Get on the floor, bitch.

Do it NOW, cuz I don't think that breast pin is registered.

(And please, I am not being a copper bore this time either. I'm being a gold bore, merely noting in passing that copper today passed $4.60 and that your old copper cent is now worth  a curly over three zinc pennies.)

The cops in Federal Way, Washington, are embarrassed at a rise in home burglaries. They blame Tim and Ben or whatever for making gold prices go so high.  So  they aspire to make it much harder to sell your grandma's  ugly old cocktail ring if it contains gold, silver, or platinum.  To do so you make the dealer take your fingerprints, require him to issue you a check rather than cash, retain the trinket for 45 days, and enter it on a police database.

The city fathers are pushing a state law to that effect, but legislative deliberation is much too slow for them, so they want to enact it locally. Me? I figure that if they get the job done there will be a boom in coin dealerships, pawn shops, and precious metal dealers just outside the city limits. If the state caves in, well, Idaho isn't all that far off.

But guys like us are probably just warped old cynics who have no sympathy for common-sense jewelry control.

Some of you are even worse. I mean you radical malcontents who look at this as a neat way for the gummint to keep track of your wedding band after the tipping point. The tipping point is defined as that instant during which you and I and the Chinese decide to quit going along with the gag that our currency means something.

Achtung!

Apparently there is one --  perhaps only one -- difference between a blockwart and a Hitler blockleiter -- how they feel about rooting out Jewish people.

Each, according to Marko's excellent report, generated by Boston blockwarts, finds glory in using the laws, however trivial, to "behave like an obnoxious asshole."

Weather-driven

This  batch of Alberta is driving me indoors, probably for the entire day and more. Only the messy pile of firewood around the burner gives me cause to smile after looking at the thermometer (+2) and knowing this is about as good as it will get for at least  three days.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to catch up on paperwork and get this cluttered cabin shaped up, but depressing self-knowledge suggests that the Master of Camp J will more likely  start looking for a book which demands reading. Probably won't have any visitors anyway, especially fussy ones. They'll stay home and dust.

The other alternative is to (expensively) fire up the Knipco out in the shop and start repairing Ruger's work on the .22/.45.

---

The efforts to  locate the owner of Little Miss No-Name have yielded no results. We'll give it another day or two, then start dreaming up a name for her. I've been considering "Sarah." When a liberal chick asks, I can say she's named for the Brady lady. Otherwise Palin.

Naaah, probably not.

Loopholing at it's finest

Sometimes it's as important to know your dealers as to know guns. The two shooters here came from the FFL'ed  friend who has what is,  these days,  an unusual business plan. He comes to the loophole shows bent on actually selling guns rather than tagging them with stupidly stratospheric prices and waiting and waiting and waiting for a well-heeled fool. He prospers because he knows how to buy guns. And because he's a knowledgeable and likable man.

Decades ago Bubba got his hands on the Krag but showed a certain restraint. Perhaps it was respect for the pure Norhoovian heritage and the 6.5 x 55 chambering. Restoring this one to military is pretty much out of the question, dammit, but  a man can live happily with her as is. The sharp rifling and excellent  round might lead to braggable groups. We'll see.

The .22/.45 is what it is, but I've been wanting one for a while, strictly for the design, and at $250 couldn't pass this one. The quality is pure latter-day Ruger, meaning a half-day in the shop with slip stones and crocus cloth to erase the burrs and the floor sweepings in the innards.  The new reality is that you buy a NIB Ruger, work the action, dry fire it a couple of times, sigh, and remark, "I can probably save it."


Elsewhere, three sturdy but unmarked Mini-14 30-rounders (Oh the horror.)  for $35. A Browning Hi-Power mag for $5. A  funky old $5 holster that will hold the Black Hawk, just in case some day I want to dress up like a real cowboy instead of Gene Autry.