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Retro Tacticool

October 1, 2015, 2:30 pm
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Think you're tactical?


Are you half a sock wrapped in duct-tape to make a twin 1911 magazine pouch tactical?

File this under, "If it's silly, but it works, it's not silly."

Keeps pine needles and other debris out of the magazine mouths.
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Of Frog Lube And Light Strikes

October 1, 2015, 3:03 pm
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July of last year I had my Glock 21 all apart and thoroughly degreased and cleaned.

I used FrogLube CLP as the LP when I put it back together.

A year untouched in the safe and the FrogLube now has the consistency of Karo syrup.

The pistol three light strikes in 50 rounds using Federal Champion aluminum case 230gr FMJ RN (CAL45230).  Ammo that had never given us any problems in other guns.

So I pulled the striker right there at the range, cleaned out the no longer green FrogLube and applied good old-fashioned LSA to the affected area.

No more light strikes.

I might not be able to drink it, but LSA never seems to stop being a lubricant, even dried out the pasty residue still acts like a grease.


Top right, getting reacquainted.  Center, loaning it to Ian who'd never shot a G21 before and generally doesn't care for semi-autos.  Left targets are on magazine each after cleaning the firing pin.  7 yards for all shooting.  The embarrassing stray round on the bottom left target I am blaming on the fans catching the target and blowing it up as I was pulling the trigger.

Yes.  That's it.
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Position Shift

October 2, 2015, 8:18 am
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Because all of these mass shootings occur at gun-free-victim zones, I am removing my sympathies for the victims.

It's been clear for a long time this is where such events happen, and these people still disarm and enter them.

I've mentioned before that the victim is a participant in the selection process.

Because the risk is so much higher in those places, you're a fool to enter them.

Even if the no-gun sign has no force of law, don't go there.  The murderer might not know that and go there anyways.  You have a better chance there, because someone might be shooting back, but it's better to have no shooting at all going on.
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Dancing Monkey Strike

October 2, 2015, 9:47 am
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This time it's voice actors.

If they never record another voice over for animation or video game...

I still have food on the table.

The water still flows from the faucet.

My car still starts.

The range is still open.

My family still barely tolerates loves me.

In other words, whether they work or not has almost exactly zero effect on my life whatsoever.  Since their working, or not, doesn't affect my life I don't give a fuck how much they get paid.

Well, shouldn't give a fuck...

The fact is all forms of acting is really not that hard.  It is a skill that can be learned, and like all skills some are naturally better at it than others.  But it's a lot harder to acquire the skill of getting an order right at Chili's during lunch rush than to memorize some dialog and deliver those lines with feeling.

Pay actors minimum wage.  Better yet, make them work for tips.

Actors are the gloss paint job on a hot-car.  The thing that everyone notices the most, but matters the least.

Name an actor from ancient Greece.  Can you?  Now name an author.

Who starred in the first performance of Romeo and Juliet.  Who played Juliet when it was performed for the queen?  Bet you know who wrote Romeo and Juliet though, don't you?

Actors do not matter.  Just ask Darrin Stephens and Becky Conner.  More apt to a voice actor's strike, just look at how the cast of The Simpsons shrinks as people are fired and another begins to assume more voices.  And those voice actors being perfectly willing to take the role for a small increase of pay and take someone else's job kind of torpedoes the entire union brotherhood portion of the argument.
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Dear Wilson Combat

October 2, 2015, 10:00 am
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Any part for the AR that requires the removal of the front sight base and barrel nut for installation is not "drop in".

A Geissele trigger is drop in.

A free float forearm is not.
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Still Not The Point

October 2, 2015, 12:13 pm
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Joe posts a quote.

For some reason I am reminded of David Brin and his idea of The Jefferson Rifle.

Mr Brin seems so close to getting it, but ultimately never crosses the line.

Like so many people he's wrapped around opening phrase of the 2nd Amendment.

You'd think that someone who writes for a living would understand sentence structure better, wouldn't you?

We don't need another amendment to fix things.  We blatantly ignore the amendments already on the books now, passing a new one to "fix" the 2nd is just a form of "more, but harder."

I've only limited exposure to his fiction, just the books in the Uplift series and The Postman.

From what I've read of his opinion pieces is he's a liberal who thinks they're a libertarian with conservative leanings.  Because he so misidentifies himself, he can't properly speak for the person he thinks he is or understand people who are actually libertarian/conservative.
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Definition

October 2, 2015, 6:56 pm
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Barometer.

A device used to measure the pressure exerted by a wight agains the walls of their barrow.
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I Ain't No Crackah

October 2, 2015, 10:18 pm
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I be a carpetbagger.

I was born up there in DamnYankeeLand, and moved south to exploit its riches.

FFS, get your stereotyping right!
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Lack Of Understanding

October 2, 2015, 10:40 pm
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Determining what twist is best for what bullet weight.

