If I could only have one.

Rifle that is.

The Cabinet Man here. Long time, no post. I hope Fuze's offer to guest-post on occasion still stands. We'll know soon enough, I guess.

Fuze and I have more than once had a discussion that starts with the question: "If you could have only one rifle, what would it be?" [ed note: Can of Worms alert!!] Fuze is enamored with the AK platform and he has the nicely-done home-builts to show for it. But my impression of him is that he's an FAL guy at the core. He may choose to chime-in at a later time and prove me wrong. But I'm not here to speak for this blog's owner.

I too have strong affections for the AK and, for the no-notice, "Molotov cocktail hoodlums in the front yard at 2:00 AM" scenario, the milled Bulgarian SLR-101 tactically positioned at the front of the gun safe is my go-to gremlin repellent. I took that sweet piece of post-commie legacy to Gunsite and for five days held my own against all manner of Gene Stoner's Finest. Not once did the little carbine fail me and every pop-up hit out to 200 yards fell solidly with one round. The trigger is no work of art and, in its current form, it lacks any means of a bolt hold-open. But for the purposes of clearing my little 1/6-acre urban homestead of gang-bangers, Neo-Cons, zombies, Socialists, and other foaming undesirables, I'd rather have that Bulgy in my hands than any AR-15 I own. Not to mention that it's fun to shoot!!

I also have a soft spot for another Bolshevik import: the Mosin-Nagant. I have a number of these lying around, half of which are the superior Finnish-captured M39 variants. They are simply and soundly built and, when properly fed, reliable to a fault. The upgraded Finn sights are no small improvement over the Russian originals, though I went one step further and dressed-up a couple of the Finns with Mojo ghost rings. The 7.62x54R cartridge hits hard - and I mean 30-06 hard!! - and can be found in a good range of bullet weights. With Wolf Match Extra, one of my scout-scoped M39s shoots 1 MOA. Which means if it's acting hostile, using two legs for mobility, and under 750 yards distant, I own it. 'Nuff said.

But I digress. Sorta...

The reason for that little train of thought derailment was to highlight the fact that certain rifles do certain things very well. Equipped with a Surefire light and an Aimpoint red-dot, the Bulgy SLR is a hella' CQB weapon. When my eyesight is up to the task, the M39s can really reach out and touch someone. (Only onerous malcontents, of course...) But I wouldn't want to clear the house with the Mosin nor perform counter-sniper chores with the AK. We're talking compromise here, not perfection.

If I could have only one rifle...

...it'd be a Yugoslavian 59/66 SKS. The wretched commies win again!!

As with most things for which I have strong affections, there are a few SKSs lying around the house. Most are Yugo 59/66s but there's also a lone angry Russian. (I recently sold-off an odd-ball Albanian. Curious to look at but I never grew attached.) The SKS is by no means glamorous. It's a bit on the heavy side and when compared only to the compact form factor of the AK/AR, it borders on unwieldy. But it's commie-simple, as dependable as gravity, and actually looks like a rifle. There's wood and metal and leather: the three basic elements of the universe. The AK-47 was designed for rough use by largely uneducated and wholly unmotivated conscript soldiers. On the other hand, the SKS gives its operator some credit for understanding his role in the man/rifle pairing and, thusly, I suppose it's a truer proletarian weapon. For example, the SKS is considerate enough to lock back its bolt after the last round, signaling the rifleman through a subtle change in its recoil that renewed attention must be paid to its on-board ammo supply. And that's a good thing. There's no detachable magazine to misplace - nor extras to carry - and nothing to grind in the dirt while shooting from prone. The stripper clips, while imperfect, perform well and with adequate practice, can be employed as quickly as detach-mags. While a step or two more involved to field strip than an AK, the SKS requires no additional tools. Some folks don't like the look of the 59/66's grenade launcher gear and choose to remove it, replacing it with a muzzle break, flash hider, or other such Bubba-junk. Nossir. As is, the rifle has plenty of character so I leave that stuff alone. I don't ask my women to get boob jobs, either.

One of my 59/66s in particular has proven itself especially endearing. Its trigger doesn't completely suck, its stock is perfectly clean with no carvings or pock-marks, and its bore gleams as if it had been newly minted just yesterday. Fully de-cosmo'ed, it has never jammed nor slam-fired. It sports a Williams ghost ring rear sight and an OEM front post. On most days, even from a half-assed shooting position, I can put ten rounds in groups of ~5" at 100 yards. Certainly no medals will be awarded. But that's OK because it's not a target rifle and no amount of aftermarket froo-froo is going to make it one. And it doesn't seem to care much about its diet. It shoots Wolf as well as it shoots Winchester or Cheetah. (Yes, I still have some stores of Robert Mugabe's best 7.62x39 Cheetah ammo. Envy me.)

"But TCM, why the 59/66 for The Only One?"

Let's do the math, Grasshopper.

The middleweight 7.62 round is not ideal, but it's not the total slouch the AR banner-wavers would have you believe. From a 16" AK, the stubby 125-grain x39 bullet is - at best - a reliable man-stopper out to, say..., 250 yards, which is right about where its energy drops below 750 foot*pounds. But the 59/66 has a 22" barrel. That extra six inches is good for an additional 135 feet/second at the muzzle. (I have chronograph-sourced empirical data to support that claim, so don't argue with me.) That means the little commie caliber can still hit Plenty Hard Enough To Stop out to 300 yards, maybe 350 with a tail wind and a lot of holdover. Those ranges are no big deal to the Mosin, but we might wanna' clear the house, too, remember??

Now I know the 7.62x51 guys are already smugly asking how I'm going to engage the infamous 600-yard target. Well, folks, I'm not. We're talking your basic (mid-40s) visual range, hombre-a-hombre self-defense situations here. The evangelists of "The 600-yard Hit" are primarily concerned with (semi- or non-) organized civilian groups encountering organized, hostile forces armed with 5.56 NATO weapons. That's all well and good and I completely understand that way of thinking. For that kind of situation, nothing beats a true MBR: an M1A, an FAL, an HK-91, or a Garand. You'll get zero argument from me on that. But one of the criteria of this scenario is that I'm down to only one rifle, which means things have truly gone to hell. It's safe to assume that my problem is not 600 yards away with a crypto radio and mortars at the ready. I'm more concerned about the classic Zombie Biker threat. Maybe they're well armed, but probably not. Maybe they're well trained, but probably not. Maybe they're well organized, but probably not. So at 300 yards, I'm feeling pretty confident with ten rounds in the SKS and a clear exit strategy.

"Then why not stick with one of your Mosins?"

So, we're back to that, huh?? OK. Five-shot mil-surp bolt-action rifles are wonderful things. They're gifts from God and I can't own enough of them. But how about our Zombie Biker threat?? Or the group of agitated, trigger-happy squatters that won't move along?? Or the pack of wolves or a rapidly approaching bear?? I have to assume that I'll be facing these challenges by myself - I always assume that - and the process of engaging multiple, close-range targets with a bolt-action Mosin (or Mauser or K31 or 1903A3) is no minor problem. For that kind of work, I'd love to have my Bulgy AK. But we are talking one gun, aren't we??

Gimme' the SKS already!! I get ten shots as fast as I can aim, all while keeping both hands on the stock. I can quickly reload ten more rounds in a few smooth motions. I'm throwing out mid-power 30-caliber whoop-ass without 8mm or x54R recoil knocking me about the four corners of Central County. And I can still hit reasonably hard at 300 yards if need be. For additional assistance with that 300-yard target, the sight radius on the 59/66 is about 2½ inches longer than an AK's. I'll concede that that's not much but it is an improvement.

"Ha!! You're gonna' kill a bear with an SKS??"

A charging bear will get as many rounds as he needs to be dissuaded. All ten if that's what it takes. (The same goes for two-legged goblins.) And I'm likely to do a better job of changing the bruin's mind with 7.62x39 rounds than with 5.56 NATO. That said, I'm not going to hunt bear with a x39 chambered rifle. But given that little extra "oomph" afforded me by the longer barreled 59/66, at moderate ranges I could safely hunt deer, antelope, and wild hogs - assuming there are any left after the SHTF - and maybe even drop an opportunistic elk target that's up-close and personal. Predators such as coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, and feral dogs are no match for the 7.62 middleweight champ. Excepting alligators and the infrequent moose, that about sums up the four-legged critter issue for the Lower 48.

Let's not forget a couple of easy-to-overlook features. Assuming Bubba didn't remove it, the SKS has a permanently attached, collapsible bayonet. Don't underestimate its utility. How would you feel if at what appeared to be the final moments of a good brawl, your opponent initiated a bayonet attack?? Not scared, huh?? Ask a WWII Pacific Theater front-line combat vet what he thinks of desperate Japanese suicide charges. I'll bet he won't be laughing when he tells his story. And, as a last resort, the heft of an SKS would make it a formidable club. The AR - and maybe even an AK - could sustain terminal damage after a heart-racing bout of head bashing. The SKS loves that kinda' stuff!!

