1,2,3,4 What are we fighitng for?

A little for Flag and Mom's apple pie, but mostly for the girl back home.  Ask Sgt. York.

Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel of Detroit.

Grand Opening...

...although he has been returning classics from the dead for quite a while. (This is the man you've seen me refer to as "Genius Jeff," and there is not much hyperbole in that.)

So she ain't quite perfect.

Heck, neither am I. 

 

Non sequiter of the day

An I-5 bridge collapsed in Washington state. Reuters was on the story. Its  final paragraph:

The cause of the collapse was not immediately known. It was not raining in the area, Francis said.

MegaThoughts

Oh my! So much going on in the world. It's more than a fellow can examine in detail, so he is impelled to take the easier path of pronouncing cosmic truths:

1. Stockholm and London are under attack by revolutionary forces. The lesson is that an advanced society does not benefit from providing free candy to lure in tribes not all that far from the Stone Age. Excluding the Irish, of course.

2 Of course we've all wondered, "Why does the Inner Party kill its citizens by remote control and use the tax authority of the state to browbeat and destroy those whose speech appears to be Crimethink?"  Why, because it can, and because it makes governing ever so much more convenient if every bipedal drone in the country knows it. And fears it.

Dear Television,

Thank you. I get it. Everyone in Moore, Oklahoma, is brave and stalwart.  Cops and firemen and ambulance drivers and so forth are braver and stalwarter than average.  Politicians fighting their way through the rubble, deperately seeking a television camera, are bravest and stalwartest of all.

So it is unnecessary for you to keeping telling me. Shoot me an email when you have milked the last emo goop from the tragedy and developed some perspective  on this story's place in the whole wide world of news.

(For instance, Ben Bernanke goes public today with all the reasons he should keep devaluing our currency because President Obama needs lots more Federal Reserve Cartoons to keep the recovery going. Gas at four FRCs and bacon at five is just minor collateral damage which we should ignore.)

---

An aside: Gretchen has her thighs covered this morning, so there's no reason to flip to Fox, no matter what they claim to be reporting about.

The hayseed gun market

No theme ran through the small collection auctioned off in a little Iowa town last night. Just an assortment owned by a fellow who, in a casual way,  liked guns. This is what the crowd decided weapons are worth:



--Mossberg 16 ga. bolt action, okay condition .... $110

--Carcano 38 (7.35 cal.) heavily bubbaed .... $110

--Spanish copy of Browning "vest pocket"  .25ACP  rough, no mag. .... $90

--Rossi .38 Spc. revolver (Pythonish) as NIB -- $200

--First series Colt Match Target  .22  (1940 mfg.) VG-Exc but no mag .... $530 (!)*

--Star Elbar, SS Colt Commander copy, VG ....  $375

--Spectra HC 9mm semi-auto, as NIB with several hi-cap mags ... $725**

--Winchester 101ish Pigeon Grade XTR (12 ga OU)  in presentation case .... $725

-0-

*Only a fool would have left without owning her at that price.

**An assaultish looking pistoloid which I've seen, if ever, only fired sideways in movin' picture shows about ninjas still subject to acne attacks

Officer Friendly Gets Your Gun

Clive's Finest found out you don't  have to pay even a pittance at gun turn-ins. . A few zippitydoodahs get fuzzy just giving their weapons to the cops. For the children, I would guess.

This one netted 51 "weapons" if you count the BB guns and broken pellet rifles along with assemblies of rusted parts which weren't worth bringing home when new.

However, I imagine gleam in some acquisitive cops' eyes.

After determining if they were stolen, police will send the guns to the state crime lab for testing. Those weapons that are not found to be linked to a crime will be destroyed.

Uh huh. "Chief, I'll just take this here Ruger home and hang it up with the other guns I'm planning to destroy." 

The bunk-junk photos reveal a few that we'd all be pleased to own and possibly a classic or two. Give me some slack for working with lower resolution images, but I notice:

A possible Black Hawk with McGiverned trigger guard, splotchy but savable ... A decent Ruger Standard ... A probable Hi-Standard Sentinel ... another HI-Standard-like semi on the order of the HD ... and something that looks at least a little like the Savage experiment with pocket autos.

But never mind. Clive is a safer burb these days. The Only One's press release says so.

Reloading .30-06 military brass

For reasons I hinted at last evening, I've developed an even stronger hunger for .30-06, and a rainy Sunday is devoted to loading some of the case stash, mostly military.

Grrrrrr.

The primer pocket crimp we all curse is only part of the problem. Some of the pockets are just too tight to take a fresh one.

I de-crimp everything with a countersink chucked in a drill, and for some that quick  operation is all it takes. My Autoprime loves 1950s cases from Lake City, particularly LC 54.

It hates everything from Denver, especially  D 42, and I just toss those.

Winchester and Frankford head stamps are between those extremes, and after crushing too many primers I've decided to set them aside until I get around to creating either a  power reamer or a press-mountable swage.

---

At the command of the TMR Legal Review Section, I remind newbies that any time you remove brass from a case you weaken it, maybe significantly, maybe not. I reserve anything I've cut into for conservative loads.

