Maybe hold it against your head and pull the trigger. That way you’ll know for sure if your gun is defective or not. Given the number of guns in circulation your fear mongering doesn’t seem to be making the country any safer.
Dark Beast @XMenHankMcCoy
Tweeted on December 11, 2018
[This is what they think of you and the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. They want you dead.—Joe]
A new academic study has found that, once again, gun laws are not having their desired effect.
A joint study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of California at Davis Violence Prevention Research Program found that California’s much-touted mandated background checks had no impact on gun deaths, and researchers are puzzled as to why.
California’s Background Check Law Had No Impact on Gun Deaths, Johns Hopkins Study Finds
[When someone demands more background checks on gun sales tell them, according Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of California at Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, it is a waste of resources. The existing resources used to do the background checks should be reallocated to things that might make a difference. Perhaps more police officers or better mental health care. Or even letting people keep their tax money and spend it as they see fit.
If they insist, them ask them, “Since we know for a fact that background checks do not improve public safety what is your real reason for continuing to insist on expanding them?”—Joe]
I know it’s tough at times but as a civil rights activist it’s important to use the proper words. And when you hear people use the improper words point it out to them so the communication is more exact and truthful.
One of the most visible instances is the phrase “gun safety” which, as we all know, is code for “gun control”. Almost no one who claims to be a “gun safety advocate” has ever taken a gun safety class, let alone taught one, or has even talked to a gun safety instructor.
Don’t let them get away with this deception. Alan Korwin is the first person I know of to take this on. He sent out this email on February 29th, 2000 and he did an awesome job. See my 2007 blog post for a quick summary.
Here is something newer via Twitter. It’s not exactly serious like the tutorial from Korwin but it makes the point more succinctly:
Most people seem to subscribe to what I call the Special Immunity Thesis: the idea that the set of conditions under which it is permissible, in self-defense or defense of others, to deceive, lie to, sabotage, attack, or kill a government agent is much more stringently constrained than the set of conditions under which it is permissible to deceive, lie to, sabotage, attack, or kill a private civilian.
On the flip side, we have what I call the Moral Parity Thesis: the idea that, very simply, you have the same right of self-defense against government agents as you do against civilians. Officials have no special moral status that immunizes them from defensive actions. When they commit injustices of any sort, it is morally permissible for us, as private individuals, to treat them the same way we would treat private individuals committing those same injustices. Whatever we may do to private individuals, we may do to government officials. We may respond to governmental injustice in exactly the same ways as private injustice.
The Moral Parity Thesis has radical implications. It means you may assassinate leaders to stop them from launching unjust wars. You may fight back against a police officer who arrests you for something that shouldn’t be a crime—e.g., marijuana possession or homosexuality. You may escape from jail if mistakenly convicted or convicted of a bogus crime. Your business may lie about its compliance with an unfair regulation and evade excessive taxes. A jury or judge may nullify an unjust statute by refusing to convict those who break it. The Moral Parity Thesis vindicates helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who threatened to kill fellow American soldiers to stop them from killing civilians during the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. It vindicates Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden for sharing at least some state secrets. It vindicates government agents who sabotage unjust efforts from within.
My basic argument is simple: By default, we should accept the Moral Parity Thesis, unless we can find some good reason to believe the Special Immunity Thesis instead. Upon inspection, though, the arguments for the Special Immunity Thesis fall flat. Governments and their agents aren’t magic.
Jason Brennan
December 2018
When Nonviolence Isn’t Enough—Does the right to self-defense apply against agents of the state?
[It’s an interesting article on personal and political philosophy.
Lysander Spooner had some things to say on this topic as well:
It is a natural impossibility that a government should have a right to punish men for their vices; because it is impossible that a government should have any rights, except such as the individuals composing it had previously had, as individuals. They could not delegate to a government any rights which they did not themselves possess.
