Wrapped!

After a range day of 75 12 gauge rounds (mixed between light target, sporting clays heavy target & law enforcement slugs), 200 .45 ACP ball and 60 7.62, SHOOTING GALLERY Season 12, our first season of 1-hour shows, is WRAPPED!

Another School Shooting

Doesn't it make you sick to hear about another school shooting? The achingly painful procession of victims, the endless bleating about "bullied" and "outsider" as explanation for the disgusting vermin who pulled the trigger, the immediate calls from our blood enemies for stripping everyone in the country of our rights to "solve" the problem...

Want to solve the problem? Arm the teachers, a la Israel, and allow CCW on college campuses. The first time that a sad, bullied outsider's brain, such as it is, becomes a yeechy splatter pattern against a back wall and the rest of the room stands up and applauds, the next little bullied outsider will decide to stay home with his dirty underwear and his computer screen. Because instead of a dark warrior, a culture hero for all the other little bullied outsiders nursing whatever imagined grievances that fester in their overheated pea brains, he's just another sack of wet garbage, waiting on the curb for pick-up.


Gun-free zones kill!

Hit the Ground Running!

...and sleep deprived! Alf the Wonder Beagle conspired with a big Mac Daddy raccoon to make sure my Sweetie and I woke up every couple of hours. To be fair, pickin's get a little slim this time of year up by the Secret Hidden Bunker, especially when the temperatures approach zero and even the skinny squirrels go to ground. So old Mac Daddy -- who is, I swear, the biggest raccoon I've ever seen -- starts checking everywhere for scraps.

All day in the studio today finishing up Season 12 of SHOOTING GALLERY, then on the range tomorrow (hoping it warms up enough so I don't stick to the guns!).

In the end, both my Sweetie and I improved our final match finish over last year's Winter Range...in my case especially, not bad for bombing an entire day! I barely made the 50% break, which was my minimum goal. I need to take a couple of cases of shotgun shells and go whack plates, over and over again!

Everything Back to Normal

...plates falling, no penalties, no longer moving like enervated turtle...hopefully, normalicy will continue through tomorrow's stages.

BTW, my Sweetie had a revolver jam that proves, once again, that shooting is a pure chaos system...here first shot hits a plate and through some bizarre karmic coincidence a piece of bullet splatter dropped INTO her gun, neatly wedging itself between the transfer bar and the frame. Figure the odds on that happening! She ran through the cylinder 3 times, then sat the gun down on the table, assuming that she'd somehow managed to load only one round. Seeing the gun was fully loaded, she picked it back up and all 4 rounds went off. We got the gun to the safe area, and a big chunk of flattened bullet fell out...weird...

BTW, got notified that my name is up for one of Jim Bunting's aluminum bull pup chassis fo the 10/22. Ought to be darn cool!

Notes on Today's Stages!

Perhaps I should take up golf...or curling...LOL!

As the .40 S&W Turns...

Every so often I'm really surprised when the world begins to turn in my direction. Several years ago, when I unloaded all my carry/competition guns in .40 S&W, I took a lot of heat. How could I abandon the World's Greatest Cartridge, a veritable laser death ray of lethal efficiency? I said then the were lots of reasons:

1) Ammo development has drastically narrowed the gaps between 9mm, .40 and .45.

2) The sharper recoil made it harder to rapidly make the follow-up shots I believed might be necessary. In small CCW style guns, .40 could be areal bitch -- I refer you to my little Star, one of the first super small .40s.

3) From a reloading standpoint I didn't like the pressure curves on some of the most commonly used powders for the .40.

4) I wondered about the longevity of scaled up 9mms.

There's a lot less love for the .40 out there these days. This is from the When the Balloon Goes Up blog, referencing the Safety Solutions Academy Podcast:

I am not a fan of the .40 and I think Paul did a good job in summarizing why and you should listen to his podcast to hear his explanations because he takes a slightly different bend than I do.  For me I would summarize the reasons I don’t carry a .40 as…

1. Ammo costs more than a 9mm and I want to maximize the training I get for my center fire training budget

2. The recoil is unpleasant and training isn’t as much fun

3. The terminal ballistic performance isn’t improved enough for me to want to deal with the added cost or unpleasantness

4. You can get more bullets in the same gun in 9mm, and assuming they are both effective more is better

5. I shoot IDPA and there is no minor scoring, so I don’t have to.

While Watching Old MASH Reruns...

