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Range Report: July 4th Excursion

Good Stuff, Patriotism

Not my range visit, but from deep in the mountains of Tennessee (greenest state in the land of the free — sorry), Reader Mike S. sends me this fine account:

Loaded up magazines, a 50BMG can of 5.56, and my AR into the truck and headed to the range.

First pleasant surprise came when checking in the office.

“Hey, Ruger guy!” It was a fellow I met a few weeks ago and showed him my Mk II Standard and Mk III 22/45. He’d just bought a Mk IV 22/45 from the range. It was a range rental but no one was renting it so … he enjoyed shooting mine so got one of his own. *happy dance*

Off to the firing line.

At one point there were 5 of us with ARs. One was full auto. We let freedom ring!

During reloads we swapped info ‘bout makes, models, modifications… gun stuff. And yes, I had the oldest model (AR15A2) with fewest mods (trigger and stock replacement) except for the youngest shooter who had a new AR. He took notes on what we said. His girlfriend was reluctant to shoot the rifles so … boyfriend took her to the pistol range to fire his 9mm. She didn’t like that one either so once again my 22/45 came into play. She didn’t like the light trigger but enjoyed the light recoil. The Volquartsen mods are perhaps too much for a newbie. When they returned my gun and mags they included a box of ammo. Nice touch.

As the sun slid between the firing line cover and tree line it got a tad hot (stop laughing you Texans!). The rifles weren’t cooling down either. So handshakes all around and off to home.

Damn good way to spend Independence Day.

I’ll say.  And I have to say that as much as I enjoyed the story, what really got to me was the display of good manners by the youngins.

Maybe we’re not doomed.

Apex Stuff

Hunting

I’m sometimes asked the best way to hunt dangerous game — specifically in Africa, where there are lots of things with teeth and claws and such, waiting for an opportunity to turn the next easy target into dinner.

Let me be perfectly clear about this:  human beings are the ultimate prey for hunters like lions.  We can’t run very fast nor very far, we have no sense of smell compared to, say, lions or leopards let alone antelopes, we don’t have sharp horns or hooves to protect ourselves or cause some kind of defensive injury to a predator, and we sure as hell can’t swim like a damn crocodile.

We are, in the animal kingdom, like marshmallows.  Pork-flavored marshmallows, to be precise, just the thing to make lions sharpen their claws before putting on a dinner napkin.

So why do these dangerous animals think that we are the apex predators?

Because we don’t fight fair.  As though fighting for one’s life, or hunting down food requires us to be all Marquis-of-Queensbury types;  what foolishness.

Fuck that.  If a pride of lions wants to target a few humans for brekkie, well… say hello to an A-10 Warthog or an Apache attack helicopter, and let’s see who’s really the apex predator, Fluffy.

The only reasons we don’t use our peak powers to hunt game are because the stupid government won’t let us, the weapons are a little on the pricey side (if you think .50 Browning ammo is spendy, try a depleted-uranium 20mm boolet).  And lastly, we don’t use all that cool wizardry because it kind of messes up the trophy hides and meat somewhat.  (Not much market for half-inch-sized hides and bloody slurry instead of steaks.)

So we’re stuck with rifles like this rather pretty Chapuis Elan Classique double rifle, in .470 Nitro Express:

For those unfamiliar with this beast of a cartridge, here’s a comparison to the 8x57mm Mauser (itself no slouch in the “killin’ things” business):

And speaking of hammer blows:

Of course, if you know what you’re doing, you’ll only need one or two blows to your wallet for that Cape buff or 600-lb Kalahari lion.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, refer to my “pork-flavored marshmallow” description above.

Gratuitous Gun Pic: Rossi Model 62 Pump-Action (.22 LR)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

This comes courtesy of our friends at Collectors, and even for them, it’s a little cheeky to ask $250 for a 1970 Rossi pump plinker in only average condition.

But that’s not the point, here.

What I want to know is this:  why does nobody (except Henry) make .22 pump-action rifles and carbines anymore?  You might say that they don’t move off the shelves anymore, which is a perfectly good reason to stop manufacturing them.

Okay, then the real question is even more puzzling:  why doesn’t every home in America have at least one of these little beauties in a closet or gun safe?

The reason I find this inexplicable is that I don’t believe that there is any more fun to be had than plinking with a pump-action .22 rifle.  This has certainly been my own experience — not just for myself, because I am a completely promiscuous shooter of .22 rifles — but for everyone I’ve ever gone shooting with, and handed them a pump rifle to shoot.  Let’s just say that huge and I mean HUGE grins of delight have been universally in evidence, coupled with a look of utter disappointment when there are no more boolets left in the tube.

