Tag: Guns and such

My favorite toy

Stuff We Already Knew

Anti-Gun Nannies, Elections, Marxists, The Gun Thing

From Ammo.com I get an email which serves to remind us of one of the consequences of a Biden presidency:

According to Joe Biden’s own website, he plans to put [Ammo.com] out of business:

“End the online sale of firearms and ammunition.  Biden will enact legislation to prohibit all online sales of firearms, ammunition, kits, and gun parts.” We’re not telling you who you should vote for, but we do want to inform you of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s current position on these Second Amendment issues from the candidate who proudly proclaims:

“In 1994, Biden – along with Senator Dianne Feinstein – secured the passage of 10-year bans on “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines.  As president, Joe Biden will defeat the NRA again.” 

Like the title of this post says, we all know what these pricks want to do to the Second Amendment:  gut it and do everything they can to make it irrelevant.  (They can’t repeal it, but they can emasculate it with regulation after regulation to render its freedoms moot.)

What saddens me the most — just a little — is that all this new buying of guns by our citizens has drained the shelves and pipeline of ammo and related supplies to the point where National Ammo Day (Nov 19th, mark yer calendars) is going to be really difficult to observe.  (Reminder:  500 rounds or more of rimfire, or 100 rounds or more of centerfire, or reloading supplies sufficient for 500 or more rounds, all to be purchased or ordered on that date.)

It makes me think of this conundrum:

Asking Too Much

The Gun Thing

American Rifleman asks the question:

The .22 Magnum: Good for Self-Defense?

Short answer:  no.  Longer answer:  Hell, no.

I’m going to put my bias out front:  I love the .22 Magnum cartridge, when I’m shooting it in a rifle.  On varmints, I can personally attest that it’s absolute mustard;  I’ve shot maybe a dozen African silver-backed jackals with the .22 Mag, all were one-shot kills and only one of the little beasts made it more than a couple dozen yards before dropping like a stone.  Rock rabbits (Seffrican:  dassies), maybe thirty or so, with only one which ran off and I never found (probably a clean miss, as there was no blood trail).

And as Longtime Readers know, I carry a little .22 Mag NAA Mini-revolver in my pocket against the threat of snakes when I’m out anywhere near Texas brush country (e.g. the little creek which runs past our apartment complex), but it’s loaded with #9 shot shells, not boolets.

Now:  would it be pleasant to be shot in the face with one of these?  No, of course not.  Would even that stop a hopped-up lunatic with a knife?  You can try it out;  I’ll stick to a .45 ACP, thank you, if that situation presents itself.

As the above article suggests, the .22 Mag is a little powerhouse out of a rifle barrel, but out of the typical short-barreled revolvers which typically carry them:  not so much.  Sometimes you can ask just too much out of a .22 bullet, and self-defense would be one of those times.

Black Lists Matter

Business, Marketing / Advertising

Boycotting things and businesses has traditionally been a tool of the Left — flood a TV show’s advertiser with calls, threatening to boycott the company’s products unless they stop supporting [Tucker Carlson], etc.

We on the conservative side have had a few ourselves — anyone remember the anger when gun writer Dave Petzal  Jim Zumbo (sorry, Dave)  said that nobody needed an AR-15?  or the boycott of Smith & Wesson when the hapless gunmaker made a deal with the Clinton junta?  We will not even speak of Dick’s Sporting Goods, etc.

I myself have a list of businesses and brands that I will never consider, mostly because of their anti-gun positions:

  • Levi Strauss
  • Leatherman
  • REI
  • Patagonia
  • Starbucks
  • California Pizza Kitchen
  • AARP
  • Dick’s
  • Ben & Jerry
  • Doordash
  • GrubHub
  • Hallmark
  • Jack In The Box
  • Domino’s, Pizza Hut and Walgreens (they fire employees who protect themselves with guns)
  • Sara Lee
  • Costco
  • Panera
  • Waffle House
  • Target
  • Whole Foods

There are some companies that I “semi-boycott”, e.g.:

  • CitiBank:  I have a Citi Visa because I get airline miles from using it — but I only use it to make firearms-related purchases.  And if they stop accepting custom from the places which sell me those products, I’ll pay it off and cut it up.  I sent their marketing department a letter to that effect a couple years back.
  • Target:  I buy two products (and only two) from Target, simply because it’s the only place in Plano that carries them.
  • Waffle House:  I used to go to Waffle House weekly.  Now I only go there when I’m on the road, absolutely starving and there’s nowhere else to go.  (Maybe twice in the past three years.)