...a couple of notes. Apparently, I'm late to the newest fashion trend of fake bullet proof vests, like this 50 Cent version (the rapper, for heaven's sake...not the retail price!).There's a certain amount of handwringing, but I sorta see it as Darwin-in-Action. I wonder if it comes in colors.

Anyhow, had a pretty good 4-stage warm-up match today. Weather in Phoenix is crazy good, especially after the hurricane wind at the Secret Hidden Bunker the last few days. I think I'm finally getting the feel for the Browning BSS double, knock on wood.

Was surprised at the big response on today's podcast about my .44 Maggie "Get Michael Home" package. Lots of interest in bug-out (or in my case, bug-back) kits. As I've said many times recently, there's a general, unspecified fear out there, a disturbance in the Force, if you will. Should the sitting President be re-elected, get ready for the Mother of all Firearms Bubbles...

Gun Culture Ver. 2.0 Soars!

From USA Today:

Research by the National Sporting Goods Association shows female participation in target shooting grew by 46.5% between 2001 and 2010. And an October 2011 Gallup Poll found 23% of women own a gun.

The world is changing, and for the better. It's interesting that the story is based on the NSGA report, which mentions "target shooting," but the story ledes with women "hunting." That's basically an MSM fail, the inability to believe that people use guns for anything but whacking turkeys. Yes, they get into it later in the story — congrats, Haley! — but that material should have been the lede. Still, we're winning!

Humped It Today, But All Good!

Got the podcast finished and then fished my cowboy Vaqueros out of the ultrasonic cleaner...after about 12 hours! LOL! The parts were very, very clean...and very, very degreased! After lubing them up, the guns seem happy, though. At least I have a 4-stage match Wednesday to break them in. I hate to come into a big match with 100% clean guns.

I'm not shooting the Wild Bunch match, unfortunately. Time time time. 

The week after next we're filming the last SHOOTING GALLERY of season 12. We'll also be choosing the 3 most significant guns -- handgun, rifle, shotgun -- of the last 12 months. Oh, go ahead and guess!

I'm also rethinking my knife strategy. I have lots of knives, but I'm reevaluating the way I carry them. Typically, since I carry a gun on my strong side, I carry a folder set up for my weak side. I'm thinking of adding a small fixed blade to the mix, although I may have to make my own sheath to get it exactly the way I want it.

The Best Laid Plans...

...etc.

I really planned to spend the day futzing around with the air rifles, but instead ended up cleaning and setting up all the cowboy guns for next week's Winter Range in Phoenix, the cowboy nationals. All the ammo's loaded, the guns are clean -- well, my revolvers are still floating in solvent -- got my clothes laid out...looking forward to it. I love shooting matches, and I miss them in the dead of winter.

Am moving forward on the break-down Marlin .44 lever gun...going for a16.5 inch barrel & scout scope mount with the little Aimpoint. Be a while until its done, of course.

Interesting to see how many blogposts/articles seem to center on stuff we've covered on thus season of THE BEST DEFENSE...sincerest form of flattery, etc.

Great article on Big Government about why don't we just repeal all gun control:

The repeal of gun laws or even a moratorium for sixty months will not lead to blood in the streets any more than the right to carry in forty-eight states has. The majority of states in America supports the concept of the armed citizen with more than enough laws to protect the public (murder is already illegal, for instance) and registration of guns is unheard of in many states. All inall,  they have not been given reason to regret open and concealed carry for millions. Those states have found that the armed citizen reduces crime by a ubiquitous presence while gun control has proven to be absent when it was needed most.

Read the whole thing.

Interesting Article on One-Hand Shooting...

...from John Farnam, via The Truth About Guns (the quip isn't up on John's site yet):

Comment: Even I am amazed at the number of shots that are fired via strong-hand only during the NTI [National Tactical Invitational]. Statistics from police shooting appear to support that observation, even though we’re all trained extensively to draw and fire using a two-handed technique. I’m not at all sure I understand why! I’ve always found flat-gripped pistols (like the 1911) to be more inherently accurate than round-grip ones, at least for serious shooting. We are apparently irreversibly into double-column pistols, but pointability obviously continues to be directly linked to the degree to which the grip resembles a flattened oval. /John

There was a time in my career when I unequivocally believed in two-handed sighted shooting no matter what. That was. of course, before the widespread use of simulations and force-on-force...reality intruded on my preconceived notions! One thing we see regularly in our state-of-the-art scenarios we put together for THE BEST DEFENSE is the necessity of using the non-shooting hand for blocking, for controlling kids/Spousal Unit/bystanders, for tuning light switches off and on, for opening doors, etc. In other words, in the Real World we often have tasks that require a handy-dandy standard-issue primate hand, leaving only one hand to operate the gun.

