Even Big Brother says something smart once in a great while

For an inglorious instant this morning I was Winston Smith. The Inner Party had fulfilled its threat.  I loved Newt Gingrich.

"(Mitt,) can we get rid of the pious baloney?"

Hustling Newt Gingrich

On second thought, I'm glad the Des Moines Register doesn't fritter away money on copy editing. Curmudgeons wielding pencils deprive the world of laughter.

---

Newt was hustling Iowans. A homeless woman decided to tell him her sad story and began:

“This is difficult so bare with me.” 

At least she was speaking to the candidate most likely to respond, "Sure. Your place or mine?"

Frankie Laine sings Ron Paul

"Get those dogies movin,  
  "Tho' they're disapprovin'
"RAWMIIILK."

---

Dr. Ron brought down the house last night in New Hampshire with a clarion call to let folks drink raw milk if they want. Holy Moly, Mary Marvel -- Cannabis. Raw Milk. There goes the Republic.

It's making the teevee heads even more nervous in light of Paul's new statistical tie with Newt in Iowa.

Gee, I like starting the day with a grin.

Let Hitler cure your megrims

Please step over to Random Acts of Patriotism for the Hitler take on John Moses Browning's 1911 versus the Teutonic brick. If it doesn't make you laugh you're not a true gun nut.

H/T Borepatch

Well, Uncles are supposed to be avuncular

I don't know what set Uncle off, though it looks like a case of misusing the internet. Meaning he may have spent too much time reading the iron-clad conclusions of the uninformed while unsolaced by ancient Irish Whiskey.

But I'm glad something tripped his trigger.

I especially liked the suggestion to gun-terminology pedants:

Yeah, I know a silencer doesn’t completely silence a gun. But the guy who invented the things called them silencers. He gets dibs. And you don’t.


This could even be extended to suggest that if you slip up and call a magazine a clip you are not automatically sentenced to dinner with Barbara Boxer.


The rest is good, too, including most of the comments.


H/T Joel.

Terror threat in the Heartland

The City of Des Moines blocked off a an area of the urban core after a citizen reported a suspicious object on the sidewalk. Crack hazardous-objects officers in full armor charged to the scene and successfully disarmed a cylindrical plastic tube used for dispensing dog crap bags.

You may recall a TMR report of a few months back detailing another suspicious object on one of our highways. In that case a road-kill muffler was neutralized.

So much for my life-long view that paranoia is not a Midwest trait.

You can't make this stuff up

How do you streamline government?

 Army Secretary Creates Commission to Simplify Bureaucracy

The release itself is sensible enough as government press releases go,  but I fear the public information officer who wrote the headline was doodling pictures of tanks and guns while his English teacher was explaining the concept of irony.

(H/T to a lad who paid attention.)

Baby ballistics

The well-known instigator Tam has me sweeping brass from the living room floor -- .22 Super Colibri brass, to be exact. It is a way passing a few moments of dull winter.

As promised, I dug out the box I thought I'd filed in the "Miscellaneous" corner.

(There are four corners in this gun room. They are labeled "Will shoot," "Won't shoot," "Miscellaneous," and "Other."  But I digress.)

I stuck one in the BL22, stepped to the deck, and let fly. Of such simplicity is fun created.

The Colibiri descends from the old BB and CB short "caps" for .22 rimfires. It's purpose in life is shooting in places where conventional wisdom,  and sometimes the law, say there should be none. 

It looks a lot like the defunct .22 Long -- a Long Rifle case stuffed with a 29-grain bullet. The small difference is that the Colibiri uses a 20-grainer.  The big one is that there's no powder behind the bullet, just a hot priming compound giving you about 500 fps, a low pop instead of a bang, limited range and penetration. However, my lashup buried the bullet to its depth in soft wood 30 feet away, so the Four Rules apply.
--

The North Wind doth blow, so I plot for comfort. I will block the front doors open,  fire out the door, over the deck, across some 20 feet of drifted back yard, into a target, using the  shed as a berm.

The  target? One of those ridiculous little shovels with a four-inch blade and a foot-long handle, sold in better WalMarts everywhere as "roadside emergency tools."  (I gaze at it and  speculate on my probable need, to, some day,  inter a small budgie bird, at roadside, in an emergency setting, in soft earth. More is beyond its capacity. But I digress. )

Ram the handle into the snow and the blade makes a nice aiming point. Hit it and it moves a little.  I make it move 20 times or so, bare-handed and bare-headed in January. Grinning all the way, even at something like eight cents a round, counting the tax.

I can't really comment on accuracy other than that, offhand, I got consistent minute-of-useless-shovel groups according to my examination of the hit marks -- faint smudges of lead.

---

The Calibiri, left, next to a .22 Long Rifle.

The box warns that you should fire these rounds only through a hand gun because, it says, the charge may fail to drive the bullet all the way through the rifle barrel. Then, if you fire a full-power round behind it you'll wind up with Elmer Fudd's barrel  after the wabbit stuck his finger in the muzzle.  I report this at the command of the TMR Legal Review Section.

