Another Trip to the Range

Another Trip to the Range

No new loads for the Encore yet, but I wanted to shoot the Remington 700 some more. When I went to the Gunblogger Rendezvous last October, David of Random Nuclear Strikes gave me some of his Black Hills 175 grain .308 Sierra MatchKing commercial ammo, and I wanted to test it out as a baseline against my handloads. It was another trip to the Casa Grande range to make use of their 300 yard facility. Here's an average group using the Black Hills stuff:


By my calibrated eyeball, Mk. I, that's about 4" CTC.

Here's my 175 grain SMK handload:


The bottom most hole is two holes touching. I'd put that group at a hair under 2".

Here's my 155 grain Lapua Scenar load (typical) with me throwing a flyer (also typical):


What you can't see there is that this group is about 5" higher than the point of aim, which means it's hauling ass compared to the 175 grain SMK load. Now, if I could just stop throwing flyers . . .

I think I need some more of those bullets.

(Sorry about the crappy quality. These were taken with my cellphone camera.)

It's Official: You May Now Panic

It's Official: You May Now Panic

Found via PDB, another very disturbing (in a weirdly sick way) graph:



That's the U.S. money supply, according to the web site of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Also per PDB, from an earlier post, the Quote of the Day:

In FY2007, the federal government spent more money than it had at any time in its history. More than in WWII, more than it took to go to the moon during the height of the cold war, more than under Reagan rescuing our military from Carter's neglect. This massive amount of spending was unable to avert a recession. Why is more federal spending suddenly now going to mitigate the effects of this recession?

We are so screwed.

No Europellet for Me Yet

I did a tour of the local funshops yesterday looking for either a good example of a Browning Hi Power, or an EAA Witness Match in 9mm Europellet, but no joy. Murphy's did have a Hi Power, but it was the double-action version with a de-cocker, not the single-action or (my personal preference) the SFS, so I passed. It was the only Hi Power I found. Murphy's had the only Witness I found, either, but it was chambered in .38 Super. Several of the other shops were closed. Apparently there's a gun show going on at the fairgrounds.

I am not a fan of gun shows. It's a personal thing.

Oh well, I did find one very interesting place that had a firearm I'd not actually previously seen "in the flesh" as it were:


A .44 AutoMag.

I don't have that kind of cash laying around, nor do I know enough about them to be able to tell if it's a particularly nice (or trashed) example, but I have to say that the urge to whip out the plastic and make installment payments on a gorgeous hunk of stainless steel nearly overwhelmed me there for a second or two.

Also, for about a millisecond, I considered picking up a Glock 17. So many Glock afficionados have been turned to JMB's (PBUH) finest handgun design in the last year that I thought, just maybe, I should give the plastic-fantastic a try, but I retained my willpower and moved away from the bright light.

So, no .44 AutoMag, and no 9mm Wünderpistol either. Maybe next weekend.

Oh, and just a reminder: I'm scheduled to be on Charles Heller's (no relation to Dick Heller, so far as I know) radio show, America Armed & Free next Sunday at 1:00PM Mountain Standard time. You can listen to the show by streaming audio here during your pre-game party. We'll be discussing gunblogging.

Happy Birthday, Tam!

Happy Birthday, Tam!

Today's Quote of the Day:

Really, could it get any better? I mean, short of having Charles Schumer picking up my brass and carrying my shopping bag full of ammo while toadying obsequiously? - A birthday slathered in awesomesauce

You mean he didn't? Dammit! I have to talk to my credit card company about reversing the charges, then!

And they say an honest politician is one who stays bought . . .

When Obama Says This Stuff, I Don't Think He Really Means It

"When Obama Says This Stuff, I Don't Think He Really Means It,"

". . . and that gives me hope."

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

It's the only reason the Left's collective (in all meanings of the word) heads haven't exploded.

Found at Anarchangel's.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go buy another gun . . .

Lifer

Lifer

(Sad) Quote of the Day

(Sad) Quote of the Day

Another from Hecate's Crossroad (and she's going on the blogroll):

When her body was later found in the hospital parking lot, the whistle was still between her teeth. She had blown it until it filled up with blood as she died. - Now Do Something Constructive

Read the whole thing to get the context. It's definitely worth your time.

The Tottenham Outrage

The Tottenham Outrage

One hundred years ago today, on John Moses Browning's (PBUH) 54^th birthday, two Latvian Anarchists attempted to rob the payroll of Schnurmann's Rubber Company in Chestnut Road, Tottenham, England. The payroll was worth about £80, or roughly $8,800 today. Armed with then-still-new semi-automatic pistols, the two robbers, Paul Hefeld and Jacob Lapidus tried to make their escape, starting a shooting-spree that resulted in twenty-four wounded (seven police officers) and two dead - one police officer and one 10 year old boy. The police officer's reported last words were, in fine British tradition:

"Come on, give in, the game's over!"

