Happy Independence Day!

I’m going to go do stuff that is uniquely American.

I was a member of the ACLU until their recent equivocation over the Heller ruling. I know it sounds naïve but I fully expected them to change their official stance. I’m not the only member who is upset. By the way, I took the money I was going to use to renew my ACLU membership and used it to renew my membership to the NRA. I’m also looking hard at the CATO Institute.

They have some work to do. Even if they now modify the wording of their Second Amendment position statement, I won’t believe them until they successfully defend a Second Amendment case. Otherwise it will be only lip service.

Supreme Court affirms that the second amendment is an individual right.

I’ve been on the road a ton over the past month, here are some shots of my latest ports of call.

London:

Germany:

<—That’s Pork Knuckle bitches!

Four Corners:

I decided that I wasn’t going to shoot at the usual locations today. HGC is a mud-hole right now, I don’t like Doug’s, and Get Some looked crowded. I threw a bunch of stuff in the Rover and headed West. I got to the Grantsville exit and scouted a couple of locations until I found an isolated horseshoe canyon. I obviously wasn’t the first one to find this spot, there were hulls and brass all over the place. I set up a folding table and got down to business.

I brought my:

STI Spartan

SA Loaded

Para Nite-Tac

XD Service

Beretta PX4

Saiga 12

Remmie 870 w/compstock

I’ve been traveling a lot lately and not only have I not had time to shoot (it has been months), but the SA and the Beretta aren’t even broken in yet. Today was the day to start to take care of that problem.

Here’s the odd thing; apparently the time off was good for me. I shot better than I ever have. I couldn’t miss. I was tearing the centers out of targets, running cans up the hill, obliterating hand thrown clays.

Ran through ~1000 rounds of .45, mostly through the SA and the Beretta. Nary a hiccup. At first I experienced a little trigger sting from the Beretta but it stopped after about 50 rounds. The SA ran like a swiss watch, the trigger is really nice now that I swapped out the ILS and have run a few hundred rounds through it. It is almost as good as the STI, almost.

I had been contemplating getting rid of the Para because I just couldn’t get used to the LDA. Well, that plan is off; it didn’t bother me one bit this trip. I kind of just stopped thinking of it as a “1911 with a funny trigger” and thought of it as part of the same family as the XD and PX4. Strange how a little change in perspective can have wider ramifications.

The Saiga just gets more fun the more I shoot it. I bought it primarily as an HD gun, but I may have to pattern it. I think I could hunt with this thing. BTW the 10 round mag is such a riot. If you have a Saiga 12 you must buy the big mag, it is so worth it. I was only planning on going through a box of shotgun shells, but I was having so much fun I went through all I had (6). What is that, 150 rounds?

I was planning on taking a few pics too, but instead I just shot and shot and shot.

What a day!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been in Germany and Chicago, I’ll post updates and put up some pics over the next few days.

I finally figured out what Obama’s campaign posters remind me of:

Why is he using cold war propaganda style posters?

I have come up with a pretty good solution for storing/transporting my semi-autos. SKB makes a wheeled case that is ideal for this application. You can get the SKB 3i 2011 at your local Guitar Center. It is nearly identical to the Pelican 1510DF but cheaper and GC always has them in stock.

So on to the work I’ve done for you.

With this case you also get diced foam inserts that are rectangular; 41 squares wide (x axis) and 23 squares high (y axis). Count 3 squares from the left and top edges of the foam for your starting point. Then remove 17 squares on the y axis by 2 squares on the x axis. This will give you a slot that a 5″ 1911 will slide into upside-down. A 4″ poly gun like a Springer XD or Beretta PX4 requires 14 squares on the y axis and 2 squares on the x axis. By spacing every 3 squares and creating another slot, you could fit up to 7 well-protected 5″1911’s in one case.

The beauty is that you can fit your magazines in the same size slot. You can fit 10 single-stack 1911 mags in a 17 by 2 slot, or 5 double-stacks in same. Or for more protection; one single-stack mag can fit in a 1 by 3 slot, one double-stack fits in a 2 by 3 slot.

Note 1: You can increase the number of magazines if you go 3 squares on the x axis and put the magazines in side-by-side. The downside to doing this is that the slot is now item specific instead of generic.

Note 2: Resist the urge to reduce the spacing between slots to less than 3 squares, you lose too much support by going less.

*OPTIONAL*Once you have created the slots in the two layers of diced foam, spray glue the two layers together and let dry overnight. This lends a lot of extra support and basically welds the two layers into one solid piece.

I’ve had to order a few new sets of foam to work out this arrangement, now you don’t have to.

*EDIT*

I’ve gotten some comments and suggestions concerning moisture control for this project. Desiccant packs work well and can be microwaved for re-use. Also silicon impregnated Gun Socks have been recommended as sleeves to control oxidization. Both very good suggestions.