BTW, I was pretty pleased with the Survival Sheath System shoulder holster/S&W 329/CRKT knife set-up I used for hiking yesterday. As I mentioned, in concealed exceptionally well beneath a vest (I wore a lightweight fleece vest and an LL Bean lightweight down jacket over that) and carried very well...after about 10 minutes I didn't notice it at all. I had the shoulder holster made a while back as a handy carry-all for California-ish places should I have to exit quickly.The original plan was to create a lightweight revolver/lever gun combo that was legal in most jurisdictions around the country, excepting of course Snowplow Bloomberg's Urban Paradise. That's the rationale behind the revolver and the lever gun, avoiding both capacity issues and "assault rifle" nonsense.

As usual, the reality of work interceded with my project...I got the 4-inch 329 exactly the way I wanted it, with a super action job by the great Jim Stroh at Alpha Precision, who also added a gold bead front sight and an shallow-V express-style rear sight blade. I removed the Rube Goldberg S&W locking device and put on Hogue "Tamer" grips to make the little 25-ounce monster reasonably controllable. I usually carry the gun with the 200-grain Corbon DPX .44 Specials, backed up with Buffalo Bore velociraptor-killers, 255-gr Keith .44 Magnum "Reduced Recoil." Got a kydex IWB and the shoulder holster set-up.

Still to round up, a break-down lever action. ideally one of the Wild West Guns' Marlin conversions with a 16.5-inch barrel and an Aimpoint T1 forward mounted in a scout configuration. Add a sling and a nice fitted Storm Case for everything, throw in a skateboard backpack for discrete transport of the broken-down rifle, and — viola! — a lightweight, portable get-you-home-no-matter-what kit!

Meanwhile, Back in Gun World

We took Alf the Wonder Beagle on her first long snow hike since her minor surgery a few weeks back, and, as usual, she was a champ. The trail was packed enough that we opted not to use snowshoes. For something a little different, a threw on Survival Sheath System shoulder holster, an S&W 329 .44 Magnum on 1 side and 2 Tuff Strips and a CRKT Rescue knife on the other. Amazingly, all that hardware concealed under a fleece vest! Who knew? Well, I did, but I'd forgotten.

Why I Hate Politics

Let me get this straight...as much as I have been trying to ignore the Republicans' psychotic, self-destructive, circular-firing-squad "process" for choosing their contender — a person I have sworn to support — for the most important Presidential election of our lifetime, the front-runner now appears to be a man who loses elections by a landslide in his own state, who unconditionally supports big, bigger, biggest government, and whose stance on "social issues," especially women's sexuality, is pretty much on par on with your average radical Islamist mullah?

Excuse me for a moment...I think I need to throw up...

Sorry!

Doing interviews for GUN STORIES Season 2, so trapped in the studio yesterday and today...Steve Hunter should be here in a couple of minutes...followed by Bob Brown from SOLDIER OF FORTUNE mag...

Plan for the weekend is ramping up the air rifles (I'll get pixs!).

I'll lay off guinea pigs for a while...

Ah, Monday!

From Fox News:

British man reportedly arrested for 'frying hamster'

Police and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) were investigating Monday after law enforcement officers found the creature lying dead in a frying pan in the man's kitchen, in the city of York. 

They made the grim discovery after the unnamed 20 year old was detained for being drunk and disorderly -- and officers inspected his student apartment. The man was arrested on suspicion of a further offense of causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal, The York Press reported.

While I'm unequivocally against cooking live animals, except for lobsters and progressives, who, let's face it, don't count, inquiring minds wonder about the recipe...I wasn't able to find said recipe specifically for fried hamster, but I did find this one — strangely enough, on a UK food site — for fried guinea pigs, which always struck me as great big hamsters:

Fried Guinea Pig (Ayacucho-style)

CUY CHAQTADO

1 guinea pig, de-haired, gutted, and cleaned

1/2 c. flour

1/4 - 1/2 t. ground cumin

salt and black pepper to taste

1/2 c. oil

Pat dry the skin of the guinea pig and rub in the cumin, salt, and pepper. Preheat oil. Dust the carcass with the flour and place it on its back in the oil, turning to cook both sides.

