One of these is not like the other

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I was at the range a couple days ago and noticed my handgun was shooting a couple inches high at 10 yards. Odd, I thought.

I put the target out to 25 yards and tried again. Yup, obviously high. I adjusted it down and continued my practice. It bothered me and I kept thinking about it.

Then I noticed the front sight looked a little odd. I looked closer and from a different angle and discovered the problem:

image

On the left is a new sight from my spare parts bin. On the right is the old sight.

I apparently broke it off shooting through a port at a recent match. To avoid damaging your gun you need to push all the way through the port or stay out of the port completely. If you are mostly centered in the port the recoil can interfere with the proper cycling and, as in this case, damage you gun.

I replaced the sight when I got home, order a new one to put in the spare parts bin, and went back to the range the next day to rezero my gun:

image

The top group is from five yards and the bottom group is from 27 yards away. One flyer with each six shot group but good enough to believe the sights are where they belong.

Gun cartoon of the day

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Via email from Brian Keith:

CongressStudentsEvilNRA

This is what they think of you. They think of you as an evil person who shoots innocent school children.

As I said yesterday, what congress is really “scared” of regarding the NRA is the votes and activists they can bring or take away from candidates.

Quote of the day—Monte Milanuk

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This year’s goal: no singed wookie!
#boomershoot #fireball

Monte Milanuk
Tweeted on April 30, 2015
[At Boomershoot 2014 Monte, who does resemble a wookie, fired the opening shot to detonate the fireball target. There were some miscalculations and Monte was too close. Watch this video for details:

I didn’t discover Monte’s tweet until yesterday.—Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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Via email from Brian Keith:

CongressCourageNRA

This is what they think of you. They think of you as some misshapen, crazy, fat, tiny brained monster.

What congress is really “scared” of regarding the NRA is the votes and activists they can bring or take away from candidates.

Popular on Twitter

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In response to David Hogg:

You shouldn’t be able to by a gun, gun parts or ammunition over the internet.

I Tweeted:

A gun is like a book. Possession, use, and purchase is a specific enumerated right. You should be able to be purchase them any way, anytime, and anywhere.

That is my goal. Get used to it.

I’m getting a surprising large number of likes for that response.

Quote of the day—Tiana Lowe

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In the video Cuomo snarked on, Corban isn’t belligerently calling on Americans to arm themselves to prepare for civil war. She’s not even lauding limitless assault weapons or luxuriating in the gore of guns. She’s recounting how she survived being strangled and raped by a man who is currently serving life in prison, and how the Second Amendment empowers her to defend herself and her children from future threats.

Even if you’re in favor of restricting different kinds of guns or creating registry regulations, Corban is pretty much the worst target you could possibly focus your ire upon. Yet Cuomo cannot help himself.

Tiana Lowe
May 29, 2019
Constitutional ignoramus Chris Cuomo just can’t help himself, mocks a rape survivor
[This is what they think of your right to keep and bear arms. It is better to be violently raped than defend yourself with a gun.—Joe]

Do I detect a hint of bias?

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From The Pasadena/San Gabriel Valley Journal (emphasis added):

This week, SB 61, SB 172, and SB 376 all authored by Senator Anthony J. Portantino (D–La Cañada Flintridge) passed the California State Senate. The three bills further establish Portantino’s leadership as one of California’s strongest sensible gun control advocates. His efforts over the past decade have significantly improved California’s gun control efforts and have enhance public safety in neighborhoods and main streets across our state.

Nothing indicates its an opinion piece. It’s categorized as a news brief. No data is given or suggested that would support the claims.

And some people wonder why traditional media is going bankrupt. I don’t. And I don’t have any sympathy for them. They brought it on themselves.

Quote of the day—Tom Knighton

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This provides yet another glimpse into the mind of the anti-gun activist, though. You see, no matter what they ask for, it’s important to remember that it’s never the endgame. They’re never finished with that one bit of gun control. It’s only a start. They’ll either use it to justify the next piece of legislation or claim that it doesn’t go far enough, all despite no evidence that more is even needed.

