I’d not heard of cut lead bar being used in lieu of ball. The use of “findings” in a fowling piece or a blunderbuss, sure, but not this. Interesting.
If you can melt lead or a similar metal or alloy (and who can’t?) and pour it into a slot between some boards, you have buckshot for your scattergun, or bullets for your “smooth rifle”.
I wouldn’t try it on the line at Boomershoot though. Well OK I might, but I wouldn’t expect any detonations, much less hits, from 400 yards.
It’s the UltiMAK model M15 optic mount for the Yugo/Serbian M92 (A.K.A. PAP) AK pistol.
There have been a lot of requests for this. The first batch went into anodizing today and should be shipping by next week.
As always; yes it’s slightly shorter than the original piston tube. Yes, it’s supposed to be that way. No, that won’t have any effect on carrier cycling whatsoever. Yes, it’s the very best place for a dot sight on your AK. It’s also the right place to mount a pistol scope. No, it doesn’t need to be removed for cleaning.
I won’t get into the issue of the utility of an AK pistol. Several of the guns I own don’t have much real utility in the strict, modern sense (the reproduction 1861 Colt Navy percussion revolver comes to mind). Then again, some people are SBRing the AK pistols, providing a sub-gun-sized, shouldered shooter with a lot more power (and muzzle blast) than a 9 mm or a 45, plus ammo and magazine compatibility with a regular AK carbine.
The PC police would of course disapprove of the cigarettes and cigar. OK they’d disapprove of everything.
Also they handle lead with their bare hands at the range, shoot stuff out of other people’s mouths and ears which our litigious society now largely prevents, and they still for some reason thought the human heart was all in the left side of the chest. It appears that the price of their cast lead bullet reloads was a penny per round (presumably with the deposit of your spent brass).
They had someone else to clean your gun for you. That I do not approve– It’s not only elitist, but dumb from the standpoint of being able to understand and monitor the condition your own hardware. You should clean your own gun as an integral part of the craft.
They did have rotary, progressive loading machines.
I understand the desire for efficiency at a range, and of having some kind of standards for evaluating the skills of your deputies, but the highly controlled (and therefore highly limited) nature of the training/practice experience at such a range leaves me somewhat cold. I suppose it makes me something of an outlier, but I think you should to get out and simply “play” at it now and then, making up your own scenarios, picking non-standard targets at un-measured distances and so on. I’ll call this “messin’ around shooting”.
I once had a retired LA cop (which means he should very well know better from more than a little personal experience) tell me that his 45 ACP could “shoot through an engine block”. When I got back into shooting after being a hippie for a while, one of the first things I did, of course, was to try various calibers on an old chainsaw at a friend’s house. A 9 mm Para would break the aluminum fins off the cylinder, a 10 mm would strip the fins down clean, and a 7.62 x 39 would punch through the light aluminum and severely dent or tear the steel parts. There’s no way your 45 is going to “shoot through an engine block”. The messin’ around shooter already knows this from direct experience.
So while the gelatin testers, the organized range shooters and the gun magazine readers are talking about the performance of this or that bullet or load, the hunter who does his own butchering, and the messin’ around shooter, are often scratching their heads laughing at them.
I know people who are far more concerned about keeping the grass at the range looking nice than having year-round access for shooters, and they hate people like me. If it’s your own private club and your dime, fine.
Man; I got a little distracted there, huh?
I got a little bit excited and went Here. Alas.
I really wanted to vote, but I couldn’t find the “Get the government the hell out of it, and as far away from it as possible, forever” button. How come you never see that option?
I had to leave. Now I suppose I’m guilty of being “unrealistic” or of “not getting involved in the dialog”.
Well here’s my realism; government meddling screws things up faster and deeper and for longer periods than any other force on Earth. If you want something to work, get the paper pushers, the politicians, the bureaucrats, the departments, committees and the task forces a minimum of one continent away from it. Let them eat grass with the North Koreans and tell each other how to do things.
Here’s my participation in the dialog; when liberty is on the ballot I’ll vote for it. Just let me know. I’ll be listening.
Though he wasn’t born here, he obviously was an American;
“Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.”
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“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
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“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
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“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
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“I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly”
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“A joke is a very serious thing.”
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From brainyquote.com
The British Parliament of course hated him, or so it is said.