Here's a photo of the firearms in question:


The top one looks like one of JMB's early works. If anyone can identify them, I'd be grateful.

One robber killed himself just before the angry crowd could do it. The other was captured after he shot himself, and he later died of his injuries.

The Tottenham Outrage is cited by a lot of us in the gunnie world because it is an example of how things used to be, and how - many of us believe - it still ought to be. The Tottenham Outrage was a living demonstration of Sir Robert Peel's Nine Principles of Modern Policing, first published when he established London's first "modern" police force in 1829; most especially Principle #7:

Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

During the incident, average people going about their daily lives joined in the pursuit of the robbers. A party out bird shooting at nearby Lockwood reservoir reportedly exchanged fire with them. The Tottenham police, in the tradition of British police to this day, did not go armed. Officers, unable to find the key to the locked firearm cabinet in the station house actually had to smash the doors off to get to their weapons, but brother officers already in pursuit instead borrowed firearms from people on the street - something literally unimaginable there today, and literally unremarkable back then.

A mere 100 years ago today.

I'm Late on This

I'd blame it on work, but I received a nice email from reader Steve Vaujin on Tuesday about the topic, and I'm only now addressing it. I know all of you are already aware, but here it is again:

Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent. - Found on inauguration day at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/urban_policy/

So much for believing in the Second Amendment.

"Closing the gun show loophole" means "Ending private-party sales. All sales must go through an FFL." This will, of course, get the support of many of the (remaining) FFLs. And it will be the first step to an eventual national registration system.

"Making guns in this country childproof." All 300 million of them? Will this be like "childproof caps" that only children can actually open? Or does it mean "won't go bang at all"?

"...support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent." Now, if you're an optimist, you read this as "making the expiration permanent," but we all know better than that. No, this means a new, IMPROVED "Assault Weapons Ban." One that will, you know, actually ban something.

Oh, and "addressing gun violence in cities" - where it's largely committed by and committed upon a tiny, easily identifiable demographic, but instead the .gov wants to put in place sweeping, highly restrictive laws that will affect everyone but that demographic.

The philosophy cannot be wrong! Do it again, only HARDER!

Well, there's a great big hole in my collection that I need to fill. I'm not a fan of the 9mm Europellet, but I have been waiting and looking for a nice custom Browning Hi-Power to fill that niche - a 13-round capacity model, with a bunch of spare magazines. When I take newbies out to shoot, the lack of a 9mm has presented a problem as I work them up from .22LR to .45 Colt. (Hmm . . . And now .260 Remington?) I think this weekend I will go shopping for an EAA Witness in 9mm, and all the spare magazines they have in stock.

Who knows, maybe I'll stumble across that Browning!

(*Sigh* - I was looking forward to at least a few more years before the .gov finally got around to passing enough laws to make me a willing felon . . .)

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

Ignorance - the best tool in the anti-gunner's arsenal.
- Sharp as a Marble, Time to become an iPhone developer

UPDATE: D'OH! The link went to the wrong post. Fixed now.

This Just In . . .

This Just In . . .

Still not a peep out of Tom Ferda.

What, do I frighten them or something?

Job Creation

Job Creation

Glenn linked to this fascinating (in a weirdly sick way) graph courtesy of Fabius Maximus:



President Obama talks a lot about "job creation." It looks like Bush and his predecessors have all done a bang-up job of that! I guess Obama is going to turbocharge it?

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a coworker several years ago. His mother works for the Census Bureau. Her job has great benefits, lots of holidays, generous vacation and sick leave, and an excellent retirement plan. For about two and a half years at a stretch, her job is quiet and undemanding. Then, for about eighteen months it's hectic, and the hours can be somewhat long, though she is compensated for the overtime. At one family gathering, during the slow period, she commented to all that working for the .gov was just terrific, and "I don't know why everybody doesn't work for the government!"

Into the short silence that followed, my coworker replied, "We do. For about the first five months of every year."

Anybody expecting it to exceed six in the not-too-distant future?

I Wish I'd Written That

I Wish I'd Written That

Today's Quote of the Day via Glenn:

There seems to be a typo. The last word ought to read “lefty”.
Ian Hamet, Just One Letter Off at Benevolent Misanthropy

RTWT for the context.

Range Report - .260 Remington T/C Encore

Sorry for the delay. Family stuff and then the drive back up to Wickenburg interfered. Plus, I have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning, so this will be short.