Tom Knighton
May 28, 2019
NZ Gun Grabbers Not Content With Assault Weapon Ban
[It’s worse than just lack of evidence. In our country it’s in defiance of the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

We know the motivation isn’t about making the general public safer. We know the motivation is sufficient they don’t hesitate to lie, indeed, lying appears to be an inherent part of their culture. These people are evil and must be stopped.

Change our culture by “coming out of the closet” as a gun owner. Take new shooters to the range. Donate money and/or time to gun rights groups. And call out the lies of those who wish evil upon us.—Joe]

Alternative to “red flag” laws

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I don’t have a problem with this:

The process of banning yourself from guns in Washington state is fairly simple. It starts with a person filling out a short form and presenting it, along with identification, at any county clerk’s office. After verifying the person’s ID, the clerk mails the document to the Washington State Patrol, which has 24 hours to enter it into the federal background check system, as well as the state’s crime database. If that person were to then try to impulsively buy a gun anyway, he or she would be denied.

Residents who waive their firearm rights also have the option to un-waive them — as long as it’s been at least seven days since the waiver was filed and they are not otherwise prohibited from gun ownership. They file another short form and wait for the state police to remove them from the system, which restores their ability to purchase a gun. The clerk and State Patrol must then destroy all records of the person’s initial waiver.

The waivers are designed to be confidential, and can’t be used in legal proceedings nor as a condition of employment or mental health treatment.

This would address some of the issues supposedly addressed by the “Red Flag” laws without the severe infringements associated with those type of laws. Sounds like a win-win to me. But you know the other side is not going to be satisfied with it. They don’t gain power and control over people with something like this. Still, it’s a useful litmus test to see if people are truly interesting in addressing the claimed issue or they want the power and control of the “Red Flag” laws.

It went into effect in Washington state as of January of this year. Since then only three people have used it. None have revoked the waivers.

Quote of the day— High Horse Strong @RWITGuy

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Repeal the 1986 Hughes amendment!

Make America Fully Automatic Again!!!!   #MAFAA

MAFFA

High Horse Strong @RWITGuy
Posted on Gab May 26, 2019
[It’s not going to happen in the next couple of years but there are plausible paths to get there eventually.—Joe]

Winning back firearms freedom one lawsuit at a time

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Another small victory by SAF laying the foundation for bigger victories:

FED. JUDGE PERMANENTLY ENJOINS RIVERSIDE COUNTY’S CCW APPLICATION DENIALS

A senior U.S. District Court judge in California has issued a permanent injunction against the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s longstanding policy of “dissuading, discouraging, and preventing non-United States citizens from applying for a CCW license,” in a lawsuit brought by the Second Amendment Foundation, Calguns Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition.

SAF, Calguns and FPC were joined by the Firearms Policy Foundation and Madison Society Foundation, and Arie Van Nieuwenhuyzen, a permanent resident alien who has lived in Riverside since 1983 and is a business owner there.

The case is known as Van Nieuwenhuyzen, et al. v. Riverside, CA Sheriff Stanley Sniff, et al.

Senior United States District Judge Dean D. Pregerson entered the order permanently enjoining Riverside County from having a policy and practice that prevented legal U.S. residents from exercising their right to apply for a carry license.

“We’re delighted with the outcome of this case,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “This isn’t our first experience with such a policy, and we’re happy to have had good partners in this challenge. Mr. Van Nieuwenhuyzen has been a productive, law-abiding member of his community for decades, and there is no good reason to discourage or deny someone of his background and standing the ability to apply for a carry license.”

“This coalition victory is important,” added Brandon Combs of the Firearms Policy Coalition, “because it not only helps to restore access to the fundamental right to bear arms, it also sends a crystal-clear message to carry licensing authorities that the rights of the people can and will be enforced in our courts. Anyone who stands between the People and their rights is on notice.”