And lastly, there's the issue of cost. What are essentially unissued 59/66s can still be had for $200 and change. For that price, forget about a spare parts kit. Just get two rifles. Or three. And while 7.62x39 ammo availability was a big problem the last couple of years, that's no longer true. It's available in quantity today. It's not priced at $90/1000 like it was in 2003/2004 but it is affordable. And the prices are tolerable enough to justify a little stockpiling for the next drought. While the 7.62x51 folks are forking over 50¢ or more per round for their bit of the rarified supply of mil-surp x51 fodder, you're at the range getting in good practice time for 15¢ a pop. Few of the Average Joes can afford (the Pure Joy of) a $2000 Fulton Armory or LRB M14, a $250 Sadlak scope mount, a $1000 Valdada BDC scope, $800 worth of USGI 20-round magazines, and enough ammo to practice with 150 rounds every other weekend. As the saying goes, it's better to have $2000 worth of training and a $200 rifle than to have a $2000 rifle and only $200 worth of training.

So that's my take on the problem of Just One Gun. Gimme' an SKS, a Yugo 59/66 to be more specific. YMMV...

TCM

After the SHTF, please find me a good dentist

Swen reminds me of a post I've been brewing; I heard in real-time Rush's famous chiming-in on the "men afraid of using tools" kerfluffle.

Not over here, boss.

I've made with my hands: an air-cooled Volkswagen engine, assembled a couple thousand rounds of ammunition for pistol and rifle, brewed more than a few gallons of ales, butchered a few antelope, ground up a bit of it into sausage. I've built 3 Kalashnikov rifles, and am working on a few other blasters.

This weekend I replaced the shock absorbers on my truck. A couple months ago I replaced the gear oil in its transmission. I'll replace the oil in the front and rear differentials next.

The next large game animals I harvest will have their hides tanned, some brain and some vegetable.

Though even I don't get this part: I usually hire the oil changes out to someone else.

Met Fred, got the T-shirt

. . . but did not make "Rifleman" at the Worland Appleseed Shoot. And dammit, I drove the whole way to Worland and didn't shake Swen's hand.

Mortality sucks

I recently received news that my brother, 4 years my senior, suffers from a tumor surrounding his brainstem. His prognosis is poor, his wife tells me, but he is in the best care available.

I should plan to visit him soon, and bring my youngest, my Toad, with me because he is the only offspring unit of mine who has not met this uncle. This may be his only chance.

It also reminds me to draw these offspring units a bit closer. I took Boy out to Vedauwoo so he could handle a 10/22 and Jadwiga. He liked the Kalashnikov far better, because he hasn't figured out optics and he's still too short for a cheekweld on the 10/22. With Jadwiga's stock folded, he could rip out 3 rounds and hit a grocery bag at 20 yards.

Steal this television program

TCM laments in comments below that we'll be stuck forever with the cliffhanger at the season-ending of Jericho because the b@57ards at CBS cancelled the program.

Perhaps, but then perhaps not. If there is a burgeoning cottage industry of fan-production for Star Trek (think of the dollars they sink into props and costume) there has to be a way for fans to step in and keep a show like Jericho alive without CBS.

All you need is a run-down little town, a few police cars, a school bus, an amateur radio . . . nothing you can't already find in some deserted plains town a stone's throw from the Front Range.

BTW, I watched the second episode the other night, and still no fat women. But suspense of my disbelief was much further impaired by the tatted convicts impersonating cops. They picked up the blonde along the road and they were desperate for . . . gasoline?

And they kept the real deputies in the trunk? Alive? What for? And the deputies' uniforms fit the convicts? Gimme a frigging break. Sorry, I probably would have dropped this series by Ep 3 or 4 anyway, at this rate.

Which only supports my point. I'd wager that those implausible devices were inserted into the plot at the insistence of the Beeeg Teevee Netvoohhrk executives because that's what TV execs have always done.

If fans pick this show up and keep it alive, they won't have tin-eared empty suits telling them what to do to the script. The fans won't have any advertisers to please.

Debating season over there, Boss

My lackluster Senate campaign gets a kick in the yarbles with a good showing at the debates.

Ride like the wind, Bullseye!

Of all the lame derivatives Disney has made of their properties, they are missing a goldmine:

Woody's Roundup.

Sic

I just cracked open a case of Uncle Sugar's finest Caliber .30 Springfield Model of 1906 Ball Ammunition, recently delivered from the Civilian Marksmanship Program.

Some functionary of CMP decided that a liability statement of some kind must appear on the package to clarify that the ammo was delinked from milsurp machinegun belts and wasn't fresh new milspec.

This is really embarrassing. There must be tens of thousands of these cartons in circulation with the word "strickly" in all-caps.

Don't forget Wayne

Please send a few dollars to Wayne Fincher's defense. I did recently, and his wife sent a brief note of thanks and good spirits in reply.

The Wayne Fincher Defense Fund
c/o Mr. Don Bright
2225 No. Mockingbird Ln,
Fayetteville, AR 72703

Does it always have to be about football?

Senator Brownback's misapplication of metaphor is a more grave insult to the language than his failure to invoke Wisconsin's athlete named Faahhrv.

It also takes down a peg or two my consideration of Sen. Brownback for the position of chief executive of the Republic. He's technologically illiterate.

"Blocking and tackling" does not refer to defensive techniques in the game of American football--or if it does, that is a recent misappropriation of the term by linguistic thugs, cutpurses, and pitchmen. It is far older than that, a reference to the use of ropes and pulleys ("a block and tackle") to lift heavy objects. In modern times, it is used to signify drudgery, the repetitive tasks that do not demand raw strength so much as perseverance along a simple plan, one pull on the rope after another after another. It connotes slow progress. Blocking and tackling does not leave one exhausted so much as it leaves one sore, having traveled through several times more in length of rope than has the weight that was lifted.

In comparison, the blocking and tackling of football are glamorous, instantaneous, bruising spectacle. An angle of attack gone wrong, a misplanted foot, and an athlete's career can end.

It's a geek-vs-jock thing, and as jocks would have it, the world turns around jocks. Another term for "jock" is ambitious.

In Kansas, of all places

I just watched the first episode of Jericho. Only one observation of the show that sticks with me as improbable: no fat women.

There was a deaf girl. There was a school teacher on the bus with some likely internal injury---that didn't kill her after being stranded on that bus for hours and hours---she was kinda hot. The ex-girlfriend who drove over the crow corpses, she was hot. Heck, at my age the mayor's wife and protagonist's mom, she's passable. Any of them could fit down the aisle of a commuter aircraft without spilling someone's coffee.

Not one diamond-shaped quarter-tonner. Not a single one. I don't recall a fat guy, either.

And I didn't notice a Kansas accent.

Kinda hard for me to suspend my disbelief for the rest of the show, y'all.

Sure, wtf, take a survey

Please take my blog reader survey!

It has arrived!

My first shipment of 6.5mm Grendel ammunition has arrived. At about $.70 per round delivered, it'll be a while before I have a SHTF-adequate quantity. Midway gets my money.

But in what shall I shoot it? That's another post.

One of my suppliers

In my K'lash building of late, I've used several parts made to order from "one of the guys on the boards."

After placing another such order recently, one "guy on the boards" has been particularly effusive in gratitude for the business. Only fair that I bring him to light here.

So hotbarrel, please take a bow. Quality kit and shamefully low price, he does it for the fun. The only way to reach him, that I know, is to join the gunco.net board and look for him under that name, 'hotbarrel', and PM him.

By all means, do, if you're taking up the (endangered) craft of home Kalashnifacture.

Happy happy, Joy joy!

Examination Scored

Congratulations on passing the NREMT cognitive examination. Your passing result on the cognitive examination will remain valid for a one year period from the date of the examination, 4/x/2007 (provided you meet all current requirements for National EMS Certification).

Please allow 2 weeks for the NREMT to mail out results letters.

Quote for the day

. . . changes in corporate law cannot eradicate poverty or materially change existing distributions of wealth, except by impairing the creation of wealth. Changes in corporate law will not clean the environment. And changes in corporate law will not solve the labor question. Indeed, the only changes in corporate law that will have a substantial effect on such issues are changes that make the world worse, not better.

HT Instapundit. And what, exactly, is "the labor question"?

What do you get when you cross . . .

Probably the greatest incarcerated fraction of society in US history, receiving the closest thing to socialized medicine short of the VA, drawn from an illiterate underclass, that still has access to all the drugs it wants and gives hypodermic needles and tattoos to each other?

A hepatitis-C time bomb.

Whom do we get to thank?

Addendum, 1 April: Don't forget prison rape.

Idea number 1201

Megan McArdle, guestblogging at Instapundit, quotes a blogger charting the trajectory of music along technology, wondering what comes next, and how to recapture the magic of music you haven't heard yet:

[the iPod confers] incredible levels of control over what we listened to at any moment. It’s simply next in the progression from LP (moving the needle from track to track), to cassette (pressing FF and guessing), to CD (pressing next, but still limited to one album). Now, at your fingertips, there is the power to pick any song, play it for any length of time, and skip to another song, and keep skipping until you find what it is you want to listen to. While there is great, great joy to be had in simply shuffling at random (the wild success of the iPod Shuffle definitely illustrates this), I think all will agree that it is not enough.

