Tag: Guns and such

My favorite toy

Speaking Of Licensing Guns

Bad News, Gummint, The Gun Thing

By now we all know what the godless socialists are planning in Virginia, to whit, licensing of gun owners with respect to the following:

An “assault firearm” means a semi-automatic center-fire rifle that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and has one of the following characteristics: (i) a folding or telescoping stock; (ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the rifle; (iii) a thumbhole stock; (iv) a second handgrip or a protruding grip that can be held by the non-trigger hand; (v) a bayonet mount; (vi) a grenade launcher; (vii) a flare launcher; (viii) a silencer; (ix) a flash suppressor; (x) a muzzle brake; (xi) a muzzle compensator; (xii) a threaded barrel capable of accepting (a) a silencer, (b) a flash suppressor, (c) a muzzle brake, or (d) a muzzle compensator; or (xiii) any characteristic of like kind as enumerated in clauses (i) through (xii).

The little bastard is talking about something like this AR:

or this Dragunov:

or even this AK:

I am so glad I live in Texas;  but that doesn’t mean something similar couldn’t happen here in the future.

This means only one thing…  yep, you read my mind:  a trip to the local Eeevil Loophole Gun Show™ over the weekend for one of those private transactions that the would-be gun confiscaters hate so much.

I call it “civic duty”.  I don’t care what they  call it.

Torture Test

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

This post is appearing early in the morning so that if any of you are off to the range later, you can make the necessary preparations.

A while back I was reading about the practice method known as “spot shooting”, something I’ve been doing forever, but didn’t know it had acquired a name.  Put simply, it’s a routine whereby you fill a blank target sheet with small circles, then shoot one (and only one) shot per circle in the shortest possible time.  Here’s how to do it.

The next time you go to the range for some .22 practice, get one of the cheap full-sized silhouette paper targets (or, if you’re one of the people who buys the things in bulk, then takes a few to each range visit, keep one aside after your regular practice session).  Then affix a hundred small circle targets onto the paper, spaced about two inches (2″) apart — rows are best so you can see where you are — then load up the necessary numbers of mags, and get going.  Here are two examples of the target spots, the Birchwood Casey orange dot and the Shoot-N-C type:

These are the two more expensive ways to practice this drill, by the way;  real  Cheap Bastards (e.g. Kim) will go to a discount store or online and buy rolls of the little price tags such as made by ChromaLabel, which have the advantage of being multicolored, available in 1″, 3/4″, 1/2″ or even smaller sizes, and they typically cost less than a penny per spot.

The advantage of this is that it’s a really cheap method of practice, and it is cruelly unforgiving:  there’s no “9-ring” or similar types of escape routes — just a small circle which either has a bullet-hole in it, or not.  It is also unbelievably tiring, mentally.  People often boast of how they blast off many hundreds of rounds at a single practice session, but a hundred in a single practice routine?  Be my guest:  if you’ve never done it before, it’s a whole lot tougher than it looks.

At the end of the routine, you score yourself out of 100, and anything less than 100% represents failure (there is no participation trophy in precision shooting).  When / if you do manage to get 100% consistently (good luck with that), then start timing yourself (or have a range buddy time you) and try to get that same 100% in less and less time.  (It doesn’t need to be stopwatch-perfect, especially the first few times you do it.)

And by the way:  if you’ve never done this before, start with larger dots (1″), and then gradually work your way down to the smaller ones when / if you master that size (uh huh).  For my .22 rifles, I shoot 1″ spots at 25 yards unscoped, and 3/4″ spots scoped;  for a handgun, it’s 1″ or 3/4″ spots at ten yards.

Here’s what this wonderful practice routine teaches you:

  • Patience.  If you lose patience, you will start missing the target.  It’s that simple.
  • Target re-acquisition.  How to move on and aim at the next dot, make sure your aim is true, then fire and move on… one hundred times.
  • Making sure your sight picture is perfect.  No matter how well you think you know your gun, after about the tenth shot, you will know exactly — exactly — what sight picture will score a hit.  Now do it again, ninety times in a row.

About six months ago I got my first-ever 100, with a Browning Buck Mark borrowed from Daughter, shooting the 3/4″ dots at 10 yards.  I felt like doing a victory lap around the range, or at least a Happy Dance, but apparently jumping around like a lunatic while firing bullets into the ceiling is not Acceptable Range Behavior, for some reason.

