Buffy Cries

Sad, but true. Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Serenity, has come out with a video supporting the man who let American heroes be slaughtered in Benghazi. I wonder if Brother Whedon has ever actually watched any episodes of Firefly...doesn't seem like it. Sad, as I have always been a fan...up until The Avengers, which was pretty much on par with warm mayonnaise being smeared on a dirty kitchen floor. Oh well, whores will be whores. won't they?

The Election Is Coming

VOTE

Tonight's Wine Choice...

Paraiso Vineyards Pinot Noir...a very mild pinot matched with chili'ed salmon and Greek veggies. I visited Paraiso last time my Sweetie and I were in Monterey, and I liked the pinot a lot.

To tell the truth, I didn't do jack today. I got back in town Friday night from filming the last of THE BEST DEFENSE scenarios, where I had the opportunity to be beaten to death with a crowbar. In scenario 2, I did get to cap Janich, who cried piteously...piteously, I tell you! I worked a little on the music of upcoming DOWN RANGE Radio podcasts, then shot a bunch of the new Gemtech ultra-quiet .22s off my front porch. They were quiet! I'm going to be talking more about them on the podcast.

Quieter than CCI "Quiets," BTW. I got my Glock G19 slide back from L&M Precision Gunworks in Prescott with the Trij RMR installed. They do great work! Mike Seeklander and I talked a lot about red dot-sighted defensive pistols when we were together this week, Her's got an M&P with Trij sights done by David Bowie. and he agrees with Bill Rogers and Chris Edwards that the dots are probably the future of defensive pistols. i'm talking to Leupold next week about their DeltaPoint sights. They are a big sponsor — see, I always tell you! — and I'm interested in getting their sights on either another G19 or a Ruger SR9.

BTW, I'm been flipping through Seeklander's new book on defensive pistol. YOUR DEFENSIVE HANDGUN TRAINING PROGRM. I've been lucky to work with some of the best instructors ever, and I think Mike S. has done something unique here. He has quantified a training program that allows you to train yourself without spending the big bucks on a high-zoot instructor (although trust me, we'll take your money!). There's been a meme on the Internet that you can't successfully defend yourself without spending big bucks on training. That is patent nonsense. I cannot recommend Mike S.'s bok enough.

BTW BTW,  speaking of great trainers, I had lunch with Marty Hayes, our legal expert on TBD and the founder of Firearms Academy of Seattle, and he had some very interesting insights on cabler choice for self-defense handguns based on his work as an expert witness in civilian self-defense shootings. That's going to be a big part of next week's podcast, so, hey, tune in! And if you aren't a member of the Armed Citizen Legal Defense Fund, you should be! I think what Marty and Gila and Massad are doing is changing the whole game for armed civilians. I'm a member, and you should be, too.

We WILL be filming the studio segments of SHOOTING GALLERY in the Denver area in late November. I'm aiming for 100 tickets available, but not sure whether we can hit that. You get to come to the studio filming and get our SWAG (from CNN...Stuff We All Get) bag of goodies, worth a minimum of $100 and I hope much more. I'm also working with my sponsors to get a few guns to raffle off to the audience members. As soon as I have details and how you can get a ticket, we'll be publishing it here and on DRTV. As always, DRTV members have priority for tickets. And as always, I'll be buying the adult beverages for our audience! 

Grinder

This is about the time in the production cycle when things begins to grind a bit, at least for me. I've been out for more or less 4 months on 3 shows, including the 6 weeks of 5 days out, 1 day in. I know we'll have to push through pretty much until Christmas. HO HO HO on dat! I've got about a solid week of range work to get done before winter sets in hard, and I'm trying to figure out when that happens. I'm going to join an indoor range that's about an hour or so from the Bunker and try to keep things moving over the winter.

I'm doing the paperwork for a couple if more suppressors from GEMTECH, including a 5.56 version for the house AR from Spike's. I also need to pop the money for an SBR in .300 Blackout.

Sigh...going to bed now. Early call tomorrow...

