Nothing Earth-Shattering Going On...

I am very pleased with the response to our SHOOTING GALLERY "Africa" special! My favorite response was from a shooter who does not hunt, but after the Africa episodes has decided to strongly fight against antihunting initiatives — "We're all the same, hunters and shooters." The whole production team is very proud of what we've done.

Tomorrow is, sadly, the last original episode for the 2014 Season of both SG and TBD. On SG we go completely off the reservation to do something different. I've known the Clark family in Louisiana for more years than I care to say. I met Jim Clark Jr. at, I believe, my first ""combat pistol" match, and he introduced me early on to his sister Kay. I stood in awe of Jim Sr., and the first time I went to the gunsmithy on Shootout Lane outside of Princeton, LA, it was like visiting the Mother Church of Cool Custom Guns. Of course, when Kay married Jerry Miculek, the Clark/Miculek family became unequivocally America's first family of shooting.

At SHOT Producer John Carter and I sat down with Kay, Jerry and Jim to discuss coming down to Shootout Lane and spend time with the family...not to do "interviews," but to take out viewers inside this wonderful family. I believe this episode is going to blow you guys away!

Couple of quick links. After my convergence discussion on the podcast last week, I thought I'd link to this Reason.com article on the coming 3-D Printing revolution:

Imagine what will happen when millions of people start using the tools that produced The Liberator to make, copy, swap, barter, buy, and sell all the quotidian stuff with which they furnish their lives. Rest in peace, Bed, Bath & Beyond. Thanks for all the stuff, Foxconn, but we get our gadgets from Pirate Bay and MEGA now. 

Once the retail and manufacturing carnage starts to scale, the government carnage will soon follow. How can it not, when only old people pay sales tax, fewer citizens obtain their incomes from traditional easy-to-tax jobs, and large corporate taxpayers start folding like daily newspapers? Without big business, big government can't function.

"You can't stop the signal, Mal!" Interesting enough, Kevin Creighton from Misfires & Light Strikes noted that while firearms are indeed caught up in the upcoming manufacturing paradigm shift, reloading is not. In fact, as Kevin goes on to say, reloading is pretty much rooted in Industrial Revolution technology. That's true. The only big difference is that case and bullet feeders are powered with that newfangled electricity instead of requiring all reloaders to live next to running water or have room enough in the house for in industrial steam engine. Although I still wear my steampunk goggles when reloading.  On the first season of GUN STORIES, Steve Hunter had a great insight during his interview...the breakthrough wasn't the firearm itself, but the internal primer brass cartridge case. We cna change the guns, but, so far, we haven't been able to change the case...