Take the bore diameter, bullet length and velocity and plug them into a calculus equation.

Walla!  Done!

I can't do that.  It's been near 20 years since I took calculus and I spent almost all of that time actively trying to forget it.

However, there's an easier way.

Rote memorization of "this loading goes with this twist".

You don't understand why, but you do know what.

That's actually enough.
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So Common

October 3, 2015, 10:01 am
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It's so common it's got to be hard wired into our brains.

I see comment threads over and over where the debate becomes about the meaning of a single word without regard to the context that the word appears in.

Especially true where the word appears in a context where its use is deliberately ironic.

A recent example is "policing for profit".  This refers to the police having a strong financial incentive to emphasize investigations and arrests that lead to confiscation under civil forfeiture laws.

Honest to the Gods there's someone complaining that this isn't really profit because profit requires the voluntary exchange of goods.

This person is clearly a kind of Libertarian I encountered enough on L. Neil Smith's blog that I stopped reading The Libertarian Enterprise altogether.  If you've libertarian leanings, you've met them, and likely screamed at the screen, "SHUT UP YOU'RE NOT HELPING!" while praying that they never get in front of a camera when the media wishes to show what kind of nut-case becomes a slavering anarchist Libertarian.

This side trip about the meaning of a single word completely derailed any discussion of the actual text of the post and after a few loops you have to re-read the original post to remember what the author was talking about before it started.

But, hey, we now know what the meaning of 'is' is.
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Click

October 3, 2015, 12:17 pm
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Something that may have just connected...

I'm an atheist.  (How can you tell someone is an atheist?  Just wait, they'll tell you.)  I don't think there's a God.  Full stop.

I could get all haughty and mock those who do believe there is a God (or Gods).

To what end?

What good comes of it?

But the connection that just clicked is many atheists demanding "freedom from religion".  The demand is that they never, ever encounter any expression of Belief anywhere.  The tools they use to achieve this goal are generally familiar, and are also used by those seeking tyranny or fascism.  Gee, guys, can you think of any reason I'm suspicious of your motives?

But, here in America, we have this freedom of religion thing and it's in the same amendment as that free speech thing.

Because someone can say whatever they'd like, I'm going to be subject to hearing or reading it from time to time.  Because someone can worship as they like, I'm going to be subject to seeing or hearing about it from time to time.

As long as they're not forcing me to worship as they do, my rights are not violated by their worship or advocacy.  They can even proselytize at me, as long as they have to take no for an answer and leave me alone after that.

Crosses on hills and in cemeteries don't worry me.  Not while we're blithely ignoring religions that will demand I convert and worship as they do or suffer a punishment.  A punishment that may include killing me.

Jehova's Witnesses at the door are small beer compared to convert or die, no?

I'd also like to mention that I've seen an atheist meme quoting some dancing monkey atheist who says no God ever came out to help in a disaster, just people.  While that is true, what it misses is how many religious organizations contribute to disaster relief and don't even demand a thank you, let alone conversion to their sect.  The ones that do stand out in their exception.
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Schism

October 3, 2015, 1:01 pm
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No, you idiot, it is not inconsistent of Ted Cruz to condemn something The Pope said while also expressing his Christian beliefs.

Senator Cruz isn't Catholic.

The Pope is the head of The Catholic Church.

Protestants, like Southern Baptists, are free to ignore and criticize The Pope.  He's merely the leader of a sect of Christianity that's already wrong in some way, so why expect him to be right about it now?
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Wrong FSA

October 3, 2015, 2:01 pm
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When I heard that Putin was bombing concentrations of the FSA I was alarmed but happy.

How dare he attack America?  On the other hand, we need to cull the herds of the Free Shit Army here...

Then I discovered FSA meant "Free Syrian Army"...

I stand corrected.
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Degree In Rhetoric?

October 7, 2015, 1:02 pm
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Unless your name is Joshua Chamberlain, people are probably not going to be impressed with your degree in rhetoric.

Even if that is your name, it's not his degree people are impressed with.

Just sayin'...
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Training Downfall

October 7, 2015, 2:44 pm
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Sitting here on the sidelines and reading about it...

Once someone has been to about three big name, reputable classes...

Suddenly if you've never been, you might as well just shoot yourself since without TRAINING® you're dead anyways.  Except you'd fail to shoot yourself properly because you don't have TRAINING®.

It's a pattern.

It's a bit of a tiresome pattern, really, because along with the I'VE BEEN TO TRAINING® T-Shirt comes the name-dropping TRAINED® BY NAME AT PLACE® with nearly no information of what was taught or why, unless you count TRAINING® MANDATORY as both what and why.

After a bit you notice they start dressing alike...  Using the same gun, but not that readily available gun unless it's been to NAME GUNSMITHING® to be heavily worked over to this years fashion in DPI or stipple pattern and brand of sights.

Reminds one of hipsters right quick it does.