…in a gang of thieves.
You know all those crazy, wild-eyed loons living in trailer parks who’ve been warning us about the Federal Reserve? Yeah; what a bunch of maroons (cough cough).
And no; your safe deposit box isn’t really all that secure either. Not anymore. There’s already talk of reaching into people’s bank accounts on a large scale and taking some of it, they’ve already set up the “infrastructure” to do that, and it’s already been done at least once as a trial balloon.
The Progressives (Democrats and Republicans) have already spent your money, you understand (and your children’s money and their children’s money). Now it’s CYA time for the perpetrators.
If you never understood why government types are so terrified of the concept of an armed populace that they’re willing to make complete asses of themselves and risk prosecution for depriving citizens of a constitutionally protected right, maybe you begin to understand a little bit better. It’s not that they’re all that stupid, necessarily– They’re fucking terrified at the prospect of their chickens coming home to roost. Criminals fear armed victims more than anything else. They’re already starting to act like the cornered predators they are, and a cornered predator is a very dangerous thing indeed.
…then use your bare hands (from a man from different lands).
And he didn’t even cut himself. I could’ve benefitted from this knowledge a few times in the past. Much less messy than shooting it with a 10 mm pistol. I’ll have to try it of course, as soon as I get home tonight.
ETA; soup, vegetable and fruit cans, etc., are not made of tin. They’re made of high quality steel. The others, like regular beverage cans, are aluminum, but you knew that. I’m not sure where the term “tin can” came from originally. Maybe they were tin at some point, but the steel cans are soldered, i.e. “tinned”, and maybe it comes from that. If get interested enough I can always google it.
Tin is very weak compared to steel, and it isn’t magnetic. We do use a fair amount of tin in bullet casting of course, so I always keep some handy.
I suppose the reasoning would go as follows;
Since cops are the Only Ones trained and competent enough, and with good enough judgment, to carry guns, anything they do that causes harm to innocents must therefore be someone else’s fault. QED. Move along. Nothing to see here. Relax and enjoy your shoes.
I’m all for wiping the personnel roster completely clean, right down to the janitor, in some departments, and starting over. It’s the only way to clean out a bad culture. Otherwise the culture perpetuates itself even as the personnel come and go.
In New York City even that may not be near enough, since the whole town is corrupt and its corruption radiates out for miles and miles like a volcano’s ash cloud.
So rather than try to talk about it; here’s a pickled egg.
The color comes from beet juice in the pickling solution. The eggs are boiled and peeled, and after a few weeks in the fridge in the solution, the color permeates the white, and you can see that it’s already started into the yoke.
Here’s the beet prep from last October;
We use the greens in salad and whatnot all summer. In the fall they get kinda tough, but I keep them, either blanched and frozen, or pickled, as a green for use all winter.
Here’s a 19th century cider mill I rebuilt in the 1970s and again just a few years ago;
We make between around 90 and 150 gallons per year all told, using apples I pick at a local orchard. McIntosh and Liberty apples make my favorite sweet (as opposed to hard) cider. The real serious producers will blend juices from different varieties, including crab apples, to get the flavor they want, but straight Mac is usually just right as it is. You can’t find cider like this in stores, but rarely, and then it costs eight or nine dollars a gallon. I don’t get it. But it doesn’t matter if you make your own.
Here’s some square dowel joinery I was doing for another antique cider mill I have in process;
I won’t discuss how it’s done because I don’t know how. I just had to improvise using the limited tools on hand at the time.
And last, here’s a tomato from my garden;
They call it the “Taxi” for the obvious reason. They’re delicious too, and I suppose any ripe tomato right off the vine is vastly superior to any tomato that’s been picked for shipping. The deer got most of my tomatoes this year, but I got revenge this hunting season. Now I have vegetables and venison in the freezer. Life is good
A human right is a bit like the sun. The sun is essential to life. You can bask in it, or hide from it. You may be able to change people’s attitudes toward it, or even start a religion around it. You may hate it or love it, or be largely indifferent to it, or think anything you want to think about it. If you fail to deal with it properly it can burn or even kill you, but without it you are dead. You could get a group of sun haters together in the street and carry picket signs denouncing the sun, and you might even be able to lobby enough idiots and criminals in Congress to get laws passed denouncing the sun.