Well, it seems simple enough : equip your player with a Bluetooth transceiver and hope enough other player owners do too. Tuck a protocol between the Bluetooth and your player, such that when two players come within range of one another, they compare their inventories and exchange songs that the other does not have. For intellectual property purists, set a flag to play it once and delete it, but leave a chit identifying the incoming, once-played track. At the end, sound a prompt to the listener, "keep, or clear?" If you choose to keep it, it stores the artist, album, label, license terms and so forth so you can find it and (if the artist demands) buy it.

If you are among several people with shareplayers (a long workout, say), enter a share-ffle (shruffle?) mode that gives each player a turn to offer a track to everyone else.

A lurker mode allows you to walk down a crowded street, allowing other shareplayers' tracks to fade in and out of hearing. The protocol already skips tracks you already have, could even be told to skip artists, albums, labels, and genres you choose. FF allows you to skip a track from one player and go to the next-most-audible player. Play grabs a track, or its tag, whenever it sounds interesting.

As much as it pains me to say it, mobile phones with mp3 features are probably better-positioned to deploy this capability than straight mp3 players. They already pack Bluetooth and they're supported by companies that have a history of charging out the ass for simple features (remember paying a separate fee for "tone dialing" on your landline phone?).

As always, this reminds me of High Plains Drifter: somebody is leaving the door open and the wrong dog can come home. Serious consequences for a mobile phone. Equally serious for a non-phone mp3 player that eventually comes to dock in at a computer. But these are the same risks that file sharers take already.

Abject terror in the Di'trick

I've skimmed the ruling on Parker v DC, and read much of what the blogosphere has had to say about it, and have little to add, other than:

• About damned time.
• The Supremes can still dick it up, by ruling its applicability so narrowly, and government's compelling interests so broadly, as to render the Parker ruling itself immaterial. See what good the Fifth Circuit's Emerson ruling did for Emerson the man.
  
• The Republicans in the Congress and the Executive can also snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by bowing, scraping, being conciliatory and bipartisan, and otherwise slicing their own throats along with ours.
  

I'm still stocking up on C/BE of various flavors.

Update, 30 March: GOP preparing to dick it up. See, I told you.

Andy, where's my 15 minutes?

All I want to know about 300 is whether Elephantinos the tinker appears and utters his signature line.

Ungulate sur la tension

• You'll need a cut of some red-meat animal, game meats will do well, we cooked this recipe with antelope, a roast of about 2 lbs.
• Four medium potatoes
• Half a medium onion, diced finely
• One 10oz can of cream of mushroom soup
• Half a cup of fresh mushrooms, sliced
  
• A tablespoon butter
• A pressure cooker

Dice the onion and toss it into the pressure cooker over low heat with half of the butter, and chase it around with a wooden spoon until it begins to brown. Take it off heat and add 1 tsp garlic powder.

Eye and dice the potatoes so they are in chunks roughly half an inch on a side. Peeling is optional. Spread them in with the onions to an even layer.

Cut the meat into chunks about an inch on a side. Lay them upon the potatoes.

Dump in the can of mushroom soup and scatter the mushrooms over all of it. Sprinkle with black pepper. Add the remaining butter. If this is game meat, kinda lean, you can also add a teaspoon of bacon fat if you have it.

Add 1/2 cup of water. Bring the open pressure cooker to a simmer, remove from heat, put on and lock the pressure cooker's cover. Put back on heat, run the heat up until the cooker's regulator indicates it is at pressure (a hiss, usually) then back the heat off to lowest simmer; find the burner setting that maintains the pressure cooker at a continuous faint hiss.

Simmer for 20 minutes, then relieve pressure according to the cooker's directions. Serve.

Indian tanning

The animal hides I harvest this year will be braintanned. It just logically follows that if I shoot it myself, and dress and butcher it myself, with ammunition I handloaded myself, the rest of the animal deserves preservation that I can also accomplish. Ever the cheapskate, I want to do it cheaply even if that means more work, and maximize the products resulting from the animal.

I mentioned this to the two female offspring units, and they sound very enthusiastic about helping me. They'll get to keep some bones or other animal parts to show at school, maybe.
Mlle. Sklodovska is very interested in beadworked American Indian clothing, and a chamoised antelope hide would serve very well for that.

We'll see whether this enthusiasm persists when it comes time to scud a sopping wet hide, or mash an antelope's brain in a bucket.

Firstborn's infatuation

Firstborn now cares for a Tamagotchi, having seen many of her friends caring for them.

These devices appear to have been Furby-ized since I first heard of them maybe 15 years ago; hers has a little IR window through which it can communicate with others nearby, ostensibly so they can exchange electronic genetic material and procreate. Hers has had offspring.

For all I know, these little buggers can receive data through the screen flicker of a computer monitor (not the first time this has been done). This would enable Firstborn to download changes to her pet from one of the fansites, such as new foods, grooming, tricks or a simpler feeding schedule.

She has already "lost" 3 of her pets in this device, one because of a hard reset (I think), others not because of hardware malfunction, but because it must just have been their times to die. She was devastated the first few times, but now sniffles a bit and starts the pet over, always with the same name.

Gets me to wondering: is anybody hacking these things, distributing communicable diseases through the IR port? And how much protection is their Japanese maker placing on these devices to immunize them? And can the immunity also be transferred from device to device?

There's a networking-security graduate thesis in here somewhere.

At the bluffs

BofA BS

We at WUTT! have been outspoken on the topic of illegal immigration; I dare to say we've changed our position on that topic but now have a position we can defend.

I started out at the early P.J. O'Rourke position. He was amazed, humbled, grateful almost to maudlin tears that people risked their lives on makeshift rafts and shark-infested waters to get here from Cuba. All so they can work 7 days a week for 3 or 4 dollars an hour? God bless 'em, here's a phone, call the ones you left behind and tell them to come too. We'll ship the rafts back for them.

Since having been mobilized to serve Uncle Sugar in the trackless sandy wastes, and reading of this fella named Padilla, my view matured somewhat. Not every swarthy undernourished illiterate, or swarthy college-educated H1B visa holder, who risks his life to reach these blessed shores does so to improve his life or those of his children; some seek to end mine or those of my offspring units, and take from me my prized Scotch whisky.

Now that I've listened to anyone who cares to offer his opinion, yes I've grown and now I agree that the borders of the United States should be sealed, effectively, then carefully reopened only to those whom we can positively identify. Bruce Schneier will dispute the equating of identification with security, and he has a point, but not the point I'm trying to make here. We must own our borders.

I offer the foregoing as my bona fides to visitors who identify themselves as conservatives, and any of the talk radio hosts I am inviting. If further bona fides are needed, a quick glance through my archives should suffice. For those needing the executive summary:

• I'm pro-gun, annoyed that the U.S. Congress is as neutered, cloistered, untouchable, and image-obsessed as the leadership of the National Rifle Association (or maybe the other way around); what is my Life Membership paying for?

• After they investigate, arrest, and successfully prosecute Mike Bloomberg for straw-man interstate firearm purchases, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can quietly close their doors and liquidate the office furniture. Any agents of theirs worth a damn can serve well in Constitutional agencies. The rest should never be allowed near a gun or a badge ever again. Some of them should be cleaning the toilet Mike Bloomberg will sit on in his prison cell.
  

• I think that Roe v. Wade was wrong, and States should get to criminalize abortion if their legislatures so choose.

• Global warming is not necessarily the catastrophe Al Gore says it will be, humans don't cause it, humans probably can't avert it, and if we could, why should we? An asteroid impact, on the other hand, surely will be that catastrophe, and we can prevent that with less money and time than curing AIDS.
  

• Rush told me to subscribe to the American Spectator back in 1992. I did and still do (they had George W Bush's number in the 2000 primaries, bully for them; but Ben Stein's whining about his spoiled brat really turned me off). I listen to Glenn Beck, have since before he got the TV show. I like Mike Reagan. I'd like to listen to Laura Ingraham too, and Hugh Hewitt and Bill Bennett, but they arrive at my pickup's antenna from diiiiissstaaaant KNUS rather weakly. My employer frowns upon streaming audio. So I don't get to hear all I'd like and I may miss some nuance of their opinions about my topic below---forgive me if I do.

• I'm mildly annoyed by the Latino radio stations that are filling in the gaps on the AM band, but I tolerate. I'm positively disgusted that the Federal government allows or even requires election ballots to be printed in any language other than English. And I conjugate irregular Spanish verbs better than a guy with the last name of Lopez.

• I had my misgivings about going into Iraq. But now that we're there, we had better win it, and we can win it and are winning it. Ron Paul's vote against The Surge disappoints me, but he neither lied to his constituents nor pandered to his peers; find no fault with how he voted, but what he voted.

• Once we have done with Iraq, we need to secularize Iran. We should have invaded Iran or at least severely destabilized it instead of taking down Iraq.

• Oil companies are making record profits? Buy their stock and shut the hell up.