Update:

I am not referring to anyone in the sidebar.  Just in case you were wondering.
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Glowy Inna Da Dark

October 7, 2015, 11:59 pm
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The tritium in the Meprolight sights on my Glock 21 is long dead.

The still kinda glow, if you let your eyes adjust to total darkness for a while.

I am in a quandary about replacing them.

Even with dead tritium, they're still fine iron sights with three dots.

I've noticed that I can't see the dots at all in my TruGlo sights when I am running the flashlight, they're silhouetted so neither the tritium or the fiber optic does much good.

Are radioactive sights still stylish?  Or have they become the skinny jeans of gun hipstering?
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Gun Buying Quote

October 8, 2015, 9:41 am
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FFL: "OK, just a minute and and we'll have your [NICS] check finished."

Me: "A minute?  I thought this was supposed to be an instant background check!"

FFL: "Instant to government standards."
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Time To Departure

October 9, 2015, 8:50 am
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Weer'd mentioned in comments that his average time from "I'll take it" to darkening the door on the way out is about an hour on buying a gun.

Around here it's been about 15 minutes, with most of them being spent with the FFL on hold to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to get the "instant" background check done.  Some FFL's use the handy computerized system which takes a substantially shorter... uh...  the exact same amount of time as using the phone system.

Fill out the 4473, wait for FDLE, ring up the sale, out the door!

Oft times, though, I loiter around being social far longer because I frequent gun shops with friendly staffs.

The hour I spent buying the Phoenix/Raven stands out in how much more burdensome the process was compared to other shops.

I am not certain why Fifth Avenue Jewelry & Pawn in New Port Richey, FL requires so much more information and a photo to make a pistol sale, but it substantially lengthens the process.  And it's entirely their extra steps that make it longer.

I selected the nickel plated, toilet seat gripped POS .25 ACP powerhouse.

I fill out the 4473 and produce ID and CCW.

I answer all of the questions on the 4473 again to the sales clerk plus provide a phone number, eye color and have my picture taken.  With long pauses between questions while their system absorbs the inputs.

Then the shop employee enters the 4473 into the FDLE online check system.

Approved and done.

The employee was borderline evasive about why they were doing all this extra shit in the middle, but implied that it was something that The City of New Port Richey required of pawn shops on every sale.

If it is NPR's ordinance that requires it, then they're afoul of the State of Florida's firearms preemption law.  I think the courts have even held that you can't loophole around it by saying things like "all sales".

If it's just store policy to be so nosy, I don't think I will be buying anything there again.  A quick check of the city ordinances reveals nothing requiring the level of scrutiny they demanded.
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A Difference In Defintion

October 9, 2015, 9:08 am
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I can be a very patient person.

You tell me a month, I can wait a month.

You tell me a year, I can wait a year.

You tell me "a couple of days"...

I'm going to start agitating at about the one week mark.

At two weeks I call you a liar.

At a month I tell everyone I know to avoid you.

Why?

Because if you'd meant a month, you should have said a month!

Being honest doesn't cost you anyone you really want to associate with anyways.
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Save The Nauga

October 9, 2015, 9:37 am
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Just in case you didn't know...  Vinyl is sometimes known as naugahyde.

I am known to spin a yarn, from time to time.

Occasionally I hook someone who doesn't know enough to tell that the tale is constructed entirely of bullshit.

Having a confederate who will back your outrageous claims assists a lot in keeping the ignorant from losing their willing suspension of disbelief.  Special thanks to FuzzyGeff and Mikhail Ronaldovich in this regard.

There was a burger joint in Ames, Ruttles, that was upholstered in shocking green vinyl.  So shockingly green you were convinced that they asked the warehouse what was cheapest, got the green, and then decorated around it.

Decent burgers though.

Ames, being a college town, has a large population of young adults who've got absolutely zero miles on their odometers and are just starting to realize that their educations to this point, to put it politely, skimmed the available pool of data where it wasn't outright glossed over.

This makes them vulnerable to stories told with a straight face and conviction.

We were talking about what the attributes of the nauga must be and how the vinyl industry had hunted them near to extinction...

That's when some 19 year old at the next table asked us what we were on about.

So I started in on how the price of cow leather had gone up over the years and how substitute hides were introduced to fill demand in the auto industry, but the wild herds of nauga were nearly depleted and it was proving difficult to raise them in captivity.

When confronted with vinyl being an artificially made product, I just hit them with the conspiracy angle... with endangered species laws, wouldn't YOU hide that you were single handedly wiping a species off the map?

Mikhail provided supporting "evidence" of the scarcity by mentioning how you hardly see a car with vinyl seats, most going over to cloth now...

FuzzyGeff stepped in and noted that the prices Ruttles charged for a burger were likely to pay for the extravagance of upholstering in naugahyde, in its natural color no less...

They were hooked.

They left, ready to campaign to save the East African Nauga from poachers and certain extinction.
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