NYT articles I'd like to see----Texas abortion clinic safety measures

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday struck down parts of a restrictive New York law that limits the number of permits to carry a concealed weapon in the state to about 10 from what was once a high of roughly 40.

...

The decision concerned New York's Sullivan Law, that imposes strict requirements on the issuance of permits that allow New Yorkers to carry concealed, own, or even handle a handgun.

One part of the law requires the Judge of the applicant's County Family Court to individually process the application for the permit, including personal references, interviews by a law enforcement officer, an inspection of the security measures at the home where the handgun will be stored, training requirements that must take place before the applicant can legally even handle any pistol, and a process that takes at least 6 months and approximately $250 in fees paid to the County, in addition to any expenses incurred for safe storage or training.

The law is also interpreted arbitrarily across the State, with some Judges and Sheriffs placing additional limitations on permit holders: prohibitions on concealed carry, criteria for personal references, or burdensome requirements for storage. These limitations are often applied retroactively, such as requiring a permit holder to install a fixed safe after a rash of nearby burglaries in the neighborhood.

“We conclude,” Justice Breyer wrote, “that ... none of these provisions offer law enforcement benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes. Each places a substantial obstacle in the path of citizens seeking the most common and effective self-defense tool, each constitutes an undue burden on that access, and each violates the Federal Constitution. Collectively, these provisions actively discourage New Yorkers from even applying for permission to exercise what Heller and MacDonald clarified was a fundamental individual right guaranteed under the Constitution against infringement by Federal or State and local governments.”
(Ed.---this is also a comment at the appropriate post today at Instapundit)

HK bipod, finally

RobertRTG has been promising Pakistani-made HK91 bipods for some time.  They finally arrived, and I bought one, because I am not going to spend as much on a gen-yoo-wine Kraut bipod as I did for the rest of the damned rifle. 

Eagerly I lifted it to the forearm of my Springer/Greek HK91 to find that the bipod just would not stick on that little device there. 

Back to the interwebs, to find that Springer had milled off half of that little device there, along with slapping on a perverted thumbhole stock.  I bought that rifle new in 19-mumblety-mumble when certain cosmetic features were disfavored. 

New forearms cost as much, almost, as the bipod.  The value proposition of the affordable POF bipod was dissolving before my eyes. 

Until I found a scrap fender washer of about the right dimensions, held it with a vise, and carved away all the metal that looked like it would not help hold that bipod on. 

Then I wire-feed welded that chunk on the forearm, about where the necessary parts were ground off.  The bipod now hangs there, and bears a little weight.  I need some pointers on what sort of spring was riveted inside the handguard as a catch to let the bipod come back off.  Any ideas or diagrams, dear readers? 

stroke alpha echo

we now have our Amateur Extra ticket. 

Waiting for word on my vanity callsign 

Revolver conversions I'd like to see

I've acquired a Dan Wesson 15-2, plain-vanilla medium-frame revolver with room for a 6-round cylinder of .357 Magnum.

The revolver was designed to allow the owner to switch barrels, from 2" to 4" or 6 or 8 or whatever.  The barrel itself is a tube threaded at both ends, and it rests in a shroud that can be vent-ribbed, full underlug, and so forth.  One end of the barrel threads into the frame, the other in a nut that in turn threads into the end of the shroud.  A special wrench gets at the nut, and a feeler gauge makes sure that you put the barrel back in with the right gap between breech end of the barrel, and the cylinder. 

The cylinder wouldn't be so hard to take out of the frame either. 

So why not a conversion kit, with 5-round .41 Mag cylinder, and replacement .41 barrel? 

inspiration from today's address by MG X, The Adjutant General

Do not forget that the United States became united, in a fundamental way, through force of arms.  The force was publicly demonstrated, but the arms were mostly private property.

The United States' union was later given structure and form, indeed purpose, through argument in philosophies that were informed by bitter European experience. 

Takeaways:  establish and defend a free space by force of arms, then govern it with logical application of fact. 

In that order. 

Met a not so nice girl on Skype. Not taking her to meet Mother

Hey, Cheaper than Dirt!

thanks for following. 

how about some Fiocchi 7.62x39 in case lots? 

Or . . . Berdan primers? 

Mechanical aptitude

Mlle Sklodovska inherited one of my older Windows notebooks.  It since had developed a nasty wheeze in the CPU cooling fan.  She was going through a can of computer air per week trying to get some foreign object out of it. 

Then one night, it stopped wheezing entirely.  And started issuing dire warnings that its CPU/graphics/wifi adapter/younameit was overheating. 

Newegg sold me a replacement blower that would arrive in days, not the weeks that eBay's Chinese sellers promised. 

I talked Mlle through taking the old one out and putting the new one in.  Which involved taking off the back, and the keyboard, and the mobo, to get the blower out.  Many, many M1x4mm screws. 

Thank God no soldering.  The ribbon connectors---trackpad to mobo, keyboard to mobo, wifi to keyboard---are surprisingly robust. 

Yes, this is a rewrite of the G4 repair saga. 

Mlle also knows how to weld with wirefeed and regular stick.  And her coaches at youth smallbore are coaching her to move on to highpower.  She wants a shooting coat for Christmas. 

Pinned

Sainted wife and Frankenson---now a goateed six-footer---pinned these on me.  

It's not me you have to worry about, updated extensively

I have now packed heat lawfully in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, Wyoming, New Mexico, South Dakota, Kentucky, South Carolina, Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, Arkansas, and Utah.  Wisconsin. Ohio.  Iowa. 

No lives were lost.

The way things are looking, I will pack heat lawfully in Nyawk and Cahlifawnia before I become a grandfather.

Note that there are slackers:  I'm talking about you, Nevada.  And West Virginia. 

fodmaps and QR codes

Another wish for the wish list: an Android app that looks up the ingredients of a food by QR codes and rates it for FODMAPs.

Still at it, kinda

Yup. 

a difficult mother to tie

Prusik loops formed from .065" string trimmer line. For use as tandem belay on a hauling system based on .105" trimmer line. The 105 is powerful s#17, it broke a rope cleat today.

Tieing these little buggers was a trial. Next time, I soak the line in water a day or more before knotting.

Lautenberg violation for her too

So an ubicam in the elevator may have captured for Eternity that Ray Rice's at-the-time fiancee spit on Ray.  Then he decked her with that left hook that even NPR's metrosexual sports commentators commentated.  Sometime after that, they wed.   

Question no one is asking:  Will Mr Rice receive the coveted domestic violence misdemeanor conviction that Frank Lautenberg says disqualifies him permanently from firearm ownership? 

Question that I am asking:  does Lanay spitting on Ray constitute an act of domestic violence as well, rising to Lautenberg Amendment violation?  

No, the question I'm really asking is:  has a man been Lautenberged by a DV conviction, given for the act of spitting on his domestic partner?  Yeah, that's it.  

and that's when Jack said, "That's right! There ain't no frickin' french fries, just like I've been trying to tell ya!"

Visited a Jack in the box™ today and was invited to take their survey. 

Had I known that they were running a special on a salted caramel shake, I might have dropped the burger and gotten that instead. 

Excellent steaks in Hudson, Wyoming

Bettie Jean's menu

On the left, Hornady 150gr FMJBTs in front of 56gr IMR4350.  On the right, Midway blemished 168gr plastic-tip HPs in front of 48gr Win748. 

A cop can find who accessed her driver license record but . . .

A highway patrolman stops a speeding cop, the cop launches a prick war against her, and she files "a public records request with the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. It turned out she was right: over a three-month period, at least 88 law enforcement officers from 25 different agencies accessed Watts' driver's license information more than 200 times"

Yet NSA can't figure out what classified information Snowden got his hands into, and assumes he got into All Of It.

The technology is there, just not being applied.  

a chamber cast of Anduril

I took a chamber casting of the Remington 600 known as Anduril.

