Marksmanship is generally pretty poor among Iraqi soldiers and insurgents, from what I hear. Now it seems they can’t even fire into the air correctly.  If you’re going to fire a gun into the air, you should do it straight up.  The terminal velocity of the bullet isn’t high enough to kill. It’s when you fire at too low an angle that you risk killing or seriously injuring someone.  Clearly they need to take some lessons from folks in Kentucky.
Year: 2007
Underrated Blogs
I’ve been quietly reading Skywritings now for a month or so. I can’t remember where I originally came across the link, I think it might have been Kevin. But it’s real quality stuff. Bloggers tend to have various talents, but one of the rare talents is being a truly superb writer. One of the things that draws me to Skywritings is the quality of the writing style, and the well chosen photo captions. You also have to love a redhead who enjoys shooting! I’ll point to one of her recent posts as an example:
One of those things that kills us in the wilderness, in nature, is we don’t understand the forces we engage. The environment we have grown up in the US to expect is one of peace and sustenance. For the lucky ones, food appears often and in abundance. There’s medical care for those of us lucky to have a job that provides it, and there’s plenty of light and oxygen. It is like we are in big safe pen, a domestic den of civilization. Then we go into nature and the playing field is leveled and we are tested in ways that life or TV do not prepare you for.
Most of us sleep through the test and we come in and out of the experience never really knowing what we did or didn’t do to survive yet someone believing that we are hardy, knowledgeable adventurers. As pilots say “been there – done that”. It’s smoke and mirrors.
Author Jon Krakauer wrote about mountaineer guide Scott Fisher, the one who encouraged him to climb Mt. Everest. “We got the ‘big E’ figured out” he told him” “We’ve got it totally wired”. Fisher died up there. The psychology of oblivion is not a new science.. Making someone into a believer, coming to terms with the unfamiliar forces of nature is hard. For we live in North America, where for the most part and thanks to many – soldiers, and law enforcement officers, intelligence analysts and fireman, we are for the most part safe. Few of us believe in our own mortality until we’re faced with it, and then, even then, after the threat passes, we forget. So we have no way to prepare for what seems too removed a possibility. As Christopher Burney, who was a prisoner of war at Buchenwald said “Death is a word which presents no real target to the minds eyes”.
I almost feel guilty for excerpting it. Read the whole thing. It’s high time to add Skywriting to the blogroll.
Fantastic Weekend
We had some really beautiful weather this weekend in the Philadelphia area. Rightwingprof picked a great time to come. Bitter and I went canoing in New Jersey on Saturday. She had to go back to Virginia after we met up with Wyatt and Rightwingprof, so I decided to spend the rest of the daylight today at the range with the Ruger 10/22. I was shooting an NRA large bore 100yd target at that distance w/optics in bench rest position. Ammo was Remington “Golden Bullet”, those cheap brass plated .22LR rounds they make. I scored 189 out of 200 and 178 out of 200. I noticed most of my hits into the 8 and 9 ring were vertically oriented, rather than horizontally oriented, so I’m wondering if maybe powder charge consistency in the cheap ammo is an issue? I think I should be able to hit 200 out of 200 with optics at that distance. At least that’s my goal!
The 10/22 needs a cleaning now though. It was jamming up on me toward the end, and starting to make weak strikes on the rim.
You know you’re a gun nut…
… when your girlfriend is borrowing guns from you. The conversation goes something like this:
Me: “We’re going to meet a couple of other bloggers at Geno’s in Philly. It’s been a long time since I’ve been there. Used to be an ok neighborhood. There was a shooting nearby not too long ago, so I don’t know about now. If parking is tight, we may have to walk a bit.”
Bitter: “I’m leaving straight from the district once work lets out, so I won’t have a gun.”
Me: “Well, if you want, you can borrow my Makarov.”
Bitter: “OK, I’ll do that.”
And that she did, but it’s still an OK neighborhood. I hardly ever carry a backup gun, but it is kind of cool to have a backup girlfriend :)
Meme
I’ll just borrow ideas from Uncle:
- I’ve never bungee jumped, but I’ve seen Rockey Horror Picture show two times. Last time I went, there were two hot chicks making out in the theater in front of me. I might have watched that more intently than the show.
- I don’t own a lot of guns by some people’s standards, but probably more than Uncle or Bitter.
- My legal name is 100% Irish
- I got my wisdom teeth removed last fall. Dry socket was the worst pain I’ve ever had. The narcotics were good though.
- My liver is 50% Irish and 50% German
- I could pretty much repeat Uncle’s line for this one, except I lack a graduate degree. And my grandmother did graduate from high school.
- Bitter has not yet asked me to marry her, but she’s been looking at wedding stuff all weekend. (she’s putting together a post on the wedding industry)
- I once shot and killed a bird with a BB gun without meaning to. It got in between me and the target.
Federal Law Can’t Apply to Us!