Some of the companies are easy to boycott, because I dislike their products, period (e.g. Starbucks, whom I treat like a public toilet facility, but never buy anything from), or I prefer the alternative anyway (Swiss Army knives over Leatherman, etc.).

Also, while a number of companies have official “don’t bring your gun in here” policies, the local branches (especially in Texas) adopt a “you must be kidding” attitude instead.  (Our local Kroger hadn’t even heard about Kroger’s policy when I asked the manager about it, and he just said, “Don’t worry about it.  I’m not about to risk losing half my business because of Corporate.”)

Anyway, that’s my blacklist.  Feel free to add your own, in Comments.

Range Report: Federal 6.5x55mm Swedish 140gr

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

Yesterday I went off to the 100-yard indoor range to play around a little with the new rig:

…and see which ammo it likes best of all.  I have quite a few different brands / types of 6.5x55mm ammo, so picking one is no easy choice.  I decided to start with the Federal ammo, because I’ve always had good results with it, and long ago I standardized my bullet weight at 140gr because that’s what all my rifles thus chambered (there have been a few) have shot well.

Before we look at the target, I need to talk a little bit about the scope technique.

Last week, after zeroing the scope, I reset both the top- and side knobs to zero.  All “warmup” strings were fired with that scope setting, and then I’d adjust the scope (once) for that ammo, and let off another string.  While I was letting the barrel cool between the different ammo brands, I’d reset the both scope turrets to their original zero, before changing to the new ammo.

All aiming-points are the center (bull) diamonds.

Because I couldn’t take too much time — the range is always fairly busy, even on a Monday — I had to shoot a little more quickly than I normally would, which meant the barrel heated up quite a lot.  So here’s the 100-yard target:

The top two targets were as follows:  the top right-hand target was the warm-up string with this type (includes a called flyer), and the top-left was after I’d adjusted the scope.  Not bad.

The large center target held two groups:  the left-hand group (with yet another called flyer) was basically the same ammo I used to zero the scope last week, and I was a little worried because my aim-point was the center diamond.  Was the barrel starting to whip?  I decided to let the thing cool for about ten minutes, and then I tried the “new” ammo I’d purchased a few weeks ago:  the Federal “Fusion”, the first string of which which is the right-hand group on the large target, and then, after scope adjustment, the bottom-right target.  Lovely. Good thing I have lots of it.  (Okay, I have a lot of all the ammo types, but whatever.)

Then, disaster.

The bottom-left target was reserved for Federal Premium “Trophy Bonded Bear Claw”, which has always given me excellent results, across three or four different rifles.  All this ammo, incidentally, has the same lot number on the boxes;  it was very carefully chosen and ordered, and it has worked consistently well.

Just not this time, with this rifle.

The two flyers were not called — in fact, all five shots felt “right” when I touched them off — and while I can live with flyers an inch or two off, these two came out of the blue, and were not the last two fired, either:  from memory, they were the 2nd and 4th in the string.  In fairness, the barrel was really hot by then, so… I ended the range session.

The reason this is so perturbing is that if I were suddenly to be called away on a hunting trip with no chance to test-fire any of the types shown, I would grab the Bear Claw in a heartbeat and head out.

It looks like I need to spend a little more time with this ammo.

That aside — and I will get to the bottom of the problem — the Federal ammo brands and types all performed well, under the circumstances.  Remember that this was really just a “rough” test — I plan on fine-tuning each type in separate sessions over the next couple months, with the scope adjustments noted.

Range Report: CZ 550 American / Meopta Optika6

Gun/Ammo Tests, Optics, The Gun Thing

Yesterday I took the new toys out to work, said toys being a CZ 550 American (6.5x55mm Swede), topped with a Meopta Optika6 3-18x50mm scope.  Here’s the tout ensemble:

…and the illuminated reticle:

…which I would only use if I were hunting at dusk or dawn.  (On paper, the cross-hairs work just fine.)

Now, I’m pretty sure I heard someone saying, “Meopta-whut?”

Me, too;  until I discovered who they are.  Here’s the full scoop, but the executive summary is:

  • Czech company
  • been around since the 1930s
  • mainly makes commercial photo-enlargers
  • renowned for the quality of their glass
  • started making scopes a couple decades ago
  • if you’ve ever bought a Zeiss Conquest scope [raises hand], it was made by Meopta and stamped by Zeiss
  • congratulations;  you just paid two hundred-odd dollars more than you had to, for the identical scope.