At the neck of the cartridge case, diameter is .348".  At the freebore, it is .312".  After the rifling has begun, it's .310"

that sounds a bit over.  Any ideas, readers?  Is this barrel d00med?

Update:  using my l33t Bene Gesserit training, I managed to slip the caliper on the cast just forward of the freebore, between the lands, and it's really .308" in there, and I'm not scraping Cerrosafe off of the casting.  Maybe not d00med.  But the very short magazine box plus the approximately .225" of freebore really limits bullets that will touch the rifling.  Would almost rather have the barrel pulled, lop off one or two threads of barrel shank, twist it back in and have a new chamber cut with less freebore.  

Update 2:  gotta keep in mind that Cerrosafe expands to .0025" oversize after it has done cooling, in another 7 days or so; this cast was taken Monday afternoon.  That expansion is on the same scale as my measurements tell me the chamber is oversize in diameter.

And we found SAAMI specification drawings.  The freebore is supposed to be only about .08" long.  That may be the only problem with this chamber. 

componetz

Propellants are slowly returning to the shelves.  The slower IMRs and Hodgdon numbers in particular, and shotshell propellants.  I took 2 lb of H335 to try in Grendel and 762NATO.

Still no BL(C)-2.  If this is how long it takes suppliers without permanently expanding capacity, then, well . . . this is how long it takes. 

I was really looking for election returns for the Colorado secession, and I got this (updated)

Dude, it was Czechoslovakia.  Just one "k."

A columnist who presumes to "edit[] Democracy:  A Journal of Ideas should rely on an editor or two himself, and a human spellchecker.

In a column where he laments the underlying discord in American politics and hopes to apply that as context to a secession vote in eleven counties in Colorado, he cites other sorrowful examples of other nations who couldn't stay married, in spite of the kids, and were sundered by the "culture-ization of their politics."

No matter that a guy named Tito kept those Yugos from piously murdering one another for most of a generation (defined as four 20-year spans, if you follow the Strauss and Howe model), for example.  A generational cycle of that length is about as long as any government-imposed common immiseration can be expected to hold together.  The New Deal included. 

(Typo corrected)







 

 

Open Letter to the GOP Congressional Delegation

Dear Republicans in the US Senate and the House of Representatives:

I am not a Republican.  You owe me no particular debt.  I may have voted for one or another of you while registered in several States over the years, but most of that time I was registered with a third party.  I remain so today. 

For some of you I had very great hopes.  Some of you then turned and betrayed those hopes. 

So don't get an inflated ego when I say that I generally despise the Democrats across from you, partly for their refusal to pass a Federal budget for the last 4 years they held a majority in the Senate, partly for their mischaracterization of your newer, more energetic, and dare I say more ideological members. 

You can yet earn my malediction, and the best way to do so is to cave in to those Democrats.  The next best way to do so is to turn on those newer, more energetic, and more ideological members of your own party.  They have led a dangerous, risky, odious effort to defund, delay, or repeal the PPACA.  They drew the line and they tried to defend it.  The leadership of your party has abandoned and abused them. 

If you're from Wyoming, you should be familiar with the name Lane Frost.  All he had to do was stay on the bull for eight seconds.  It took everything he had for those eight seconds, and he trained a (short) lifetime just to know what to do during those eight seconds, to last that long. 

Your job is easier than what Lane Frost had to do.  All you have to do is, well, nothing.  Just hold on, ignore the bucking, ignore the noise of the crowds.  Don't give in on a delay now, don't insist on defunding.  Just keep the law exactly as it is right now, and leave the Obama administration's people in place too.  Keep his team exactly as it is for a few more weeks.  Insist on no firings.  Pass no "if you like it you can keep it" bills.  Carve no new exceptions.  Mind your damned manners with your own caucus.

All you have to do is nothing but hold on. When you get thrown, the sand will break your fall, and there will be clowns unwittingly helping you to run to safety. 

If you don't even bother to climb on the bull, you are on the sidelines forever. 

Cordially,

Fûz

shortage of reloading componetz, updated

My sticker shock on primers kicks in right around 4 cents each, like a bout of GERD during a hangover. 

No sticker shock here.  Five thousand Large Rifle arrived in one box. 

Proof, if you needed it, that guns make one stupid

I literally slapped the table with my hand upon reading it:  "Few students ask to have guns on Wyoming campuses, and when they do, the answer is likely to be 'no.'"

I'm not surprised.  Only one or two students, staff, or faculty need be told 'no' at local Community Cawlidge before the word gets out to likeminded others, not to bother asking.  Cause and effect are likely reversed.   

This is unfortunate, considering that not all that long ago, a concealed weapon would have been rather handy against a kid planning to kill his father with a compound bow and a knife.  Whether bringing the edged weapons on campus violated campus policy or Wyoming law is no consolation, because the father is dead and the kid didn't ask in advance. 

This pearl though:  “The presence of too many firearms can inhibit the educational process.”  We can see that the absence of a firearm (where and when needed) surely as hell Inhibited the Educational Process.  Jim Krumm, RIP, did not finish teaching that day, let alone the semester.   "[S]tudents watched horrified as Chris Krumm stepped into the classroom and unleashed an arrow at his father" sounds rather, er, educationally inhibiting, doesn't it?  "Casper College, where some 5,000 students are enrolled, canceled classes for the rest of Friday;" well, there you have positive sighting of Educational Process Inhibition. 

I'm willing to cut UW's Chief Samp a little slack. What cop would use such stilted and pretentious terminology?  I suspect he's parroting a talking point given him by his superiors in UW administration, and woe be unto him if he were to deviate from it.  That line goes something like, "guns make people stupid, if we have more guns on campus we'll have more stupid people, stupidity inhibits the educational process.  Universities are supposed to have no inhibitions on the educational process, we need no stupid people in them.  So no guns.  The law of this unenlightened land at least requires the unwashed to ask permission, so we simply deny it."  This from folks who claim to be teaching Critical Thinking to the generation who will be creating wealth to fund my Social Security benefits.

The likely result is, as suggested above, that the truly intelligent people who want to protect themselves on a college campus will simply pack heat carefully, without asking, or telling, anybody. 

Which is how Wyoming law on the limits of the CCW permit ought to read in the first place.

Panic! panic! shortage of reloading componetz!

I'm down to just 3 8-lb jugs of WC846. 

And an 8-pounder of W231.  And 6 lbs of Unique-ski. 

12V rechargeable flashlight

Blegging for recommendations for a metal bodied flashlight:

• impressive, maybe even intimidating, light output
• replaceable bulb or LED assembly
• rechargeable
•  . . . by 12V via a cradle
• available replacement battery pack
• suitable for mounting in an automobile, constantly on charge by permanent wiring into the vehicle's electrical system
• body stout enough to use as a bludgeon, at least twice
• low enough price to put on an Amazon wish list without sheepish grin
• lanyard, or place to attach one

Please post in comments if you can suggest a make and model. 

if I had an Oscar Meyer weiner . . .

if I got my hands on a 3-D printer, the first thing I'd like to try is a replacement barrel bushing for a Star PD.  The 3-D printer would make a plastic version of it, but then I'd try using the plastic version as a mould for an investment casting.  Somebody around here can investment cast carbon steel, no?

But the real cool thing I'd like to try is a stretched double-stack 1911 frame.  Imagine slicing down through the frame along the magazine well, and making that magazine well about 2mm longer, front to rear. That ought to be just enough so a double-stack magazine of 7.62x25mm Tokarev would fit.  That cartridge is too long for a standard or doublewide 1911.

3-D print that frame, with gaps for hardened steel slide rails to be pressed into the plastic.  Finish with standard or double-wide 1911 parts as needed, and a .38 Super slide.  3-D print a barrel for the Tokarev, and have that buddy investment cast that for you too (update:  or use J&G Sales's Tok barrel).  A 3-D printed magazine will be needed too.  It would probably have capacity for 15 or 16 rounds. 