Otherwise at the gun show:

This was a middlin'-size loophole, somewhere around a couple hundred tables. At the usual busiest time, mid-day Saturday, traffic was brisk but not jammed to the extent we've been seeing since November. You could get to the tables and coon finger the stuff. Observations:

--I've rarely seen so much U.S. military webbing and other field gear from the WW2/Korea era. The market hasn't  decided on values.  For instance, similar  .45 magazine pouches carried askings from $10 to $25.  One entrenching tool was offered at $15, a near twin at $50. And so forth.

--Everyday M1 Carbines seem to have settled to an arguing range centered on $800. (I saw only Inlands.)

--Plenty of 5.56x45 (.223 McNamara Stalemate) was on the tables at $.80-$-1 per round. Heavier popular rifle calibers were at $1 and higher.

--Components continued scarce and expensive. I saw no powder. Primers were tagged at $5 and $6 per hundred. I did see what I considered a bargain by recent standards, .223MS brass polished, sized, and primed at 20 cents.

--Everyone wanted .22LR. Only a little offered, but I saw nothing sell at the prevailing asks of  $60 to $90.

--The dealers I know well enough to chat with reported gun sales slow to non-existent.

Is there a .govbot in the house?

Three patriots understood that one can not make America a better place to live by hanging around a tea party. Even personal debt reduction must yield to to the need for action now.

Thus they sortied to a loophole, that is, a gun show, at 0804 this date, all in search of enhanced firepower. One of them was particularly enthusiastic about bringing a battlefield weapon to the mean streets of Smugleye-on-Lake.

Designed in part to resist enemy assaults, the (semi) automatic rifle with quick-change detachable bullet clips, was also intended to permit American freedom fighters, both professional and militia, to participate in  assaults.




This one came from a federally licensed dealer, so the armed American exploited  the gun show loophole by providing identification, a state permit in lieu of an NICS check, and filling out what has become a four-page form 4473.

---

She's been rebarrelled (sharp, shiny rifling) but otherwise appears about original. The condition is somewhere near the high end of average, and I expect her to shoot rather well for a dowager born on the high river bluff of Springfield in March, 1943.

Even if she doesn't, I'm glad she's here, especially for a bride price well below the usual 1,000 FRC asking.

I did remark to a loophole companion that the M1 was not especially fun to shoot and that I never found it handy.

 "So why did you buy it?"

Because an American should own a Garand.

.


'

Topic of Crapicorn

Even a dedicated wookie can easily take his eye off the ball. It is simply too much fun to watch the details of the government in power getting a wedgie.

For instance, Miller -- the career "civil servant" who bossed Americans through his control of the IRS --  is sickly entertaining. He been questioned all morning by the House Ways and Means Committee. Two things stand out. His attack of Alzheimer's, and his sweat. The latter makes a person think of a Golden Gloves welterweight after eight rounds with Sonny Liston.  ('course, like the Arias legal team, Miller doesn't have much of a case to work with.)

Then there is the congressional committee in charge of Obama polishing. They continue to assert that the real outrage must be reserved for two interns sharing the smallest cubicle in the Cincinnati office of their Inner Party's finance branch.

Such details are vastly entertaining, but if I'm to deserve my fur I need to lift my eyes to the big idea. The crime rests on questions of huge tax-free money to influence a huge government.

Everyone from the Koch Brothers to the Farm Bureau to Acorn is willing to spend billions of dollars to buy political favor for one reason. One. The payoff is hundred of billions of dishonest dollars, money extorted from you and delivered into the hands of whatever lobby happens at the moment to be most successful.

If American people continue to vote for big bloat, they continue to vote for big crime. That's how government is.

Even before there was a 3D printer...

3D printer gun, the short version

The latest Oh My Gawd and Gee Whiz! panic  -- the plastic gun from your 3D printer --  is this year's version of Y2K when the zombies leaped from your computer and chewed up your brains.

The hand wringers hope above hope that no one will Bing "zip gun" and notice the 63,700,000 references. Piece of pipe, Gorilla tape, couple of springs (rubber bands can work), hunk of steel, nail. If you want to get fancy you can add a handful of machine screws and a tap and die set from Home Depot.

Look, I'm only a tinkerer, but if I can't make a better pistol out of stuff found in half the home workshops of America, I'll kiss your Cloraxed arse on the front porch of 505 27th Street in Ogden, Utah, and let you hire the Tabernacle Choir for a warm-up act.

Tax-targeting patriots, the short version

Any tax functionary has the power to destroy your life for reasons he or she may  keep secret.

At this point in American history, the death-by-tax-harassment penalty is primarily reserved for citizens exercising their First Amendment rights by uttering words unpleasant to politicians in power, that is, conservatives, "patriots", and those who question the purity of politicians' motives.

Four decades ago, the same horror was aimed at the reverse slope of prevailing orthodoxy, liberals, doves, and everyone else who believed the sitting president's mindset was well illustrated by his decision to dress his personal guards like Paraguay's admirals.

The current president, speaking Friday through a hapless mouthpiece named Jay,  explains that the tax agency is independent, above politics.  Therefore he, personally, like Nixon before him, is pure and worthy of your infinite trust.