• Big pharma companies making record profits? Ditto. Ironic that most of the people in Congress who contemplate seizing pharmas' profits would be dead but for pharmas' products.
  

• The only reason I have a Bank of America credit card is that my employer, Uncle Sugar, mandates that I carry one. If I use any other card, Uncle's regs allow him to refuse to repay my travel expenses.
  
• I left the private sector and took fulltime work in the military, with zero possibility of reaching an active-duty military pension. For the challenge and the satisfaction. If I said it was for the money, I'd be mentally unfit to serve.
  

• Call me a lapsed agnostic, but I'd be quite content to enroll my four kids in the Catholic school my wife longs for. Just stop collecting school taxes from me for the government school they'd no longer attend.

• Our single-income military family comes painfully close to tithing.

• We're "single income" because my wife and I agree she does a better job raising the four kids than anyone else could, and that is more important to us than the income she could earn as a security-cleared BSEE.

• I "married upward," after asking her parents for their approval.
  
• I know how to place the apostrophe to form a plural possessive. Can't marry upward without that.
  

• I support the Fair Tax, mostly out of conviction that every time your next-door neighbors slid a credit card or bought your daughter's Girl Scout cookies, that 17-to-21 percent cut off the top for Uncle Sugar would remind them that they buy more damned Federal government than they can afford. Maybe they'll start voting for people who will cut spending to what a 3 or 4 percent Federal sales tax would sustain, and keep voting that way until it actually happens.
  
• When the Heritage Foundation sends me their fundraising letter cleverly disguised as a "Conservative Leadership Survey" I strike through their list of whom I'd select as "the three most influential conservative thinkers" and pencil in below "THOMAS SOWELL!!! MALCOLM WALLOP!!!! WARD CONNERLY!!! JACK KEMP!!! VIN SUPRYNOWICZ!!! WALTER WILLIAMS!!! RONALD F****** REAGAN!!! Now YOU pick three from MINE" and return it with a single, crisp $1 bill for their trouble.
  

Now that the bonafides are out of the way:

You talk radio hosts who are railing at Bank of America's plan to offer credit cards to applicants without Social Security numbers---you have a screw seriously loose.

Have you folks any notion of the problem of identity theft, and the utter dependence of this crime upon the Social Security number?

Have you any idea of the unfettered reach of the Federal government into affairs not of their damned business, all made possible by their slow, steady, now-complete morphing of the Social Security number into a universal identifier?

I find myself agreeing with the Claire Wolfe-types who wish they could get a credit card without the strings of the Mark of the Beast attached to it.

You focus so narrowly on the obvious (I concede) naked (I concede) effort of BofA to cater to a market that you and I agree ought not to exist, that you miss the bigger picture. We have an underground economy because the economy that lives above ground must survive the merciless ultraviolet glare of excessive laws our Federal government has no charter to pass or enforce. Laws that expose us to the depredations of identity theft. Laws that conveniently don't apply to the lawgivers.

Meanwhile the responsibilities and prohibitions that this Federal government has been given, printed in crinkly Victorian black-and-sepia from the first Contract with America, they ignore.

It's not just the criminals and the underclass who go underground just to get away from the UV burns. It's disheartening that one of those Big Impersonal Corporations you (and I) are usually quick to defend is drawing your fire. It's not the fish in a barrel you think it is.

I'm half-tempted to apply for one of those cards. Probably, though, I'd be turned down because I have a (genuine) Social Security number and I work for The Man. Then The Man would add my unpronounceable name to some list somewhere, and the credit I do have will be lost.

So please, Conservative Radiosphereans: rethink that one. It's not about illegal aliens. It's the choice between cola-nut and un-cola nut, between sic utere and salus populi.

the hyperbole is ramping up

As climate pseudoscience intensifies its stridor, it appears to me that I could easily take a "global warming" press release and splice in the term "asteroid impact" and instantly turn Malthusian guilt-porn into a cause for action with real science behind it.

Except that if we truly do nothing to avert the catastrophe of a near-Earth asteroid impact, no human will be left to carry out a "climate Nuremburg trial" on the asteroid-threat naysayers.

Franciszka

. . . is the Polish feminine for "free."

She wasn't quite free, after about $350 in parts kit, receiver flat, and various parts to legitimize her in the eyes of Uncle Sugar. But she's mine.

Receiver flat is from Curtis, the ak-builder. Parts from Gunthings. Tapco trigger pack and muzzle device. Headspace set by Manson go/no-go gauges. Et cetera. Receiver done in Brownell's Teflon-Moly oven-cure coating, the rest in clearance Rust-oleum barbecue paint. All cured in the kitchen oven for 30 minutes at 300F.

I'll have to sandblast the receiver cover and gas tube and give them the appropriate treatment, and the bolt carrier too. But now that I'm getting the hang of this Kalashnifacture thing, I'm running out of parts kits. I'll redo Jadwiga in one of Curtis's receiver flats, maybe Nadia too, sometime this summer.

Until then, perhaps I'll entertain y'all with a very sick-sexy centerfold of the three of them lying together on a bearskin rug or something. And I'm trying to figure out what to use, or how to use it, to put a color inlay in the range markings on the tangent rear sights. Fingernail polish doesn't work very well and its carrier strips off the barbecue paint. Maybe a water-based enamel? Any ideas?

Today's aphorism

No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

Plans do not have survival as their purpose. Soldiers do. The purpose of the Plan is to get the Soldiers into contact with the enemy, at the time and place most advantageous to them, and with sufficient resources to survive long enough to get to the next Plan.

Now I get to wear this

. . . instead of the DRF patch.


It's not much of a trade. Now my career field badge looks like the same dark blue smudge everybody else is wearing above his pocket flap. Took long enough for it to happen, too.

At least it's an interservice- and internationally-recognized symbol for what I do. No offense, guys, but Prime BEEF ain't about me.

Farewell, old friend

I'm not supposed to be wearing this anymore. Hard for me to take it off, I've been wearing this since 1986.

The next K'lash

I made some mods to the 555th flat folding fixture today, the better to process receiver flats into beautiful sheetmetal carbines.

Flats usually have holes stamped in them at fore and aft so they center themselves on the fixture. That's only if the fixture has pins to engage those holes. So I marked and drilled holes and fitted pins that align with the holes. The bottom plate of the fixture needed some relieving so it would fit over the pins. Now I just set the flat on the center piece of the fixture and press it upon the pins.


Flats have dimples struck into them to align the magazine, to put tension on the selector lever, and to align the hammer and trigger axis pins. My fixture is relieved for the mag well dimples but none of the others. I made shallow drills at the right spots, then hogged them out somewhat with good buddy rotary tool, so the fixture won't damage the dimples. Below, the selector lever dimple on the op side.


Then I figured out that I could pre-bend the sidewalls of the receiver box by using the side plates of the fixture in a sheet brake. Yup, got one of those from Harbor Freight some months ago, so I clamped it all together and got the sidewall bends started. Below, the op side fold.


Since I was this far along, I figured I'd go ahead and bend the flat the rest of the way. This is a flat from AK-builder, and it's far superior to the Tapcos. I'm seeing great things in this K'lash, which is a Polish underfolder from the good people of Gunthings.

Like a Braille keypad on a drive-thru ATM

Why do you think socks are offered for sale in a resealable bag?

Do the makers think I'll wash my socks then put them back into the bag? Better yet, that I won't wash my socks, then put them back into the bag all stanksome? Like, this is a way to get them home from the gym without stanking up my car?

HS Reset time again

My valued Palm m500 once again gave me the Gray Vibrate of Death.

It could have been one of those little static shocks when I get out of a parked car---they happen all the time in the arid high plains---or it could have been a static hit from putting her in the pocket of my fleece jacket. But it's all it takes to put a Palm m500 into a death spiral.

The light in the on/off button illuminates, the vibrator sometimes runs, sometimes doesn't, and the screen goes as black as the waning voltage in the battery can stop it down.

The reset hole in the back of the unit won't revive her. I have to let her run the battery the rest of the way down, then recharge her and restore her memory from an SD backup. Good I had one less than 30 days old. I usually do.

But when this happens the USB port will not function, period. Palm's tech support, after about the fifth call on the same problem, sent me an SD card with a backup utility and an app called "HS Reset."


It backs the Palm up to the SD card, then runs the battery absolutely, positively dead dead dead. A soft setting of the USB port's clock speed gets erased---tech support says the static scrambles it so the USB port is inoperable---and then HS Reset puts the clock to the proper speed. Restore from the backup and you're able to HotSync again.

This is, IIRC, the seventh time I've had to do this in 3 years. The Palm is out of service for a full 12 hours while the reset app runs.

This got me to thinking, wouldn't it be nice to upgrade to a Palm that didn't have this problem. After a quick stroll of Amazon's new and used Palm offerings, it seems not only that I'm lucky to keep this m500 operating, I'm lucky I got the tech support that I did at the time---they sent me that SD card with HS Reset free, in Spring of '03.