Update:  is there any way to mix graphite fiber flakes into the plastic line that feeds into the 3-D printer?  

what to do until ammunition returns to your dealer's shelves

 . . . well, since it may be 6 to 18 months for case lots of ammunition to come available again, what is a fellow to do with his dollar-cost-averaging in the meantime?

Let us suggest that you identify those parts that wear out the soonest on the blasters you own.  Anything semiauto can be rough on extractors and ejectors, and the springs that push them, if any.  If you don't know how to pull the ejector out of the bolt face of your AR, now is the time to figure that out.  MBRs with fixed ejectors (FAL) and pistols (1911) can still break theirs, replacing them might be a bit tougher. Have a set of all the springs on your platform, many parts houses will sell you every part in one bag. 

Unfortunately, I'm not the first to have this idea, and this is why even replacement parts for ARs are getting scarce.  And 1911s too.  

Don't neglect your non-patrol rifles either.  The Remington bolt rifle extractors are said to be weak and will leave you heartbroken when they break.  Brownell's will sell you a replacement, and the replacement includes instructions.  Broken cartridge case extractors for the rifle calibers would keep your MBR out of the junk pile. 

As you try these, or have a brother show you how to do them, you'll learn what tools you need.  So we next suggest the books and tools that make you self-sufficient in keeping your beloved blasters a-blasting.  Pin punches, including the roll-pin punches that you'll need to assemble an AR, and hollow-ground screwdriver bit sets.  FAL owners would do well to get gunplumbr's guide and skim it through.  Some blasters have parts that are meant to wear out, like the buffer on the Star PD. 

If you are willing to go hardcore, get a spare hammer, trigger, and sear for your platform.  Learn how to take them out and put them back without trashing the gun's finish, breaking tools, or seeing spring-loaded parts fly out a window. 

Next, if money is still burning a hole in the ammo bag and ammo is still not available, talk to your gunsmith about some improvements to be made to your existing blasters.  If you scored a spare HTS set and its connected springs, have the smith stone them together for a good trigger pull, then take them back out, mark them as a set, and wrap them for storage.  A muzzle brake on a rifle would enhance its position on Diane's List.  Remember, in the current unpleasantness, your gunsmiths might be worried about their livelihoods too, so support them now. Give them work. 

Okay, last and most unpleasant:  if this can happen to ammunition, it can happen to expendables like food too.  You didn't prepare when ammunition prices were slowly rising.  Will you be caught again, but worse this time? 

QFTD

What is it in the American psyche that we pay so handsomely to get hectored by these vermin?

TFG

you joined the NRA . . .

 . . . so now you want a medal, or something?

Sorry, I can't get very excited about you responding to the crisis only after it looks like it could really become a crisis.  Every time I hear someone say "Hey, everybody, I joined the NRA today,  and so should you!" I think one or more of the following:

• what took you so damned long?
• (update 2) are you the same guy who laughed in my face, or rolled your eyes, or called me a paranoid black-helicopter wacko when I suggested National Ammo Day a few years ago?   Why yes, yes you are. 
• Congratulations on waking up on the gun owners' side of the battle line.  
• Get just an annual membership, then spend the dough you saved on a Dillon press and . . .

 GOA, GONH in the East, RMGO for us Westerners, IJ, and numerous other organizations.  They have been fighting at State and regional levels, especially when the NRA didn't show up.  They complemented the NRA and made many of the NRA's gains possible---or prevented the NRA from caving when the NRA started feeling, y'know, centrist.   Send them some love and money too.

NRA didn't help Heller very much, in fact one can argue they interfered.  Thank Cato instead, their Bob Levy made the Heller win possible.  

Spend as much on these institutions and organizations as you would on your next scarcity-overpriced case of ammunition or your next batch of standard-capacity magazines---if you can find the ammunition or the mags.  You can't now, because they're gone. They're gone now because you didn't buy them before the sphincters closed.  The sphincters closed because you didn't support the organizations back when this stuff was cheap. 

In short, shame on you.  Stop congratulating yourself.  You have some catching up to do.

Update 1:  I forgot Firearms Coalition, founded by the architect of the Cincinnati Revolt and continued by his widow and sons. 

was waitin for it, it was only a matter of time

 . . . until someone with national reach made the observation. 

Chicago alone is giving us a big enough body count every month to match the Newtown shooting.  But Chicago's death toll is not as shocking to the MSM because---wait for it---

"Obama Only Cares When “Vanilla” Children Get Shot"

a whole boatload of racism is implicit in that view. When will that racism be challenged? 

The mess that has been left

It's bad enough that since the atrocity, retailers and manufacturers have tightened their sphincters of supply of blasters and their expendables. 

It's even worse that most people I know are only now, with the supply tightening and prices rising, placing hard orders for the blasters and expendables.  "Know where I could get an M4?"  Me:  "I used to.  Probably gone now, for twice the price you could have had two weeks ago." 

All I can say is "I've got mine."  Now I have to put up with primers going for $.04 apiece. 

Meanwhile, the NRA EVP holds a press conference, and some wank interrupts/heckles it.  Nice attempt at a "national conversation."  Instead, as Larry Correia explained so succinctly, it isn't a conversation, it's a lecture.  Many think LaPierre rocked the presser---after looking over the release I'm not so enthusiastic. What about Fast and Furious?  What about government attempts to increase violence, and cement its association with private firearms ownership and commerce, on our Southern border? 

Meanwhile, and in a spirit of sincere national dialog rather than dismissing anti-gun writers out of hand, have a look at Cahan's post:

Repealing drug laws would do more --  much, much, much more -- than banning assault rifles (a measure I would agree is quite appropriate); barring carrying of concealed handguns in public  (I'd vote for that in my state, if after hearing from people who felt differently from me, I could give an account of my position that fairly meets their points and doesn't trade on tacit hostility toward or mere incomprehension of  whatever contribution owning a gun makes to their experience of a meaningful free life); closing the "gun show" loophole; extending waiting periods etc.  . . .  we are entitled to make policy on the best understanding we can form of how the world works so long as we are open to new evidence and aren't otherwise interfering with liberties that we ought, in a liberal society, to respect.

 The "if after hearing from people who felt differently from me" part is what thoughtful people call dialog.  Or a conversation. 

'cuz they want your stuff, man

The belief that wealth consists not of ideas, attitudes, moral codes, and mental disciplines but of definable and static things that can be seized and redistributed is the materialist superstition.

Tom Bethell paraphrasing George Gilder

Many of us free-marketers have unconsciously understood this.  The left disparages the notion of physical property as crass materialism not because they disdain material goods, rather they want us to loosen our grip on them, so they can seize those goods for themselves.  They confuse material things with wealth, they confuse money with value and love with sex, and are eager to equate spending with revenue, just as they wouldn't understand the difference between blood and saline if they were colored the same. 

Roissy done it again

"big revolutions are seeded with the polite vengeances of individuals"

Another QFTD from Roissy. 

Something the NYTimes actually can do right

A package arrived from Numrich---er, Gun Parts Corp---today.  A pack of 1911 magazines. 

Instead of styrofoam dunnage, the box was packed with crumpled pages from the New York Times. 

¡Vachement!

another pithy explanation for last week

Dreams, visions and wild hopes are mighty weapons and realistic tools.  The practical-mindedness of a true leader consists in recognizing the practical value of these tools.  Yet this recognition usually stems from a contempt of the present which can be traced to a natural ineptitude in practical affairs.  The successful businessman is often a failure as a communal leader because his mind is attuned to the "things that are" and his heart set on that which can be accomplished in "our time."  Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs. And it is perhaps fortunate that some proud natures when suffering defeat in the practical world do not feel crushed but are suddenly fired with the apparently absurd conviction that they are eminently competent to direct the fortunes of the community and the nation. 