Just got back from a quick trip to Baltimore and unfortunately didn’t see much. I was working non-stop so mostly all I saw was the inside of a warehouse, cab, and hotel. I was there while they were having a freezing rain storm and everything was covered in a sheet of ice. I’ve experienced freezing rain before when I lived in Illinois, it is as I remembered. The drive back to the hotel was white-knuckle and there were crashes every 1000’ or so.

I was there to train a large live sound company in the use of our software. I don’t want to get too deep into it since software training is one of the most boring topics in the world. I’ll just say that it went quite well and all of my goals were accomplished.

I was introduced to Old Bay Spice, a pub called Monaghan’s, and The Salsa Grill. We went to Monaghan’s twice, I had the dry-rub ribs (off-menu) and the beef stroganoff, and both were quite good, nice and home-style. The Salsa Grill was interesting because I’d never had Peruvian-style food before. I had the Goat Stew and it was quite good, but the tapas plate was outstanding. They have stuffed and grilled papas that I could eat all day long.

I got into a political discussion that was quite surreal. I was talking to a self-described Baltimore Liberal. The odd thing was all of his positions were what I would consider to be very Conservative. He wanted to close our borders, he wanted to have a strong military presence in Iraq with no withdrawal timetable, and he wanted lowered taxes. He was also spouting some free-market rhetoric while at the same time contradictorily talking about universal health care. I innocently told him that his positions sounded much like McCain’s and he just about had a brain embolism. I haven’t seem someone get that angry during a political discussion for a long time.

Once he calmed down he asked me who I was going to vote for and I told him that I didn’t like any of the candidates for the following reasons:

• Obama is anti-gun. I’m not a one issue voter, but Obama’s 2a position is abysmal. IMO if you are anti-gun you are anti-Constitution; no quarter.

• Hillary is a champion of the Status Quo. She also recently quoted from Marx’s manifesto in a speech. “Each would pay according to their ability.” Sorry Hillary, that isn’t only ideologically suspect but also just plain stupid. Also, the nation rejected her health-care plan the first time around, why are we re-considering it now?

• McCain sold his soul to Bush. Bush’s hit-squad smeared McCain up one side and down the other and what did McCain do? He kissed Bush’s ass. All his talk about being independent, all his hot-air about the “Straight-Talk-Express,” when it got down to it, he kissed the establishment’s ass.

• Huckabee is a christo-fascist whack-job. Need I say more?

• Ron Paul is actually my favorite and he doesn’t have a chance in hell. Despite the fact that I like a lot of what he has to say, he is totally in la-la-land when it comes to foreign policy. If the past 8 years of Bush and 9/11 hadn’t happened, then maybe a more isolationist stance would work. Now? Uh-uh, no way.

I added that IMO if you are socially liberal (and I am for the most part), you can’t lose with the front runners. All of them (excepting Huckafreak) are quite socially liberal. However, if you have concerns about the right to bear arms, privacy/domestic spying, free association, the increased militarization of the police, property rights, basically the entire Bill of Rights and other semi-important stuff; then all these guys suck. Hard.

He said he wanted Bloomberg to run and I just smirked. I told him that being a Westerner has given me a strong dislike for smug coastal urban meddlers like Bloomberg. I am tired of guys like Bloomberg and Guiliani making their crime, race, and poverty concerns national issues. These are local issues that require local solutions. Clean up your own house before trying to tell me how to clean mine.

I’m not saying I’m right, but I really resent urbanites condescendingly telling me how to work within my community. Your immediate five blocks of crime-ridden over-crowded paved-over blight is not a microcosm of the world. In other words: You don’t know shit.

I could tell he wasn’t used to people contradicting him, but he’s not my boss, and IMHO if you are gonna ask, you should have the stones to take the answer.

Larry Correia, yep the same guy that wrote Monster Hunter International, also owns a local gun store called Fuzzy Bunny Movie Guns (FBMG). He is moving his store to a much larger and better location. The grand opening will be on Monday the 11th and he has stocked the store with all kinds of boomy goodness. FBMG will be running various specials to celebrate this move; Larry says the “Economic Stimulus Package AR” will be particularly attractive. Also the whole FBMG crew just got back from the SHOT show, so I suspect they might also have some interesting data to download.

The new FBMG location features a very special and heart-warming thing: Parking! For reals, parking. The old place had a grand total of zero parking spaces so even one more space would be an improvement; however, this new location has 30 spaces!

Drop by and say hi to Larry and check out some inventory you probably won’t find anywhere else.

FBMG

13200 S. 48 E.
Draper, UT 84020

You guys will just have to suffer through the occasional random shot of the boy.