I took a philosophy class in college but it was far less interesting and relevant than what I have read in the years since. And it was philosophers never mentioned in class, such as Ayn Rand and Spooner, that my Marxist professor left out of the curriculum that made the difference.—Joe]
I love shiny brass in .300 Win Mag:
There is something about ability of the cartridge to be able to reach out and whack a target at 1000 yards away on your first shot that I find very satisfying. The first time I shot at 1000 yards I put the first three shots into the 10” diameter X-ring. That is a good as accuracy as you can expect to see at a public range when some random person is shooting a handgun at 10 yards. And at 1000 yards it is delivering twice the momentum to the target as a 9mm handgun would at 10 yards.
I assembled 212 rounds of .300 Win Mag this weekend. Each charge was individually weighed. Ignoring the time to prep the brass, the average time for assembly of a single round was about 75 seconds. When reloading for .40 S&W it is about 4.5 seconds.
It was worth it.
My question for Congressjerk Eric Swalwell is pretty simple: “How many Americans would you murder to achieve your goal of disarming us?”
It’s a fair question.
Swalwell is the MSNBC stalwart who recently wrote an op-ed advocating that the government confiscate the guns that make people like him wet themselves and imprison those of us who decline to surrender them. Millions of Americans own these basic tools of freedom, which the ignorant call “assault weapons,” and these loyal citizens keep and bear them to protect themselves, their families, their communities and their Constitution. But Rep. Swalwell would make these citizens felons, though these patriots are only a threat to criminals and aspiring tyrants.
Of course, he wants to make these patriots felons because they are a threat to criminals and aspiring tyrants. After all, that’s what leftist Democrats like him are.
…
So, the question remains. Our liberal elite betters think we should be stripped of those scary bangsticks the Constitution protects, and we disagree. So, Rep. Swalwell, how many Americans are you willing to kill to fulfill your vision of a disarmed, defenseless, servile population of docile subjects?
One?
One hundred?
One thousand?
One hundred thousand?
More?
Kurt Schlichter
December 6, 2018
How Much Blood Would Leftists Be Willing To Shed To Disarm Patriotic Americans?
[Via a tweet from G R Schneider @straightcase.
That’s a very good question. The answer, and even a non-answer, will be very telling.—Joe]
News accounts of 23 shootings in which more than six people were killed or wounded and LCMs were known to have been used, occurring in the United States in 1994–2013, were examined. There was only one incident in which the shooter may have been stopped by bystander intervention when he tried to reload. In all of these 23 incidents, the shooter possessed either multiple guns or multiple magazines, meaning that the shooter, even if denied LCMs, could have continued firing without significant interruption by either switching loaded guns or changing smaller loaded magazines with only a 2- to 4-seconds delay for each magazine change. Finally, the data indicate that mass shooters maintain such slow rates of fire that the time needed to reload would not increase the time between shots and thus the time available for prospective victims to escape.
Gary Kleck
June 1, 2016
Large-Capacity Magazines and the Casualty Counts in Mass Shootings: The Plausibility of Linkages
[The next time someone claims society needs to ban standard capacity magazines because of mass shootings tell them the facts do not support their hypothesis. Then ask them, “What is the real reason you want to ban them?”
H/T to Matthew Carberry @CarberryMatthew via a Tweet.—Joe]
The ban impairs using guns for self-defense. The government’s entire case is that smaller magazines mean more reloading. That may make guns less effective for ill—but so too for good. The government’s own police detective testified that he carries large magazines because they give him a tactical “advantage[],” since users must reload smaller magazines more often. App. 116-18. And he admitted that “law-abiding citizens in a gunfight” would also find them “advantageous.” App. 119. So the ban impairs both criminal uses and self-defense.
The law does not ban all magazines, so it is not per se un-constitutional. But it does impair the core Second Amendment right. We usually would stop there. How much the law impairs the core or how many people use the core right that way does not affect the tier of scrutiny. So like any other law that burdens a constitutional right’s core, this law warrants strict scrutiny.
Stephanos Bibas
Circuit Judge, dissenting.
December 5, 2018
Page 5 of the dissent in Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, Inc.; Blake Ellman; Alexander Dembrowski, Appellants v. Attorney General New Jersey; Superintendent New Jersey State Police.