Everybody loves shooting a little model 62, whether a Winchester, Taurus, Rossi, or the Henry H3 (which costs new about $500, or double that of the Rossi).  (You can’t shoot a Winchester 62 anymore because they are a Collector’s Item, i.e. they cost over a grand, regardless of condition,  if you’re lucky to find one at all.)

Here’s what I think:  if anyone were to get a .22 pump rifle, they’d never get rid of it.  As stated earlier, there is no more fun plinking to be had, with any other rifle.

So why doesn’t everyone own one?

Here’s the one I lost to burglars, a Taurus Mod 62 stainless carbine:

Ooooh that little 16.5″ barrel… [pause to let uncontrollable sobbing die away]

I’ve looked all over for a replacement, but they’re like virgins in a knock shop:  if you can find one, they’re too expensive to consider.

Stifling Dissent

Big Brother, Foreign Affairs, Government Thugs

I see with extreme displeasure that the foul UKgov has finally managed to suffocate the brilliant Kathy Gyngell and her wonderful newspaper, The Conservative Woman.

Did they do it by an outright ban?  Noooo that would have been the manly thing to do, and would have caused a massive backlash — and rightly so.

Instead, they did it by stealth:

TCW is closing as a daily site because the British state and its allies have made honest dissent increasingly impossible to sustain. The cowardice began under a Conservative government. During covid, lawful doubt was treated as a public danger. Citizens who questioned lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates, school closures and the destruction of livelihoods were smeared as cranks or extremists. Platforms were encouraged to police opinion. The MSM supinely obeyed. The BBC was, as usual, complicit. Conservative ministers talked about liberty while presiding over one of the greatest assaults on free speech in modern British history.

Then the Tories put the machinery on the statute book.

The Online Safety Act was driven through under a Conservative government and received Royal Assent in October 2023. The Act passed into law on October 26, 2023, and made Ofcom responsible for implementing the new online safety regime. It was sold as ‘protection for children’. In reality, it created a vast regulatory structure for online speech and made Ofcom the policeman of the internet. Platforms were pushed into permanent risk-avoidance. Lawful speech became a compliance problem. ‘Safety’ became the master word. Once that word rules, freedom withers. Free speech has never been ‘safe’.

This was one of the great betrayals of modern Conservatism. The party that should have defended liberty built the legal runway for censorship. It handed power to Ofcom, trained platforms to fear liability, and wrapped the whole operation in the language of harm prevention. The result was predictable. Companies do not defend free speech when regulators are watching. They protect themselves. They over-remove, over-block, over-filter and over-comply.

That is how dissent gets buried.

The same Act reinforced Ofcom’s media literacy role. That matters. Media literacy sounds harmless. It is not harmless when the regulator, the Government, public broadcasters and tech platforms are all marching in the same direction. It becomes the polite name for teaching the public which sources to trust and which to distrust.

This is the bridge to the next phase. First the state regulates platforms in the name of safety. Then it works with broadcasters, tech companies, charities and public bodies to shape what citizens are taught to regard as reliable. Then it proposes to promote ‘trusted news’ above rival voices.

That is the censorship escalator. Labour is now riding it with enthusiasm.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s 2026-2029 Media Literacy Action Plan, A Safe, Informed Digital Nation, dresses control in the language of confidence, safety, critical thinking and resilience. Published on March 16, 2026, it sets out the steps departments across government are taking to strengthen media literacy over the next three years, including helping people ‘think critically about online content’ and ‘find trustworthy information’. The state wants to shape how citizens consume information online. It says it wants people to find trustworthy information. That sounds innocent until you ask the only question that matters: trustworthy according to whom?

Well, there you have it.  If the above doesn’t make your blood boil, we can’t be friends.

And this, children, is why we have a First Amendment Over ere, despite the many efforts by Gummint, the Left and their lickspittle allies to undermine or bypass it.

Am I angry about this?  You bet your ass I am.  It’s bullshit like this which moves people from:

…to:

And note that had I published this post in the UK, I would have been shut down and/or arrested for “inciting violence” or some such twaddle.

It’s also another reason why I have eschewed any form of advertising on this particular website:  I’m not going to hand the cocksuckers a means to shut me up.

Range time?  What do you think?  I had planned on doing some .22 plinking anyway, but now I think I may have to expend something of a somewhat larger caliber.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

From Larry Correia, talking about that Nazi asshole dropping out of the Maine Senatorial race:

Don’t let [the Democrats] distance themselves now. These shit heads knew Platner was scum the whole time and made excuses for him.

Yeah, but they’ve pretty much made scumminess their litmus test for all their candidates, e.g. Mamdami and Ilhan Omar.

And before them, Obama, and Biden, and Clinton….