The policy was carried out under former Sheriff Stanley Sniff, who lost to current Sheriff Chad Bianco in the last election. Sheriff Bianco campaigned on a promise to promote access to concealed carry licenses and reform earlier policies. Under terms of the permanent injunction, the Riverside Sheriff’s Department have 30 days to finalize all changes to their CCW policy and eliminate “any and all U.S. Citizenship requirements” from the department website that describe the application process, and from CCW application forms.

“This is just one more example of winning back firearms freedom one lawsuit at a time,” Gottlieb said.

I donate money from every paycheck, matched dollar for dollar by my employer, to SAF and Firearms Policy Coalition. I think this is the path by which we have the best hope to reach our desired goals.

But this won’t be enough, we also have to change the culture. Next weekend I’m taking people from Barb’s Book Club to the range to teach them gun safety and to shoot for the first time.

JPFO video

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Via email from JPFO:

One of the lessons of the 20th Century is that far more murders were committed by criminal governments than by individual criminals. Background checks, registration of gun possession, and restrictions on guns in the possession of governments will save more lives than any restrictions on the private ownership of firearms.

Markley’s Law response

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I got a chuckle out of this (via November Papa Charlie @rcst) as a potential response to someone exercising Markley’s Law:

ConservativeWomen

I’m not so thrilled about the statement in absolute terms. There are lot of other advantages I would rate just as high from associating with women who aren’t social justice warriors.

Quote of the day—JohnRJohnson‏ @JohnRJohnson

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You can’t reason with these people. They have no conscience or self-awareness. Their sole focus is the sexual ecstasy they experience holding the power of death in their hands. They have all sorts of justifications for this fixation, but it boils down to their gonads.

JohnRJohnson‏ @JohnRJohnson
Tweeted on May 19, 2019
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

As some people have already commented, there is a whole lot of projection going on here.—Joe]

Quality control

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For USPSA matches I’ve been using 40 caliber 180 grain, polymer coated, Truncated Cone, bullets from Black Bullets International. They are very accurate, clean to reload, clean to shoot, and don’t have a jacket that comes back at you when you shoot at steel. I have reloaded almost 11,000 rounds using these bullets.

My only complaint about them is the quality control appears to be a bit marginal. One time I found a 125 grain 9mm bullet in with the 180 grain 40 caliber bullets and a few bullets which weighed as little as 177.5 grains.

The most concerning to me, which isn’t that big of a deal if you take it into account in your reloading, is the weight variation. They are advertised as 180 grain bullets. I have had batches that averaged 181.26 grains. And, most recently 179.2 grains.

Looking a bit closer at the data (a sample of 20 bullets) I found:

Mean Standard Deviation Min Max ES
179.2 0.574 178.3 180.7 2.4

If I had assumed the bullet weight was the advertised 180 grains, adjusted my load for 925 fps to get a 166.5 Power Factor and expected to meet the 165 minimum PF required to “make Major” at a USPSA match I would have ended up shooting Minor with a PF of 164.9 if chrono man had pulled a 178.3 grain (or less) bullet. This would have made me rather annoyed. One has to take into account the variation in bullet weights too, not just the average or the minimum from a sample. The statistics are a bit complicated and beyond the scope of this blog post but after taking into account the weight variation, velocity variation, and temperature sensitivity of the powder I had to load for a PF of about 175 at 70F to have less than a 10% chance of shooting Minor at a match where the chrono tested was done when the temperature was near freezing.

Okay, fine, that’s not really a big deal. I can tell the difference between a 175 PF load and a 165 PF load but it doesn’t make that much of a difference in performance.

Today I found another thing to annoy me about their quality control:

20190526_123011Cropped

20190526_124605Cropped

It looks as if the bullet mold was not completely closed when the lead was poured. Why wasn’t that caught by some quality control process? When Barb and I toured the Montana Gold Bullet manufacturing facility QC was clearly a big deal. The bullet above clearly would have been rejected. But I have other indicators that Montana Gold may be an exception in the QC department.

 

Quote of the day—Eric Raymond

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If your candidate fascist is ideologically pro-free-market, false match. Even if he merely displays an affection for large scale corporate capitalism, that ain’t fascist. For the very direct reason that big corporations are a power center, or collection of power centers, competing with the unitary state. Fascists never tolerate that well.