In fact, I appeared twice in their database so they sent me two. I encountered a friend (Hey, TK!) who had the same problem with the same model, so I gave him the spare. These days, Palm charges bux just to take the phone call, and they are probably far less forthcoming about potential glitches like ESD sensitivity.

No LifeDrive in the immediate future for me. No Tungsten E2 either. I'll keep this m500 limping along until one of my offspring units drops it and cracks the screen.

Testing

Migration to the former Blogger Beta turns out to have been a big mistake.

Dammit. I want rid of that NavBar, and my archives are missing.

Update 22 Dec: Okay, okay, RTFM. I'm still using a Blogger template dating from 2002. There are more than a few pieces of code in that template that haven't been supported since '04, archives being one of them. A quick cut and paste . . .

I just padded the BlogTitle down from the top of the blog with a sh17load of breaks so the NavBar doesn't walk over it. Might take some of them back out.

Hmmm, can I post photos from a Mac now?

Guess so. Alright, I'm not angry now.

Add South Carolina

to the list of states where I've CCW'd.

Time for a new advocacy group

All you need to know about the potential for abuse of dynamic entry is on display in the first 7 minutes of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

Life imitates art.

Damn you, Publicola

I can't get Sade out of my mind now. I've had to play her Is it a crime off my swell little player several times and still I can't quit her.

Another way to say "not a dime's worth of difference between them"?

My view: If the American Right ever establishes a fully fascistic government (not likely, not impossible) it will be done using the governmental institutions created by the Left. That's one of the reasons distinctions of Left and Right mean little.

Quote for the day, hat tip to Walter in Denver

A bunch of other people you don't have to worry about either

Ninth Stage graciously comments on my immediately preceding post, and makes a point about "just driving through."

So shall we put a finer point on it? Only those states where you carried a concealed weapon, in accordance with the law, as a private citizen, and did so by getting out of your car (no peaceful journey qualifications or McClure-Volkmer) and entered a place of business open to the public. Typically a mall or a home-improvement store.

I left Arizona off my earlier list because that was open carry.

It's not me you have to worry about

I have now packed heat lawfully in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, Wyoming, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Kentucky.

No lives were lost.

Update, 21 Dec 06: South Carolina.

Update, 30 July 07: Arizona.

15 March 09: Florida.

Update, 6 March 10: Missouri.

Update, 23 Sep 10: Nebraska.

Update, 20 Mar 11: Georgia and Alabama.

Update March 2015:  Arkansas, Utah.  

Too cheap to meter so the bastards just charge by the night instead

Is it just me or are hotels charging for wifi access again?

This is plain bu11sh!7, and makes no economic sense. Full - service hotels, even Marriotts, are charging for internet access. Meanwhile their down-market cousins, Marriott properties in particular, give it away.

Perhaps some beancounter noticed that high-speed access is no longer a luxury but an essential good for business travelers. If so, one would think access would be charged across all properties, not just at the top end properties, where its marginal cost would least affect the bottom line. Meanwhile I see burger joints and pancake houses offering wifi. Hotels, IMO, are bucking the trend where there seems to be no dollar incentive to do so.

Similarly, I'm wondering what other costs wifi access would impose on those who provide it. COPA enforcement? Spammers who check into a hotel just to use the IP address? I just can't see it.

And I won't keep paying for it if I don't have to. That means finding other places to stay, and/or finding other places to connect.

We'll start building the case again soon to direct all my soldiers to downmarket properties, even when the host of the function blocks rooms at the top end at government rate. I can't spend taxpayer money that way.

It may even make economic sense for me to investigate 1RX access over my soldiers' cell phones for longer TDYs.

What I wish there were: widely distributed wifi operated for a profit, paid by the hour with prepaid wifi cards, that I could load up with hours to burn at the airport, and at dumbass hotels that charge by the night (if I'm forced to stay in them).

I've got 4 prepaid phone cards that I just don't use. I carry two mobiles, there may be a third in my future, and payphones are a fading memory. But cards that get me into a wifi access point when I need it? I'd carry one and I'd get them for 21 other men. Where are micropayment infrastructures when you really could use one?

When in Wyoming, . . .

The weather here isn't going to get any nicer, whether the global warming is really taking place or not, whether it is anthropogenic or not. We thought it would be useful to upgrade the Pundit Sedan to a Pundit 4x4 of some kind.

The Primary Pundit Offspring Transporter is the only new car permitted in the household, so I had to work with used-car dealers.

I originally had my heart set on a Toyota 4Runner, but those things are priced like p00#t@n&. It's as if they are made of gold.

After 5 testdrives and some discussions with Mama-san over goals, objectives, strategies, criteria, and finances, I threw all caution to the wind and chose a vehicle in a matter of seconds, on the basis of how it felt as I drove it to Chez Fûz's garage to see whether it would fit.



I made it fit.

Say hello to Fûz's daily driver and huntin' wagon. A '99 Dodge Dakota with the V6 and a greatly appreciated 5-speed.

Is this unusual?

TCM and I were busting caps the other day, and my FAL stopped ejecting its empties.

After looking the rifle over a bit, I saw threads where threads did not belong. Through a crack in the gas regulator ring.

Now how often does this sh17 happen?

We figured out how to get the split one off, and there is no shortage of replacements online. But is this gonna happen again?

UPDATE: often, if the ring was made by Imbel rather than FN, and mine was. The finish that Imbel applies insulates the ring from the spigot it is threaded on to. The ring heats less quickly than the spigot. The spigot expands, the ring doesn't. Pop.

I'm told lapping compound will remove enough of the finish that a new regulator will be my last.

Crossroads and taking offense

TCM and I met Jed Baer at the Crossroads show this weekend.

I laid in another tin of 7N6 for Jadwiga and inhaled the sharp tang of the pheromones of gunowners all discombobulated because Democrats are back in power.

FAL mags were on the shopping list, but I didn't find any priced near what I could claim new-in-cosmoline from some online suppliers, so I passed them up.

On the way home, I stopped in at a shop open for its last day of business, everything must go. All the magazines FIFTY PERCENT OFF!

He had a little box of 5 mags, clearly FAL, but some of them marked for AR-10. Hmmmm. All of them were marked for $19.95 each, and half off put them at around $10 each. That sounds a little high for used mags with some wear, mixed provenance, and the guy wasn't quite sure what they were, FAL or AR-10.

I offered him $30 for the box, he said "I don't think so" and slid them back under the counter and turned away. OK fine, he's the one going out of business, not me. I'd rather be swabbing cosmo out of cherry $9 mags than sandblasting and rebluing and Teflon/Molying $10 mags. I'll eat the shipping, I would be anyway.

You think I offended him?

You think I care whether I offended him? Truth be told, I do care a bit; gun dealers are some of America's greatest heroes in my book and they have to put up with a lot of shit from many sources (ATF, zoning, protesters, threats of lawsuits, etc) to keep doing what they've been doing. None of them are making a fortune at it. They have to be doing it for the love of it.

One can never have enough love, so this fellow apparently either had had enough shit, or just wanted to retire and go do the things he's been selling gear to other people to do. It's finally his chance. I wish him well.

But I am not paying $10 and sales tax for used mags when I can pay $9 and shipping for new.

Scrumptious

I come up briefly for air from my election-imposed navelgazing, to promote NZBear's solicitation of questions for the GOP's new minority leadership, over here.

Please pile on. I have two questions there and I'd appreciate it if some buds went over and jacked mine upward in the popularity polls.

Some moonbat questions have been posted there too; a few Strongly Opposes are richly deserved.

That, sadly, may be the only good that comes of the enterprise.

Meanwhile I'm pondering what ammo and optics to buy for the kids.

Jadwiga

Nadia now has a cousin, built from a Wz88 "Tantal" kit bought from the good people of Gunthings. The receiver is vanilla Tapco, as are the trigger pack. She has a stack of Bulgarian brown 5.45mm magazines from Copes, equipped with domestic followers and floorplates offered by a fellow on one of the boards. Manson supplied the headspace gauges. Another guy on the boards supplied a domestic piston to take me over the Federal domestic content minimum.

After 3 ugly attempts to plug-weld the rails to the receiver, I gave up and ran to the nearest Harbor Freight for a proper spotwelder. Close-up photos would reveal the attempted plugs, so I won't show them to you. Sandblasting and some bench grinding cleaned them up as well as will ever be.

TCM's good results with Brownell's Teflon/Moly Oven Cure Finish, plus his offer of the remaining portion of his can, suggested that I give the same treatment to Jadwiga. While they were still disassembled, the rear sight base, receiver, receiver cover, bolt carrier, and folding rear stock all got a coat and were cured in a barbecue grille set carefully to the right temperature. The gas block and front sight base were treated with common barbecue paint. Final assembly created several dings in the finish, but she'll get a second coat after she's run in.

The bolt carrier meets some rough spots and won't spring closed every time, and the trigger pack needs proper retainers to hold the axis pins in place; the rubber bumper on the sidefolder needs a new rivet. But all can be tuned up right.

She's purty, I think, and she is the reason I got the jones to build a Kalashnikov. I understand now how the jones becomes a regular hobby.