But two things will remain true no matter what you think or do. A) your life depends on the sun, and B) neither you, nor any group of people, any committee or government body, no force on Earth, has the power to alter it in any way. You did not create it and you cannot alter or destroy it.
Similarly, human rights can be respected and honored, or they might be despised and violated, but they cannot be created, granted, altered, revoked or destroyed by any force on Earth no matter how popular or powerful that force may be. That’s where we get the term “unalienable” as applied to human rights in the Declaration of Independence.
This in partially in response to McThags post here;
http://mcthag.blogspot.com/2013/12/better.html
“He’s head and shoulders above A&E who may be in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for suspending him. Oh yeah, everyone who’s been saying that A&E had every right to fire him over his remarks forgot the religion clause of that law, didn’t they?”
But it apples to all such discussions. I’d comment over there, but commenting seems to require a google account and I’m not starting a google account.
The “Civil Rights Act” does not create, enhance, or modify any right, any more than a law can create, enhance or otherwise modify a star in some other galaxy or a physical law of the universe, though it certainly may be used as a tool or an excuse to violate some rights. Mostly it’s just some words written by people who don’t understand the meaning of rights, or hope that the rest of us don’t understand.
I usually stay away from stupid pop culture stuff, but this one has a lesson to it and maybe some on the left can learn from it (yeah I know; don’t say it).
GQ Magazine has every right to bait the Duck Dynasty dude in an interview.
Duck Dynasty dude had every right to fall into the trap, providing GQ with some juicy stuff about homosexuals to peddle their stupid magazine to stupid people.
A&E had every right to lay off Duck Dynasty dude or fire him outright, or do nothing, or whatever they wanted, so long as it’s within their contractual prerogative.
The Duck Dynasty stars have every right to stay or to leave A&E, so long as it’s within their contractual prerogative.
A&E watchers have every right to quit watching, or keep watching, that stupid network as they choose and/or as they can afford it.
Any other network has every right to take on the Duck Dynasty people in a new show, and everyone has the right to watch that one, or not, as they choose and/or can afford it.
See? That’s how freedom works. No one goes to jail or gets robbed or beaten up, no one has to sign a contract at gunpoint, everyone has free choice so long as it doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, and no one has the right to be free from the inevitable consequences of their own stupid mistakes.
No politician on the face of this Earth properly has anything to say, in any official capacity, about any of it. That’s not their job, and they should be smart enough to say so when questioned about it, though unfortunately they’re not that smart. Not by a mile.
Fake moral controversy resolved. Now mind your business.
In the grand scheme of things it’s a small win, but we’ll take what we can get;
CITY OF SEATTLE SETTLES SAF PUBLIC RECORDS LAWSUIT FOR $38,000
BELLEVUE, WA The Second Amendment Foundation has accepted a $38,000 settlement from the City of Seattle for the city’s failure to release public records about the city’s gun buyback in January.
As part of the agreement, the city has acknowledged that it did not promptly or properly provide all of the documents sought by SAF under the Public Records Act. SAF was represented by Bellevue attorney Miko Tempski.
“It is a shame that this had to drag out so long,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “but the important thing is that the city, and outgoing Mayor Mike McGinn’s office has been held accountable for sloppy handling of our request. One would have thought the city had learned something earlier this year when the police department had to pay the Seattle Times $20,000, for also not providing requested documents.
“Maybe the citizens of Seattle can consider this a Christmas gift from the departing mayor,” he remarked. “This would not have been necessary had McGinn’s office done its job.”
SAF had pursued e-mails and other documents related to the January buyback, which was conducted in a parking lot underneath I-5 in downtown Seattle. The operation was something of an embarrassment that even Washington Ceasefire President Ralph Fascitelli had advised against, the recovered e-mails revealed.
Earlier the city had supplied some of the requested documents, but a story in the Seattle P-I.com revealed there were other materials that had not been provided to SAF by Mayor McGinn’s office.
“It seems hard to conceive,” Tempski said, “how you could accidentally overlook hundreds of documents and how that could be unintentional.”
“The settlement,” said Gottlieb, “will help SAF continue its legal work. Hopefully, we will see better performance from a new city administration in January.”
Bureaucrats care very little when they’re playing with other people’s money, but eventually they get booted out of office for their douchebaggery.