Alternately, the guinea pig can be cut and fried in quarters.

Serve with boiled potato or boiled manioc root, and a salad of cut tomatoes and slivered onions bathed in lime juice and a bit of salt. Have cold beer on hand.

Me, I'd be going with wine, especially since the site notes that in Peru duplications of the Last Supper clearly show guinea pig as the main course. I might go with Seleccion Especial red from Peru's oldest vineyard, keeping with this whole South American theme.

Anyway, how does "hamster" come off as protected, and "guinea pig" comes off as dinner? I mean, let's say you're in the mood for guinea pig and, OMG!, none are available and the pet stores are closed. Isn't hamster a reasonable alternative? I mean, you'd have to cut the seasoning in half and all...

I'm sorry...it is Monday. I'm going to take the screen out of my office window, fill up the tank of my air rifle and go stalk the elusive dead tree trunk...maybe I'll get lucky and nail a capybara.

(Image courtesy DeviantArt)

Home to Snowy Colorado!

Can't wait to fire up the ole snow thrower!

Our last day on the range at GUNSITE had to be one of those fantasy gun days, starting out with full-auto FNH SCAR Light and Scar Heavy and finishing up with the amazing DS Arms reengineered RPD belt-fed carbines in 6.8.

First off, I've added the civilian semi auto SCAR Heavy,  the Model 17 in 7.62 NATO (pictured above), to my list of must suck it up and purchase guns. I've shot a lot of iterations of the SCARs as they were being developed, and I've always thought it was the softest shoots, most accurate of the 7.62 platform guns. It has kind of slipped out of my mind until this week...now it has kind of popped to the forefront. As you know, my present choice of an MBR is my beloved retro-FAL from DSA. Even grumpy old guys like me need to change...occasionally...

And — OMG! — the DS reengineered RPD carbine may be about the most fun you can have shooting! We had 2 flavors, the 7.62 X 39 and the newest in 6.8...I think we bought up all the 6.8 in Prescott and Phoenix to feed the little monster. DS reengineered the buffer system to slow the gun down bait in full auto...that plus the top end fluted barrel and modern rail system solves the nasty RPD habit of the wooden forearm bursting into flames...entertaining, to be sure, but counterproductive to good shooting. The new carbine weight in at just 13 pounds, about 3 pounds less than a SAW, I think.

The buffer system makes the RPD easy to handle offhand...you can quite literally keep the barrel level in full auto fire either in 7.62 or 6.8.

We shot until all the ammo was gone (funny, that happened with the SCAR Heavy as well) and the sun was going down. Just like the SCAR, the RPD is available right now in a semi auto civilian version for about $2K, pretty amazing for a belt-fed gun you can take to the range. Belts are in production, cheap and readily available, And a part of me keeps saying that an RPD at the top of the stairs pretty much trumps most home defense weapons.

J-E-L-L-O!

First, FYI:

Find yourself on this fun chart!

Have been on the range smacking ballistic gel and filming it with ultra-high speed Phantom camera. Net conclusion? Don't stand in front of anything that says "12 Gauge!" Also, for all you .410 Judge owners out there, we're going to come down in favor of Federal Personal Defense 4-pellet #000 buckshot, with the Winchester PDX .410 stuff pretty close behind.

You'll see all the tests on SHOOTING GALLERY in March.

I also got to spend a lot of time with KRISS Vectors, both semi and full auto, suppressed and unsuppressed. I've shot the gun before and talked about it on the podcast...almost fell on my face because I put so much humph forward expecting recoil and muzzle rise of a .45ACP buzz gun that never materialized. The Vectors are a riot to shoot....40 and 9mm flavors are on the horizon.

BTW, earlier this week we were filming with Sara Ahrens...you saw her on TOP SHOT...also for SG. Impressive shooter!

BTW, am I the only person who wishes the FRANCKIN" REPUBLICANS would quite acting like they're all in the 10th grade, pick a nominee and get on with it? And note to Newt Gingrich...Barack Hussein Obama is not a "good man in over his head."

Super Buffoons!