I drove up to the Casa Grande public range this morning after getting a late start. I did, however, remember this time to bring both range bags, so I had my spotting scope, chronograph, and laser rangefinder with me. I set up my target frame at a measured 28 yards downrange and proceeded to put ten rounds on target through the chrono getting the scope adjusted. The last four rounds went into one hole, as expected. I don't have the data sheet in front of me, but IIRC, the average velocity was 2360fps with an extreme spread of 60fps and a standard deviation of just over 20. I was shooting Lapua Scenar 139 grain BTHP bullets seated out to an overall length of 2.880" over 36.0 grains of Varget, touched off by CCI 250 large rifle magnum primers. (USE THIS LOAD DATA AT YOUR OWN RISK - I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOU BLOW UP YOUR GUN BASED ON DATA YOU GOT OFF A BLOG AND DIDN'T CROSS-CHECK WITH OTHER SOURCES.)

I was amazed at the lightness of the recoil (and no, I'm not kidding!) That muzzle brake WORKS. Oh, the pistol jumps a bit, and it is also LOUD AS HELL, but it doesn't kick. I wore muffs and plugs, and I was sitting behind it. I'm pretty sure I drove off some other shooters who were off to my left. (I was on the right end of the range.)

Because of the pressures of time (I had a family commitment in the very early afternoon) I was only able to put another 15 rounds through the pistol this morning. One very impressive thing, at least to me, was that I strung five shots horizontally right along the zero elevation line of my target at a measured 300 yards. The pistol needs some trigger adjustment for sure - I'm blaming that shot string on me, though. That group ran just over four inches wide.

I settled down for the last five-shot string and got another four-inch group in the standard cover-with-palm pattern. I'm certain that this specific load will shoot better than that if I do my part properly. I was seeing a little bit of primer flattening, so I think my next loads will drop by about a half-grain, and I want to see just how far out I can seat those very long bullets before they touch the rifling. I also want to try the 120 grain Scenars to see how they perform, but their ballistic coefficient is not as good as the 139's. I also want to take this pistol to the Tucson Rifle Club and try it out on the 500 meter rifle silhouette range to see if I have enough elevation in the scope to reach out that far without putting more offset in the rings.

This is going to be a very fun pistol!

Long-Range Pistol

At last year's Gunblogger's Rendezvous, David of Random Nuclear Strikes attended and brought with him his Boomershoot pistol - a Thompson/Center Encore chambered in .308 Winchester. He also brought with him as handouts a reprint of an American Handgunner article from 1995 about Don Bower and his long-range pistols. Entitled "Ultimate Handgun Accuracy: 1½" Groups at ¼ Mile," it certainly piqued my interest! (The piece is available at the link.)

I shot David's pistol at the Palomino Valley Gun Club, whacking the 400 yard gong with ease.

Had to have one.

So to "celebrate" Obama's victory, one of the things I bought in November was a T/C Encore frame. Then I ordered a custom Bullberry .260 Remington barrel. Finally I bought a Burris 3-12X pistol scope, Burris Signature Zee rings, a set of offset inserts for the rings, a Pachmayr grip, a Harris bipod, 200 pieces of Remington .260 brass, and some ammo boxes. (Bullets, powder and primers I've already got.) The last of the parts arrived this week.

I haven't got everything adjusted yet, nor all the screws tightened down, but here's what she looks like:













You can't see it, but the action is open on that last photo. Yes, I know the scope is canted. I still have to get everything adjusted just right, but I wanted to post photos, dammit! Oh, that spirit level is the 1" unit that Ninth Stage sent me, along with the 30mm unit for my Remington 700 5R.

I also wanted to say something nice about a vendor. I buy a lot of stuff from MidwayUSA, and their prices and performance have been uniformly good. But we gunnies are cheap frugal bastards, and price is important to us. When I went looking for rings for the Remington 700 5R, Midway was out of stock, Brownell's didn't carry what I wanted, and they were nowhere to be found locally. A little Google searching brought me to Optics Planet. They had what I wanted, in stock, and at a good price - even better when there was no freight charge.

When I went shopping for that Burris 3-12X pistol scope, as always the first place I went looking was SWFA.com. They usually have the lowest prices, and I've never had a problem with anything I've gotten from them. However, at the time I was looking, Midway was having a sale on the very Burris scope I was looking for, and it was less than SWFA. Unfortunately, neither of them had the Burris Signature Zee rings I wanted, so off to Optics Planet I went and while I was there I checked on the scope as well.

They had it, and it was less than Midway's sale price. Plus free shipping. They also had the rings and the offset inserts for them. (I've got +20MOA of offset in the back ring.)

I ordered 200 pieces of brass, four 50-round ammo boxes, and the Pachmayr grip from Midway the same night I placed the order for the Burris scope and rings. I got the scope and rings first.

I'm not denigrating Brownells, Midway or SWFA at all, they're all great vendors. But if you're looking for some glass or some rings, check out Optics Planet. You might be glad you did.

Anyway, when I go to Boomershoot this year, I'm taking both the 700 5R and this pistol. Hopefully I can get some ammo loaded tonight and make a trip to the range dark and early tomorrow morning!