[See also my “dissent”.—Joe]
Here is the Washington State Alliance for Gun Responsibility agenda for 2019:
RESTRICT ACCESS TO HIGH-CAPACITY MAGAZINES: High-capacity magazines make shootings more deadly and allow shooters to fire more rounds, faster. Recent reviews of mass shootings showed that 50% involved high-capacity magazines and, in shootings where high-capacity magazines are used, more people are shot overall and more people die. Keeping high-capacity magazines away from people looking to cause harm would reduce risks and help limit the scope of mass shooting tragedies in Washington.
“Keeping high-capacity magazines away from people looking to cause harm”? If you know someone is looking to cause harm why are they not in a cell or getting psychological help? And how do they think they can determine this? What are the details of a law they think will accomplish this? Reviewing your social media history? Interviewing your friends and neighbors every time you want to buy a spare magazine?
If they were serious about wanting to “limit the scope of mass shootings tragedies” they would encourage the one thing known to work over 90% of the time. Since they will never suggest that you know they are lying when they say they want to “limit the scope of mass shooting tragedies”.
Joining the 27 states and the Distict [sic] of Columbia who require safety training for a
concealed pistol license;
This isn’t because there is a problem with people with CPLs being a hazard to public safety. We are already much less likely to shoot an innocent person than a police officer when confronted with a deadly force situation. This is about making it more expensive and difficult to get a CPL.
Updating our list of people prohibited from possession firearms to include additional
crimes that are indicators of future violence and individuals found incompetent to stand trial.
It isn’t good enough that convicted felons and domestic abusers are prohibited persons. They want to expand it to those convicted of “additional crimes that are indicators of future violence”. Misdemeanors which happened 40 years ago? Public intoxication 20 years ago?
For over 30 years, our local towns, cities, and counties
have been blocked from taking action to prevent gun violence own [sic] their own because
of the statewide preemption law. Local leaders are best positioned to know how best
to protect their communities.
They want to remove preemption. The crazy patchwork of laws that will be impossible to remember will make it a high risk adventure to travel across the county with a gun let alone across the state.
Today, we take steps to keep
our kids safe by making schools gun-free zones. It just makes sense to extend these
gun-free zones to child care and early learning centers.
They want more “gun-free zones”! It is the existing “gun-free zones” where something like 90% of the mass shooting occur. And they want to create more of them. This cannot be for any other reason than they want to make it more and more risky to own and carry a firearm. This is not about keeping “kids safe”.
Crime guns are a major problem and a
contributor to gun violence across our state. There are common-sense steps we can
take to keep crime guns off our streets and make our communities safer.Allow the State Patrol to destroy confiscated crime guns, rather than require them
to auction or trade them.
This is almost baffling. One way to interpret this is that they believe that once a gun has been involved in a crime they think it is more likely to be used to commit a crime in the future. Don’t laugh! This is what some people believe (see also here).
Another way to interpret this is that they believe this is, in essence, a zero sum game. They may actually believe that every time a gun is destroyed that is one less gun in existence. This is, of course, not true. It just increases the market size for new guns. Is this what they really want?
Considering the usual lack of sophistication I don’t think this is the most likely thought process but they may think that raising the price, by decreasing the supply, of guns can be achieved this way. Increasing the price means that fewer people can afford them making it more unlikely people will exercise their rights. The problem with this line of thinking is that the number of “crime guns” is so small compared to the total new gun sales, less than 1%, that any change is in the noise.
Ensuring we are able to respond to new technology by closing loopholes that
currently allow sharing and downloading designs for untraceable weapons that can
be printed or manufactured anywhere.
They want to infringe on the First Amendment as well as the Second. Got it. That’s not going to work any better than the war on drugs. When law enforcement can’t keep high school dropout from getting illegal drugs from South America 24×7 via boats and airplanes there is no chance of keeping encrypted files from sneaking in from anywhere in the world at the speed of light.
Their goal is clear. In the short term they want to make gun ownership difficult, risky, and expensive. Long term they want to eliminate it.
We can’t out vote them. We have to stop them in the courts. They won’t stop unless we stop them. Help stop them.
So average New Jersey residents and veterans have the skill to safely fire 10 lethal rounds at a time in self defense, but if they fired 11 lethal rounds at a time without POST training it would create a dangerous situation? Am I understanding all of this correctly? And this law upheld by judicial apologetics is causing a reduction in violent crime in New Jersey, right?
