Month: February 2021

Here We Go Again

Anti-Gun Nannies, Politics

…only this time with feeling:

Guns are white supremacy’s deadliest weapon. We must disarm hate.

Oh, really.  And who are these “white supremacists”, and who gets to identify them?  Well, the answer to the first is easy:  that would be “anyone who disagrees with my opinions” — uttered by any politician of the Socialist persuasion — and such disagreement is ipso facto  a definition of a white supremacist.

Got that?  Now read on to discover the primary identifier:

This deadly connection between white supremacy and guns runs throughout our history. In 1866, armed Confederate loyalists stormed the Louisiana Constitutional Convention, murdering 34 Black Americans in an attempt to block suffrage for freed slaves. In 1898, an armed White mob in Wilmington, N.C., proclaimed a “White Declaration of Independence,” then killed at least 60 residents before replacing the multiracial local government with white supremacists. In 1921, mobs of armed White residents of Tulsa attacked the Black neighborhood of Greenwood, murdering as many as 300 Tulsans for the crime of being Black and successful.

The commonality of all the above?   Why, it should be obvious:

That’s right:  all white supremacists have BOOBS !!!!!

(I’m just trying to follow this reporter’s logic, here.)

Okay, maybe that’s not what she was talking about.  What could she be talking about?  From the article itself:

Oh, okay.

So in the interest of racial comity, I’m calling on all women to throw off their Confederate bikinis.  Pics (or preferably videos) can be sent to me for verification.

The Swede

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

Longtime Readers will all know of my fondness for the venerable 6.5x55mm Swede (SE), and I happened on an article which gives chapter and verse to this wonderful cartridge.

With all due respect to its larger 7mm / .30 siblings, I stand firm in my belief that the Swede is quite possibly the perfect medium-game cartridge, the excellence of the .308 Win, .30-06 Springfield and so on notwithstanding.  When you take all the factors of shooting into account:  bullet velocity, flatness of trajectory, penetration, and most especially recoil, the sum of the Swede’s parts of this equation are probably higher than the bigger cartridges.  Here’s a pic I’ve posted before, comparing the Swede to its contemporaries:

Here it us with some other “quarter-inchers”:

And finally, vs. the .308 Win (my “1.a” choice for a do-it-all cartridge):

I will say unreservedly that if I were limited to only one cartridge for “ordinary” (i.e. excluding African large game) hunting whether human or animal, the Swede would get my vote ahead of every other cartridge I’ve ever fired.

The only caveat I have is that the Swede doesn’t seem to do as well in shorter-barreled rifles.  I think that in standard loadings — and certainly with the Hirtenberg mil-surp stuff — the bullet needs a longer barrel to get that bullet spinning towards its performance apex.  And the ultimate expression of that is in the wonderful Mauser Mod 96 with its 29″ barrel, as never used (in combat) by the Swedish Army:

In my earlier post on Great War Rifles, I said:

But of all the rifles issued to soldiers of that era, the one I’d have chosen to go to war with would have been the Swedish Model 1896 Mauser.  It has moderate recoil, yet the bullet travels flat and hits hard.  The rifle is also fantastically accurate: consistently-placed head shots at 400 meters and torso shots at 600 meters are quite possible even for an average shot like myself.

I haven’t changed my mind since.

That said, I have old eyes and the iron sights would be problematic — but mounting a scope on the old M96 can be tricky, with that 90-degree-lift straight bolt.  So I’d have to take instead my current love, the CZ 550 with its 24″ barrel:

Compromises… we all have to make them.

Down With Gravity

Business, Gummint

I absolutely love it when the Left ignores not only commonsense but history.  Such as here, in (of course) California:

A new “Hero Pay” mandate in Long Beach, California has inadvertently cost some frontline grocery workers their jobs.
Ralphs and Food 4 Less, both owned by the parent company Kroger, announced Monday that they will be closing 25% of their stores in Long Beach after the city council passed an ordinance requiring companies with over 300 employees nationwide to pay employees an extra $4 per hour.

There’s nothing “inadvertent” about this, because an Economics 101 student could have seen it coming.

In an industry which runs on 2.5% net margins and where savings of 0.15% on costs can end up with a promotion to VP, adding $4/hour to an already-high California $14 makes it inevitable that management would close two stores to keep that district’s aggregate costs down.

What’s even worse is that the city council’s actions were unnecessary.  Just about everywhere, supermarket employees were raking it in during the various Chinkvirus lockdowns through overtime, as demand for product in many cases outstripped the stores’ ability to restock shelves, or else led to more frequent deliveries, which meant that shelf-packers needed to work longer hours to refill front-store real estate.  This is not just anecdotal, but hard fact, and if the Long Beach city council had had an ounce of smarts, they would have known all about it.  But no-o-o-o.  They had to make a grand gesture to “reward” the “heroic” supermarket workers, and now about five hundred of said heroes will be out of a job.  Some reward.

The common sense part is also lacking.  As any fule kno, if you drive up overhead in a part of any business, that part will either be scaled back, replaced with a cheaper option or else eliminated altogether.  It is common knowledge that in the face of “living wage” demands and impositions, the fast-food industry (which has higher margins than supermarkets) is working on replacing high-cost workers with robots.  Supermarket work is more complicated than fast food work, so robotics could only go so far (and not very, in most cases) to reduce staff costs.  Hence:  store closings.

Of course, I said “as any fule kno”, but the Left and gummint [some overlap]  are, as always, not going to let little things like commonsense and experience get in the way of Marxist principle or virtue-signaling.

The key here will be if they can repeal this stupid ordinance before Kroger closes the stores — assuming that they even want to do that and be shown up as the fucking morons they are.

Don’t hold your breath.

Too Late, She Cried

Politics, RINO/GOPe

This is quite priceless:

John Kasich: GOP Will Begin to Die if It Stays a Trump Party

Hate to tell you this, John ol’ buddy, but the GOP as you know it (GOPe) is already dead.  It’s dead because we’re sick of you clueless country-club Establishment Republicans sucking up to the Left, sick of you always compromising with the Left and allowing this country to drift ever leftward towards socialism, and sick of your constant treachery towards the former President.

Here are some of what I call the Trump Principles:

  • laws, judges and a judicial system which are solidly and immovably based on original Constitutional principles, especially:
    — an unswerving support of citizen’s gun rights
    — property rights
    — and freedom of speech
  • secure national borders closed to illegal immigration, and accelerated deportation of those who sneak their way in
  • Americans having jobs before the jobs are outsourced to other countries
  • dismantling the regulatory state
  • refusing to let eco-nonsense be the driving force behind policy and regulation, and
  • an “America First” foreign policy which deals from strength not weakness, which treats Russia, China and hostile Muslim countries with guarded caution and fosters closer ties with the Anglosphere nations

During his lamentably-short time in office, President Donald Trump followed all the above to some degree (when he was allowed to) either by his own actions or through the legislature, despite having been violently opposed by the hostile Left and stabbed in the back by the GOPe and Swamp Establishment on many occasions.

IF the Republican Party of which you speak follows all the above principles faithfully, even against massive and ferocious opposition from the Left, then we can be friends.

Otherwise, rot and fade away into history.  Your time is over.

Target Practice

Architecture

This has been called “the coolest home in Britain“, but I think it should be used for target practice by the Royal Artillery.

One picture should suffice:

It has been described, correctly, as “a shipping container in a field” which would be fine except that shipping containers don’t cost nearly $5 million.

Every single person involved in its construction — from the guy who gave them planning permission, to the architect, builder and owner, all need to be flogged in the public square.

And to think that for just a little more, you could get this place instead…

See the article linked for the interiors.