The Blag Switch

Okay folks, seriously: Four Rules.  There aren’t many of them, and they’re not hard to understand.  And when properly followed, they prevent you from blowing your jumblies off:

“A report of shots fired at 19th and Eye streets came in to police and responding officers found evidence that a shooting had in fact taken place. A call came in soon after from San Joaquin Hospital reporting a gunshot victim, police said.

Hasley was uncooperative when officers tried to interview him, police said. He may have been putting a gun in his waistband when it went off.”

Also: crammed in your waistband is NOT the way to carry.  Get yourself a holster that fits your weapon, has strong retention, and completely covers the trigger.

For some weeks, my good friends Trevor and Molly have been talking about getting a gun or two.  They’re newlyweds and have been thinking that having a gun for home protection might not be a bad idea.  Trevor decided that, for his part, he really wanted a shotgun, which for home defense is a superb choice.  Molly’s looking into something more in the handgun area, but in the meantime, Trevor decided that a scatter gun was in his future. So today, we met up at the White Elephant (a local sporting-goods/toy store) and, after I explained the principles between the different sorts of shotguns, we slung a few around to see if there were any he liked the feel of.

Finding the selection somewhat lacking, we shuffled our way a few blocks up the street to ARC, Inc.  Now ARC is by far and away my favorite gunstore in town.  It’s the local EBR/”Exotics” store, and it’s not unusual to find the walls adorned with AR-15s, M4geries, AKs, grenade launchers, etc.  (They’re also the best place in Eastern Washington to get a silencer, if you’re in the market.)  So it’s pretty hit-or-miss, and so I wasn’t expecting to find anything that was quite what Trevor was looking for. Fortunately, I was wrong.  In a place of honor on the wall they had a brand new Mossberg 590, with a full-length (7 round) tubular magazine and all-black furniture.  Trevor gave it a look, gave it a heft, and was sold.  After filling out the paper work and waiting for the ATF call-in, we through the gun and a couple of boxes of slugs into his car and off we went to the Spokane Rifle Club.

All I can say is: I suddenly regret that moritorium I put on buying any more guns for awhile.  After putting some hefty 73 caliber slugs down range, I suddenly got a huge itch for a smooth bore.  I don’t own any shotguns, and Trevor’s Mossberg convinced me in about 7 rounds that I’m pretty sure I need one. As for Trevor?  He’s extremely happy with his investment:

Within two boxes, all of Trevor’s slugs were landing within bad-guy-of-angle (the only really meaningful goal for a defensive gun) at 15 yards.  Next step for him?  The Defensive Shotgun course over at Sharpshooters. One more responsible, armed, (soon to be very well-trained) American citizen.

Every sport has its masters.  In the world of sport shooting, Todd Jarrett is one the guys the masters all look up to.  Check out his performance two years ago at the Florida State (IPSC, I assume) Championships.  Pay special attention to the speed of his reloads and how little muzzle jump he has with each shot.

Absolutely unreal.

Edited to Add: One of the great things about shooting sports is that women and men are on even footing.  A perfect example of this?  Julie Goloski, who’s won just about every pistol competition out there.  Here’s a video montage of her 2006 season:

Okay, a few things.  1.) I would have been blogging more in this space but I’ve been slammed with work of various kinds.  Also, I recently discovered the hilarity that is Zero Punctuation, which is a weekly video game review.  It’s hilarious to the point that I’m pretty sure I enjoyed the four minute review of some games more than I enjoyed the game itself.  Case in point.

2.) If any rich admirers out there are wondering what to get me for Christmas, I’d like one of these in .300 Win Mag or this ludicrously nice amp or a copy of the Secret Museum of Mankind if you can find one.

3.) Well, my Washington State ballot arrived a couple of days ago.  (WA ballots are all mail-in.)  Which means I finally have to figure out who I’m voting for for President.  I still haven’t ruled out writing in one of the Roosevelts.

Here’s a slick machining hack to get around the (much lamented) shortage of .223 Rem and 5.56 NATO ammunition shortages: make your own bullets from .22LR cases and lead wire.  Now I’m a little skittish to try this myself (as tempting as it may be, since I have a beautiful Sig 556 which I haven’t taken to the range in far too long), but that’s mainly because I don’t trust my handloading skills enough to try something like this.

Still, I may show this to my dad (a cartridge collector and handloader extraordinaire) next I’m down his direction and ask if he thinks it’d be feasible to set myself up for it.

Of course, it doesn’t look like the .223 shortage will be getting better anytime soon.  And even if it did, there’s still high ammo prices to deal with.  Copper’s hovering at right around $3/lb according to COMEX, up from less than a $1 a few years ago.  Lead’s up by a similar factor.  For those of us who are morally opposed to running Eastern Block steel-cased, magnet-attracting ammo through our rifles, it means that a day at the range can be kind of a pricey proposition.

But hey, it least it means I’m getting PLENTY of trigger time on my trusty old Mosin 91/30.  Nothing like half-century-old Bulgarian Mil-Surp ammo to make for (comparitively) cheap shooting.

Okay, so I’m USUALLY more of a C&R kind of guy, but I kind of want one of these.  Kind of, like, a lot.  An AR-15 upper that runs 5.7×28mm and takes those cute little 50-round P-90 mags?  Yes, please!  And the spent brass just falls out the mag well, which is slick.

Of course, the upper is forged from pure Unobtainium with the working parts cast in Canthavenite, so they don’t even bother listing a price.  Still, if these things are really for sale, then one is DEFINITELY on my list of shit to buy if I ever win the lotto.*

*Aaron doesn’t actually play the lotto.