I'm In A Rut...

Shot a cowboy match at Pawnee Station outside of Ft. Collins yesterday and, for the 3rd straight month, finished 7th overall (52 shooters) and winning my division. Gotta gotta gotta get faster faster faster! I was shooting a new set of pistols at this match, and I'm very happy their their performance. The .357 Blackhawks were modified by Jason Robinson, "Slick McClade," a world champion shooter and a fine gunsmith. Specifically, I went to 4-inch octagonal barrels and brass front sights. The little bot of extra weight from the octagonal barrels helps me hang the gun on target as I run it, as well as looking cool as all get-out. Secondly, the brass froth sight is quick to pick up. Very pleased with the guns!

Am not so pleased with my performance as "posse marshal," that is, the leader of my squad. We had 18 shooters and only 3 of us qualified to run the timer. We also had a couple of shooters with far too many squibs, ammo with no powder. While it's unlikely a gun will blow up if you fire a round behind a bullet lodged in the barrel, especially at cowboy velocities, it still can happen. One shooter especially had repeated squibs. He had no other ammo, and in this case, neither did I. I showed up at the match with stems and seeds, a mix of old reloads and some factory stuff What extra I had I gave to my Sweetie, one of the other certified Range Officer IIs. The short story is that I let the 2 guys finish the match. In one case I shepherded the shooter through the last stages. In retrospect, I should have drawn a hard line in the sand and will do so in the future. If more than one round is a squib, the risk to those of us running the timer is not worth allowing the shooter to continue. If you want to read the whole thread on the Single Action Shooting Society forums, including my mea culpa, it is here.

In gear notes, I'm ordering one of these Battlelink Minimalist AR stocks for the project Ar take-down rifle. Lighter is gooder, at least for this project. I'm also thinking of overhauling my Ruger LC9 9mm. Galloway Performance is doing a bunco of interesting work on the mini-9mms, and I'm interested in seeing how the work improve the performance of a gun I already like.

BTW, I trashed the heck out of my left foot at the match. I have no idea what I did, except that today I'm hobbling around today like a sad and pathetic old man. Suxs...

Have Successfully Pulled the Lever...

...and am now cracking a well-deserved bottle of wine (Balletto Pinot Noir rose to go with my Sweetie's homemade tomato soup and cornbread). I also continued work on the autumnal ammo inventory. I discovered that I'm in good shape on .22LR and 9mm, but deep in the hole on 5.56. We've been doing more on ARs on the shows, plus I've just been shooting ARs more. As a consequence, my 5.56 supply has taken a serious hit. Will be fixing that over the next few weeks.

Hope to get in a cowboy match this weekend. I've got a different set of cowboy pistols, the Slick McClade/Jason Robinson Blackhawks in .357 I'd like to give a try. I'll run them on one stage and see how they rock.

I've got to overhaul a Glock this weekend, which'll be fun. I also have one of the 1911s in .22 TCM coming...it's a 40-grain .223 cartridge at about 2000fps. Be a hoot to test that one out!

Friday in the Gun Room Day

Pulling the lever on the Dillon. Sigh...gotta keep the babies fed!

I got a good question from a regular commenter, Kmitch200, on the previous post: You have a gun that shoots a round that would bankrupt a rich man, kicks so hard that retina damage is an issue if you could afford to really practice with it and DON'T live where there is Cape Buffalo????

I thought it was worth expanding on just a bit. If I can be excused for going back in time, when I was in high school I'd hunted bird and deer, plinked, etc., but frankly, found it all a bit boring. I loved shooting pistols — the biggest I could get my hands on at that time was the .357, my father's Flat-Top Blackhawk. Big boom = Good! My relatives couldn't understand why I was so interested in shooting big handguns and not sitting in a deer stand all day. Hmmmm. About that time my father did a trade that included a Trapdoor Springfield with the barrel cut to carbine length. The Trapdoor was thrown in to sweeten the trade...my father didn't care about it at all. I, OTOH, got the local gun store to order me a box of 45-70 .405 grainers, which I was too stupid to know wouldn't be shot in a beat-up Trapdoor.