Benghazi, the short version

Four Americans died, unprotected by the American government they served. The Central Intelligence Agency reported, somewhat accurately, the killers were organized Islamic terrorists executing a plan.

This posed problems for Barack Obama, running for president in 2012 and for Hillary Clinton, running for president in 2016. Therefore they ordered the reports soaked in lye, sudsed, and bleached white, all to the conclusion that Mr.Obama and Ms. Clinton were blameless and, in fact, strong leaders. And wise.

Now, eight months later, as lies are publicly aired. Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton have issued the new talking points: "Republicans are politicizing Benghazi."

Die, Tourist Scum

Let me tell you about dock law. I mean the kind of dock you fish from, and swim.

I have one across the road on the canal. It's a modest little thing. For the privilege I pay the village of Smugleye-on-Lake $100 per annum plus a little to my insurance company for an SOL-required $1 million liability policy.

To get it I had to run a nearly year-long political uprising against the SOL village council which a few years earlier decided "no new docks adjoining city right-of-way." For reasons you would find boring, this was a piece of statist, intrusive, purposeless nonsense.

We won the point. I paid the city extortion, bought the dock sections, and in two days of heavy grunt labor in cold water, installed them.  Since then I've raised and lowered the deck three or four times to maintain a convenient height above the fluctuating lake levels. Each shift eats up about a half a day.

The Iowa DNR is not to be denied, either. Until a couple of years ago, little docks like mine were called "Class 1." While you had to endure a bit of senseless paperwork to get the state permit, they were free. Then came a gleam in the collective politico-bureaucrat eye. "Hey, Sidney, if we start calling all the Class 1 docks Class 3 docks we can squeeze a $125 registration fee out of all those rich bassards by the lake." Done. Absolutely nothing in the real, physical world changed except a noticeable reduction in this rich bassard's bank account and a concomitant increase in cash for DNR drones to piss away.

One  more thing before I get to the red meat. It isn't my dock. Because it abuts a piece of property which belongs to the village (it shouldn't), every goddam fisher-couple and their six low-average kids from Humboldt,  spewing used Pampers and Lil Debbie cake wrappers in their wake,  have exactly as much right to it as I do. Yep, I clean up after them Monday mornings.

---

Now I note your sarcastic remark that this doesn't sound like cause to go full-Mencken.  In fact, I agree. No throat-slitting is justified, but in a just world I would be permitted, nay encouraged, to hide in the bushes and snipe at their too-tightly- jeaned fat asses with my Daisy Red Ryder just because the slobs are fouling my usufruct.

Because this morning I went down to collect the makings of my first crappie breakfast of the season.  I dressed the yellow lead-head jig with a piece of worm, tossed it in, and moved the rod butt toward my handy rod holder, attached to a dock stanchion.

Gone.

What sort of snake-belly SOB goes to a bit of trouble to steal a 50-cent semi-rusty piece of iron? From a usually  harmless old guy who, as detailed above, rather heavily inconvenienced himself to enhance your weekend away from the trailer park? Jayzuss. Aren't their any garage sales in your declining neighborhood?

I will dream tonight of catching this spawn of the social cesspool and beating him  severely about his nether regions before the grand finale, to wit:  Strip and spread-eagle his Bud-Lighted carcass, pour four ounces of high-test gasoline over his pubic hair and light it off while humming the Campfire Girls' arrangement of This  Little Light of Mine.

What could be fairer?

---

Otherwise rather pleasant, since you're kind enough to ask. I caught many, but only four were big enough to kill. As God is my witness, God made no better breakfast than eight small crappie filets less than an hour from their spring frolic in 45-degree water to the hot cast-iron. (You fry them in about an inch of butter, just so they don't stick to the pan.)

Official announcement

The following have been called to the attention of your author who, as authorized by the High Committee of The Internet,  officially declares them boring.

--Chris Christie's lap band surgery. (For those of you without Wiki, Dr. Skilsaw cuts you open and fastens a radiator hose clamp around your upper gut system. It is supposed to make you eat less and look  more leanly presidential.)

--Lindsay Lohan, boobs and all, due to her continuing teevee interviews explaining that she really not all that much of a drug-addled nincompoop.

--The crisis of finding 12 square feet of disposal space for one of the amateur terrorists of Boston.

-- Mika Brzezinski, especially her book about the difficulty of being a bony Polish ice princess in a world of Twinkies and Ding Dongs.

-- Jodi Arias, boobs and all. (N.B.  This subject will be briefly removed from the ennui list if and when Miss Arias is found guilty and sentenced to death.  Discussion will be permitted on two narrow fronts.The first is whether any actual harm to society will be done if her existence is terminated. The second is the morality of ritualized death at the hands of the state.)

Whatcha been doin', Jim?

Most lately, processing a worn-out, red, cotton flannel shirt.

You probably remember that Travis McGee occasionally remarked on one of his "treasured old (garments)." I'm like that, but when this one came out of the washer last night I noticed that both elbows were out, so I decided not to treasure it anymore.

Fact: An XL Tall shirt will yield a half-dozen gun rags about the size of a handkerchief plus a quart zip-lock bag stuffed with cleaning patches.

