Folks Shouldn't Mess with Sam's Mom

I have my doubts about single-action revolvers as basic home defense guns, but in Bea's case I'll keep them to myself.

Bea weighs 110 pounds and keeps a .45 Black Hawk convertible handy around the house. She's proficient, and I'd hate to be the clerk who eyeballs her svelte frame bent over the handgun case and volunteers that she needs that lady-like .32.

It's a delightful read, over at Stranded in Iowa's place. 

EDIT: In case you didn't  follow the links (BAD Reader. BAD.Go to your kennel.)  Bea happens to be 77 years old.  When she needs a little more .45 ammo, she polices  the firing line and reloads the cases.

I'll clean the house when it gets cold again.

At least the new plastic Ruger  22/45  goes bang every time you pull the trigger, and the rounds hold in a couple-three inches at 50 feet from a semi-steady braced position.  (Leaning on the truck is our bucolic version of bench rest shooting.) Thirty rounds of el cheapo 36-grain hollow points were fired. Not counting two trigger jerks, all but three or four of them punctured a beverage can of my choice.

The same trip to a piece of DNR land a couple of miles west of Camp J gave me the excuse to run New Dog Libby and see how she  works the brome and cattails. Not bad, but she did let a winter-killed deer distract her.

It isn't spring yet, but the sun is becoming slightly more arrogant, and a chinook  wind is aiding the illusion that winter at 43 North is tucking himself into the history books. It is a day when the Lords of Blast and Fire would not be denied.

All politics is local,

not to mention bloated.

The census snoopers credit  Smugleye on Lake with 341 residents as of last summer.

My SOL neighbors and I are supervised by 21 local officials, elected and appointed. That's one superintendent for every 16.23 citizens. It works out to something like  five houses per regulator, so  they could check us all every day,  just to make sure we aren't feeding the stray cat  or replacing windows without a building permit.

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*This doesn't count cops. We  pay the county sherf to hold down crime in Smugleye.

Fancy that: Merchant of Death to Advise Obama

A veteran Ruger executive is about to join the Obama team.

The Ruger news release:


Kim Pritula, Director of Export/ATF Compliance & Security, has been appointed to the President’s Export Council Subcommittee on Export Administration (PECSEA).  


Sounds okay to me. She's been with Sturm Ruger some 30 years, helping the bosses navigate the Kafka novels which make up ATF and other Washington rules about who can sell what to whom. But maybe it would have been better if the Ruger flack had ended the release right there, because:

“Kim has a very unique talent and passion for export regulation and plays a critical role in the Sturm, Ruger organization,” said Ruger President and CEO Mike Fifer. 


Well, I'm pleased for you, too, Kim. It is a personal achievement. However the quote your PR guy made for President Fifer begs a point some of us find important. Is it actually a good thing to hold  "a passion for export regulation?"   We libertarian scallywags tend to think of regulation as, at best, a sometimes necessary evil to be treated about like a spitting cobra sharing your howdah.

It would be picky these less-literate days to sigh over your "very" unique talent and passion.  Better we should spend our effort finding another word to mean the only one in the world -- a new one that will serve until  public relations guys and advertising copywriters start loading it up with modifiers until it, too, deteriorates  to just another word for "somewhat unusual."

Anyway, it's nice to know someone from the firearms industry is functioning in high councils of government, so congratulations.

(My spies tell me the Tune-In is still the most pleasant bar on Capitol Hill.)