What the Seattle government critters were trying to hide through their obfuscation of course is that gun “buy-backs” (as if they were ever their guns in the first place) are nothing but a cheap, stupid sham. They knew they’d be called on it, so they were willing to take their very slim chances in court at the citizens’ expense.
At a minimum, the settlement should come of out their salaries. That is after they’re arrested for using their position in an attempt to chill the exercise of a constitutional right.
How about a printer and ink “buy-back” as a means of “fighting” counterfeiting? Yeah; shockingly stupid. Insane, actually, if anyone were to think it could ever help anything.
If you trust people who do this sort of thing to hold positions of power there is something wrong with you.
Hey; let’s have a Koran “buy-back”, after which we’ll show videos on the evening news of those Korans being shredded for recycling. “Getting these Korans off the streets is another way to help save lives” the announcer would say, as a flock of doves is released. Surely that’ll put a big dent in the jihadist threat, right? Same reasoning. Same anti constitutional behavior. Same insanity.
They have it back asswards of course; crime (both the freelance and the official kind) is the reason we must at all times protect the right to keep and bear ams.
I gave quite a bit (for me) to the SAF this year. How about you?
Last time I went out shooting it was a beautiful, sunny day. Granted, it was nine degrees Fahrenheit and very windy, and my fingers were going numb to the point where I could barely load my guns, but hey; sunshine and beauty.
There’s a lot of discussion about shooting in adverse conditions under stress, and then there’s also a lot of talk that goes along the lines of, “Hey I got this fabulous new gun, but I’ll have to wait ’till Spring before I can try it out.”
For seven months of the year, there is a real possibility of snow on the ground here, and more so as you get higher in elevation. Maybe your practice should be around 7/12 cold weather practice in places like this then. You may find that your gun(s), which functioned well at 70 degrees, will start behaving in strange ways at zero and below.
Remember Washington’s crossing of that icy river on that snowy night to attack the Hessians at Trenton? Yeah. That kicked ass.
Do you know what it’s like policing your brass in three feet of snow on snowshoes while carrying all your gear on your person? Have you dropped a warm magazine in the snow when it’s zero degrees out? Yeah; it’s out of operation ’till you can warm it up and get the ice out of it. How does that slick new pistol hold work out when you’re wearing a heavy coat and standing on uneven ground on ice? What does your super bright flashlight do for you in a blizzard? What happens to the effectiveness of different types of batteries when they get very cold? Should you attempt to shoot while wearing gloves, or no? What do you do when snow falls out of a tree onto the exposed action of your rifle? What happens to the effectiveness of your optics at 10 degrees when you happen to breathe onto the ocular lens? Can you even turn the zoom control on your scope?
Next time it’s snowing, windy, very cold and dark, maybe consider it an opportunity for some good shooting practice. If you enjoy the warmth and comfort of home on a stormy winter’s night, just think of how much more you’ll enjoy it after some good shooting practice.
“The nationalized preschool promoters, led by feckless bureaucrats who piled mounds of debt onto our children with endless Keynesian pipe dreams, claim that new multibillion-dollar “investments” in public education will “benefit the economy.” But ultimately, it’s not about the money or improved academic outcomes for Fed Ed. The increasing federal encroachment into our children’s lives at younger and younger ages is about control. These clunkers don’t need more time and authority over our families. They need a permanent recess.”
I was just telling my daughter on the way in this morning that you need to look past the authoritarians’ rationalizations, dismiss them out of hand, and look instead at their behavior and results over time. Then you see the disease for what it is. Malkin is exactly right; they need a permanent recess.
You know; ordered as opposed to random, just because I feel like being a smart ass.
The most ignorant, uninspired person in the room is the one who’s most interested in running things.
The person who’s doing nothing, seeing the person who’s doing something, will become irritated and try to tell the person who’s doing something that he’s doing it wrong or that he shouldn’t be doing it, and/or that the doer is victimizing the non doer with all his inconsiderate and irresponsible doing. Failure in that strategy requires falling back on plan B; taking credit for the works of the doer that could not be redirected or discouraged.
The non doer views the mastery of this simple strategy as incontrovertible proof of superior intelligence and worth.
This is the basis of all politics, in the same sense that space, time, matter and energy are the bases of life– It is a fundamental law of nature.