It sounds tedious, but it really isn't if you do it during your early morning hour of disgust in front of the cable news channels. I found myself making most of the patches during the content periods and looking more carefully at the screen during the commercials, which are somewhat more coherent.

As a matter of social responsibility, repurposing the flannel is about a wash. I earn carbon credits for reducing the load on my local landfill, but, on the other hand, there is the guilt of unstimulating the economy.  The Obama-Bernanke policy holds that I should  do my part to alleviate unemployment; that is, take some Federal Reserve Cartoons to the store and purchase rags and patches to maintain my lethal weapons.

--

Then there are K and D, man and woman, traditionally married. They paid a visit yesterday, bearing gifts. D brought her incomparable caramel rolls untouched by shrink wrap. K provided the show and tell, a handful of scrap steel lathed into a complete and, IMO, elegant, system for sizing cast bullets in .355 and .356 for another friend's Helwan. Somewhere in America laid-off machinists and commercial bakers continue to starve.

---

Earlier in the week, just before global warming abated, a lady celebrated her birthday with a fine outdoor party. I didn't know many of the other guests well, so there was the possibility of striving to make conversation. That annoyance did not occur. About half of the men gather downwind from the tables (cigars were involved) and came to a consensus that firearms, archery, the ammunition drought, the deluge of white-tail deer, and the idiocy of politicians were all worthy of serious comment.

---

Besides, the summer machinery is up and running. Both chain saws, both little tractors. Not to mention that the dock is fixed. Holy Moly Mary Marvel. Don't know how much better life can get.

Well, maybe a little.

But I'm probably dreaming, eh? Back to Robert Ardrey so that someday maybe I can write usefully about applying his views on biological imperatives to the current disorder.

 

Once there was a draft...

From my friend John via email.

The view that it is  field-expedient modification for the next McNamara 100,000 is my own.

M'aidez, 2013

Stand Your Ground Defense?

Zimmerman says not yet anyway, and that's subtle good news for those of us who believe SYG is a proper legal doctrine, permitting a citizen to defend himself anywhere.

His attorneys want to gamble to the extent of hearing the state's case before abandoning the Florida SYG protection altogether. They claim the law permits a SYG hearing any time, not just before deciding on whether to risk it before going to trial. The prosecution may resist but that is  another issue.

My reading persuades me there's a near-consensus that Zimmerman has only a traditional self-defense case to make, that SYG was written and intended only to     prevent  prosecution in a clear case of defense against unprovoked attack.  Zimmerman created the confrontation when he had other reasonable options, such as calling the cops from the safety of his car.

---

My state had a fair chance of getting SYG protection until the Zimmerman case stopped it cold. If, when the dust settles, it can be made plain that such law is inoperative in cases like this, it will be back on the table. Talk it up.

Saturday in Paradise

The second straight day of glorious is upon Smugleye-on-Lake. Yesterday brought not the slightest notion of writing to my ambition reservoir.

There was an annoying drive to DNR headquarters to renew my dock permit -- annoying because it's 15 miles one way and because the Only Woman in the World legally authorized to give me a form to fill out and to take my $125 decided to leave an hour and a-half early.

Otherwise it was a day of progress, mostly in rearranging leaves and getting the world's ugliest pile of logs rearranged into something that looks a little more like a classy redneck's firewood supply..

I'm not going to detail much about the work done because that might lead to mentioning the work still pending. I fear it might remind you of the tale she told you about Augean Stables. (You know who I mean, your high school history teacher, the lady with a mustache and  two dresses, one for each semester.)

I'm not thinking much about it myself because it would ruin two joyful feelings. One is that I can still swing the splitting maul after the accident. The other results from cubic miles of fresh indoor air as the big old 1960s GE window fan races on "high" in front of an open pane.

I'm also trying not to remember the prophesy from the NWS seers, namely that March begins again on Wednesday.

Hold me bitter and watch this, Cyril

I had a $20 rifle. I spent about ten hours and $50 to turn it into a $65 rifle.  If nothing else it proved that a Brit relic from the Days of Empire could be made less ugly. Grind off protuberances. Polish. Blue. Finish up a semi-inletted stock set  from Herter's final going--out-of-business sale.

The SMLE actually looked nice and sporty, and I fear I was guilty of the sin of pride.

Then comes my friend K over dinner one Friday night and says something like, "Yeah. Looks okay. Too bad it's such a weak action."  (He had been reading one expert gun writer. I had been reading another.)

"Weak action?! I'll show you, you SOB."

Yours Truly to the loading bench in a paleo-Mythbusters mood.














After concocting one round of this load I dug out a spare SMLE and a hank  of cordage. I carried the whole works to the K acreage for the annual sweet corn fest, a great party; folks came from miles around. Some shooting was always a featured attraction before we tapped the kegs.

With much advice (and damned little actual assistance), I lashed the rifle to a tractor tire lying in the shootin' pasture and hitched the pull cord to the trigger. After all, the cartridge about to be chambered was getting awful close to IED territory.

Final bets were placed as the crowd ambled toward whatever shelter was available.   I don't know the details of every wager, but the gist of all was whether  "He'll blow the sh*t out of it."   We didn't burden ourselves with precise definitions of terms. My position was, roughly, that the improbable bomblet would probably stretch the action and create visible but minor damage without "blowing up."

