surplus. I was blown away by the quality of the gun...very, very nice! I got the P-1 as part of a series we'll be doing on DOWN RANGE on inexpensive — ne...cheap — handguns that will do the job for self-defense. Other of our inexpensive guns include the Star "Modelos Super" in 9mm Largo, the CZ-52 in 7.62 X 25 (which I'll probably refit to plain vanilla 9mm for expense-sake) and maybe one of the Hungarian or Czech 9mm Makarov pistols.

I've always have a soft spot for the P38/P1 because they were the first semiautos I put a lot of rounds through. My father had a P38 and a P1 he'd bought mailorder (ie, before 1968), and when I was in my early teens I lobbed a lot of cheap 9mm surplus downrange through the German guns. I found them to be fiercely reliable and certainly as accurate as I was. I think the P38/P1s got a bad rap from the gunwriters of the time (just like the M1 Carbine and the .30 Carbine round, as we've discussed before) because of the whole comfy relationship between some of the greats and American gun companies. It was an unwritten rule that American product was pretty much beyond criticism, especially since the American firearms industry was ramping itself up after WW2. It was totally okay, however, to dis' the hardware of the Hated Hun.

P38s were alleged to be unreliable, inaccurate, clunky, blah blah. Wasn't my experience. The P1 I got from AIM has excellent DA and SA trigger pulls, and I'm looking forward to taking it to the range. I was going to do that today, but a nice cold drizzle is pushing me in a different direction.

A cold front blasted through last night, and it was in the high 30s this AM...sigh. As Jim Morrison sang, where will we be when the summer's gone?