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer:  Thoughts on the nature of mass movements
\

Grow a pair . . . of labia?

It seems that many of our fellow Americans have indeed voted as if their lady parts depended on it. 

Unfortunately, I would have sworn that many of those fellow Americans didn't have lady parts on whose behalf they voted. 

I guess I was mistaken. 

post-election wrap-up

It is Mlle. Sklodovska's first night of the new junior smallbore season.  As I was driving her to the range, she asked, "Who won the election?"

"Mr. Obama has been re-elected."

Hmmmm.  "Is that a good thing?"

I thought for a second.  "Not optimal." 

Hunh

I might have failed to tell you that on neighboring Farflung Silos AFB, the base exchange has installed a firearms counter and does land-office business in blasters.  Not just yer plain-jane duck-hunting NEF break-open shotguns and bolt .22's either.  They seem to lean hard on pocket blasters and Black rifles.  Quite good prices on everything Springer.  And I never knew how pretty a Ruger 77/44 was until I saw one there. 

I walked past that counter the other day with FrankenBoy in tow, and noticed a family crowded up to the counter.  Dad talking to the dealer, one or two offspring units in a stroller, and Momma in faux-stretch-leather pants handling a S&W M&P. 

Double-take:  she was slowly, deliberately turning the pistol and looking straight down the barrel. 

words that I wish were more common

I heard a guest on a radio talk show last week use a word that I wish I heard more often:  'whence.'

Which is proper usage:  "let it go back from whence it came" or "let it go back whence it came"? 

Other words that should stage a comeback: 

• disabuse

Commenters, by all means chime in. 

Invisible War and PPACA

Today we watched the film Invisible War, which detailed the problem of sexual assault in Uncle Sugar's services, and how assaults persist in spite of the sexual assault prevention programs Uncle has launched against it.  This film is not for weak stomachs.

My takeaways:

• the typical sexual predator claims 300 victims in a career.  I'm torn on the idea of trying to treat this as if it were a public health problem, using motivational posters and briefings.  In fact, this film brutally rips the current SAPR/BIT/SHARP programs as ineffective at best, or PR distractions at worst. 

• the film's showcase assault survivors bear the scars of the assault, but even worse scars from the coverups and declined or bungled investigations after the fact.  It's worth asking whether these survivors would have recovered and continued purposeful lives and successful military careers if the commanders had investigated and prosecuted the assaults more vigorously.  What do we know about  survivors whose perpetrators have been prosecuted fully?  The film shows that most perps get weak punishment, assuming that the perps were guilty.  I will not support abandonment of presumed innocence. 

• the survivors had peers, both male and female, who supported them and encouraged them to report the assaults and seek justice, as well as peers who tried to persuade them to stay silent.  The latter will always bend in the direction of the wind.  Commanders and enforcers make the coverup possible, thus making future assaults inevitable. 

• something is genuinely dicked up with the Feres doctrine.  There's a reason I'm not a lawyer and the preceding sentence shows it. 

I don't want to rob this film of its power, but much of the film shows one of the assault survivors battling the Veteran's Administration for coverage of injuries from the assault.  Watch just these passages if you want to see what your life will be like when Obamacare is fully implemented.  That's what they want for all of us. 

Why do feminists assert nonsense that intimacy is terrifying to men?

When all you have is a lack of options, the world looks like a mandate.

Roissy

teledildonics

when I send a text to the wife telling her to check the batteries in the butterfly, I mean check the batteries in the remote, too. 

Has anyone fielded a Bluetooth-enabled toy that can be controlled through a smartphone?  I wonder. 

Self-reassurance, or affirmation statement?

About a year ago, a new family moved in across the street.  A divorced head of household, her son with a girlfriend, and a daughter with two sons of her own, the elder of whom is bright, energetic, and over here with our two sons every day.  Others appear, or stop appearing, randomly. 

The said head of household has been revamping the landscaping and cleaning up trees and so forth.  She visited the other day, asking to borrow tools for the effort.  Sainted wife offered our stepladder and a telescoping pruner. 

At one point during a lull in the conversation, she said, "I don't need a man."  That struck me as rather queer.  Did she mean she didn't need a man to handle the landscaping that has utterly dominated her spare time for the entire summer?  She said it at a moment that I thought my sainted wife might not have heard it, almost that it was calculated so.  In retrospect, I found it somewhat offensive. 

I said, "well, you don't need a man until you need a man," meaning that it's easy for a woman to say she doesn't need a man, when she can borrow the things that tend to be available through a man from someone else's man. 

Since then I 've been thinking of about better  comebacks I should have offered, so she didn't think I was trying to hit on her, for example.  "None was offered," for example.  Please suggest your own comebacks in the comments. 

"Not until you need a ladder from one." 

"Is that an affirmation statement, or a self-reassurance?"

"Is that why you don't keep one around?" 

"'How's that working for you?" 

"Of course not, the world's your oyster, Toots." 

Eric Hoffer: where to start?

Due to recent reviews of the Longshoreman Philosopher's biographies in American Spectator and Reason, I've now got a yearning to read him.  Which would be best as a first read, one that has the most relevance for today's situation? I have to make a good first cut, considering other demands on my time. 

Amazon reviews are positive for The True Believer. 

another "I'll be damned" moment

It has been maybe two years since the last time I tried to teach Frankenboy how to ride a bicycle.  That time ended, er, poorly, with him tumbling ass-over-tincups off the bike, rolling on his shoulder and scraping a patch of skin from his leg.  A neighbor lady out in her lawn saw the whole thing, and the boy's uncontrolled crying and howling, and thought I was some horrible abuser.

Since then, a neighbor boy has moved in and spends almost every waking hour at our house, goofing off with our two boys.  He rides a bicycle.

Frankenboy thinks he wants to build a gokart or soapbox racer or some such out of discarded bicycle parts.  I tell him it's a lot less work to learn to ride a regular, ordinary bike.  The fear from the memory of his last painful attempt wells up.  "A cart won't fall over."

So I make him a deal.  Learn to ride a plain-vanilla upright bicycle down to the community pool and back, and he can disassemble one of the older 12" bicycles for parts.  A 20" has been sitting in the garage, with cardboard piling up over it.  We get it out and air up the tires, figure out which gears the derailleurs will in fact shift to, and he straps on his safety equipment.

He and neighbor boy disappear.  I go back to working on a stubborn Coleman stove that won't shut off.

A few minutes later, I notice that a few minutes have transpired, no sight of son or neighbor boy.  The neighbors' cars are gone, a good sign the boy is too.  So my son is alone, on a bicycle, or maybe under one, maybe with a severly angulated extremity. Dunno. 

Hmmmmm.  I start walking in the direction of the goal of his heart, his way to getting parts for a cart.  The pool.  I keep walking.  Halfway there.  Did a psycho grab him?  Did some teen roll over him in a Crown Vic? 

Then swinging around the distant corner, there is a figure clad in bicycle helmet and knee pads, and the old combat boots and kneehigh wool socks I had given him earlier this morning (he now wears my boot size, at age 12).  Doggedly pedaling a 20" bike that is too small for him.  Keeping it upright.  Pedaling faster than he should because the derailleurs are stuck in 1st on the front and 3rd on the rear.  A smile from ear to ear. 

I guess then we go shopping tomorrow for a 24".

They are average—that’s why they’re so deadly

Stock up on flashlight batteries and canned peaches, Citizens.

Roissy is a regular read.  Time to start reading what Roissy reads.  

Quote from the recent past

The village may have replaced "the state," and it in turn may have replaced the fist with the hug, but an unwanted embrace from which you cannot escape is just a nicer form of tyranny.

Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism

I'd eat it every night if I could, until I got bored with it

Viet Q, montgomery, ABQ

Pho

Saigon restaurant, San Mateo in ABQ

A reminder

A fascinating story at the Heart Mountain internment camp site.  Sad, angering. 

little chores around the house

My favorite camp axe, an Estwing with a hammerhead, is going on 30 years old, and was beginning to show its age. The chrome finish is worn away, showing pitted steel. As I was browsing an oldtimer's page about restoring old Coleman camping equipment, there appeared a technique to remove rust and prep the metal surface for a newer finish.

The oldtimer described how to immerse the metal part in a weak solution of trisodium phosphate, with a separate electrode of the same metal as that to be cleaned (discarded steel banding in this case). Put positive voltage on that sacrificial elecrode, and negative on the part to be cleaned. Flow direct current through it for a loooonnnnng time, and the rust will be pulled off the part. It worked nicely enough that some steel wool got the whole axe looking uniformly black and rust-free. Then an old slow-cooker heated up some Brownell's zinc parkerizing solution. After that, Johnson paste car wax rubbed deep into the pores; she looks beautiful.

The camp stove that prompted me to look up the Coleman restoration page got less elaborate treatment. The drip pan was pretty rough with some rust and food drippings, but they came off easily. Garage floor cleaner (probably phophate in there too) got most of the crap off, and I tried Rust-oleum's galvanizing spary paint. Gorgeous.

But the burner will not shut off. New generator is on there, but I need to replace the packing in the fuel stem assembly. Replacement packing parts are on the way.

The Burden of Perishable Skills

One of the recurring topics of conversation between the Missus and me is, "Why do we never have enough time?"  Granted, we're busy people, with a regular -- and sometimes overloaded -- work, exercise, and competition shooting schedule.  We're both NRA Certified Firearms Instructors and Range Safety Officers.  I "volunteer" as a Steel Challenge Match Director and we'll both soon be official USPSA ROs.  I'm an ARRL-qualified "emergency communications responder", for the lack of a better term.  (ARECC Level 1, for those that are curious.)  We like being outdoors and we work to stay fit in order to hike to the Colorado back country and snag a 14'er or two each year.

Admittedly, when we're feeling overwhelmed, we can simply let one or two things go until we're back to treading water.  No problem.

Except 'letting something go for a bit' doesn't solve the core issue: many of these activities involve perishable skills.  It's not so much the activities themselves that consume a lot of time, but the maintanance of the skills required to perform the activities competently that requires serious time commitments.  This is a very recent realization, discovered amidst some soul-searching I've been doing in an effort to combat/overcome some burn-out problems I've been having.

So let's do a brief run-down of these perishable skills that the Missus and I must maintain:

• Shooting
• Krav Maga
• Morse Code
• Motorcycling
• Physical Fitness

Anyone that is intimately familiar with the shooting sports is well aware that the associated skills are extremely perishable.  People serious about armed self-defense -- and even middle-of-the-pack competitive shooters like the Missus and me -- know the importance of routine, focused, and deliberate practice.  Even at this level, we're talking at least one trip to the range and a couple dry-fire sessions each week.  We shoot a weekly Steel Challenge match (Remember: that's competition, not practice!) and a couple of USPSA matches each month.  Toss-in the peripheral activities related to this -- designing stages, cleaning guns, reloading ammo, and driving -- we're talking a significant time commitment just to maintain one perishable skill.

We started taking Krav Maga classes in the fall of 2011.  We did this for several reasons, the explanations being beyond the scope of this post.  Much like shooting, the skills acquired thru sweat and blood (literally) are hard-earned -- and easily lost.  We took off some time from Krav during the month of April and our return in May was an eye-opener.  Yeah, we remembered this technique and that set of moves, but we were rusty, slow, and weak.  One run thru a very simple knife defense drill and it was clear that my counterstrike couldn't have knocked over a glass of milk.  We're currently taking off the month of June in order to get past some conflicting scheduling and we know our return to class in July will be . . . . . humiliating humbling.

The Missus and I are also ham radio operators, licensed General Class and Extra Class, respectively.  I got my license back when Morse code was still part of the General exam, so I was obligated to learn it.  I taught myself and managed to ace the exam.  Granted, 5 words per minute (WPM) wasn't a huge hurdle but it was a proud accomplishment, nonetheless.  I've since worked my way up to 15 WPM and practice Morse code three or four times a week.  If I skip practice for a couple of weeks, it shows -- and badly.  Again, a perishable skill.

Motorcycling isn't like riding a bicycle; once you learn the basics, you're not necessarily good to go.  There's as much -- if not more -- art and instinct to negotiating 75 MPH highway traffic as there is to the simple act of moving forward on two wheels.  I've logged well over 100K miles on various motorcycles in the last 25 years and I can tell when I haven't ridden for a month or two.  I'm not quite as 'in tune' to the ebb-and-flow of traffic.  Not quite as smooth and confident.  Not quite as alert and cautious.  I'd like to see the numbers comparing motorcycle accidents to miles ridden.  I'll bet it's heavily skewed towards the one-50-mile-ride-a-month crowd.

Physical fitness is not so much a 'skill' as it is a 'state of being'.  But like any skill, it's just as perishable.  When I was in my mid-30s, I was a CATx USCF (now USA Cycling) road racer with aspirations to tackle the RAAM.  I trained like a fiend, grinding out 200 to 300 miles each week on my trusty Litespeed.  Due to changing circumstances, I had to give up that kind of training schedule after a couple of years.  Backing-down turned to backing-off turned to abandonment.  Six months later, I could barely pedal 35 miles.  Since then, I've never been able to maintain a focused workout regimen for more than 12 months.  Something always comes up -- work, family, etc. -- and I have to drop the program.  Getting back into the groove gets harder each time, doubly so as "50 Trips Around the Sun" looms near on the horizon.

Coupled with the fact that these skills need to be addressed on a regular basis, I have the problem of being a goal-oriented person.  All of the things I mentioned above involve "journeys", not "destinations" -- and I find most journeys to be tedious and distracting.  The goal, the end-game, the finish line is what I strive for.  Check a box and move on to the next thing.  But none of those things have that.  Intermediate goals?  Yes.  Ultimate goals?  No.  So I get bored when there's little or no apparent progress toward a destination.  I also find much to mock in the 'continual improvement' mindset that's so prevalent these days.  I'm sorry, but everyone has a plateau -- and once you reach that, you bump into The Law of Diminishing Returns very quickly.  Who has the bandwidth for that?

So I'm always gonna' be a mid-pack shooter, a 'P' level Krav student, a 15 WPM Morse operator, a 125-pound bench presser, a 25-mile-weekend bicyclist, and a 200-mile-a-month (if I'm lucky) motorcyclist.  Yes, I find it frustrating to try to find a balance between these demanding activities.  Yes, I find it frustrating to continually revisit weak spots that I have worked thru in the past.  Yes, I wish I could find an end-game to all these things, wash my hands of them once-and-for-all, and enjoy the freed-up time and money to pursue other things.  But, no, because they're perishable skills, I will not give them up.  I've worked too hard to gain what little competence I have in them.  And, paraphrasing Heinlein*, I'd rather be good at several things than great at one thing.

This is my burden, even if I don't always bear it well.

TCM



* "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Robert Heinlein

scary watershed

This week seems to have been a watershed moment, and not a good one. In 3 airports, two Wally Worlds, and many other public places, it sure as hell appears that female obesity has firmly established itself.

Non-scientific, subjective, but just so: I've seen scores of mother-teenage daughter pairs traveling this week, and in the majority of them, the mother is slimmer than the daughter. It crosses apparent boundaries of class and ethnicity.

this in spite of riding the same plane today as the Golden Girls.

Could it be that I'm on the backside of thirty? I don't think so.

readings

Just finished: The American Revolution by Wood.

Now reading: Goldberg's Liberal Fascism.