Boom.

The extractor left for parts unknown. A big hammer was needed to open the bolt and a dowel to pound out the brass. That's not a blowup. I claimed victory. My adversaries said "Well, yeah, but...," and I don't recall ever collecting my winnings.

Then we drank a beer or two and argued about something else.

Indictment Blizzard Smacks Maryland; Women and Minorities Hardest Hit

Lots of hanky panky going on in a big Baltimore jail. Narco dealing, boffing the guards, and other things that could get a guy locked up.

Thirteen female corrections officers essentially handed over control of a Baltimore jail to gang leaders, prosecutors said. The officers were charged Tuesday in a federal racketeering indictment.

The perps already adjudged guilty of something-- without need of further indictment  -- seem to make up the other 12 accused.  They're reported to be stalwarts of something called the Black Guerrilla Family.

I suppose finding this on the hilarious side makes me insensitive to cultural differences, politically incorrect if you will. Still, there's a redeeming social purpose.

What is more firmly under control of a government than its prisons? If said government cannot even maintain order there, why are we to believe that it will do a better job when placed in charge of free men and women -- our medical care system, access to the means of self-defense, and dietary habits  (care for a Big Gulp?).

  

Look, Joe Scarborough

The Boston bomber did not "legally buy an M4."  Not at a gun show, gun store, WalMart, or Dunkin' Donuts.

Period. Story over.

Damn spammerrs

I've turned on comment moderation. It was that or WV, and I think most folks hate that worse than a little delay.

It is strictly to keep the spam out, so if  you're a real person and want to call me a louse, no problem. You'll get through, just a little later.

Jim  

When the cops get your guns...

I liked the list best -- 114 citizens' guns which wound up in the hands of the Fremont County sheriff's office. it suggests that folks there used to own a lot of  junk, at least those who came to the professional attention of county cops.

But among the rattletrap Rohms and Ravens lurked a SW Model 28-2,  a couple of potentially valuable Ithaca doubles, and some respectable old Winchester and Remington .22s. Not to mention around  a dozen "sawed-off" shotguns.

The sherf says he bought about $1,000 worth of them himself and  -- with court approval -- traded others to a local FFL for stuff his department could use.

It raises questions, and the state auditor is looking into things. No one else in the state bureaucracy is. The Register lede mentions possible criminal violations, but there's merely innuendo about that in the report.

Still, it is a good reminder that Officer Friendly may have a yen to grab your gun just because he thinks it would look nice hanging over the bar in his rumpus room.

And about those "sawed-offs" -- if they were sawed-off enough and transferred to the dealer without NFA paperwork, maybe we ought to send in a bureaucrat with a tape measure, sort of like the Feds did to Randy Weaver.

Loophole report (Please stand by)

I'll post a picture of the single purchase, a Lee AutoPrime II, one of the few shootin' gizmos that fine old company ever decided to discontinue. Right now I'm off to the loading shack to set it up and get started converting all that shiny and sized brass into a ready terrorism palliative.

I will say it's a goofy looking thing, but knowing Lee as I do, it will undoubtedly work as advertised. Even if it happens not to, I'll be a whopping five bucks in the hole.

Why? Because I couldn't find the No. 4 shell holder for the regular AutoPrime, new or used. Maybe they fell victim to the buying panic, too, since they can be used to restuff 5.56x45 (aka the .223 McNamara Stalemate) for assaultish looking  weapons.

You see, the AP II  uses standard shell holders, the ones you already have for everything you reload. Good idea, Mr. Lee,and I wonder if you have an engineer working on redesigning the AutoPrime to do the same.

---

Otherwise a rather dull show. I did note some .22 LR staying on the tables when priced at $65  brick.

The Fun Resumes, or Loopholing in Lutfiskia

It's Worthington again this weekend, one of those small country shows I enjoy.

The only urgent want is a No. 4 shell holder for the Lee Auto Prime, but I'll be in Condition Red for primers and powder. Given our experience at loopholes since the election, I am not optimistic.

I'm still looking for an interesting piece to shoot all that .38 Special cluttering up the place. The snubbie in residence will set it off, but since when is any Taurus interesting?  Again, not cheery, and here we enter the realm of legality against the recent  (if DOA) congressional discussion of allowing interstate sales of handguns, at least to  concealed-carry holders.

As you know, Mr. FFL can sell you an assaulty looking rifle with a zillion-bullet clip anywhere you travel. But he is forbidden to transfer an Old Model Ruger Black Hawk to you unless you reside in his state.  (Capacity five bullets plus $20 buryin' money rolled in the chamber under the hammer.)  Your CCW makes no difference.

The practical effect of that is that buying one at Worthington would create two felons, me and the dealer,  whereas if the show happened just 11 miles south, a foot over the state line, we would instead be a pair of exemplary citizens.

It would be nice to kill that illogicality, but in the current climate I doubt it will even go kof-kof for attention.