Sorry that blogging’s been light (read: non-existent) at both my online stomping grounds. Work was pretty intense all last week and then I had the first weekend to myself in ages. And as is often the case with such things, I had a chance to recreate for a few days, so I recreated the HELL out of the weekend. I spent about 9 hours all told on Saturday curled up on the couch with cat, beer, pizza, and Civilization: Revolution.

I also hit up the range with the lovely Becky Paul to put a couple of boxes of Bulgarian Military Surplus ammo through my Mosin-Nagant 91/30. It’s amazing that, after 70 years, it still shoots beautifully. With the regular iron sights I was able to reliably tag a 6 inch target at 50 yards (which is pretty good for me.) Becky did well with it, too, which didn’t surprise me in the slightest, but did cause a bit of shock on the part of the range officer. (”You’re not gonna let her shoot that big ol’ thing are you?” Answer: “Of course I am. She’s more hardcore than I am. I have a bum shoulder and whinge like a little wussy about what the mean ol’ boomstick does to it; I’m surprised SHE lets ME shoot it.”)

Oh, and I suppose I should formally introduce the blog to the latest addition of the household. My excuse: she didn’t have a name until yesterday, and one can’t well make introductions when one party lacks a moniker. So, without further ado:

Asterisk, this is the blog; blog this is Asterisk. (Sorry for the camera phone picture - I’ve once again mislaid the cord to my good camera.) She was apparently abandoned when her last family moved away and left her in the empty house. The realtor found her a few days later shut up in the house and called the humane society, who arranged for her to be put up for adoption at PetSmart, where we found her. Once she settled in, she took to Kenlyn and I pretty well. She’s also taken quite a fondness to a little stuffed hedgehog that I’ve had for ages. She carries it around in her mouth, bats it around the kitchen, chases it when it’s thrown/kicked, etc.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print, for now. Hopefully I’ll be able to blog a little more reliably in near future.

Ever have “one of those days”? I’m definitely coming down off of “one of those weeks.” And apologies all around for dropping off the map during it. But between the car breaking, busting my ass on a long week at work, and various time-intensive projects and snafus, I’ve been pretty short on time.

Today was good, though. It’s about time I had a nice, relaxing day. My folks were in town for my great aunt’s 80th birthday, so we took the birthday girl out to lunch. It was nice to see my aunt again. I’ve never been particularly close to her, but she’s a sweet woman, and incredibly sharp. It was also good to see the folks again. I’m re-learning just how easy it can be to get wrapped up in work at the expense of neglecting important people in one’s life.

After lunch, dropped my aunt off and went out to the range. I’ve been wanting to try out the Spokane Rifle Club range for awhile, and with Dad in town and the weather a gorgeous 80 degrees, it seemed like the perfect day for it.

So Mom, Dad, Becky and I headed out there with my Sig-556 and my Mosin-Nagant, neither of which I’ve really shot for lack of a good range. The Sig’s proving to be fun, but the BUIS on it suck. The Mosin, on the other hand, is a LOT of fun. And I’m pretty decent with it, too. My first 5 shots were on paper and my second five were not only on paper but decently grouped.

Tomorrow, Mom, Dad, and I are off to breakfast before they head out of town, which will be great. Even though my parents DO get up at 4am every morning, so breakfast with them will mean me rolling my lazy but out of bed by 8am or so. Which honestly, is probably a good idea anyway, since I’m trying to be more of a morning person. (Not an easy task when my biological clock seems to think that “bed time” falls somewhere around 4am.)

And on that note, I think it’s reading and sleep-attempting time.

Well, I’m off to try my hand at IPSC-style practical shooting for the first time. Wish me luck. It’s not an actual competition, just friendly practice at my local range. But still, I have to admit, I’m kinda nervous.

UPDATE: I’m really happy with how I did.  I did two runs and got a 1.86 and a 1.91.  (The runs are scored as the ratio of accuracy to time.  So the better you shoot and the less time you take, the better your score.)  I didn’t hit any of the no-shoots and all the guys there who had done it before said my muzzle control was excellent. 

Sorry, couldn’t resist the Myth Busters reference. Anywho: take a look at this slick video of a guy shooting a sealing-breach 1895 Nagant Revolver with a silencer.

Yes, it does in fact silence the gun. With conventional revolvers this isn’t possible. The gas escaping out of the gap between the cylinder and the barrel will still have a significant report. The Nagant can only be silenced because of an amazingly clever mechanism by which the cylinder, cartridge, and barrel conspire to make a totally enclosed breech. Pretty cool stuff.

It’s interesting to me that here in the States we have our own pantheon of firearms innovators.  Samuel Colt, Christian Sharps, John Moses Browning, et al.  But we don’t much hear about all the amazing innovators and innovations abroad.  I mean, the above is a product of the Nagant brothers, originally of Belgium, and it’s a brilliant design.  Mikhail Kalashnikov is the father of the assault rifle in the same way that Browning is the father of the semi-auto pistol.

Not to denigrate the works of domestic firearms designers, but I just think it’s interesting that the revolutions in firearms design abroad are so often either ignored or adopted quietly and that their designers so seldom get the credit they deserve here in the States.  My Sig 556 uses a gas-piston system which is, in concept, identical to the one which Kalashnikov invented for the AK-47 and yet I’ve met many people who treat the notion with a “gee what will they think of next” sense of novelty.