Next up: either Strauss's Emergency, or Baze's The Road Home.

not bad

Ordinarily I don't watch any TV sports. However, there's a pretty good film on ESPN Classic about steroids, bodybuilding, and the Law.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster.

Buying American

Am recently on a jag to buy American more often. Seems to me that I'd rather spend $100 to hire an American to repair an older chainsaw, than $100 to buy a new chainsaw made elsewhere. The $100 spent in town on American labor to fix an older piece is likely to stay in town.

QFTD

The first generation of kids who grew up using hand sanitizer every 30 seconds and everyone gets a trophy is currently Occupying Whatever.

Says Uncle

If you can't protect it, don't collect it

Chez Fûz just received two identical letters from a company that does IT work for TriCare. One addressed to Her and one addressed to Him.

We are sorry to inform you that a backup tape of many healthcare transactions, while being transported by one of our employees, was stolen from the employee's vehicle. This tape includes sosh-scurty numbers, addresses, names, and piles of other information prone to compromise. Your information may be among those records lost, we aren't sure. Because we feel so very very very very very sorry, we're telling you about it more than 2 months after our employee notified us of the theft, and encouraging you to monitor your credit reports very carefully for the foreseeable future, in case the guy who went to such extraordinary effort to steal this data tries to use it.

And by the way, we have arranged for a fourth party company to watch your credit reports for you, for free, for one year. All you have to do is send them your sosh-scurty number, name, address, and much of the other data that we already have, but have allowed to become stolen. Just fill out the attached form and put it in the postage-paid envelope.

If I were the guy reading this letter, my first thought would be that this is a mother-schtupping phish. Sainted wife will call TriCare tomorrow to rule that out.

My next thought would be, DOD cannot transition from the SSN to a randomly-assigned service number fast enough. As the DOD's successes, failures, and lessons-learned accumulate, the rest of the Fed Gov should be compelled to follow suit.

The next thought after that would be, let's adjust all future contracts between DOD and TriCare to require them and their subcontractors to apply the same risk management practices over these records that GIs are required to use when they plan anything more dangerous than the company picnic. Make them liable for costs plus penalties for the abuse of the lost data. The dollar signs will probably tell them that they should catalog and encrypt every backup volume that ever leaves their data center, and use a courier service to transport those volumes.

Then let's require TriCare and their subcontractors to identify the clients whose records were on the lost volume, and notify only those clients. Within 48 hours of the loss.

And I was the guy reading that letter. How many thousands of other letters just like it have been read tonight?

Nervous reflex

Congress punts the spending-reduction deal. All of Europe, not just the PIIGS, at risk of collapse. I missed National Ammo Day. Bennetton pulls its ad with the photo of the Pope and the imam swapping spit. My knee-jerk reaction?

I ordered more shelf-stable stuff from Honeyville Grain, and am adjusting the shopping list for Sam's Club. Buying in bulk.

third-world visual impression in DFW

Passing through a major airport this weekend, my eyes fell on a wall-sized ad for Christmas toys. Except for the name of the retailer, there were no other English characters, just pictures of the toys, each with its QR thingy beside it. It made me feel like I was back in Barrigada, or Bizerte. Don't people here read English, dammit? Well, uh, no they don't.

C33 at DFW, BTW.

higher education bubble visible to the military

One of the biggest pushers of higher education is the United States military. They encourage it among their enlisted, they require it of their officers, and Congress lets them craft myriad ways to shower money on it. I myself am a shameless beneficiary in my own modest way.

This week, for the first time, I heard an education counselor for the military admit that there are perhaps too many Masters degrees in circulation. "How would your life be any different if there were fewer" higher-degree holders, he asked. It wouldn't, he answered for us. Then, "how would your life be different if there were fewer engine mechanics, chefs, or plumbers?" Insert vague reference to Occupy Wall Street encampments here.

He was hinting that fields needing advanced degrees are saturated with graduates, and reminding his audience that GI bill education benefits also are eligible for the trades. The benefits taper off quickly over time in such apprenticeships, because the GIs receiving them are drawing steadily increasing pay.

Makes me want to drop out, again, and go to gunsmithing school.

CCW bleg

Anybody fly through Dulles with checked pistol recently?

IAD is supposedly on D.C. soil.

It has arrived

It has arrived.

Update: We didn't make it while it was playing in theaters. Sainted wife and I watched it, and I was delighted with how it was done. Wife at once dug out my 32-year-old paperback copy and started in on it.

an addition to the if-wishes-were-horses wish list

I'd like to see R. Lee Ermey do I Like to Move It as a jody call. Lyrics should be adjusted to suit the messenger.

Friedrich Hayek on the Military Decision Making Process

Compare this:

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.

. . . in any society in which many people collaborate, this planning, whoever does it, will in some measure have to be based on knowledge which, in the first instance, is not given to the planner but to somebody else, which somehow will have to be conveyed to the planner. The various ways in which the knowledge on which people base their plans is communicated to them is the crucial problem for any theory explaining the economic process, and the problem of what is the best way of utilizing knowledge initially dispersed among all the people is at least one of the main problems of economic policy—or of designing an efficient economic system.

to this:

The peculiar character of the problem of battle command is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which that command operates does not spring into being in a concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the various members of the command's staff possess, and must consciously concentrate and integrate under the command's leadership.

. . . in any military organization . . . planning . . . will in some measure have to be based on knowledge which, in the first instance, is not given to the planner but to somebody else, which somehow will have to be conveyed to the planner. The various ways in which the knowledge on which a battle staff bases its plans is gathered is the crucial problem for any theory explaining the staff process-—thus the main problem of designing a coherent operation.

Such problems, consequences of how information is distributed among line units and staff agencies, appear even in very small organizations.

bugger

it appears that blogrolling is tango uniform now too. What next?

for a friend and valued reader

Cancer strikes another person near me. Please visit TheFatGuy, find the tipjar, and donate.

how high definition television has made my life worse

Watching HD programming on a good HD set now enables me to see the blemishes that stage makeup erased before.

Today, a fairly attractive 30-something woman spoke about finance on a cable news network. Her blouse was sleeveless and exposed all of her neck and some of her chest. The makeup on her face, under her chin, and going halfway down her neck was flawless. The digital compression of HD video also tends to smoothe out made-up skin.

But right about where the first wrinkle on her neck would be, the makeup stopped. Abruptly. From there down, it almost looked like a rash. The same fine texture also appeared on her shoulders and upper arms. It moved consistently with the limb and the skin upon the limb.

So that's what real skin looks like in HDTV under studio lighting. Gals, HD television cameras add a lot more detail than earlier cameras did. Cover up with either clothing or foundation, not just halfway down the neck.

Notes found in the Comments window

of the Training Schedule for Period 47 in DTMS:

The Commander has an agenda. The Deputy Commander has an agenda. The Sergeant Major has an agenda. Hell, S6 has an agenda. They're schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I have no agenda. So when I say that the S4 not making captain's career course this FY was nothing personal, you'll know that I'm telling the truth.

It's the schemers that put you where you are. You were a schemer, you had an agenda. . . . and, well, look where that got you.

I just did what I do best. I took your little agenda and stood it on its head. Look at what I did to this unit with a couple of MFRs and FM 7-0! Hmmm?

You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to their agenda. Even if the agenda is horrifying. If tomorrow we're cancelling thirty days of leaves in the brigade to catch up on AWT, or we're changing lanes dates because of the availability of airlift, nobody panics, because that's all part of the plan. "Embrace the suck" or "everybody gets a bite of the shit sandwich" or "would you rather be in the Stans?" or some such, all just attempts to distract you from their failure to make good plans and adhere to them.

But when four of our Soldiers have overdue travel cards because they're waiting for airfare refunds, well then everyone loses their minds!