Drew Rinella
December 6, 2018
Comment to New Jersey must have a stupidity force field
[Yes. Yes. And yes.
Any more questions?—Joe]
From pages 41 and 42 of the ruling in Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, Inc.; Blake Ellman; Alexander Dembrowski, Appellants v. Attorney General New Jersey; Superintendent New Jersey State Police on appeal from the United States district court
for the district of New Jersey (see also A Powerful Dissent Charges Judges Who Casually Uphold Magazine Restrictions With Disrespecting the Second Amendment and Third Circuit upholds NJ’s ban on magazines holding more than ten rounds.). “LCM” means “Large Capacity Magazine” which in this context is anything greater than 10 rounds. This is a decrease from the previous restriction on magazine capacity which was 15 rounds:
Plaintiffs assert that the Act violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause because it allows retired law enforcement officers to possess LCMs while prohibiting retired military members and ordinary citizens from doing so. N.J. Stat. Ann. 2C:39-3(g), 2C:39-17. Plaintiffs have not shown that retired law enforcement officers are similarly situated to other New Jersey residents. Retired law enforcement officers have training and experience not possessed by the general public. Kolbe, 849 F.3d at 147 (holding that retired law enforcement officers “are not similarly situated to the general public with respect to the assault weapons and large-capacity magazines banned”). Police officers in New Jersey must participate in firearms and defensive tactics training, including mandatory range and classroom training, under a variety of simulated conditions. App. 144; see, e.g., App. 1361, 1369, 1368, 1383. Law enforcement officers are also tested on a periodic basis after initial qualification and must re-qualify twice a year and meet certain shooting proficiency requirements. App. 144-45; see App. 1322-410 (describing standards, requirements, and full courses for law enforcement firearms qualification). Retired law enforcement officers must also satisfy firearms qualification requirements. N.J. Stat. Ann. 2C:39-6(l). Moreover, because the standard-issue weapon for many New Jersey law enforcement officers is a Glock 19 with a loaded fifteen round magazine, App. 116-17, these officers have experience carrying and using LCMs. Thus, law enforcement officers, both active and retired, have training and experience that distinguishes them from the general public.
Law enforcement officers are also different from members of the military. Unlike military personnel trained for the battlefield, law enforcement officers are trained for and have experience in addressing volatile situations in both public streets and closed spaces, and they operate in noncombat zones where the Constitution and other rules apply. App. 148-49. Even if some military members receive firearms training comparable to the training law enforcement officers receive, App. 140-41, the scope and nature of their training and experience are different, App. 141, 147-49.
For these reasons, retired law enforcement officers are not similarly situated to retired military personnel and ordinary citizens, and therefore their exemption from the LCM ban does not violate the Equal Protection Clause.
Also of note is that New Jersey residents have until Monday to get rid of all their magazines with a capacity of greater than 10 rounds.
Interesting logic going on here. I didn’t know that people in New Jersey were so stupid that the difference between using a 10 round magazine and a 15 round magazine required so much training and experience. And that, furthermore, no matter how much training you had in the military to use magazines with capacities greater than 10 you still aren’t capability of using one once you set foot into New Jersey. It must be that New Jersey has some sort of naturally occurring “stupidity force field” where people become stupid and incompetent once they step across the state border into their political jurisdiction.
But it must be true. How else would legislators and judges dream up and insist everyone believe something so stupid as the above?
This law does nothing to prevent criminals from doing what they want to do. This law is more like going after people who are gun owners who are not criminals and telling them what the state wants them to do.
Robert Snaza
Lewis County Washington Sheriff
November 30, 2018
Lewis County Sheriff’s Office won’t seek out I-1639 violators
[Correct. Gun owners are resentful of this and I expect there will be a lot of people who ordinarily are law abiding who will ignore this law and donate money to court cases to see that the law is overturned.