How she shoots? Dunno. Jeez, man, I have two tins of 7N6 and I need range time. But I have to get out to Area 46 and 39 for speedgoat first.

A $300 weekend

The POS dishwasher we got with this place began tripping the GFCI outlet we put in a year ago. It tripped the GFCI with increasing frequency until, last Friday night, the damned thing wouldn't even run, just trip the outlet as soon as it was turned on. The GFCI even arced when I reset it with the dishwasher on and ready to draw current.

Mama-san insisted there might be problems with the wiring. I dug through it, even replaced the GFCI outlet in case the arcing had ruined it. While I had the unit out from under the cabinet, I noticed corrosion gunk all over.



The house wiring looked OK though the dishwasher's didn't. I plugged the dishwasher itself into another circuit (I dragged an extension cord in from the garage) and it blew that GFCI instead.

So off to the local big box to bring home a replacement.

This is the third dishwasher to have been in this house; the water supply line had an extra length spliced to it with compression fittings for the unit I removed. With that extra length gone, the original supply line reached the new unit comfortably. So a house built in 1973 goes through two dishwashers in 33 years, meaning a dishwasher lasts about 16 years?

Surprising, not fascinating: No Liquids Aboard edition II

Mr Keillor would never have made his eloquent pronouncement on the farce of airline security had he still been able to bring his Starbuck's aboard the plane.

Most people will not speak out like this unless and until they can visualize their own ox being gored. In his case the ox is a latte, but, well, we knew that.

His wit is the only thing he brings to the table, and he can turn it on and off like a spigot. The spigot itself has not changed: "'I'm a liberal and we love ridiculous government programs that intrude on personal freedom." I wonder whether he heard his own irony there?

"But where are the conservatives who used to object to this sort of thing?" A little more telling, that.

He'll have his answer to that question here.

No news here, kids. Certainly no new ally.

Three alternative angles of approach, or Second meet Ninth

Aim_Small_Miss_Small discusses a grand strategy to restore the Second Amendment of the Constitution to a fully-protected civil right:

. . . we must start and then move [non-committed antis] along gradually with the kinds of things they will find persuasive . . . we need to meet them (on the rhetorical and philosophical battleground) where they are instead of where we wish them to be.

I agree, but maybe we also need to look at other places where they already agree with us. Note the poll on the right sidebar of The Gun Blogs, where I found the post: which strategy should we RKBA types emphasize to what should the focus of gun rights activists consist of next? Expanding CCW, repealing "sporting purpose" language, et cetera. As you look at the poll results, you'll see there's not enough consensus for us RKBA proponents to concentrate and achieve one of them.

For example, many staunch gun rights activists argue that a national CCW would be a step backwards, because we'd be subordinating a right to a nationwide (read Federal) system of licensing.

Similarly, should we support BATF reform? Bullshit, some of us (including me) will shout back---shut it down instead. No good can come of it.

Between the poll and Aim's post, it occurred to me that we should explore other options that foster divisions, or just as good, doubt, among the antis instead of arguing over the divisions among us. Our options should not discuss guns openly either, because the antis will smell such tactics coming from far, far away and circle the wagons. Focus on collateral, apparently unrelated issues.

It will readily become clear to the gun rights activist that he or she ought to be fighting for other rights anyway, because the infringement of those other rights makes gun control that much easier---standing the old bromide "the Second Amendment is the right that guarantees the rest" on its head.

Recent events supply many possibilities.

• Asset forfeiture. Read the travails of the owner of KT Ordnance and you'll see that ATFE---the force-initiation arm of the anti-gun movement---doesn't need gun control per se to screw people over. They didn't charge Mr Celata with any crime. But they did raid him, copy his hard drives, seize his inventory, and then . . . nothing.
  
  They can bankrupt him by continuing to do . . . nothing. While his inventory sits in their vaults, or ships to the scrapyard, Mr Celata goes without the income it could have gotten him, and has to come up with even more money from elsewhere to petition to have his property returned to him. If he does nothing, he loses.
  
  No doubt the same tactic has successfully shut down a number of other businesses serving us gun folk, many of them not even needing a license from ATFE to be businesses because they weren't making firearms or ammunition in the first place.
  
  Asset forfeiture has been used to take cars from beneath the butts of guys looking for prostitutes, other guys looking for abuse drugs, and even more guys merely being accused of looking for prostitutes, accused of looking to score drugs, and accused of numerous other victimless crimes. The City of Denver has used it to seize cars and guns from ordinary folk who've been silly enough to drive through that city with certain models of gun aboard, in spite of Colorado's peaceable journey law and McClure-Volkmer.
  
  Don't argue about the victimless crimes themselves. That's a non-starter among our own community, and it will lead only to failure among the antis. If this were not so, there would be Libertarians in the Oval Office. There aren't, so don't. (Plenty of libertarians like me in the RKBA movement, granted, but we're part of a coalition and we have to cooperate.)
  
  But you definitely can argue about how asset forfeiture is unjust, how it makes the owner's innocence (or absence of being charged) irrelevant to the case the State is making against the property. Sure, it's a long-standing tradition of English law to charge a piece of property, rather than the owner. So what? Why should we even tacitly support a law that allows the State to get away with theft? Do we want our courts, cops, and prosecutors to be corrupted by it?
  
  Taking asset forfeiture away from the Man means taking an arbitrary and frequently-abused power away from anti-gunners. How to sell the dismantling of asset forfeiture to the antis? That could be tough, I haven't an idea yet. Perhaps by linking it to the campaign to end eminent domain abuse, which seems to be trending positively.
  
  
• Dynamic entry. I don't know whether KT Ordnance's raid was a peaceful, knock first, "hey we got a warrant, let us in," wait for Mr Celata to answer the door kind of raid. If it was, it's rare. Radley Balko will tell you more than you want to know about the overuse of forcible SWAT-type raids, in the dark of night, on the wrong house. He'll also tell you about the trend in using dynamic entries to carry out what used to be plain old police work.
  
  The bodies are piling up. Lawsuits to recover damages from mistaken raids are failing, justice is being denied. Puppies and kittens are not being blended, but shot, stomped, and Tased.
  
  Gun owners aren't the only targets of these raids. They started with the War on Drugs, but now that dynamic entry is becoming the default method of serving a warrant, gun owners are getting their share.
  
  How to sell this to people who are inimical to gun owners? The same way you sell it to the non-libertarian gun owners: Cops are dying in these raids too. And if only a percentage of the lawsuits by innocent victims succeed, you'll see cities and counties in deep financial trouble to pay the judgments.
  
  If you want to appeal to the feminists, call it an outrageous example of testosterone poisoning.
  
  Dynamic entry must be restricted only to saving the life of a hostage. This can, and should, happen state-by-state, much like liberalization of CCW is taking place.
  
  
• Marginalizing the weird. I have to be careful with this one. Consider: more people believe that extraterrestrial astronauts visit our planet, than that they will ever draw money out of their Social Security accounts. I'm not that sure of the latter anymore myself. That says more about Social Security than about the existence of UFOs.
  
  Lots of people think homeschooling is weird; I definitely do not, but many people do, and I'd wager a good number of them are part of the giant government apparatus that spits out search warrants and arms men to execute them. An animus against homeschooling, or unusual religious practices, can easily be exaggerated into a claim of child abuse. An animus against guns in a home with children is less of a leap.
  
  Unwholesome attention to weirdness easily becomes an intense desire to look for infractions of the law. In case you haven't noticed, there are more than enough laws now to blindly infract.
  
  How to sell this one to the antis? There are lots of other weird people in the world, and we need not give them respect, but they demand to be left alone unless they make real flesh-and-blood victims. The biker, the furry, the kink, the performance artist suspending yourself in midair by hooks through your flesh, the addict to plastic surgery. Leave weird people alone. You might be one.
  

Well, there are three ideas, in matters where gun rights activists can expand the effectiveness of their efforts and divide the antis, without even having to utter the word "gun."

Holding his nose cannot be enough

How can Glenn Beck stand to have to talk to Nancy Grace?

Let alone have to hear her voice?

It must be the magic of production, like how the Beatles could record an entire album with only one Beatle present in the studio at any one time. Ringo laid down the percussion, all else could be tweaked by engineers.

Soulcraft

Mlle Sklodovska and I had the house to ourselves today. I scratched an itch---homemade pretzels.

Reminds me of this article that TCM pointed me to recently.

Quote for the day

You say you are worried about your kid getting run over? I dealt with that concern by taking [offspring unit] for a ride in the country and stopping by the side of the road to point out roadkill racoons, particularly three day old gas-bloated ones buzzing with flies. "This is what happens if you play in the street."

The Wheat / Rye Guy

Medicine Bow Peak on Labor Day 2006

On impulse, I drove all of us up into the nearest mountains I knew, the ones I saw in the distance on my last speedgoat hunt. The offspring units behaved themselves quite well and seemed to enjoy the 10,847 feet above mean sea level.

Oh, I'm full

Dinner at Sal Grosso off Powers Ferry Rd this evening. Excellent, Smithers.

Nadia debuts

Nadia is a Romanian AKM with laminated furniture, built from a non-matching kit from Classic Arms.