Introduce a little FM 7-0. Upset their agendas, set them against one another until they all collapse. Then the only agenda that can prevail is no agenda at all: doctrine.

I'm an agent of doctrine. Oh, and you know the one thing about doctrine?

It's fair.

Anime characters that really look Japanese

Aside from Mushi-shi, what other anime series draw their characters to really look Japanese?

I like the heck out of Mushi-shi. Damn near everything about it.

why indeed?

The Wisconsin Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would allow concealed weapons in the state Capitol and other public places, but not in ... specifically exempted locations.

"If this bill helps make Wisconsin safer, then why are there any exceptions?" said Sen. Tim Cullen, D-Janesville.

Because your party introduced the exceptions. You would have added more if you could have gotten away with it:

Before Tuesday's vote, Democrats introduced about 20 amendments that would have expanded the number of locations where concealed carry wouldn't be allowed. Those sites included the Capitol, polling places and places of worship. Those amendments were all voted down.

And this:

Sen. Spencer Coggs, a Democrat from Milwaukee, . . . said the way to deal with violence in cities wasn't to encourage people to carry hidden weapons.

"The solution is less guns, not more guns," he said.

Prove it, numbskull. Do you have one of those CoEx1St bumper stickers too?

Gary Johnson writing clearly

If you get the deadtree of American Spectator, the one that just hit your mailbox has a good Freedom Watch column by Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico and Ilya Somin's kinda-preferred libertarian candidate for GOP nomination for President of the US.

Not available today, but go buy the deadtree if you must not wait: Government Spends Too Much Because It Does Too Much.

"you cannot limit government spending with an unlimited government."

"Truly controlling spending demands much more than juggling numbers on spreadsheets: it demands a long overdue return to the proper role of government."

Manga heroine?

GOP Presidential straw polls

I notice ads posted by Townhall.com, polling readers' opinions on GOP Presidential candidates. (Update: I navigated back to it, here).

I picked Herman Cain, just to back the dark horse as I usually do (no pun intended) (no, really, no pun intended) (honest).

What was missing, especially at this stage in the race---it's too early even to call it a race---is the option to pick which pre-candidates do not deserve further interest. Instead of picking "your favorite Republican candidate", Republicans (and I am not one) should be winnowing the field.

The usual suspects were all there, even Santorum. I don't recall whether Trump was there (going to Townhall.com's home page didn't even cough that ad up, either, so I still don't know whether Trump is there). Trump can stay, for right now, just to give the Donks something to throw tomatoes at. Update: No Trump. Maybe Townhall takes the Presidency seriously.

It was refreshing to see "Name YOUR Favorite for 2012" where the reader could supply another dark horse name if I could think of one. Well crap, I can think of five. Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, Steve Forbes, Walter Williams, and Bob Barr. But that's not the problem. The ad/poll listed, well, there must have been at least 30 potential candidates (Update: 18 plus Fill in the Blank). This many candidates being proffered, or launching exploratory committees, is a sign of a vacuum, a dearth, a void.

The GOP needs to be told who they should keep on the back benches, who they need to bring in from outside, and who they need to bring forward from the shadows. Some folks who were listed on this poll need to stay where they are and actually achieve legislative goals there before being groomed for higher office: it's too soon for Ryan and Bachmann, for example. And, frankly, Governor Palin too. Too early for Christie, and I wouldn't vote for him anyway given his RKBA stance. We're all better off with him keeping New Jersey afloat.

Besides, the office of the President isn't where the problem or the solution lies. It's Congress---the Senate most urgently, the House only less so. They're hosed and they are where discipline will do the most good.

After-Action Report: Gunsite's "Battle Rifle" Class

OK, folks, long post here. Thought I'd jot down a few (hundred?) thoughts about the Gunsite "Battle Rifle" class I attended last week.

Background

I've been slinging around these things called "battle rifles" for a decade or so now. I bounced around the spectrum of them -- FALs, HKs/PTRs, M1As, M1 Garands -- and finally settled on the M1As. (Don't worry, I kept the Garands...) I've been shooting the local CMP matches with the M1As for about five years and doing . . . . . OK. (High score so far: 465-10X) I also shoot 3-Gun matches with the M1As, running in the "Heavy Metal" -- aka, "He-Man Irons" -- division. Again, I do OK, albeit slowly. Last year I scored a Rifleman patch from the Appleseed folks using my iron-sighted LRB. So, needless to say, I can hit with an M1A.

But one thing I'm not with an M1A is fast -- and the thought of having to use iron sights in an "expedient fashion" always gave me the wiggins. So I decided to attend Gunsite's "Battle Rifle" course with an iron-sighted M1A with the hopes of remedying that.

This was to be my fourth trip to Gunsite, having taken Pistol 250, Arizona CCW, and Carbine 223 previously. I'd been warned by an attendee of the inaugural Battle Rifle class that it was heavily derived from Carbine 223 and that there'd be overlap. That didn't phase me. Carbine 223 helped me get a lot faster with that platform; I expected the same from Battle Rifle.

I was not to be disappointed.


The Curriculum

The class is one of Gunsite's 5-day "total immersion" affairs. The schedule was roughly (and with some probable ordering/sequence errors on my part):

Day 1:

Introduction, safety briefing, syllabus, and rifle fundamentals
Sight alignment and trigger control
Natural Point of Aim
Zeroing at 100 yards and 200 yards
Shooting positions

Day 2:

Introduction to the "school drills"
Ballistics
School drills
Tactical reloads and ammo management

Day 3:

School drills
Speed reloads
Movement and turns
Shooting from cover
Transitions to a sidearm
Non-standard response (moving beyond "two to the body, one to the head")
300-yard shooting

Day 4:

School drills, school drills, and more school drills, with time pressure
El Presidente
Moving targets
House clearing
Field courses: walking and running
Night shoot

Day 5:

400-yard shooting
School drills, school drills, and more school drills, with time pressure
El Presidente
School drill, El Prez "final exam"
Shoot-off
Graduation

Each day began with a quick confirmation of our 200-yard zeroes.

The school drills were:

One shot to the head @ 25 yards in 2 seconds, off-hand, starting from low-ready
Two shots to center-of-mass (COM) @ 50 yards in 4 seconds, off-hand, starting from low-ready
Two shots to COM @ 100 yards in 13 seconds, dropping to kneeling/squatting from low-ready
Two shots to COM @ 100 yards in 13 seconds, dropping to sitting from low-ready
Two shots to COM @ 200 yards in 15 seconds, dropping to prone from low-ready

Depending on your experience level, those times may seem too fast or too slow. For me, running irons, they were just barely long enough, with the targets typically turning away just as I was recovering my sight picture from the final shot.

The El Presidente was:

One shot to COM on each of three targets @ 25 yards, off-hand, starting from low ready, followed by
A speed reload, followed by
One shot to COM on each of three targets @ 25 yards

The goal was 10 seconds. My best time was 11 seconds.


Results

Well, I can say one thing for sure: I'm a lot faster now! Gunsite is all about repetition and establishing muscle memory. We performed the school drills until I couldn't stand it anymore. While it was difficult to do them quickly with iron sights, by the end of the week, I was doing them in half the time I was at the start of the week. We were taught a very clever trick to perform a speed reload on the M1As and the FALs. (Basically, lever-out the empty mag using the full mag that'll replace it...) On a full-sized Pepper Popper, I was able to make 90% of my hits at 300 yards and 2/3rds of them at 400 yards. And, yes, that little range knob on the left-hand side of the M1A's rear sight really does work! Me and my M1A -- dubbed "Mindy" (aka, "Hit Girl") -- gelled into quite a team.