Something else fascists never tolerate well is unregistered civilian firearms, or registered ones in the hands of anyone not signed up in one of the leader’s thug militias. A fascist looks at these and sees a civilian insurrection waiting to happen, and generally has a pretty keen sense of how quickly said civilian insurrection can end up with him hung up dead in the town square someplace like Giulino di Mezzegra.

Eric Raymond
Spotting the wild Fascist
April 30, 2019
[Via email from Chris M.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Andrew Chesney

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…it should be concerning to ALL Illinoisans that proponents of these laws are after the shield (constitutional rights) and the spear (guns) against tyranny. We must not give up the legislative fight and must resort to the third co-equal branch when two branches have failed in their constitutional duties. Expect this all to end up in the courts if ever enacted into law in Illinois.

Andrew Chesney
Illinois State Representative
May 21, 2019
It’s not about your guns; it’s about your rights
[Sometimes it’s easy to get discouraged by the number of politicians who demand we give up our rights. It’s sometimes easy to believe we have few, if any, political allies in government.

It’s a relief to find that even in a repressive state like Illinois there are politicians who are fighting for our rights.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jay Stooksberry

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… the underlying argument that Colorado sheriffs are making against the red flag law: They have professional discretion when it comes to the enforcement of their state’s laws. Furthermore, if this precedent was applied to a future legal challenge, noncompliant law enforcement would not be held legally liable if they refused to serve a court order even if the targeted person subsequently committed a heinous crime. If death and taxes are two guarantees in life, police immunity is a safe bet for the bronze medal.

Jay Stooksberry
May 23, 2019
Colorado’s Growing Second Amendment Sanctuary Movement
[The Second Amendment sanctuary movement has to be causing the anti-gun people great pause. If law enforcement won’t enforce their new laws and both the intending victims of these laws and law enforcement get away with ignoring them, might they then become inclined to ignore older gun laws as well?

Also,SCOTUS doesn’t operate in a public opinion vacuum. That there is this much pushback on these stupid laws is going to be taken into account. This will make rulings lean toward a broader application of the protections guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John G. Malcolm and Amy Swearer

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1. Violent crime is down and has been on the decline for decades.

2. The principal public safety concerns with respect to guns are suicides and illegally owned handguns, not mass shootings.

3. A small number of factors significantly increase the likelihood that a person will be a victim of a gun-related homicide.

4. Gun-related murders are carried out by a predictable pool of people.

5. Higher rates of gun ownership are not associated with higher rates of violent crime.

6. There is no clear relationship between strict gun control legislation and homicide or violent crime rates.

7. Legally owned firearms are used for lawful purposes much more often than they are used to commit crimes or suicide.

8. Concealed carry permit holders are not the problem, but they may be part of the solution.

John G. Malcolm and Amy Swearer
March 14, 2018
Here Are 8 Stubborn Facts on Gun Violence in America
[Follow the link for a deep dive into the points above.

While Constitutionally protected rights do not depend upon empirical data to be retained the above points can be used to demonstrate anti-gun people have intentions other than reducing violent crime. Demand they tell you their real intentions for desiring a disarmed public.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan M. Gottlieb

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The long delay is over. The important aspects of the motion to dismiss have been denied. Just as important, the judge’s ruling treats the Second Amendment as any other fundamental individual right that is constitutionally protected.

…

Our supporters have been asking for months about the lawsuit’s progress. Now we can report that the long wait for a ruling on the motion to dismiss is over, and we won the first round. And now the state, and the initiative proponents, are on the defensive.

Alan M. Gottlieb
May 21, 2019
FEDERAL JUDGE DENIES MOTION TO DISMISS SAF/NRA I-1639 COURT CHALLENGE
[Here is the decision.

These things take so long that I get annoyed. It would seem to me we should get a summary judgement in our favor within a month or so, begin prosecution of the villains, and be done with it. But I recognize I have a bias. It does, however, appear we are making progress so I can’t complain all that much.—Joe]