So Snowplow Bloomberg once again takes to the airways and the Sunday pressers to continue his quest to control every second of everyone's life in America...man, that'll put you off your Ruffles and onion dip, or even Madonna's aging gams! Just wanted to touch on the meme he was peddling on the talk shows yesterday...from the NY Daily News, "Even with New York City’s tough gun laws, a Brooklyn thug who had 14 prior arrests allegedly obtained a pistol and shot plainclothes officer Kevin Brennan in the head last week, the mayor said."

Once of the big reasons America has lost interest in gun control is that the people are smarter — a lot smarter, as it happens — than Wayors Against Illegal Guns (who are 43 times more likely to be criminals than the average concealed carry permit holder). People with an IQ greater than lukewarm water pretty much figured out that our Brooklyn thug violated a lot of laws, not the least of which was shooting a cop in the head. I think that's still illegal even in NYC. It's also illegal for a convicted felon to even touch a gun, and yet our Brooklyn thug — amazingly — didn't hesitate to commit that felony, either. He probably carried the gun concealed...darn, another mandatory sentence crime in the Big Apple! Fourteen prior arrests?!?!? What was this thug doing on the street? Oh yeah, he hadn't tried to slip any transfats into his fast food and he was careful on salt intake.

American people realize that the reason criminals are criminals is that they break laws...if they're willing to break the big law about taking another life, especially the life of an armed law enforcement officer, they're pretty much not concerned with all the other, lesser laws. So, what is the point of passing new laws that everyone, including MAIG, knows will only impact non-criminals — you and I?

Wait a second...Michael Bloomberg is not really as dumb as he sounded last night...he knows that all the agenda MAIG is spouting won't amount to, as my friend Charlie Daniels once noted so succinctly, "a nickel's worth of warm piss." So then he has another agenda...hmmmm, I wonder what that could be? "Ending the gun show loophole..." Since there is no gun show loophole, and since there are now plenty of studies showing that gun shows are not a primary, or even a consequential, source of guns going to felons, wonder what Snowplow really hopes to accomplish?

Well, obviously, eliminate all private sales of firearms.

Hey, maybe, if all gun sales have to go through dealers, then there'd be a record of every firearms transaction...MAIG's next big item would be access to those records, a nice searchable database on every firearms owner in America...and, repeat after me, kids, what happens when we have that nice database?  Registration always, irrevocably leads to confiscation! No matter what those in favor of registration say; no matter which country (or state) we're talking about; no matter what guns end up on the list, as soon a Dot.Gov has a list that matches guns with citizens, they start moving toward taking those guns away from said citizens (rendering them "subjects," BTW).

The only "common sense" gun laws are carry laws. If NYC was part of the United States, where citizens have guns, thugs wouldn't control the streets.

Clobbered!

Snow! Note the rearview micro of my Honda Element on the upper left! The tiny mirror on the right is my Sweetie's Mini, in deep hibernation...

The Secret Hidden Bunker is absolutely clobbered by a fast-moving snowstorm. We have nearly 2 feet of snow on the ground, with as much as another foot or 2 before the storm moves on. Lotta shoveling on the immediate horizon! The snow is over Alf the Wonder Beagle's head...she's still recovering from her surgery (and having to go back to be restitched after an unfortunate scratching incident.

Yesterday's Holder testimony on Fast & Furious was about what I expected...Holder is, at his core, a water-carrier whose primary "accomplishments" have been brokering deals for rogue billionaires, freeing terrorists and fanning the fires of racial hatred. He is also holding the bag for an operation that only makes sense as a direct attack on the Second Amendment. I abhor conspiracy theories, because as a journalist I spent time with many of the people implicated in a number of conspiracies, and my take was the vast majority of people, including all of the government apparatchiks I worked with, couldn't organize a bake sale, much less a conspiracy.

Having met a lot of the gun control advocates over the years, I do believe however they are the kind of damaged individuals who would happlily green light the slaughter of foreign nationals and even countenance "collateral damage" in America to move forward their holy issue of gun control. Think about it...gun control has NEVER worked — not once. It always fails, often disasterously. Despite 3 decades of antigun propaganda, including a complicit mainstream media and an entertainment industry that until very recently actually allowed antigun advocates to write subplots of popular television shows and movies, support for any gun control is at an all-time low. The antigun industry is getting desperate, and Fast & Furious if nothing if not a desperate "Hail Mary" pass to swing public opinion toward more control. That particular Hail Mary pass not only missed its intended receiver, but it flew out of the stadium all the way to Washington to hit Eric Holder in the head.

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