But oh doggie, did those bad boys buck and roar out of that short barrel! Forget the thirty-thurty and those snore-nod converted military bolt guns...this was a rifle I could get behind! I shot the crap out of that Trapdoor and it never blew up in my face (luckily!). It left me with an abiding love of BIG BORE THINGIES. As a consequence, I've spent a lot of my shooting career whamming away with big blasters, handguns and rifles. In rifles, 45-70 remains my one of my favorite calibers; .458s are fun, but nothing like the classic African cartridges. The .500 Nitro Express is cool beyond words to shoot. I've been lucky enough to fire both a 4-bore rifle and an 10-bore Howdah pistol...I'd own them both if I were rich. I have a Barrett .50 BMG that is my single most favorite rifle.

And don't even get me started on handguns! My biggest regret is not having the scratch to get Hamilton Bowen to build me the "Super British Bulldog" he and I concocted one night — a 56-50 Spencer Ruger Redhawk dolled up to look like a classic turn of the 19th Century British Bulldog.

I may never get to Africa to walk in the footsteps of the heroes of my youth, but you never know. If I do get to make that trip, it will be with 2 Ruger #1s — the 450-400 3-inch and a hotted-up 45-70.

And yes, I understand that the effects of recoil are cumulative. All of us who shoot boomers understand that on an intimate level. My favorite story is when I had my right elbow MRI'ed for persistent, agonizing pain. The doctor came out and said, "So, Mr. Bane, I have a question for you...what does one have to do to get a bone spur in just that position on your elbow? It's not this..." he mimicked a golf swing "...and it's not this..." he mimicked swinging a tennis racquet. "...I'm curious."

I mimicked shooting a gun, and he said, "Hmmmmm...I'm thinking you did this more than once!"

Home!

And dog tired! Will do a longer post tomorrow, vis-a-vis both B-HO coming out of the closet ans some mo' gun stuff,

BTW, re: commenters on the .475 TURNBULL, when you start playing with the big boomers, it gets expensive quick. I love my 450-400 3-inch Ruger #1, but every time I pull the trigger it's like shredding $5 bills...$123 per 20 Hornady rounds. The reloading components are equally expensive. Hell, the dies cost about 3 times as much as normal dies! And that's cheap compared to the big Nitro cartridges. On par with shooting .50 BMG or .338 Lapua Match.

The shorter .475 TURNBULL will give you more rounds in a lever platform...mostly it's efficient, a sweet spot cartridge.

Obama Calls For Reintroduction of Assault Weapons Ban

I'm thinking "no."

LOL!

Blogging platforms for the iPad suck!

Big Medicine Indeed

I think Doug Turnbull may have made me a believer about his .475 TURNBULL lever action rifle cartridge. It's a 50-110 shortened and necked down to .475 to take advantage of the plethora of .475 cartridges. Think 400 grains at anywhere from 1800 to 2100+ fps. Ouchies!

Shoots great out of his 1886 lever guns...recoils isn't NEARLY what you might expect from a thumper like this. Brass and loaded ammo from Corbon. Heck of a gun all around!

Sweater Weather!

Yes, it's time to imitate Jimmy Carter (oooooooweeeee, yeech!) and don your favorite fall sweater...of sweatshirt, as the case may be. It's also an excellent time to check out one of my favorite methods for concealed carry -- the sweater holster. Actually, the late Lou Alessi used that phrase to describe a cross draw holster he made for my Colt Mustang decades ago. "Wear it about 2 inches off your centerline," he said. "One of the quickest holsters ever made."

He was right, and I still have that holster. This weekend I put the Sig P938 9mm into service using a Blocker cross draw (24XD Concealment) under a long-tailed "waffle" henley t-shirt...perfect! Hiking, driving, just sitting around, it's like the gun wasn't there.

