Author: Kim du Toit

Replacement

The Gun Thing

Recently, I’ve done two ammo tests using my faithful Marlin 880 SQ .22 rifle, and while the gun is still more accurate than I can shoot it, I’m not happy with the trigger. The fact is that lately I’ve been spoiled by shooting some rifles with incredible triggers, and by comparison, the 880’s trigger is crap: lots of creep, inconsistent take-up, and sometimes a little grit when it releases. I’ve taken the trigger group apart and cleaned it thoroughly, so it’s not that: it’s just not a good trigger, and the gun isn’t worth spending money with a gunsmith who may or may not be able to improve it.

So I think I’m going to put the 880SQ into honorable retirement, and look out for a decent .22 rifle over the next year or so. I have a couple rifles on the short list — unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of money to spend on a match-grade one, nor do I actually want to get into that arena again — but my standards are nevertheless quite high and I do have some idea what I’m looking for.

My #1 choice is probably the Savage Mark II BV, and it has good reviews (like this one). It is kinda ugly, though it does have Savage’s sublime AccuTrigger:

My #1a choice might just be the slightly more expensive CZ 455 Lux model, because even though it doesn’t have a set trigger or heavy barrel, it is so beautiful I want it to bear my children:

I also like that it has iron sights for those “Oh shit, I just broke my scope!” situations.

As for a scope, I’m not too bothered; I have several I could use, but if I have enough room in the budget to buy a new one, I’ll probably get a Weaver RV9 3-9x32mm (+/- $250) or my old favorite, the Leupold VX-I 4x28mm (+/- $200). I’ve owned both in my time, and they’re excellent.

All suggestions and personal experiences on the above topic in Comments. Please don’t suggest any of the super-premium rifles like Anschutz because as I said, I don’t want to bench-rest it and I’m not going to drop over a grand on a plinker.

Girlyman Alert

Culture, Entertainment

Oh good grief. Apparently there’s a talk show for men scheduled to appear on TV sometime soon.

I use the term “men” in its most penumbral sense because:

“We have all the shows in the world that empower women to talk about these things – which they should exist by the way because, let’s be honest, women deserve a safe space to have these conversations – but men don’t talk,” he says. “Even the idea of this show made men scoff, like, ‘Oh, who’s going to watch men talking to each other?’ That’s how rare this is. This is not The View for men. This is a conversation show. This is a show where men create a comfortable space for each other to go deep and have a conversation and we hope that this stuff happens in real life, too.”
Topics include personal subjects like body image, fatherhood and dating/relationships, but Baldoni also hopes to cover current events when appropriate.

My prediction: this show is going to tank worse than the upcoming “Lena Dunham Gives Harvey Weinstein A Pityfuck” Christmas special on the Disney Channel.

For those who can’t get it: men don’t talk about their feelings, body image or dating relationships. We already have a comfortable space; it’s called a pub or bar, and it’s there where we discuss our problems: the broken transmission on the truck, the dickhead boss, why [insert sports team of choice] sucks so badly this season, why we did badly in [insert relevant competition] last week, and why we have to call off the annual fishing trip (because the doctor says that the wife’s going to have the baby prematurely, or some such bullshit).

Discussion of dating relationships is of the “So, did you score last night?” variety, followed by a sympathetic shake of the head if negative, or a high-five if positive. If we talk about “body image” it’s of the “The Doc says I need to do something about this gut or I’m gonna die soon” type. That’s it.

You got it right, Baldoni: men don’t talk, and we don’t watch shows about men talking either. Maybe if your guest list included actual men (e.g. Clint Eastwood), we might be tempted; but the problem is that such a show would include a few terse sentences, lots of nodding and even more sips of single malt. Unless the men start showing off their latest gun- or new car purchase; oh, then the conversation will flow, you betcha. But that’s not your typical modern-day TV entertainment, is it? Oh no: just look at the list of participants, and note that one is a transgender butch dyke of indeterminate gender who specializes in Wokedom or some such crap. That’s yer conversation fodder eight there, you betcha.