Via email from Chet.—Joe]
In 1999 I started loading for 300 Win Mag. In fact, I had the gun built with the specific intention of shooting a particular bullet which I planned to handload. The bullet was the Berger 210 grain VLD Target. At that time the BC was listed as 0.640. Then in 2007 I was looking at their website and discovered they had changed the BC to 0.631. It still didn’t fully explain the results I was getting but it was closer. Today I discovered they have changed the BC again. It is now listed as 0.621. That fully explains the results I was seeing. Whoops on their part.
I haven’t reloaded any of these bullets since 2000. It was time consuming. I would clean the primer pockets, trim the length, and individually weight each powder charge. I found that I got better accuracy at short ranges (less than 300 yards) and decent results at longer ranges with Black Hills Match (190 grain Sierra Match Kings with a BC of 0.533). And, most importantly, it saved me a lot of time.
I still have the powder and primers for the Berger bullets and figured it was time to load it up. I now have a much better tool for prepping the brass which speeds up the prep by about a factor of four.
Last night I was preparing some 300 Win Mag brass for reloading. I noticed that some of the brass I had used for the Berger loads had primers which were mushroomed:
Not good.
I checked my notes:
1999 Hodgdon manual/website says:
200 gr. Nosler Partition bullet, max 79.0C gr. -> 2883 fps
This is with a 24″ barrel.Older Hodgdon data (1997, 1998) says:
200 gr. bullet, max 80.0 gr -> 2984 fps.
220->225 gr. bullet, max 77.0 gr -> 2881 fps.
This is with a 26″ barrel.…
Starting loads are 90% of max. My guess is that max should be about
80 gr. with the 210 grain bullet. The Nosler Partition is a straight
shank bullet without a boat tail. This gives it more bearing surface
and friction (especially without the moly) than the Berger will have.Initial loadings:
6/2/99 16 rounds Berger 210 grain moly coated VLD:
One round each of 72.0, 72.5, 73.0, 73.5, 74.0, 74.5, 75.0, 75.5, 76.0,
76.5, 77.0, 77.5, 78.0, 78.5, 79.0, 79.5
I settled on a load of 78.7 grains of H1000 after firing charges up to 79.5 grains. I measured the base of the case for expansion as my indicator of high pressure and didn’t find expansion greater than with the light loads. It seemed good but the gunsmith who built the rifle told me an interior ballistics program he used said my load was unwise. I continued to use that charge with the few rounds (423) that I actually loaded.
Last night I checked the Hodgdon rifle reloading website and found they list a 208 grain bullet with a maximum load of 78.0 grains of H1000. And for one 200 grain bullet the maximum load is 77.0 grains! The max load for 220 grain Sierra Match Kings is 78.0 grains.
Whoops!
That explains my mushroomed primers and validates my gunsmith’s concern. I need to redevelop my load and disassemble the existing ammo with the previous loadings.
This explains why 80% of gun owners shoot themselves or members of their own families.
Tom Arnold (@TomArnold)
Tweeted on November 30, 2018
[See also, Math is hard by Carl Bussjaeger.
As we have known for a long time, anti-gun people have problems with numbers and arithmetic. Arnold is just reminding us of that and that Hollywood types do not have any special knowledge in anything other than pretending to be something other than what they are and reciting lines from a script.—Joe]
The solution is quite simple.
Ban civilian firearms and make illegal possession and/or distribution a capital crime.
Every dead gun owner makes society a better place.
Vote Blue November 6 @AlvardoMitchell
Tweeted October 6, 2018.
[Simple solutions for simple minds.—Joe]
Via NRA-ILA we have Anti-Gun Researchers Undermine the Anti-Gun Narrative:
Comprehensive background checks and prohibitions based on violent misdemeanors had no effect on homicide rates in California.
The latest study published by the highly-credentialed researchers in these well-funded programs, “California’s comprehensive background check and misdemeanor violence prohibition policies and firearm mortality,” was designed to evaluate the effect of California’s 1991 comprehensive background check and prohibiting those convicted of violent misdemeanors policies on firearm homicide and suicide. The study period was 1981-2000, with secondary analysis up to 2005.
Using a synthetic control methodology, the researchers found that the comprehensive background check and violent misdemeanor prohibitions were not associated with changes in firearm suicide or homicide.
In conversational language, the two policies had no effect.