Nothing new to those who’ve read his work, but it is interesting. He certainly never minced words.
When I heard the militaristic sort of music they used, I couldn’t help thinking that it would be taken as sarcasm today. Back then? I’m not sure.
There are more and more people calling for constitutional amendments, or a convention of states.
Let me see if have this right– Those in office aren’t obeying the constitution, so we’re going to change the constitution that they aren’t obeying.
Isn’t that a bit like a “gun free zone” sign, in that those who would obey it aren’t the problem we’re addressing? “We must pass new laws because criminals aren’t obeying the laws” is what we scoff at when it comes from Progressive communists. Now we’re doing it too?
The best I can see coming from a new or revised constitution is that it would represent an official mandate– It might serve as a psychological incentive for the three percent, somewhat like the Emancipation Proclamation which on its surface had no teeth being that there was already a state of active rebellion.
Just don’t think for a second that the dirtbags in power are going to see your shiny new, libertarian constitution and say to themselves; “Golly! Now THERE’S a constitution I can obey to the letter, the spirit, the whole deal! Heck yeah! No problem! No more redistributionist/interventionist/kleptocratic thinking for me! No, Sir! This is GREAT now…all of a sudden…like!”
Really?
…once we have been stripped of the best means of defending ourselves.
That was originally posted on Angelfire as one of the “121 Tenets of Socialism” my brother and I wrote many years ago, and which has since disappeared down the rabbit hole of early internet restructurings and multiple computer replacements. It’s one of the tenets I remember well. They all highlight the blatant logical contradictions we’re expected to embrace in the name of the coming Heaven on Earth that Progressive communism promises in exchange for total surrender to government authority.
This is from a Second Amendment Foundation e-mail;
“With a track record like Barack Obama has on health care, we don’t want the president getting involved in gun care or firearms safety.”
Anyone?
If your IMMEDIATE reaction wasn’t something along the lines of; “Wait! The president’s track record is irrelevant. The second amendment (and more importantly the ideal of liberty) prohibits politicians getting involved in such things” then you have some reflectin’ to do.
What the statement implies, whether its originators know it or not, is that the “right” president would be more than welcome to tell us how to do things, pushing us around, meddling with our lives using intimidation and coercion as though humans were no better than livestock.
There is no “right person” (or group of people), regardless of their track record, who can properly use coercion, wielding the Ring of Power so to speak.
I donate regularly to the SAF, and they do a lot of good work, but that statement is just sad. Plus it is simply wrong on its face– If you understand the meaning of the word “We”, then yes, certainly; “We” DOES want Obama in charge of our guns.
Last night there was at least one helicopter going up and down the Palouse river, very low and very slow, over and over again. I could hear the tail rotor wash, which is unusual.
It was out again this morning at first light. I spoke to a neighbor on the way out the door and didn’t know what they were doing, but he did notice that our local fat cop was down by the river. While I was driving in this morning my wife left me a phone message. She’d heard on the news that they were looking for a kayaker who’d failed to return home last night. Dang.
My son and I have floated that river in a canoe, and although it’s a very small river there are lots of rocks and things that can snag you or flip you over at the worst times when the current is strong. Then again it’s very shallow most of the way this time of year, such that you could usually stand up if you were dumped out. But this is November and it’s been COLD these last few nights, getting WAY down below freezing. There are also places where brush and trees overhang the water.
I’ve found no updates since around 8:30 AM Pacific. If they haven’t found her by now, someone needs to get down on that water, up close and personal.
Hopefully she’s holed up at a friends house, or warm and snug in a tent, and it’s just that her phone isn’t working. There are plenty of cellular dead zones around here.
Update 12:51 PST; I got a call from my daughter, and checked on line to verify. They found a body. I just don’t get it. It was really cold last night. You don’t get wet in that kind of cold and last for very long unless you’re wearing one of those insulated dry suits they use for diving in ice water, and you don’t go kayking for miles on a river if you plan to stay dry. Something’s not right with what we know so far. Official weather report says it was down to 14 F in Palouse, but down on the river in still air like that it’s going to be the coldest place for miles around. Tragic, and sad. I guess we could all tell stories of how we did some daring thing or other, just for fun, where it could have turned out very bad but somehow didn’t. I was hoping this would be one of those stories, but alas…