I folded a Tapco receiver flat for her, gave her a Tapco piston and G2 ignition group, and refitted the magazines with Falcon Arms domestic floorplates. A domestic muzzle protector sits out front.

Work to create her was spread out over several weeks, including a couple abortive attempts on the receiver. Some work remains, such as a replacement disconnector spring, a replacement safety lever, and a better rivet fixture for the trigger guard, which is screwed on presently. More sanding and oil for the wood, and another coat of flat black paint for the receiver, after she's been shot in.

She is unfired, waiting for me to find a good place to try her out. I ran the bolt carrier in repeatedly until it's as smooth as I remember Kalashnikovs ever to be.

The cheapest kit I could find was chosen for a reason: if I was going to dick this up, I didn't want a lot of money in it. In retrospect it wasn't difficult, it just demanded patience and a willingness to consult the gods on the bulletin boards.

Everybody should try one before the kits dry up; ATFE knows this homebrewing is going on and they're bent on stopping it the one way they can, by blocking importation of the parts kits unless key components, expensive to make domestically, are destroyed.

An Army of Davids will still need its slings

The biggest reason for the slack posting of late is that since KT Ordnance was raided, I've been obsessed with building my own blaster from parts.

Not just any blaster. A Kalashnikov. An AR will come later, when KT is open for business again and can sell me an 80% receiver blank. But dammit, something had to be done now.

TCM and I discussed it---normally I'd keep my mouth shut and avoid the attention, but if I have the huevos to post on the KT mess, I ought to have the huevos to do what ATFE raided KT to try to stop. Otherwise the domestic terrorists ATFE will have won.

A plain-jane Romanian AKM copy, with the laminated furniture and vertical foregrip, is almost complete. A few dollars have been sunk in Harbor Freight goodies such as a 12-ton press and a fluxcore wire welder. Pictures to follow.

And a few more Klashes, in particular a wz88 and a Polish AKMS.

I can stop whenever I want.

Quote for the day, no-liquids-aboard edition

From a highly placed source in the API list:

I heard a Department of Homeland Security public service announcement today asking Americans to report anything suspicious. If I were to call and report that I find it suspicious that we're in a war but we're not controlling our borders, I don't think I'd be well received.

a little closer to reality, perhaps?

Usually, my posts titled "Idea number xxx" are flights of fancy, if-wishes-were-horses proposals. If I could finance them, I suppose they would be feasible, technologically, but they'd need someone with completely different skillsets to find the willing market and make the sale.

It pleases me that STOL airships are far closer to reality. Of course Dynalifter does not list medium-haul domestic passenger airlift as a potential market, as I had wished. By the time such craft and services are available, if ever, I will have little need to go to the East Coast anymore.



But that's not the point. Maybe I'd buy stock in it.

at VC

An interesting post by Ilya Somin, about the divide among libertarians on the US occupation of Iraq. Milton and Rose Friedman are quoted.

Please don't challenge me on the choice of "occupation" for what the US is doing in Iraq. By plain-English definition, that's what we are doing, and I use it with no intent to challenge the intent or wisdom of it.

I left a comment there, after wading through mounds of libertarian blather about abstraction versus the concrete, moralism versus consequentialism or utilitiarianism, and walls of flame. Plus some gems. It deserves the rare, vaunted Second Reading.

It isn't enough to simply oppose or support this conflict. Slogans such as "oppose the war but support the troops" and "regardless of how we got involved, we still have to win" don't even scratch the surface. In a way that transcends foreign policy or the face Uncle Sugar puts on diplomacy, regardless of whether American boots marked Saudi soil, this war was coming to us one way or another. Why we fight it predicates how we fight it, and how we fight it determines whether we will win it. If we are not fighting for the right reasons, we will lose.

Why the DoD will not switch from SSN to random service numbers

Bruce Schneier:

We generally think of computer security as a problem of technology, but often systems fail because of misplaced economic incentives: the people who could protect a system are not the ones who suffer the costs of failure.

DoD will not suffer if my SSN is compromised and my identity is stolen. I do.

Unless the incentive can be turned on them, they have no reason to change.

Mideast, short and sweet

James Rummel prompts me to remark that the face-packing in the Levant is a bit overdue.

One newsreader earlier this week referred to Israel's defending herself against Qassam rockets and UCAVs as "perpetuating the cycle of violence."

Madam, this is no cycle. The violence over the last few weeks all seems unilateral to me. We can hope that the Lebanese government, if there is one (or if a sensible one is in waiting) will see this as an opportunity to eject unwanted puppeteers and determine their own future, and set their own relations with neighbors.

If the US intervenes as a so-called nation-builder, let them learn from recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do not value democracy so highly that this new democracy you build can merely vote down the rule of law, the right to own oneself, and the right to be equal before the law regardless of one's practice of this or that religion. Talk to the speechwriters and find some word other than democracy to bring tears welling in Americans' eyes.

*****

And speaking of James, I'll be taking dinner with him this evening.

To the finish line!!

I know, I know, I haven't posted in a bit. But see, I'm better at being a Gear Guy than I am at waxing politic. So here's a gear post for you.

Background first. I snagged twenty-two (that's 22...) HK-91 steel mags off of GunBroker a couple months back for cheap. They were advertised as having "minor surface rust". I figured, what the heck, a little elbow grease and they'll be as good as new. I posted the winning bid at $42 and they appeared on my doorstep about a week later. Well, lemme' tell ya', minor surface rust, my ass!! They were nasty!! Now I had a decision to make: toss them or continue throwing money at the problem. Being that I am The Cabinet Man, throwing good money after bad has never been reason to stop while I'm ahead. Now, I've never done anything like this before -- never even held an airbush -- so this was uncharted territory for TCM.

So, I had the local headstone/memorial shop sandblast the buggers inside and out for $50. Then I ordered two kinds of finish: Lauer Weaponry's DuraCoat "Black Oxide" and Brownells' Teflon/Moly Oven Cure "Dark Park Gray". Not knowing how much would be required, I ordered a pint (16 ozs) of each. I also ordered an airbrush kit from Lauer that included a 1/4"-to-1/8" adapter so that I could use my air compressor for this task.

When back from the sand blaster, the mags had a nice gritty surface. They were so clean, they were silver colored!! I degreased them with acetone and then used a new toothbrush and compressed air to get rid of the cotton fibers left behind from the cleaning rags. I connected all of the airbrush goodies and was ready to go. (NB: the "instructions" -- and I use that term loosely -- for the airbrush were non-existant. I had to figger' the whole thing out myself. Not impossible mind you, but it didn't leave me with warm-fuzzies. Remember: newbie here...) I cranked down the line pressure off the tank to 45 PSI, pulled on some latex gloves, and was ready to go.

Brownells first.

The directions on the can specify that the metal to be sprayed should be warmed to ~100°F. To do that, I just laid them on a piece of plastic sheeting in the driveway for a few minutes. It worked great. I sprayed on two coats about 1/2-hour apart. The finish dries very quickly to the touch. In the case of bare steel, it was a matter of seconds (literally!!) until the freshly sprayed mag could be handled. After letting the second coat dry another 1/2-hour, I put them in the oven at 300°F for -- you guessed it!! -- a 1/2-hour. And that was that.

Now here are the negative details. First, there is no indication on the Brownells can of what to use for cleanup. Nothing I tried worked. Acetone, kerosene, mineral spirits did nothing. I finally disassembled the airbrush and scraped it clean with rags and pipe cleaners. I got it cleared-out enough to use later with the DuraCoat. Second, since the Teflon/Moly stuff dries so quickly it was tough to keep the airbrush clean and running. I was constantly fussing with the flow nozzle just to keep it clear. Third, the baking process is very stinky. Make sure you have a way to properly ventilate. I opened all the windows and ran the attic fan the second I smelled chemicals. There's a slight lingering odor but not much.

The good. The Teflon/Moly goes on very smooth and even. It's easy product to work with, needing no hardener or reducer. The color is a perfect match to the gray parkerizing I've seen on mil guns. As far as I'm concerned, the Brownells Teflon/Moly is quite idiot proof. (Thank God...) I used just over 1/2 the can of finish (~8 oz) for eleven (11) magazines inside and out.

DuraCoat next.

DuraCoat has no special requirements for preheating the item to be sprayed. Unlike the Brownells stuff, DuraCoat comes with a reasonably clear set of instructions. (It wasn't until I read them that I discovered the need for their reducer for clean-up. I went back to the Lauer site and it does state this, but it's not obvious...) The DuraCoat finish comes with a small bottle of hardener that needs to be mixed at a 1:12 ratio (hardener:finish). Throughout the DuraCoat phase, I mixed the hardener:finish in the color bottle a few tablespoons at a time. Not so good for consistency but it was all I had. Using the DuraCoat proved to be quite a challenge.