On the final day, we did a "rotating" shoot-off with all of the students in the class, shooting from indoor ready against a 100-yard Popper (off-hand) and a 200-yard falling plate (prone), with a movement of firing positions in between. I was the only student in the class with iron sights and I had to haul-ass to keep up. I won 6 of the 8 initial pairings, putting me in a three-way tie for first place. Unfortunately, I was eliminated in the first round of the final shoot-off and had to be content with 3rd place, not that I was upset about that. I was congratulated by my fellow classmates, all of them impressed that I was keeping up with iron sights. Upon graduation, I received a grade of "Marksman I", the Gunsite the equivalent of a "B".

And, man, was I exhausted!


Equipment

Rifle: Springfield Armory M1A Standard, green composite stock, iron sights

Ammunition: German DAG mil-surp

Sidearm: Springfield Armory Mil-Spec 1911 (not the GI model)

Rifle Mags: CMI 20-rnd mags (I brought 35 of them)

Rifle Sling: Specter Gear "Two-Point Tactical" for the M1A

Tac Vest: an old Blackhawk MOLLE

Mag Pouches: three Tactical Tailor single-mag pouches, attached to the vest

Sidearm Holster: Blackhawk "generic" drop-leg

Hearing protection: ear plugs and Peltor electronic muffs (LOUD! I was double-protected all week...)


Problems and Equipment Failures

Ammunition: The M1A started giving me problems on the morning of the second day, not going completely into battery on random occasions. Typically, the bolt would "lock-in" when the hammer dropped but it wouldn't fire the round. (And that's a Good Thing...) This happened independent of the number of rounds in the magazine, so they weren't suspect. The first diagnosis was too much lube, but that wasn't it. I replaced the recoil spring. That wasn't it either. We had the opportunity to chronograph our ammunition and the DAG was clocking-in at measly 2650 fps. That didn't seem right and a quick call back home to the wife confirmed it. She scoured my range notes and found that my "normal" ammo -- Aussie mil-surp -- was pushing 2800 fps. I should have caught this anyway since the ejected DAG cases were barely landing forward of the muzzle when shot from prone. So, the DAG was underpowered and I knew what to do: cleanliness is next to godliness! I performed a full cleaning of the M1A every night and again during lunch, and used grease only in the op-rod's roller channel. Break Free went everywhere else. The failures-to-go-into-battery (FTBs?) all but disappeared after that. (I could usually tell when it was getting close to lunchtime or the end of the day simply by the one or two FTBs I'd start to get...) I'll be using my remaining DAG for matches and save my (more reliable) Aussie for the zombies!

That said, the DAG ammo is *very* accurate, more so than the Aussie. And there were no duds.

Rifle: None, not even after 1050 rounds in 5 days! (Total round count on this M1A is now very close to 2000...) The composite stock sure took a beating, though, and I'm glad I didn't put one of my nice wooden stocks thru this torture. I had to keep tabs on the screw holding the rear sight's elevation knob. It had a tendency to back out. Lok-Tite is the cure, I suspect.

Mags: Nada. Not a single malf could be traced to the CMIs. I had a handful of those Korean mags and they worked fine, too.


Notes and Misc

Number of students in the class: 7

Age range of students: mostly 40-somethings, with a 30- and a couple 50-somethings thrown into the mix.

Number of instructors: 3 the first two days, then 2 thereafter

Knowledge level of the instuctors: on a scale of 1 to 10, an 11.

Patience level of the instructors: (see 'Knowledge').

Rifles: 3 FALs, 3 M1As, 1 AR-10. One of the M1As was a back-up to an AR-10 that was back-up to an AR-10. (Follow that?) At one point or another, all three AR-10s went Tango-Uniform, two of them down for the full ten-count. Not cool. Everyone -- except Yours Truly -- ran an optic of one flavor or another. Aimpoints and ACOGs were the norm. Both of the other M1As were "Scout Squad" models.

Ammo consumption: 1050 rounds.

Fitness: This is not a course for someone that's out of shape. I've been lifting weights 1x or 2x per week for the last three years and I'd really wished I'd done more. Gunsite teaches reloading "up in your workspace" and holding the M1A in front of my face with only my stong-hand for countless tactical reloads had me plum tuckered out! Workouts should emphasize biceps, shoulders, and lower back. Do your stretches, too. It'll help a lot while getting back to your feet from position. In preparation for the class, I'd lost 25 pounds since October. I was grateful for my sub-200 lb weight, especially when dropping into prone!

Lights: The night shoot involves using hand-held and/or weapon-mounted lights. Not wanting to mount anything to the M1A, I'd brought a 205-lumen Fenix light (AA batteries) only to discover that, unlike Surefires, the switch doesn't activate the light until it's released. Grrrr... Nice light, but not "tactical". Lesson learned.

Transitions: Switching between my M1A (with its two-stage trigger) and my 1911 (with what is effectively a single-stage trigger) had me all over the target with the sidearm. It was rather embarrassing, actually. Perhaps my XDM is a better companion to my M1A than the 1911. (Yes, I know: heresy.)

The assistant instructor had one of the new "heavy" (7.62x51) SCARs. All I can say is, "Interesting...."


So, tha-tha-that's all folks -- thanx for hangin' in there through all that verbiage! I loved the class, even though it took a lot out of me. And I certainly don't fear the irons any more! Hope this helps anyone else considering the class.

Ciao!

TCM
(who earns a living from neither Gunsite nor Springfield Armory...)

QFTD

Airports today are what a certain group of statists want to turn the entire U.S.A. into if they get a chance. These bastards have not captured a single terrorist, or stopped a single terrorist attack. American citizens have done that . . .

This is not America, at least not the America I want to live in.

WTQ

CCW far and wide

Fûz has now carried in GA and AL.

Remember when a State government was this big? Me neither

A plaque is set in the grounds in Tuscaloosa, where Alabama's former State Capitol once stood. The plaque shows the floor plan. This is the second floor with the House at one end and the Senate at the other.



The Governor, several of his Secretaries, and the Supreme Court shared the first floor.

In its time it must have been an opulent building, one that inspired pride in all Alabamians. Damn, even far-flung Wyoming's government has spread into many more buildings than this.

Do you know what time it is?

NRA BOD ballots arrived in the American Rifleman.

Any suggestions on voting for true friends of Liberty?

Dancing in blood is, well, what They do

Matthew Vadum reports in WashTimes:

Shocked staffers at the Nation report that the publication’s website has been flooded with angry comments, expletives and unprintable threats against Ms. Piven's person.

Of course there is a suggestion that these threats come from Tea Partiers or other friends of Liberty. Rubbish.

From what we have seen of the attempt on Representative Giffords's life, Piven's movement---not ours---is ready and willing to take advantage of martyrs.

Why would we wish to give one to them? Let The Nation look among its own for the source of threats against her.

I, for one, truly wish Frances Fox Piven a long, long life wherein she sees her philosophy abandoned, her beliefs discredited, and her health preserved by doctors taking their payment in cash.

goings on in the Middle East

. . . prompt talk of an 'internet revolution.' Apparently an internet revolution won't work, or hasn't yet worked in Egypt, because the internet can be seized by the thugs who'd be displaced by the revolution.

So maybe there needs to be development of a revolutionary internet. Hinted at here.

Small, low power, short-range digital radios that relay a short packet one to another. Make them small enough, and cheap enough, that they can be stuck quietly to motor vehicles, even those of the thugs, so they circulate. Each radio repeats a message until another radio gets it.

If enough of them are in close proximity, they can either speed up bandwidth to relay files (photos, for example), or dice up transmission timeslots smaller so more stations can participate. Or both.

Allowing a huge number of hops is acceptable.

The thugs would spend valuable time finding or jamming enough radios to impair the network, while you're deploying more.

For those of us outside the isolated country, we can smuggle or airdrop more of them in. Hell, fasten them to migratory waterfowl. This is something we could already have done for our liberty-minded friends in Egypt.

It's not the internet you grew up with. It won't be internet protocol at all, in fact. But it beats being deaf and blind.