This can and must be used to block further attempts at “enhanced background checks” and eliminating existing background checks. They are a waste of resources in addition to being constitutionally suspect.
I appreciate “studies” about firearms, but discount them in regards to policy decisions. The absolute right to be armed was decided in 1791.
Braden Lynch
November 30, 2018
Comment to Quote of the day—Jacob Paulson
[Furthermore, this right includes military weapons. Thinking about it from the point of the founders and the text of the 2nd Amendment this makes sense. But following up on this it was clearly pointed out in the Miller Decision. Even further it implies that unless it was a weapon useful to the militia it is not protected. In other words, it could be claimed that according to SCOTUS the 2nd Amendment only protects military weapons:
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.
I would also point out that the right preexists 1791. It is a right which has been claimed by all species for all time. Even mushrooms claim this right.—Joe]
The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
Karl Popper
1945
The Open Society and Its Enemies: New One-Volume Edition, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 7, Note 4
[Via email from Bob T.
Interesting observation. I had a similar discussion with a co-worker many years ago. We didn’t arrive at a solution. And it is quite clear our government and society has gotten us into the end game of this paradox without implementing the apparent solution offered by Popper over 70 years ago.—Joe]
Most people don’t realize an easy high explosive is nothing but nitromethane and ammonium nitrate. Beats TNT in some aspects. Add 800 mesh Al powder, and you can make EFP’s with a decently formed plate.
An RPG is a step up in complexity. And fusing a fuel air bomb is as well. All doable with patience.
Wheel of Death
November 29, 2018
Comment to Mark Walters: What a Democrat House Means to Our Gun Rights
[People talk the talk over there but I haven’t seen anyone walking the walk. Until then we need to invest in lobbying, voting, and lawsuits.—Joe]
This month I reloaded 919 rounds of 40 S&W, 1997 rounds of .223, and 50 rounds of 300 Savage.
The .40 S&W was all 180 grain Montana Gold JHP for practice at indoor ranges.
The .223 was 62 grain AP bullets to given the anti-gun crowd a bit of heartburn.
“Why 300 Savage? Isn’t that out of character?”, you might ask. Yes, that is out of character. It’s a somewhat long and sad story.
My nephew Brad Huffman was given an old 300 Savage, rotary magazine, lever action rifle by his maternal grandfather before his grandfather died. Brad harvested a few deer over the years with it. It is a good rifle, considering it’s getting close to 100 years old. Brother Doug bought reloading dies and some new brass to replenish the ammo since it is getting a little hard to find the ammunition for it locally. Brad wasn’t much interested in reloading and he had a box or so of ammo left which would have lasted several years at the rate he was harvesting deer. No big hurry for either of them to load the ammo. Then Brad died. Neither of his sisters are hunters and Doug decided the rifle should stay on the maternal side of the family. His wife has a couple of nephews who are hunters and he decided to give it to them. But before he did that he wanted to load up the brass because the nephews aren’t currently into reloading. Even though Brad died over five years ago Doug still hadn’t gotten around to loading the ammunition so he could give the rifle away properly equipped. I figure it would only take me a couple hours to do it and it would be fun as well. So when I was visiting for Thanksgiving I picked up everything Doug had and brought them home with me. I picked some bullets and an plastic ammo box in Moscow and a missing powder funnel at a gun shop in Cle Elum on the way home.
It took me over a day to reload those fifty rounds. Doug also had seven rounds of used brass that I tried to run through the dies as well as 50 rounds of new brass. I think the chamber of the rifle is oversized in the neck area because four of the seven rounds of used brass got stuck in the die no matter how carefully I lubricated them and tried to get them through the sizing die. Instead of just reloading the new brass I got sort of obsessed with trying to solve the problem. After removing the first stuck case I didn’t get the die adjusted correctly and destroyed a piece of new brass. The end result was 49 rounds of ammunition using the new brass and one round using the old brass.
This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:
223: 6,810 rounds.
30.06: 756 rounds.
300 WIN: 1,591 rounds.
300 Savage: 50 rounds.
40 S&W: 95,381 rounds.
45 ACP: 2,007 rounds.
9 mm: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 128,236 rounds