Range Note

The tourists were gone and the locals hard at work, leaving the range empty yesterday. Daughter, son-in-law and old man took advantage and monopolized the 25-yard range for a couple of hours, shooting the SS Colt 1911 and some of the guns that don't see enough use.

Dave favored the Winchester '94 but  did his best work with the 1911 -- one group just under four inches with one in the x-ring, making for a near tie between spouses.  I decline the honor of referring the  point about who shot better.

Then there was the BL22, a rifle I like a lot and one I would nominate for a  high place in the list of best-machined lever-actions ever. We didn't get compulsive about measuring the Browning's groups, just ran 60 or 70 rounds through it Chuck Conners style, fast and offhand.

My personal satisfaction peaked with the three-screw SA .22. You may recall me grousing here about the shoddy Ruger work and non-existent customer service installing the "safety" conversion. The home-brew fix  worked fine. My only regret is forgetting to bring the Stetson to round out the six-shooter and Buscadero rig. Next time.

---

For what it is worth, these two young folks are not totally unknown as players in the MSM, and you can safely bet that they won't let some cop or Brady-ite  get away with calling a 10-22 an assault rifle in their pages.

Not everyone can be lucky enough to raise a weapons-aware news kid, but you can always invite one  to go shooting with you.

Range Kids

A well-known news editor hones her management style.

With the de-lawyered  SS Colt  Series 70 and his father-in-law's  hand loads, a chief photographer explains to senior management  why the photo should go above the fold.

Similar persuasive device is the carbine version. Orginally conceived as a tool for annoying hoplopobes by its very existence, it does't shoot all that badly.

A closer photo would better show braggability.The young lady hasn't shot a rifled weapon  in years. Five shots were scattered over four inches at 25 yards, with one centered in the X ring.

Show Time

We'll be in Sioux Falls tomorrow for one of the better loopholes in the country -- the Dakota Territory Gun Collectors Association Loophole. This is not  their biggest show of the year, but it's always an interesting one with hundreds of classic levers and SAAs along with more modern shootery. I have no plans to loophole anything, though I really should  because my recent efforts to annoy Senators Harkin and Schumer haven't been effective,, i.e., no subpoenas whatsoever in the mail lately.

Maybe I'll find a a beat up 12 gauge double  I can bubba up like the single that came out of the shop last week. That should be twice as provocative, raving dangerous,anti-gummint  gun fanatic-wise.

It is just so hard these days  to be recognized as a leader in the counter-revolution.

You say they've super-sized the zombies?

Why, I have just the thing,  Watson. 


---


There was too much clutter in the loading shack -- such as hundreds of .30-06 cases and oddball .308 bullets -- old  220 -grain round nose fmj's that may well be .30-03 pulls. Cleaned up and loaded ahead of (n) grains of 4350 they will fly at  just under 2500 fps and strike terror into the hearts of the not-quite deceased who, the movies tell me,  threaten the world as you know and love it.

If the zombie scare turns out to be just another passing Madness-of-Crowds phenomena, they will still be useful. This load should work well enough to control  elephants migrating  to my latitude as the globe warms.

See You Later Allig ... (ZAP)

I'm sure Corb is a nice kid, a credit to rock and rollers everywhere, and fully deserving of his new scholarship. But I wish he'd explained the conundrum to the doowhackadoo photographer and editor. Solid body guitars need to be plugged in. Plugging them in while seated seaward of the waterline could result in a very short set.

Veritable Arsenal

This jaunt is not overly planned, but I suspect we're looking at about two or three thousand miles through the barren waste lands of the great American desert. My bestiaries report a land of vipers and sagebrush, grizzly bears and wolves; ethnographic studies reveal a populace quick to retaliate against violent provocation.

So I feel pretty good about things and don't really see a need to be armed to the extent necessary for an excursion down South Halstead Street in Chicago. And since guns get kicked around severely on my camping trips, the prettier ones stay home.

For what it is worth, here's one man's concept of a well-stocked arms locker for a few days on the great prairie and in the Rockies when no hunting is planned.

--For general pleasure and common pest control, the Smith 59, just because I'm comfortable with it, like having 28 rounds easily available in its two magazines, and a few more dings aren't going to set my tear ducts flowing. This will be a fine chance to shoot up all the remaining ancient reloads. I don't worry about the pipsqueak caliber because I figure the odds of trouble are slim.

--In case I'm wrong about that last point, the 20-inch Mossberg 500 with with five rounds of 12 gauge 00 buck in the magazine and five more in the stock band.

--A .22LR semi, maybe the Winchester 74, maybe one of the 10-22s. There is no place like the Wyoming/Montana plains for just plain plinking fun.

That arsenal should be veritable enough, though I'm beginning to flay myself for not planning on a Winchester 94 or a single six. How can a self-respecting man go to the shadow of the Big Horns without a cowboy gun?

Tam says:

"Meanwhile, General Motors is announcing a joint venture with Frito-Lay..."

And if those ten words aren't enought to justify a month's net connect cost I'll kiss your arse in Detroit  City Square and give you an hour to alert the remaining city residents, if any.

(Some kind of  warning would be nice, though -- just a headsup to swallow the rest of that mouthful of Coke.)