Still grinding the gun-politics sausage

Let us honor the filibuster. Think of it as a precautionary dose of Valium to be taken before doing something massively stupid.  Or counting to ten before you ballkick the boss.

You don't even need to use it. The mere threat settles things down. Three weeks ago, it looked like the left would insist on trying to gut the Second Amendment and, in consequence, face at least 41 senators saying "no" at great length and handing HIs Ineptness the place where the pants fit tight.

That would have been the optimum result, but it really wasn't in the cards. The national drama contest  after Newtown all but guaranteed that we would lose something, just as did the World Trade Center bombing.  When the mobs circle up for a an intense tear jerk, it's hard to stop them, harder yet when they're led by  our wet-eyed national primo and his dependable cadre.

At the moment it appears we will lose something but could actually gain a mite from the Toomey-Manchin "compromise" designed to ward off the filibuster. The New York Times reports:

The bill also enhances some gun rights. For instance, it would allow gun owners who have undergone background checks within the past five years for a concealed-carry permit to use the permit to buy guns in other states, and it would relax some of the restrictions on hunters traveling with their guns through states that do not permit them. It would also allow active members of the military to buy firearms in their home states, currently prohibited when they are stationed outside their state.


Tearing down the iron curtains of state borders for interstate gun purchasing  is long overdue, even if it depends on holding a Mommy-May-I Card from our state bureaucrats.* So is expansion and clarification of the federal innocent-passage doctrine. 

What we lose is our right to make our own judgements about people to whom we, as private citizens,  can responsibly sell or trade our guns. In return, America will gain precisely nothing. Inter-thug trading in Glocks will continue merrily, especially in neighborhoods like ones our president organized before beginning his climb up the federal pay scale.

The content of the Senate bill as reported here needs to be viewed cautiously. A wide internet ramble turns up no actual legislative language..

The Toomey web site is as close as I can come to a draft of the legislation.  I suppose you can trust it to the extent you can trust any elected nabob to tell you the truth.

 (The actual bill may not yet be written. Picture Mountain-Dewed young staff munchkins spending this night hunched over word processors, large bags of chemically flavored  corn chips close at hand.)

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*I hope no one reminds the gun-ban left of a consequence they can't see. When the state CCW becomes some sort of national pass for firearms purchases, the demand for them will soar. Okay by me, but I expect the Feinstein gang will develop  a new interest in the price of Depends.

Dry-fire your way to misery

It's a coincidence on a par with His Ineptness uttering two coherent sentences on the same day.  Two bunged-up firing chambers on two pretty .22s purchased at the same loophole? Impossible.

Both the Challenger and the Speedmaster went shooting with us Saturday. The pistol worked only as an awkward single shot. A round would chamber but not extract. The rifle wouldn't chamber a round at all. In firearms, looks usually don't lie, and these two were stunners for ~1960s production, moderately used, carefully cleaned and maintained.

And dry-fired by click-happy mad men. Each carried a disabling burr at the firing pin strike point. The good news is that both Browning and Remington made barrel removal easy.  A few cautious strokes with a fine rat tail file and a finish polish of 220 emery smoothed things up.

I knew the Challenger fired dependably despite the slight indentation left by the uncushioned firing pin, but I was worried about the  Remington, unnecessarily as it turned out.

Lesson emphasized: We click our .22s at our peril.

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Fortunately we took lots more iron with us, so the afternoon was in no sense lost. The grandson got a plenitude of coaching as he broke in his new 10-22, but he seemed to enjoy it anyway.

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And after a hard day of creating noise and smoke, what could be more relaxing than a nice ride over the lakes and the spring countryside in J & K's new 182?

Sure, I rather approved of Margaret Thatcher, but

I can save you quite a bit of time this morning if you're the sort of person who gets up, pours a coffee, and clicks the electric teevee in hopes of getting a general sense of what is happening in the world today.

Across all three cable news channels there is but one story, the passing of Ms. Thatcher. Friends, I'm afraid she's going to be dead almost as long as Michael Jackson. 

So you can safely leave your Telescreen blank and go do something useful. 

There is one exception. CNN decided that one other news development was worth a long treatment. They have hired Anthony Bourdain to do some fly-in-and-eat shows for them. 

But is is art?

                  "Still Life on Tractor"

         (From the artist's later bang period.)