There are some other excellent "sweater holsters." Pocket Concealment Systems has one based on the Alessi design, and there are others out there. I believe a DeSantis "Sky Cop" would work if it's available for the new generation of little pistols. With the cross draw, extra rounds for the primary go in the left pocket (until my next package for Wilderness Tactical arrives), 2nd gun, the LCP, stays in the right pocket.

Meanwhile, Back @ Winter

I sort of had fantasies about going to the range today and doing a little AR work...cold, wind and rain have pretty much trashed that fantasy. Oh well, I've got about a billion things to do down in the gun room, not the least of which is putting stuff away after a week of filming. I have, BTW, discovered a major difference between green and red lasers. While your average red laser can provide hours of fun for a cat, a green laser drives them (well, at least Pokkee-san the Tailless Manx) bonkers. I can almost get him to run up a wall, which is pretty unusual for a "ground cat" like a Manx. And no, I'm not pointing the gat at the cat...I've got a CT green laser on a G19 frame that's lying around the house waiting for the slide to get back from L&M Machining with its Trij RMR.

I really want to get my suppressed Ruger Charger sighted in — right now it's got an Aimpoint Mini in it. It is a fun gun to shoot, and next spring should contribute to the Ground Squirrel Apocalypse in my Sweetie's garden. Probably would work on the occasional coyote as well. Weirdly, we haven't seen any foxes around the Secret Hidden Bunker for months. There are even bunny rabbits hopping around, something that doesn't usually happen when the foxes are on the job. I haven't seen any coyotes, though, and they usually aren't shy. Maybe a mountain lion prowling around, which sends the foxes scattering.

I note with interest that the Heizer "Double Tap" 2-shot derringer has hit the rocks. The protos were darned interesting little guns, and I hope they figure out a way to get it to market. Stranger things have happened...I would have never figured that the Boberg XR9 would get to market, and I was totally wrong about that.

In Case You Missed It...

The great Walton Goggins (The Shield, Justified) gave the performance of his life on this week's Sons of Anarchy as transexual escort "Venus Van Damn."

TV Guide referred to the performance as "jaw-dropping."

And, ahem, the special effects are...impressive! LOL!

Blasto-Smasho Range Day!

(All photos courtesy Denise Jackson for OUTDOOR CHANNEL)

This is one of our set-ups from yesterday's blasto-smasho day at the range for SHOOTING GALLERY's annual "ballistics" episode. After last season's orgy of ballistic jello we decided to do a follow-up show on penetration. We did a plywood "penetration box," wall segments, car doors, car windows, wheels (tire, rim, brake drum), the "box-o-steel" using mild steel plates, concrete blocks and, of course, the ever-popular gallon water bottles with colored water. All captured at 8000 frames-per-second. If 8000 frames-per-second had been available in the gory days of Haight-Ashbury, hippies would still be watching multicolored water jugs blow up and moaning, "Oh, dude! DUDE!"

For me, the most fun is putting rounds through the .500 S&W Magnum. We used 400-grain Winchester hunting loads and 275-grain Corbon DPX on various targets. There is nothing more fun that launching boomers, even if my hand is a bit sore this morning!

Gonna be a cool show. Last year's ballistic gel episode was tremendously popular.

As far as "what did we learn," that'll be obvious on the episode, but I would like to say that the endless Internet detractors of the Taurus Judge platform need to take a deep breath and get over it. With Winchester PDX1 or Federal 4-pellet buckshot, the Judge is a formidable short-range defensive weapon. Period.

Some Days...LOL!!!

Yesterday we were at Machinegun Tours, Alan Samuel's totally cool gun store outside of Denver, filming 3 builds for SHOOTING GALLERY Season 13 — the TAC2 breakdown AR on the ATI Omni lower, the state-of-the-art .22LR AR on the Spike's upper with a JP lower and a suppressed Ruger Charger, mostly to show how easy it is to mod a 10/22.

Right.