It’s funny how many of the left leaning blogs are astounded about the notion that the ATF is investigating one of their favorite reporters:
I want to address the idiotic notion that Bailey was involved in an illegal “straw purchase,” which at least one Media Nation commenter has fallen for. What straw purchase? Bailey gave money to Walter Belair, a former prison guard, in order to buy a gun. Belair didn’t buy the gun for Bailey; he bought it for himself, and, indeed, kept it until it was confiscated by the feds.
It’s not really such an idiotic notion. As I mentioned yesterday, the fact that the gun went with someone else is not necessarily the relevant fact, but that a straw purchase could still be affected without the actual buyer being in actual possession. While I think it’s unlikely that Mr. Bailey has anything to worry about in terms of actual charges (most of the facts don’t seem to point to a straw man purchase), I can’t exactly blame the ATF for investigating.
It almost seems as if some on the left believe these laws would only affect criminals, and that it was a waste for the ATF to go after people who are generally law abiding. If folks on the left think that, I couldn’t agree more! But you know, the laws don’t only target criminals, who don’t care if they break the law. They target ordinary people too, like Steve Bailey.
That’s why those of us, like me, who are into shooting and collecting, and definitely the folks who are into gunsmithing, are so intimately familiar with these laws. It’s a minefield, and one trip can turn you into a felon. If you don’t like the idea of the ATF investigating Mr. Bailey, then how about helping us repeal some of the more onerous ones?
UPDATE: Kennedy replies in the comments. Â So do I.
Why Does Congress Tolerate Ignorant Reporters?
Well, one dumb question deserves another. The rest of the article is behind a subscription wall, but here’s the public part:
The guns used by the three Rockaway men who shot two police officers nearly two weeks ago came from Virginia, as the majority of guns used on local streets do. You would think that it would be relatively easy for local police agencies such as the NYPD to track weapons used to commit a crime, but it is not.
Wouldn’t the fact that they know the guns are from Virginia indicate that the NYPD was able to trace them easily? I don’t know what the rest of the article is, but if this is any indication, it’s no doubt filled with misleading statements about the nature of the Tiahrt amendment, which is supported by both BATFE and the Fraternal Order of Police.
NRA Arming Children
The horror! The NRA is encouraging children to use guns. Not only that, they are training them to be highly effective snipers. Clearly the gun pushing lobby has gone too far this time:
Soon-to-be Marysville High School senior Katie Bush is making the most of her time off from school this summer.
Bush is in Port Clinton, Ohio, competing in the 100th anniversary competition of the National Rifle and Pistol Championships.
The championships began July 18 and will run through the weekend. Up to 6,000 competitors were expected.”This is a big competition,” Bush said. “I’m usually in the middle of the pack, but it’s pretty tough competition here.”
Bush is competing in the Camp Perry Smallbore 3-Position competition.
This is the second year Bush has made the trip to the national championships.
I’ll bet she’s even learned safe gun handling practice too! The treachery of the NRA knows no bounds! The students at Marysville High School had better watch out, because clearly she will snap any minute and shoot you, very precisely.
In all seriousness, we wish Miss Bush the best of luck. Maybe we can convince her to take part in one of Mr. Completely’s e-postal matches.  Of course, then we’d all get beat by a sixteen year old girl :)
Picture of My Sister
I was showing Bitter where I grew up. My father, and now my sister, are volunteer firefighters with the Ridley Park Fire Company. My father lives in Newark, Delaware now, and is mostly not active. I was kind of surprised to find a picture of my sister on their site not more than a week old:
She’s front and center, with the first shovel moving from left to right. Directly to my sister’s left (picture right), is my brother-in-law. Click to see the whole pic.
Visiting Geno’s Tomorrow
Bitter has never been to either Pat’s nor Geno’s to have a real South Philly cheesesteak. I haven’t been there for a while myself. I grew up in Ridley Park in Delaware County, about 5 miles south of Philadelphia, where the place you would get good steaks was Leo’s Steaks. Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough, but I can’t find any good places to get steaks in Bucks County. I’ve tried a few, and they are weak in comparison to what I know.
Of course, what sparked this is that Rightwingprof is in town. We’ll be meeting up with Wyatt Earp as well. We just had another murder in Philadelphia right in this area a few weeks ago, so I have to wonder if Rightwingprof really wants to meet us, or he really wanted to go to Geno’s, and figured having a Philly cop, and two strapped gun bloggers along would help even up the odds a bit ;) But seriously, we’re always happy to meet fellow bloggers. If you’re ever in the nation’s capital or Philly area, we’re up for getting together.
UPDATE: It was good to meet everyone. I didn’t realize that Bitter had never had a philly cheesesteak at all, so I will have to take her to Leo’s sometime to try the ones I grew up with. It’s been 10 years since I’d been the Geno’s or Pat’s, and was worried that maybe the neighborhood might have gone downhill since then, but it’s still a halfway decent area.