In fact, post-Boston, I don't see how we can avoid another defensive stand on at least a couple of fronts. Congressthings will find teevee time and perhaps votes by demanding trackers in in our IMR 3031. They'll also covet background checks and registration every time we need a fresh pound of Unique.

In an evil way I'm looking forward to the first drive to take black powder off the market. Someone like Senator Feinstein will announce that if we ban it there will be no more. That should give one of us a chance to work up the shortest riposte of the year: Bat shit.  

I'm the NRA and I will Overkumbayah

Is this guy a confused, sloppy writer? Or a master of the droll?

But no one was more adamant about their hatred for the NRA than MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell who last night accused the civil rights group of aiding and abetting the terrorist(s) responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings.

Wayne LaPierre stands tall at the Lincoln Memorial. "I have a dreeeeeem....". A misty image of Charlton Heston slowly descends  behind him. A million snaggle-tooth rednecks wave their AR15s and chant in hypnotic rhythm,

 "What do we want?"

"Thirty Rounds!"

"When do we want it?"

"Now!"

---

This guy takes a reasonably accurate shot at O'Donnell. I watched a bit of Larry's spit fest. I found new limits to my admiration for him, MSNBC, television "news" in general, and the entire spectrum of far-left opportunists.

Boston

Even with the aid of cable news, I'm not quite able to create a satisfactory  analysis of what's going on out there.

I will venture only one point.

Having to rob a Seven-11 and steal a getaway car does not bespeak the work of a sophisticated internatonal terror cartel.

Much more like, "Brother, I am becoming bored. Let us go out and kill some people like Uncle Csgozch did back in the old country."

Why we're broke

We don't want to get too insular. Beyond the Second Amendment debate, the usual quota of federal idiocy continues, and Old NFO has a nice take plus a useful summary on Paul Ryan's suggestions for keeping America out of the Greek bath house.

H/T Tam

A better gun bill?

Breaking news. This just in to WTMR News Central:

Sens. Grassley of Iowa and Cruz of Texas just popped a news release onto our desk. It announces their last-minute amendment to the Obama Administration's gun bill.

I've taken time to read only the contents section, but the money fact is that it appears to attack violence without a useless pretense of background checks.

It needs to fit into the already-set machinery, and I haven't the vaguest guess about its prospects.

---
I never write much about Grassley, though I like him personally and consider him -- at worst --  one of the better men serving in Congress. A lot of us wish we could we could pry him away from his love affair with mandated ethanol and other welfare schemes for the ag industry. (He has a down-home awww-shucks demeanor which occasionally moves the literati to write him off as a hick. Usually they do it only once, chastened by the embarrassment of wondering what to do with that bundle he hands them. "Will my detached Ivy League ass fit  in my attache case?")

Don't know much about Cruz except that he sometimes has an impolitic mouth. To be expected, I suppose. After all, he's elected from the same state that once hired Ann Richardson's to govern the place.

Mere near

Sometimes I empathize with reporters trying to do a good job. Take Alan Fram of the AP for example.  He was assigned the overnighter on today's scheduled votes on  S.649 -- the Big Gun Control Bill. As is known from here to Planet Zangaro, the key to this thing is the Manchin/Toomey amendment to dink around with Feinstein's original language on background checks.

Like everyone else in the media, Fram probably began by buying the Obama adjective  "universal,"  then switched to "enhanced" and "expanded" when even the anti-rights left quietly abandoned  -- as untenable -- their lie that the checks would be within a dozen parsecs of universality. And that led the poor ink-stained wretch to:

"Just over half the public — 52 percent — expressed disapproval in the new survey of how President Barack Obama has handled gun laws. Weeks after the Newtown slayings, Obama made a call for near universal background checks the heart of his gun control plan."


"Near universal" is a valiant effort, but an impossibility in a context of reason, as in the emo mother's wail that dear sweet Snooki is nearly a virgin but, unforunately, also nearly pregnant.

Even competent journalists must work in a linguistic setting controlled by the loudest liars on every side of a hot issue. That's not because they necessarily want to, but because their sound-bite-conditioned audiences expect it, a general readership that, in fact, would be lost without buzz words.

And reporters themselves become similarly conditioned.  They shouldn't, but they do. That's one reason you never read a mass-media report that the term "        (adjective)  background check" is, all by itself, a lie.

It does not examine your "background." It scans records compiled by bureaucrats and associated -- correctly or otherwise -- with your name. The same sorts of records kept by the same sorts of data entry drones that screw up your bank balance, credit record, IRS standing, medical history, and even from time to time, criminal history.

Even with 100 per cent accuracy, the Inner Party's database has a probability of being irrelevant to "who you are."  Take mine. I have a 23-year rap sheet consisting of guilty pleas to two nefarious failures to heed a snow-removal ordinance plus a speeding bust. This proves irresponsibility -- the very quality Sen. Feinstein believes prima facie evidence of unfitness to bear arms. Think that's a silly argument? Please recall a New York effort a few years ago to deny gun permits to folks who failed to pay parking tickets on time.

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Back to you, Alan of the AP: Take no offense. That piece is a good summary of what we face in the Senate today. Besides, I'll bet that in a world less saturated with meaning-free gobbledygook, you wouldn't even think of typing "near universal." 