Some days just refuse to go down the simple path we envision! I decided to start simple with the Charger, since I've down so many 10/22s and was using my "standard" parts kit — Volquartsen trigger group, bolt handle and spring assembly, assorted parts. I was also adding a integrally suppressed barrel (mine is a no-longer-manufactured TS; Thompson Machine makes one).

I had read that Chargers can be a bear to disassemble, largely due to the shake-and-bake finish Ruger puts on the Chargers. I have an Accutech barrel pusher that has always done the trick, so I wasn't worried. Short story...3 hours later I got the damned barrel out of the Charger. It took tensioning the Accutech, which pushes against the forward pin that holds in the trigger group, very tightly, followed by A REALLY BIG HAMMER and a steel bar. I then cleared out the receiver barrel channel with fine grit sandpaper. I ended up flat filing the "drop in parts," which have always dropped in for my other 10/22s. I thought producer John Carter and DP Gene Moffett were going to strangle me as the hours ground on and on and I'm back in the shop filing away.

The ARs went together fine. I required help from the shop's gunsmiths, because I'm definitely not a gunsmith...LOL! We have a range date on Thursday, so might get some shooting in then.

A Chilly Sunday

This bout of cold is supposed to break next week, which is hopeful since we have a couple of SHOOTING GALLERY filming days! In between, I want to get a little more range time in before the glaciers move south.

We took the Wonder Beagle on a long hike yesterday, and we had the trail completely to ourselves since it was so cold and wet. Alf looked particularly fetching, BTW, in her red plaid sweater.The neat thing about a day like yesterday is that ice crystals form on the trees and plants, so everything looks like its frosted for Christmas. We even found some ice flowers, perfect flowers of ice remaining when the plants themselves withered from the frost.

In truth, I just grabbed the first gun handy for the hike, which was the Taurus "Slim" 9mm in a Simply Rugged holster. That particular combo carries like it's not even there. The bears are still awake, so I should have probably carried something "thumpier," like one of the .44s, but the Slim was handy. I moved the Ruger LCP to my weak hand pocket, as usual.

I have picked up on one small issue with the Sig Sauer P938 that I probably need to rectify. The gun comes with an ambi safety, which initially I liked based on the idea that the gun could be carried on my left side as a second gun. Generally. I'm not crazy about ambi safeties because, at least on 1911 platforms, they have a way of getting knocked off by carry holsters and in general provide just one more thing to break. The problem with the ambi safety on the 938 is that on speed drills, the offside safety actually pinches the flesh at the base of my trigger finger. Not every time, but often enough that I find myself hedging on the grip...it hurts!  I'm gong to do a little grinding on the offside grip...there's a fair sharp edge where the safety meet the grip and see if that does the trick. If it doesn't, I'll have a talk with Wayne Novak about it, because he knows everything.

I got back my Winchester Model 12 from Ken Griner Gunworks, and I can't wait to take it to the range. As you know I'm a fan of the cowboy action shooting subset of Wild Bunch shooting, using the guns of the movie THE WILD BUNCH,  including major caliber lever action rifles (.45, .44, 44-40, 38-40), 1911s and pump shotguns. Originally, the 1897 Winchester and its Chinese clones were the only pump guns allowed. But in Wild Bunch shooting, the pump guns are loaded up and run like pump guns are supposed to be run (in cowboy, '97s are only loaded 2 at a time). Winchester '97s are sketchy at best — they're old, overly complicated (87 separate heat treating steps) and prone to being pounded to pieces. My friend Gene Pearcey (cowboy champion "Evil Roy")  has always said every cowboy shooter needed 3 '97s — one to shoot, one for back-up, the other at the gunsmith being repaired. When I shot '97s in competition, I found this to be gospel.

The Wild Bunch founding fathers decided — wisely, I think — to allow Winchester Model 12s into the sport effective 1 January 2013. Model 12s, one of the most famous and best -selling shotguns ever, was created to solve many of the shortcomings of the Model '97. Secondly, Winchester made about a billion of the things, and they're widely available at completely sane prices. My local gunstore had 7 of the things in the rack, with prices starting at $250. Cheap at the price! Mine's a 1950s vintage gun (as opposed to my 1903 '97) in excellent shape. Ken cut the barrel to 21 inches or so, took an inch off the stock, fitted screw-in chokes and replaced the worn parts.