By the way, this is also a great drill when practicing with your carry piece — only it gets a little expensive even if you’re reloading.  I normally end my session with just one or two mags’ worth of dots (say fifteen rounds of .45 ACP or twenty-five rounds of 9mm), also at ten yards.  I don’t take too much time either:  I shoot what I call “rapid deliberate”, which is about 1.5 seconds per shot.  And if you think this is too easy, toughen up your scoring criteria:  half a bullet circumference or more in the dot counts as a hit, less than half is a miss.  I’ve never yet hit every dot with my carry pieces, but I’ve come damn close.

All this shooting talk is making my finger itch.  If you’ll excuse me… I think I need to go load up my range bag.

Quote Of The Day

Gummint, QOTD, The Gun Thing

From Walter Williams:

“Knowing who owns what weapons is the first step to confiscation.”

I don’t think I have to caution any of my Readers about this, but anyway:  if ever some government apparatchik wants to register guns — any  kind of guns — resist, refuse to comply, make a noise about it.

I should point out that back in the police state known as Apartheid South Africa, all guns had to be registered to owners, who were themselves registered as such.

I had five  guns that the Gummint knew nothing about.  In fact, now that I think back, I had more un-registered guns than registered ones.  If it was possible under that government, it should be easy-peasy Over Here.

Do ye the same, O My Readers.

Return Of The Nat– I mean Colt Python

The Gun Thing

Several people have written to me about Colt’s re-release of the venerable Colt Python.  From the horse’s mouth:

What… no Colt Royal Blue?  I’ll wait.  I don’t want a Python Pimp Model, thankee verramush.

Anyway, I can’t wait for the gun mags to review the new Python.  What I’d really  like to see is some intrepid reviewer doing a side-by side comparison of an old 1970s-era Python with the new one, to see if Colt will be manufacturing guns to the same degree of quality as they did back then.

I don’t want to be all negative and stuff, but something in my water tells me that’s not gonna happen.

But just to be perfectly clear on this:   as a HUGE fan of the Python revolver — I still have my old 6″ Python holster, against the day when I get another one — I will be the happiest man in the world to be proved wrong.

Some of you may be wondering, if I’m such a Python groupie, why I ever sold my old one:

Answer:  I didn’t sell it.  I shot it till it broke, irretrievably:  frame bent, cylinder busted, the full catastrophe.  Only the barrel and trigger assembly could be salvaged for parts.

It was the finest handgun I’ve ever fired, by a day’s march — and believe me, I’ve shot a LOT of damn handguns in my life.

I still mourn its passing.

Enter Stage Somewhere

Gummint, Politics, The Gun Thing

I see that the NRA has promised to “work with gun owners to swamp the first hearing of the Virginia Senate committee considering new gun bans”.

NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen told the Washington Free Beacon that the gun-rights group is mobilizing its members to appear at the first meeting of the Virginia Senate’s Courts of Justice on Jan. 13. The organization hopes that pressure from constituents will make newly elected Democrats, who helped the party capture control of the state legislature, think twice about supporting gun bans pursued by the state’s Democratic governor.

Uh huh.  Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but over the past three decades or so, whenever some state government has decided to crap all over the Second Amendment, the NRA has been more conspicuous in its absence than in its action.

I remember down here in north Texas, a long-established and much-loved gun range was being targeted by a housing development, whose new residents were aghast that there was a working gun range a whole mile away from their backyards.  So said developers put pressure on the TX legislators to declare the range a public nuisance / danger and force it to close.  As it happened, there was already a weak law on the books which prevented this kind of thing, but as it was a weak law (it’s since been toughened up) it required legal representation which the gun range couldn’t afford, and the Texas State Rifle Association couldn’t afford to cover, either.  So the TSRA appealed for help from the NRA but was told that the NRA had more important things to do with its money at the national level, and as such it was up to us locals to come up with the funds (from memory, the shortfall was just over half a million dollars, or fifty of Wayne LaPierre’s shiny suits).

The range closed six months later, bankrupted out of existence by lawyer’s fees;  despite raising a goodly amount (I donated nearly a grand, as I recall), it wasn’t nearly enough and so they just said “fuck it”, moved over fifty miles away into the boonies, and we all lost a fine range and an excellent little gun shop located on the premises.  Every time I drive past the place (now a nondescript strip mall standing between the road and the McMansions of the development), I want to toss bricks through the windows of every single one of the buildings.