Let me get the basics out of the way, first.

This scope cost me about $650, and I honestly think I got $1,200 value for it.  Holy cow:  the precision of the scope is astonishing, and the clarity as as good as any scope I’ve ever looked through.  I was originally going to get a Minox ZX-5i of similar power for about $100 more, but nobody had it in stock at the time and I was antsy, so I took a flyer on the Meopta, and I don’t regret it, at all.

That said, there are a couple of things that irritated me about the scope’s setup operation.

I’m using Warne Maxima rings, the tallest you can get, because the 50mm bell needs to be raised off the barrel and CZ bases are quite low.  As it turned out, the bell wasn’t a problem.  What was a problem was that yuge magnification adjusting ring on the scope:

…which proved very good at preventing the bolt from being pulled back — which, in a bolt-action rifle, is Not A Good Thing.  I had to put a shim into the rear scope ring to raise the scope the requisite millimeter or thereabouts so that the bolt handle would clear the adjusting ring.

The second issue also involved the adjuster, and it was the little stick screwed into it, supposedly to aid the easy working of the mag adjuster (which, by the way, is hellish stiff, more than it has to be, I think, but it should ease up with use).

Well, maybe the stick helps adjust the ring, but what it also does is get in the way when you’re working the bolt — and yes, there are several threaded holes to choose from to overcome this problem:  but what I found was that moving the stick so that it stayed out of the way worked for one magnification setting, but as soon as I changed the magnification (from, say, 10x to 5x or 12x to 18x), the fucking thing would catch on my hand when I worked the bolt.  And nothing makes Uncle Kimmy crankier than when something interferes with him working the bolt.

So I unscrewed the little stick and threw it away.  Don’t need it, won’t need it, especially as the adjusting ring has those deep, thick grooves to provide a decent grip*.

But those were the only issues I encountered at that session.  The scope worked flawlessly, and zeroing it took just under an hour (I generally let the barrel cool between strings, especially a skinny lil’ thing like the 550’s.)

Like an idiot, I hadn’t bothered bore-sighting the scope before hitting the range, and I paid for it by having to waste over a dozen rounds just to land the boolets into a dinner-plate group.

I had no intention of going for MOA (except by luck) during this session, anyway.  This is a hunting rifle rather than a precision target piece, and in any event, I was only shooting one brand of ammo to get everything into the same zip code.

The ammo was my standard sighting-in choice:  bottom-of-the-line no-frills Federal 140-gr Soft Point:


…with which I managed this 100-yard grouping with the last 5 rounds in the box.

That’s close enough for government work (or anti-government work, depending on your circumstances).

Now that the scope is roughly zeroed, next week I’ll get serious and start running through the dozen-odd different brands and bullet weights I have lying around in Ye Olde Ammoe Locquer, to see which one works best.

What fun.

*I don’t wear heavy gloves when shooting, anyway — in very cold weather (e,g, Scotland), I use the flip-off mitten type over thin gloves.

Lying Bastards

Elections, Politics, The Gun Thing

We all know that politicians lie like, well, Democrats;  so it should come as no surprise to anyone that wannabe-POTUS Joe Hidin’ is talking bullshit again, albeit through surrogates:

Attempts to conceal and lie about Biden and Harris’s gun control positions are a tacit admission that the public does not want the gun control these candidates pursue. If such measures have the popularity their backers often pretend they do, there would be no need to obscure their goals. Rather, gun control advocates and politicians understand that they cannot succeed if they are forthright with the electorate about their extreme positions.

We all know that Biden, Harris and all the other assholes blabbed their loathing for guns during their party’s primary elections, and tried to outdo each other when boasting about how much they were going to fuck over gun owners, take away their AR-15s and so on.

I know that after the primaries, which exist to rally the faithful, candidates usually “tack to the center” for the general elections.  Unfortunately (for these pricks), we all know what they have planned for us:  California- and Australia- style laws and regulations designed to make gun ownership difficult and cumbersome, and (probably) gun registration and -confiscation.   Are they promising all that?  No, of course not:  it’s all driven by “need”,

Simple replay to all this mendacity:  fuck off, Sparky.  No amount of reassurance from Biden and Harris are going to pull the wool over our eyes, so they might as well give it all up and run on the Gun Control & Confiscation ticket.

They’re going to get crushed whatever they do.