I think Wild Bunch has the potential, I believe, to be a major national sport, capturing the good points of both cowboy action shooting and some of the other practical shooting sports like USPSA. 1911s remain crazy popular, and the cool thing about a Model 12 is that I would not be uncomfortable at all using my Model 12 as a home protection shotgun (I would use a '97 if that's what I had, but I would worry). The sport took off like a shot (yep...pun alert), but went though pretty typical growing pains that slowed growth.

On the plus side, the founding father have from the beginning insisted on a greater emphasis on marksmanship...the shots are typically harder than you'd see in SASS (or the Steel Challenge, for that matter), and there are lots more of them.  On the negative side, there are some "artifacts" left over from the sports' cowboy roots, such as loading the 1911 mag with only 5 rounds. Still, Wild Bunch is a fascinating and challenging sport, one that I like a lot.

BTW BTW, Rob Pincus has an excellent article on his Personal Defense Network on choosing a carry gun. The focus of my own video is "simplify and demystify" concealed carry, and Rob's article is in agreement. One of the legacies of gun magazines is an apparently endless assessment of ammunition, guns and gear, in search of that elusive (and nonexistent) "best." Rob's article is definitely worth reading.

Brother Steven on James Bond's PPK

Steven Hunter, writing in WaPo, on James Bond's signature piece:

Fleming presumably made his choice of weapon on the basis of design alone. And indeed, the PPK (in German it stands for “short police pistol”) is a cool little beauty. It looks like Nietzschean poetry in steel, with a thrust of decadent Weimar art moderne to it. And it is Weimar, the latest thing from 1931, with its radical double-action design. It’s light, thin, designed for undercover work, meant to be carried a lot and shot a little. It was already old-fashioned by the time Connery got his in ’62.

You know, I think we might include the PPK in GUN STORIES Season 3 just because I love to hear Steve nail it!

Snow Last Night...

...here at the Secret Hidden Bunker, after a day where the temperature never got above 30 degrees. Tomorrow is supposed to be bitter, which throws into question whether I'm going to get up at O-Dark-30 and go shoot a 3-gun match.

BTW. am posting this om Firefox, which I actively dislike as a browser, because Safari's newest edition has a conflict with Blogger, because Blogger is owner by Google and Apple hates hates hates Google. Sigh.

I was pretty pleased with RAPID FIRE. I think Iain and Mike S, are wonderful personalities and the show moved right along. There are some midcourse corrections I'm going to make to make the show even better.

I did get out to the range with my AR for an afternoon of work, and it was fun. Glad I did because in the last 2 trips the scope has been taken on and off numerous times, and the zero has wandered all over the place. I need to get a torque wrench to keep putting scopes back on guns! I am enjoying shooting the AR more and more, which means there are more 3-gun matches in my future.

I also tried running the little Sig P938 the same way I'd run a larger gun in a match. LOL! Michael need to pay more attention when the gun is jumping around in his hands!

I'm also building up a coupleo of red-dot sighted "practical" pistols...one a Glock 19, the other my FNP-45. Both Mike Seeklander and Chris Edwards from Glock have been telling me that this is the future, and if that's the case, I'm way behind the curve! And BTW, I still got no truck with "USPSA "Open" Division!

RAPID FIRE TONIGHT!

Our new series, RAPID FIRE, premieres TONIGHT! Mike Seeklander and Iain Harrison will absolutely rock your world!

Keeping Things Quiet

Is there any worse curse than approval? Have you ever learned anything new from people who accept the world as it is?

James Lee Burke

Creole Belle

I always read James Lee Burke's "Dave Robicheaux" novels with a sense of dread, as if I'm going to find out some hidden truth that I profoundly didn't want to know. And maybe I do. In truth, at a very low ebb in my life, I read In the Electric Most with Confederate Dead and found something there that helped me keep my head on straight...the movie, however, sucked.