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For  meticulous followers of the Senate sausage mill, the Manchin/Toomey amendment is S.Amdt 714 to Feinstein's main bill which is S.649.  The media reports that eight votes will be taken today, and if you have the stomach to follow closely, the bill itself and all amendments are detailed here.

If it helps us evaluate the quality of information we're getting from our electric teevee sets about whodunit in Boston, we might consider this:

For a few days, the prosecutor shootings in Kaufman County, Texas, commanded the air waves. Virtually every on-air performer conveyed the notion that our culprit was a cabal of racist, ex-con, anti-government, gun-clinging skinheads.

Upon further review, authorities and the media now suggest that the prime suspect is a fat, middle-age, former government employee with hair, a law degree, and a conviction for stealing government computers.

So no matter who Rachel Maddow decides to blame for the Boston bombs during any given on-camera take, we might want to reserve judgement.

Americans

Without drama, in the absence of  televison cameras, some Boston people  you never heard of, and never will, make a difference --  undoubtedly more of a difference all of the horrified on-air performers and grandstanding politicians combined.

A simple Google place  offering a bed and a meal to other Americans and guests displaced by the terror bombing near Copley Square.

Tip-up porn

I'd have to be more careful with shot placement if I ever had to use one in a serious minx-up, but this little Beretta has always given me a mildly serious case of want. I couldn't begin to articulate why, maybe just an unhealthy fixation on oddballs.

I think it was Matt Helm who once found himself in one of those interminable arguments about "What caliber for (whatever)?" He brushed it off with, "You can kill an elephant with a .22 Short if you're willing to wait for the poor thing to bleed to death." Only metaphorically true, of course, but it makes a point.

A Monday Morning Mash

1. My friend John in ultra-urban Arizona spent hours looking for .22 Shorts for his friend who owns a Beretta Minx. This crap has been going on for a long time now -- long enough to get me questioning my usual iron resistance to goofy conspiracy theories.

2.I'll ask her to do something about the slightly frizzy hair, but Rep. Martha Blackburn of Tennessee will be offered a high position in my First Administration. This morning on the teevee she characterized the Gosnell murder/abortion case as 'horrible" rather than "horrific." This persuades me she might refrain from  using "impact" as a verb. In this language-murdering 21st Century, that qualifies anyone for cabinet-level office.

3.  Global warming, anyone? The Plains weather continues to suck. If this kind of weather hangs on for a few more weeks, we're only a middlin' Tambora eruption from a rerun of 1800-and-froze-to-death. If you look at your weather graphic on your telescreen, you'll see a splotch of white about the size of Europe splashed across the country from Oklahoma up to the western Great Lakes. That's real snow, cold and pearly white, reflecting heat back into space at a time when The Good Earth should be soaking up warmth for the 2013 growing season. We'll probably be okay, of course, but it never hurts to remind the climate politicians of how little it takes turn an 8,000-mile diameter rock into a pretty snowball.

4. Nothing else impacts on my mind this morning. So have a nice day if you can, otherwise endure.

Shall I shoot the bastard?

The fellow in St. George, Utah, did not. He racked his pistol slide.The burglar  ran.The homeowner gave chase. The thug tripped and the homeowner held him under the gun until police arrived.

I call that a near-perfect result, although I understand an opposing view that anyone who invades your bedroom at 4:45 a.m. needs killing, and even that this world is an incrementally better place for each violent criminal who is quickly and economically dispatched to the next. 

That incident is the peg on which the AP's Adam Geller hangs a report on the various views of armed self defense.  While is far from a bad report, it manages to avoid two points most of us find important.

(1) Geller cites studies and experts (often self-styled) who argue that because America suffers less reported crime now than 20 years ago, the need for armed self-defense  is reduced.

This confuses two separate issues. Fewer thugs doing violent things across a nation of 320 million souls is a welcome fact but meaningless to exactly one decent human being facing a criminal in an existential moment when his choice is life or death.  Phrased less abstractly: "This son of a bitch is in my house, threatening me and mine. Killing him immediately is one of my legitimate choices." There couldn't much urge at that moment to ponder the latest FBI crime report. 

(2) Geller reports that more Americans are arming themselves for purposes of self-defense than 20 years ago*  but misses the opportunity to explore the fact as one cause of reduced crime. 

Again,  you and I are in familiar territory here, although the generality of wire service readers probably is not. 

A thief or rapist or killer wants what is yours, but he wants it minimum risk. While he is willing to risk arrest and a protracted trip trough the criminal justice system, he is loathe to chance immediate career termination via  "bang" -- a would-be victim's gun. He looks for the truly unarmed victim from  little gun-free zones to big places governed by such as the Sullivan Act.

It would be more fun to snark the Geller piece to death, but, as I said, it seems to be a honest effort to contribute something useful to the debate.

Pass it to know what's in it...

Remember about 36 hours ago, before the cloture vote, some of us were  missing and poaning about not being able to find an actual text of the bill to disarm everyone except criminals?

It turns out we had company in high places.

Mike Lee of Utah -- pretty much on our side -- brought up the minor detail. Frisco Feinstein said me too, but it seemed to bother her less.