Another Invitation

Another Invitation

Say Uncle linked to a David Codrea post at Gun Rights Examiner where a sportswriter showed his ignorance in the comments and was promptly smacked down for it. Feelings apparently hurt, the writer took his ball and went home after complaining about how nasty gun rights advocates were.

So once again I have decided to extend the olive branch and invite the sportswriter, Tom Ferda, to have an open, public discussion on the topic of gun rights right here at this blog or anywhere else he feels comfortable. Even though I'm up to my eyeballs with work for at least the next two weeks, I really want to engage Mr. Ferda. Here's the text of the email I sent him tonight:

Mr. Ferda:

Welcome to the wonderful world of the gun rights debate! My name is Kevin Baker, and I live in Tucson, Arizona. No, I'm not Kevin Baker the award-winning novelist, I'm Kevin Baker the Professional Electrical Engineer who happens to run a blog by the name of The Smallest Minority, if you care to Google my name (which is how I found your email address).

Obviously you're new to this topic, but don't feel too bad - many are. On both sides. The problem is, there's been a concerted effort for, oh, the past forty years or so to remove firearms from the public. It's been described as a "decades-long slow-motion hate crime" against gun owners, and a lot of us are quite tired of it. So you were the recipient of some (very mild!) backlash when you demonstrated your ignorance the topics of firearms and Constitutional law.

I understand that you'll find this difficult to believe, but when you wrote the words "semi-automatic machine guns" you basically punched nearly every hot-button most of us on this side of the aisle have. The ones you missed on that first pass you punched - emphatically - with the words "think about when these original right to bear arms laws were written."

Mr. Ferda, I'm a calm, collected kind of guy. I started blogging with the intention of debating people like you in a public forum. Honestly, I don't expect to change your mind, and I'm absolutely certain you won't change mine (my position being the result of well over a decade of research, study, and consideration - I should have a PhD in the philosophy of gun rights) but I do believe that people LEARN when they discuss and defend their positions with people who DISAGREE with them. Hopefully, so do you, since you wrote: "Stay aggressive, call people with different opinions idiots and chase us all out of your area. You guys are doing a great job of forming a group where everyone can have identical opinions and keep anyone else out of the club." And: "Good-bye and enjoy conversing amoungst yourselves without any more comments from people like myself who may differ in opinion."

I earnestly wish to have a discussion with you - in a public forum! I will remain civil, factual, and I will give citations with links for you to follow and verify. (You'll have to bear with me, however, as my day job at the moment is pretty overwhelming, so my responses will be necessarily slow.) I am willing to give you guest-posting privileges at my blog, and I promise not to edit anything you write (except possibly for readability - text size, font, etc. - never content) or you may email me your responses and I can post those - again, in total and without editing - or you may post your half of the discussion anywhere you'd like, so long as I can copy those posts to my blog for archival purposes.

I do have open comments. If you are as sensitive to the response of the readers as you appear to be at the Gun Rights Examiner post, I suggest you not read them. Oh, and this invitation is also being published at my blog.

I hope you do accept this challenge. I promise you, if nothing else you will come away much more knowledgeable about the topic.

Kevin Baker,
Tucson, AZ

Here's hoping he accepts. Whatever the response, you'll be the first second to know!

UPDATE, 1/19 8:00PM: No response from Mr. Ferda as of yet.

More Linky, No Thinky

More Linky, No Thinky

Once again, a link to Hecate's Crossroad of "advice" on how to be a good robbery victim from the Omaha World-Herald.

SOS.

Quote of the Day goes to Hecate:

This steaming pile just leaves me speechless.

Well, not exactly speechless . . .

And, if you have a lot of spare time on your hands, you might enjoy the Discovery Channel's Non-Line-of-Sight cannon game. How much stuff can you blow up? Link courtesy of one of Hecate's commenters, Rio Arriba of Notes from the American Outback.

Another long day tomorrow, and next week looks worse.

You Certainly Don't Need Any Authority . . .

You Certainly Don't Need Any Authority . . .

. . . to REPORT on anything.

Today's User Friendly strip:


But some knowledge and familiarity certainly helps when you're a blogger!

In Re: Sucking Up

In Re: Sucking Up

Hecate of Hecate's Crossroads posts on why she put links to the three Dangerous Victims essays on her sidebar. Excerpt:

I recall a friend describing a brief time when he worked in a liquor store. It was the only one in the area that had never been robbed. The store owner had a policy that anyone working there had to have a gun and carry it openly.

RTWT.


(Sorry, but 12.5 hour days are not conducive to "thinky" blog posts, thus you get "linky" blog posts. And not many of those.)

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

(Taken out of context.)

Bob Barr wouldn't know a civil liberty if he was beating one unconscious with a riot baton - Tam, Libertarian, my butt