So having turned off real men, all the viewers of this crappy little show will be women and girlymen, and no doubt these same viewers will start Volume-11 whining and hashtagging the moment any one of the participants says anything remotely manly or controversial, or anything that isn’t part of the Universal Pussification Zeitgeist.

Then the show will be ignominiously canceled, and it’ll be All Men’s Fault, as usual. So much for a masculine “safe space”. What bollocks.

I’ve told the story before about my incredulity towards the stupid Hollywood production process as portrayed in the movie “The Player“, and the acid comment from The Mrs., “They aren’t even that smart.”

Here’s proof of that statement.

Range Report — Federal Auto Match .22 LR

The Gun Thing

So I got an email from Erik at AmmoMan, asking me if he were to send me a couple boxes of ammo, would I test them?

I’m just a poor corrupt blogger, so when people send me free stuff (especially ammo) in exchange for a link, who am I to turn it down? (Erik didn’t actually ask me for a link, but he’s getting one anyway.)

So a couple boxes of Federal’s Auto Match 40-grain ammo arrived at Ye Olde Ammoe Locquer, and off to DFW Range I went again. Here’s the ammo:

…fired as usual through my Marlin 880SQ:

Readers will remember my last test of Federal .22 ammo, so just for the hell of it I popped five rounds of the Federal Range ammo off, just to clear away the cobwebs and see if I hadn’t been imagining things when it came to its accuracy. I hadn’t.

This stuff is good — the “miss” at the bottom was a called flyer. Now for the Auto Match*:

…also with a called flyer at the bottom. Damn, this Auto Match stuff is also good. I fired off a few more 5-round strings into other targets, but with no appreciable difference.

So with that suspicion in mind, I found an old box (phew, at least ten years old) of Federal Match, and fired that too:

Wait… what? Another 5-round string:

Hmmm… I think Federal may have improved their .22 ammo quality over the past decade. But I’d hate to mislead anyone, so it looks like moar testing will be required… but as it stands right now, this ammo is very good — both the Auto Match and the Range variants.

Anyway, just for the hell of it, I’d also brought my Taurus Mod 62 for a little fun plinking.

So I loaded it up with the Federal Auto Match and fired off  a few rounds, then got serious, and fired a seven-round string (why seven? that’s what was left in the tube magazine). This was offhand and unscoped into a (larger) target at 25 yards:

Ugh. Either I have to have that cornea surgery soon, or else it’s going to be scoped shooting for the rest of my life. That, or a lot more practice.

*Federal claims that the Auto Match ammo is designed especially for accurate semi-auto shooting. Well, I still don’t have a semi-auto .22 rifle, so I can’t test that claim. But it doesn’t matter — it works just fine in any rifle, as far as I can tell.

 

The Ugliest Schools In The World

Seen On Campus, Two-Minute Hate

As I paged through this article (actually entitled 16 Of The Most Beautiful Schools In The World ), I experienced a growing sense of horror: every single one was indescribably awful, terrible and soulless. In particular, the temporary structure at the Estonian school  looks to me like a modernistic version of an extermination-camp gas chamber, complete with Zyklon-B inlets:

I expected to find beauty: harmonious buildings set in gorgeous countrysides, or if in an urban locale, at least buildings which were designed to accommodate the pupils’ needs. One of the descriptions actually includes the words “square lines and hard angles”, and another, “jagged, playful exterior” — at a kindergarten(!) no less — and I ask: when the fuck did these design motifs become equated with beauty?

Every single one of the architects responsible for these revolting structures needs to be driven from the public square with whips, accompanied only by scornful cries from people who are sick to death of their ghastly pretensions. I’d start with the guy responsible for this ghastly edifice at Duke University:

This Etch-A-Sketch structure is set within a framework of exquisite, graceful Gothic buildings, and you know what it is? It’s a middle finger extended squarely at tradition — and for a conservative like myself, it embodies everything that’s wrong with academia (because ultimately, the college administration approved this revolting design).

If you want to know how civilization ends, this is as good an indicator as any I’ve ever seen.