If I were a cynical man, therefore, I would suggest that the only reason that the NRA is suddenly so interested in what’s happening in Virginia is because that’s where NRA HQ is located, and most of the guns in their basement museum would become illegal overnight and have to be either moved or handed in.

Not so fucking funny when it happens to you, eh, Wayne?

The Ultimate Long-Distance Rifle

Good Stuff, The Gun Thing

As I posted yesterday, I’m going to be setting up a fund to buy and then ship a high-quality long-distance rifle and scope to some lucky guy.  Here are the details (and if you enter, please follow them faithfully):

  1. You can only make one $40* donation per household, and only $40.  More than $40, and I’ll send the surplus to Greenpeace.  Believe me on this.  If you send me two checks, one for yourself and one for your “brother”, the checks had better be in two different names and addresses, or the second goes to Greenpeace.  Husband & wife get no exception.  One entry per household.  Don’t test me.
  2. Checks or money orders only, with your current address listed — I need the paper trail — to the sooper-seekrit mailing address (6009 W. Parker Rd #149-141, Plano TX 75093), made out to Kim du Toit.  Make sure the “Note” on the check says ULD Rifle 2020 and your website ID (if you have one) so I know it’s for the rifle and not just a donation.  By sending me a check, you agree that I can publish your name / ID (but not address) as the winner.
  3. The drawing will be notarized, i.e. performed by a third party and witnessed by a notary public or some such official, to keep this kosher and the ATF happy.
  4. I get to pick the rifle, and the scope — and what I get will depend on how much I get in donations.  The winner gets what I picked out, and no whimpering or complaining.  (Sheesh… you’ll be getting a fine long-distance setup for $40.)
  5. It will be chambered in .3x caliber, so that I can get better results past the 400-yard mark (from experience, the smaller 6.5x55mm bullet gets blown around a little too much for consistent accuracy at 400+ distances — and the wind always  blows at Boomershoot).  It will most likely be in .308 Win or thereabouts, but I’m not ruling out .300 Win Mag and the like, if I can get a decent deal.
  6. If there’s a surplus from buying the set, I’ll round off the amount to the nearest couple of dollars by setting aside some for the postage, packaging and such.  If there’s still more left over, I’ll use it to defray some of my travel costs (it’s a six-day roundtrip drive ugh), if that’s okay with everyone.
  7. The winner will be notified personally before the result is posted, and I’ll also add a certificate of the “provenance”.
  8. The gun and scope will be shipped to your FFL — even in the state of Texas.  (That paper trail thing, again.)
  9. My family are prohibited from entering, as are Doc Russia, Combat Controller and Tech Support II.
  10. Remember, I’ll be shooting it at Boomershoot 2020.  It may come to you with a scratch or two.  Deal with it.
  11. Regrettably, I can only make this work in the United States.  As much as it would delight me to ship this equipment off to a GFW country, it ain’t gonna happen.  Sorry.  If you send me a check from England or Japan, the money will get passed on to Greenpeace.  Don’t test me.
  12. Whatever rifle I get, it will be legal in all 50 states.  For that reason, I won’t be getting an AR-10 HB or anything that could be classed as an “assault” rifle (not that I would, anyway).  If your state bans “sniper rifles” during the interim period, however, you’ll be SOL, and I’ll have to make another drawing.  I’m not going to break any gun laws on this, no matter how stupid I think they are.
  13. I reserve the right to close the fund at any time, when I judge that the fund has reached an acceptable level.  Judging from the popularity of the idea the last time I did this, I’m going to set an arbitrary shut-off date of January 31, 2020 but I also reserve the right to extend the date too.
  14. Conversely, if I don’t get enough money to buy a really decent rig, I’ll just close the fund, refund your donations and go with what I’ve got.  I don’t want to do that.

Obviously, this is open to anyone, not just Readers, so if you have a friend, relative or neighbor who fancies his luck, have at it — but via a separate check, or else Greenpeace gets the surplus and he gets nada.

If this idea gets really popular, I might make it an annual event.

*One last thing:  the old raffle tickets only cost $20, but at that time I had about ten times the daily readership that I have today, PLUS I don’t have to tell you what’s happened to the price of guns in the past dozen-odd years.  [20,000-word rant deleted]

If you wanna blame someone, blame Has-Been President Obama and the other Commies for driving up demand with their stupid threats of confiscation.