Have been working with the TS suppressor on one of the Ruger 22/45 Lites. I love the set-up, but so far I haven't found the ammo of my dreams. The CCI "Quiet" 40-grain/710fps pills are, well, quiet, but they also won't cycle the gun. My usual fallbacks of Mini Mags will cycle the gun just fine, but they usually crack as the little pellets go supersonic. I say "usually" because the actual speed of .22 ammo is pretty much a crap shoot. Mini Mags are rated at 1235fps at the muzzle, and the speed of sound is about 1100fps at 70 degrees and sea level. Given environmental concerns and the less-than-perfect consistency of .22 ammo, sometimes it cracks and sometimes it doesn't.

I need to sit down with my many different .22 rounds until I find the perfect compromise. I'm hopeful about some of the Federal match rounds, which is what I usually use in RRC competition. They cycle my Mark III just fine and clock out at just under 1100fps. The CCI "Quiets" are going to be real winners in my T/C Contender rifle barrel. I've shot BB and CB caps out of the T/C, and objectively they're not much louder than the 22/45 with the silencer. As soon as I get the T/C barrel back from being threaded I'll let you all know.

Today's a range day, which is perfect since the wind is blowing like about 400 miles per hour. I'll have to shoot everything on the diagonal just to hit the target!

A Cheery Read!

From Matt Bracken, former Special Forces guy and author of the ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC series of novels. Yes, it's grim...read the whole thing:

So, we have millions of men and women with military training, owning rifles similar to the ones they used in combat operations overseas from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Many of these Soldiers and Marines have special operations training. They are former warriors with experience at conducting irregular warfare and counter-terrorism operations in dangerous urban environments. They are the opposite of unthinking robots: their greatest military talent is looking outside the box for new solutions. They always seek to “over-match” their enemies, using their own advantages as force multipliers while diminishing or concealing their weaknesses. These military veterans are also ready, willing and able to pass on their experience and training to interested students in their civilian circles.

A Cool Hunting Story...

...in, of all things, the NYT:

Ms. Pellegrini wants to pay what she calls “the full karmic price” for her meals. In an observation few carnivores will protest, she says, “The duck you pluck will taste so much better than the one you don’t.”

Herding Cats

Spent yesterday either talking on the phone or rounding up AR parts for our SHOOTING GALLERY builds. The ATI Omni lower is pretty interesting. It looks good (and boy, is it light!), but the question remains of how a polymer lower will handle the stress of a lot of rounds. Of course, the gun we're building, the break-down, is not intended as an everyday plinker, but we'll shoot the crap out of it anyway.

Today is podcast day, so as soon as I finish with the blogpost I'll head up to the studio. Couple of other things on the agenda today...at the IDPA Nationals I bought one of the Bob Vogel Glock Trigger from GlockTriggers, and I want to put it into our crash-test-dummy Gen 4 Glock 19. Unless my Sweetie commandeers the Glock for her impending 3-Gun run, it's slated to go out to TSD Combat Systems for a red dot sight transplant. I am convinced that red dot optics on a pistol for concealed carry is a coming thing. I want to set up a Glock and my FNP .45...we'll show you how they work on SG.

I'm also heading to the range when I finish up at the Bunker. I want to put more rounds through the Sig Sauer P938, and I'm breaking in a new pair of cowboy pistols...or, rather, my overhauled pair of .357 Blackhawks I got about a decade ago. They've now got 4-inch octagonal barrels (looks cool!) and a brass front sight blade. I'm looking for a few good seconds here.

Although, to be honest, at least in my cowboy shooting there are seconds to be found with the rifle. I finished in the top-10 again last weekend against some really really good shooters. Once again, I was consistent but not as fast as I know I can be. I went through a spell of missing a lot of rifle targets, and I backed off my speed with the rifle to guarantee the hits. It is darn hard to ratchet the speed back up! Practice practice practice!