Memo to the IRS

Welcome to my blog, and I hope you enjoy reading it more than I enjoyed  sending you that check day before yesterday. It again amounted to the price of a very nice Colt 1911 which, as you may know, is a robust yet concealable  heavy-caliber weapon capable of accepting high capacity magazines.

(It usually doesn't,  because most fellows like me tend to tuck it in our pants and a special big magazine is uncomfortable. Too, a magazine in my pants that sticks out a long ways may, depending on exact positioning, confuse certain onlookers about my social intentions.)

But anyway,  as I say, welcome to my site, and I really don't care if you read it because when I publish something  to one and all, I think I agree with you that I indeed do give up what you fellas and gals are calling an "expectation of privacy."

Now, about my email:

Piss off.

If the first place, it's none of your damned business what I write to the pretty lady in Ohio.

In the second,  you are wasting money. Even if i did forget to report the profit (about $8.50 if I recall correctly) from that garage sale I held back in 1997, I doubt I would detail it in an electronic letter to my spiritual advisor or my vet.

One of your lawyer guys defends your sneaking, unconstitutional practices with,

"...if a service provider fought the (subpoena only, no warrant)  search request, it would likely result in "protracted litigation," meaning that any leads from the emails would be "stale" if the IRS ever obtained them."

So, you mean that all you have to do is claim administrative inconvenience as an excuse to pry open every confidence of my life and I'm supposed to light up with an awed understanding. Like Zing go the strings of my heart?   

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.)

A clip full of toilet paper, if you please Ma'am

We've all been subjected to a good a deal of deep, dynamic, unalloyed ignorance in the current debate.

We're used to it, of course. Every Second Amendment rights defender  is continually explaining facts at a kindergarten level.  "And the bullet goes round and round and it comes out here..."

Anyone who hasn't isn't in the game.

Occasionally, however,  despair is understandable. Somewhere in Colorado, adult Americans elected Diana to public office.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO): "I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available."

Setting aside the basic illiteracy of  "...these are ammunition," has this woman actually sat through the lengthy debate in America's  highest councils and come away assured that firearms magazines are as reusable as Charmin?

When dumb goes that deep, I doubt the synapses can be repaired. Stitch her lips shut. Roll her west from Wolf Creek Pass. Just to see if she makes it all the way to Pagosa Springs.

Note on the formerly free state of Connecticut

As written by free men and women some years ago:


Connecticut gun code of 1650:

"All persons shall bear arms, and every male person shall have in continual readiness a good muskitt or other gunn, fitt for service." 

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As written this week by a quite different breed:

The bill text is here. 

It is tough going but probably essential reading. If you can't be bothered, I suppose a fair summary is this: "Your natural right of armed self-defense as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed; you may or may not be granted a limited privilege of preserving your life and property. We, your elected and appointed masters,will decide."

Crying solves nothing, but a tear or two here would not open you to any important criticism. 

It takes a Smith and Wesson to Beat the Sugar Shack Blues

The main problem here is a feeling like I'm getting to be a liberal hippie with a Gibson knockoff strapped to my 10-speed, looking for a commune and humming something by Joan Baez while dreaming of world peace and free love achieved by  eating nuts and berries and crapping in a hole in the ground.

About the only way I can restore psychic balance is by keeping in mind that real maple syrup is getting expensive enough to attract thieves.

That justifies strapping on the SW 645 and threading my macho saddle-leather belt through the slots on the tactical magazine holder -- the one that holds my extra clips back and forth like a real 21st Century ninja rather than up and down like an old Elmer Fudd.  I'm cocked and locked on sap-bucket patrol. Come on, Maple Mob, make my day.

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It was supposed to be lower key than this. I figured two silver maple taps would get me a couple gallons of sap. I'd boil it down to two ounces and check one more thing off the bucket list.

Think about the Guinness tap in a busy Galway pub on Saturday night.

The sap ran free on Day One, and that night I reduced two gallons or so to about a pint of not-yet-syrup. Friends, that stuff is good, even at that thin stage.

So four more taps -- which produced nothing for 48 hours of wrong weather, then, today, better than eight gallons. It's all on the stove now, three burners worth in the three biggest pots I own. The crock pot is pressed into duty as a pre-heater. There's still a gallon of raw material in the refrigerator. And the taps continue to drip. I understand Mary Shelley better now.

It looks like I'll go on this way until Thursday when the weather gets wrong again and the buds get more robust. (The internet tells me  budding-tree sap sucks; the season is over.)

TBC, he says as he ambles off to put on a camo sweat shirt and dry fire his big, dangerous pistol. Whistling  Kumbayah.

A Happy Birthday to you, Time

On this date in 1988, the first edition of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time was published.

Thank you, Dr. Hawking. I have read it three times. I confess that some of it is still somewhat unclear to me. (Who the Hell am I kidding?  I mean most of it.) But at least my cosmic ignorance of the universe can now be expressed more elegantly and in much larger words.

In the introduction to a later edition, Hawking reports with a certain measure of pride that he has sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex. It occurs to me that I have read none of hers. And it further occurs that sex as she seems to understand it might cause me as many puzzled frowns as does the cosmological  wormhole.