First, the DuraCoat is much more like a paint than the Teflon/Moly. It sprays on OK but remains wet for almost a 1/2-hour. This slow drying process made it difficult to spray the entire mag -- inside and out -- in one pass. It's also a very "sticky" finish. After the first couple of magazines, my gloves would stick to everything: the mags, the sprayer, the drop sheets. By the time I finished the eleventh mag, the airbrush was a sticky, globbing mess and my gloves were useless. It was very frustrating.

I also had trouble with paint "blobs" from the airbrush. I don't know much about them so I'm not sure if this was a "feature" of the DuraCoat or of the airbrush. (You can see one of the blobs in the center of the mag pictured below. This is actually one of the minor blobs. There are worse...)

One thing the DuraCoat does have going for it is that "a little goes a long way". I used very little product, less than half what I did for the Teflon/Moly. I also got the sense that a second coat wasn't needed. I still applied two coats to the feed lips and the areas that will contact the rifle (basically the upper third of the mag). Perhaps someone more skilled in such things would have put on two thin coats but my setup wasn't working well enough for me to do that. In hindsight, perhaps a bit of reducer in the mix might have helped with the blobs. I dunno'...

So here is the final result, DuraCoat on the left, Teflon/Moly on the right:



In my opinion -- at least for this application -- I would definitely choose Brownells Teflon/Moly over the DuraCoat. Sure, I had to hassle over the airbrush clogging while using the Teflon/Moly but it produced a much smoother, more even finish. And it was just plain easier to work with. Only time will tell which will wear better. In hindsight (#2), I should have experimented with just a couple of mags for each finish. That way, I'd have 20 mags in Teflon/Moly rather than just 11. Maybe DuraCoat works for other folks (those with better equipment?? with more patience?? with actual training??) but it didn't work so well for me. YMMV...

Thumbs up, Brownells Teflon/Moly Oven Cure!!

TCM

Since it's Disney Channel Games week, . . .

Screw the games with guys racing each other inside inflated balls. The sidekicks on Disney's shows are, shall we say, more interesting. Since as a father I have to watch this stuff anyway---otherwise the offspring units will be Very Pissed and not eat their broccoli---throw us dads a bone.



Mix it up with the Spike crowd and expand your viewership, Mickey. Work the studio system to the full extent and make sure these properties actors have a future once they are old enough to check themselves into rehab. Not every one of them will be a Kurt Russell.

Alyson Michalka represents Phil of the Future.

Anneliese Van der pol shouts it out for That's So Raven.

Wrestling in vanilla pudding.

Old gray mare ain't what she used to be

My sister-in-law's Volvo sedan has rolled its odometer twice. Not sure what's wrong with it now, but many of the motorized electrics don't work, such as a window or two, and other maintenance items are adding up to the conclusion that it needs to be replaced.

SIL wants a hybrid. I stress that hybrids' price premiums will not break even on the saved fuel unless gasoline prices climb above maybe $5 a gallon and stay there, or much of that price premium disappears in 6 months. She's also 6'3" or so, and of, er, ample proportions. The little streamlined monocoques of the Prius or the hybrid Honda will probably not fit her.

She has a loooong commute from Herndon VA to Frederick MD every damn day. Any place she'll move to early in the life of this car will create a commute of comparable distance.

If she wants the fuel economy and the long engine life, and the option to use a biologically derived fuel, I'm thinking diesel, as I am thinking of it for myself. Will a woman of SIL's proportions fit into a Jetta TDI? (yeah, they take a price premium too---ever price a pre-owned TDI? Still, it's manageable.)

Are any other carmakers offering or planning performance-diesels for passenger cars?

Speedfreaks

We are with in-laws in Western NY, and took in Six Flags at Darien Lake yesterday.

Firstborn enjoys the fast coasters, though she becomes a sobbing mess while waiting to get into the car. "Is she OK?" ask concerned riders just before we climb in. "Is she gonna be alright?" Makes me feel like a child abuser. But the sobbing is gone after the first steep drop.

Predator was very good, but Ride of Steel is the shiznit. After that, two turns on the Viper and she was done with rollercoasters for the day.

Carhenge

Now that we live within a couple hours' drive of this place, all I needed was an afternoon free as the excuse to get there.

More on this later when I craft a satellite overhead comparison of this to the original. How faithful were the builders? Have differences in its location on the Earth been compensated for?

Idea 437

The problem is that, in meatspace wargames such as at Ft Polk, there is an explicit trade-off between MILES gear that is utterly digital, or simulated munitions that possess real external and terminal ballistics. The digital gear supports extensive automated systems to characterize the armed engagement, at the cost of significant loss of authenticity.

The laser systems can also teach the wrong lessons. Lasers can’t penetrate drywall or foliage; bullets can. The laser vests, according to the RAND report, “equate concealment and cover, a dangerous lesson for ground forces who sometimes demonstrate a frightening ignorance of the difference between the two.” (The JRTC sometimes uses paintball-like “simunitions,” but they don’t have the information-gathering capabilities of the lasers.)

The solution would add the support for scalable automation (position, time, operator, manner of impact, option for umpiring or other mediation) to the physical entity of a moving, material, nonlethal bullet that will penetrate enough concealment (but not body armor) to drive the point home, like paintballs do.

How cheap are RFID tags nowadays?

Develop a plastic bullet containing an RFID and an impact-activated transponder.

• When the round is fired, it squawks a timestamp and position coordinates provided by the rifle.
  
• When it hits something, it squawks its identity and a timestamp.
  
• When it hits a trainee, the trainee's load rig (containing a compatible transponder) hears the identity, estimates how near the bullet came to vital organs, and barks out a hit, wound, or miss, and so forth. Even a bullet impacting a tree or rock in front of the soldier will register with the soldier's rig.
  

Develop a cartridge around that bullet, that either cycles the service rifle or cycles a training top-end for the service rifle.

When the ammunition is issued to the soldier, a transponder interrogates it so the supervising system knows which soldier is carrying it.

Without knowing much about RFID tags and their RF capabilities, I'm guessing that the location of a given tag or swarm of tags could easily be triangulated by a limited number of networked location-aware transponders. I'm also guessing that the tag can be interrogated in milliseconds. And that it can be powered by the acceleration of a small magnet through a wire coil, both packed comfortably aboard the bullet, so the tag gets an ample shot of DC both when it is shot down the barrel and when it bounces to a stop.

At the end of the exercise, golf carts equipped with transponders and vacuum cleaners scour the play area and sweep the spent bullets up, either for re-use or disposal.

Nothing in this concept is incompatible with the existing MILES gear. Both systems can overlap, and probably should, because the RFID-tagged bullets will not duplicate the exterior ballistics---the range and accuracy---of real rifle bullets. If they did, they would be real rifle bullets and carry the lethality of real rifle bullets.

Merry f^c%in8 Christmas to me and a cast of millions

This greets me in my work inbox:

You are receiving this e-mail as a secondary means to notify you that your personal information was among that stolen in the recent theft of Veterans Affairs electronic data. For more information please contact the Veterans Affairs contact center at 1-800-333-4636 or visit the VA Website at http://www.firstgov.gov/veteransinfo.shtml.

Maybe I'll have grounds to sue, inspite of being still alive and not depending on portable oxygen. But to sue whom? DoD? VA? SecDef? Congress?

Please view the project of dismantling the Social Security system not as an economic objective but as a matter of simple criminal justice. Our government practically requires us to create and maintain a vulnerability to identity theft to simplify their governance over us. In this policy this government is insubordinate to us.

The vulnerability is made even sharper and more prevalent, the exposure to risk greater, for persons who have served in her defense.

This is intolerable.

Weck up to Dave

Dave and I got some dinner the other night, had a great time.

We have differences: he's atheist, I'm a lapsed agnostic, for example, but we share a love for and commitment to the American West. We just had trouble putting our fingers on exactly what about the American West evokes that love.

And Dave, go for the Bresnan phone. It costs more than the Vonage, but it coexists much better with the pipe it's connected to.

David is only the second blogger I've made my way to meet, WalterinDenver being the first. But that might not count for some of you, because I met him before I launched WUTT!.

Big Sky

It ain't no fooling, this is Big Sky Country. I'm TDY at Malmstrom AFB, hoping to sip coffee with David MSC sometime in the next few days.

It's prettier than I thought it would be, though colder and wetter.

A lot is running through my mind as I write. So much I want to do. But my day job as dragon soldier and rest-of-the-time job as father really do interfere. Shameful.

KISS: I have a real and tangible animus toward the notion that things should be kept simple, Stupid.

Stateless places: Both a CSI episode and a Law and Order: Criminal Intent episode remind me of Bill Bradford's Liberty poll some years ago, demonstrating that the State's reach is by nature and of right ought to be limited.

f^ckerz r out of control

ATF has raided KT Ordnance, a maker of lawful 80%-complete firearm receivers.

This agency needs to be shut down. Baby steps would be OK but eventually they need to close their doors. The few agents in that organization that are worth a sh17 can find work in another agency where they are needed to, oh I dunno, find goddamned militant islamicists in the US?

JPFO asks rhetorically why KT was singled out. It wasn't because they were supporters of JPFO. It was because KT embraced JPFO's assertion that the ATFE is a rogue agency.

They can't let that go without comment, now can they?