Not many new gun owners start a gun blog, but this one did. This is a useful thing to get out onto Al Gore’s interwebs.
Year: 2008
Defensive Carbine
Looks like PDB took a defensive carbine class at Defensive Concepts of North Carolina. Here’s day two.
Going Progressive
So I have decided that I am in need of a progressive press. The main thing keeping me from practicing my shooting more is the fact that for guns other than .22LR, I’m either stuck paying in limbs for ammo, or spending hours at the reloading press. I can reload about 50 to 60 rounds per hours with the single stage press. What takes me an hour to load, I can shoot in 10 minutes. This has to change, especially if I get into action shooting sports.
I know there will be myriads of folks who will say “You just need a Dillon.” but Dillons are expensive, and while I like the idea of a no-nonsense warranty, for all practical purposes, I’m not likely to need unusual warranty service. I’ve had a reader who has graciously offered to send me his Lee Pro 1000 that he’s no longer using, and it’s a tempting offer, since I’m already using their stuff, and it’s working fine for me. But if I choose Lee, and make an investment in caliber kits, I could be sinking money into something I might just decide to upgrade later. Should I go whole hog, and just get a quality press? If I go that route, I’m torn between the Hornady Lock-N-Load AP, and the Dillon XL 650
Here’s what I want to reload, in order of volume:
- .45ACP
- 9mm
- .44 Spl/Magnum
- .223 Remington
- 6.8 SPC Remington
- 30-06
Now if I have to do 6.8 and 30-06 on the single stage, I’m not going to be all that broken up. Though, the 6.8 would be nice to do on the progressive, if only because I would shoot it more if reloading speed weren’t an issue. I’ve been considering this review of all three progressive presses, which says good things about the LNL AP. I’ve also been looking at Chris’ review, and also here and here, which is largely favorable to the Hornady.
What to do, what to do.
Bad Idea
Ry Jones reports that the Sportsman Guide is selling a Ruger Charger Kit that converts it into a carbine. The problem? It’s 10 inch barrel makes it a Short-Barreled-Rifle under the National Firearms Act, which means if you don’t fill out your ATF form to register it and pay for the tax stamp, you’re a felon. If Sportsman’s Guide is going to sell these, they need to warn gun owners about the legal requirements. Otherwise someone is going to go to prison for a very long time, figuring if they were selling the kit, it must be legal right?
UPDATE: Whoops… looks like what this kit does is convert a 10/22 into a pistol. Actually, I think you can legally do this. Let me check into it.
UPDATE: Yeah, I’m pretty sure this falls under United States v. Thompson Center Arms. This kit should be legal.
UPDATE: Wrong again. It seems ATF asserts that you can convert a handgun into a rifle, as long as you add a barrel longer than 16″, but you can’t convert a rifle into a handgun. That would be making an NFA item, and you need the registration and tax stamp to do so.
Do the Brady Campaign folks want to come on here and try to tell me these are reasonable gun laws?
UPDATE: See here, here and here. Given the case of US v. Thompson Center Arms, I don’t think ATF is likely to prevail in court here, but I wouldn’t risk it. You can be arrested and prosecuted.
UPDATE: Looks like they updated it with a warning. Good.
Mail Troubles
My mail host is having difficulties that have been exceedingly difficult to diagnose. If you’d have troubles e-mailing me, I do apologize. My mail service is through my friend Jason’s Mac, and we’ve been trying to figure this problem out for the longest time. Basically what happens is postfix decides to stop recognizing local users, and starts rejecting mail saying the user doesn’t exist. Restarting postfix seems to fix this, but it usually comes back within a few hours. Even more oddly, rebooting the host sometimes fixes it for weeks and months.
The real trouble with figuring this one out is not having a good google search term. There are lots of very simple problems with local mail delivery, and this isn’t a very simple problem. Finding good information through all the reams of people who just don’t have their mail server configured properly is rough.
Hopefully we’ll figure this out soon. In the mean time, if anyone has experienced anything like this with Postfix running on MacOS or BSD, let me know.
What They Think of You
There are one million hunters in Pennsylvania in a state of twelve million. That’s a lot of hunters. Michigan also has quite a lot of hunters, which would make you think Obama would know better than to bring this up:
Palin’s bio is “compelling,” Obama said.
The crowd booed. “No, it’s an interesting story.” More boos. “No, no, it is. I mean that sincerely. Mother, governor, moose shooter.”
The crowd broke out in laughter. “That’s cool. That’s cool. That’s cool stuff,” Obama said.
She’s Really a Man
On Being a New Jersey Gun Owner
Over at Cemetery’s gun blog. A lot of New Jersey gun owners don’t really get how bad they have it, and more than a few are blisfully unaware of how easy it is to end up a felon. At a match a few months ago, I was talking to a guy who’s friend was in a lot of trouble because he and a buddy were target shooting on their property, when the police showed up and, at gunpoint, disarmed them and hauled them off to jail. He had his kids with him, and there was some worry he’d lose the kids, because they charged him with endangering them too. His crime? Possession of .22LR hollow point ammunition. A whole box of it. That’s worth a lot of time in New Jersey. You can buy that stuff easily out of state. Most folks have no idea it’s illegal.
Latest Hysterics
Carl in Chicago points out a Brady presser that would seem to indicate that if HR 6691 is passed, that the mass of guns flooding into our nations capital will produce such an immense gravitational field that it will collapse into a singularity that will consume the city, followed quickly by the rest of the nation, planet, solar system, and known universe.
In short, they are freaking out because the laws in Washington D.C. will be substantially identical to most of the 50 states, with the exception that carrying a loaded firearm on your person will still be unlawful. This is the press release of an organization struggling to find relevance in a political climate that’s not favorable to their message. I can’t imagine how much it must worry the Brady’s that the original Republican bill was tabled, because the Democrats wanted to take credit for getting this done. And the Democrat bill was more pro-gun than the Republican bill! The Brady’s have to find relevance in this election, and they haven’t been able to so far. The best they’ve been able to get is “don’t tell me that we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.” from Barack Obama, who also keeps insisting he’s not a gun banner. While there’s no doubt Obama is their man, most sensible Democrats are now aware that this is a losing issue for them.
UPDATE: Cam wants to know where the evidence is that this bill would change anything about carrying of firearms? Maybe the evidence went back to school with the Brady intern.
Promising Statistics
From a New Jersey media source at that:
According to the research done by the NSSF, 72 percent more women are hunting with firearms today than just five years ago. And 50 percent more women are now target shooting. The statistics, from National Sporting Goods Association surveys spanning 2001 through 2005, show more than 3 million women hunt and over 5 million women enjoy shooting.
[…]
The statistics show that 23 percent of the shooting population in America are now women. Women also own 9 percent of the firearms in America, and this figure is increasing with each passing year.
I’ve also found that women are far better additions to the community than many men. This is merely antecdotal evidence, but in my experience women:
- Are far more willing to get their kids, families and friends involved in shooting.
- Are more likely to take an interest in the issue politically and be activists for the second amendment.
- Are more willing to try different shooting sports.
- Often improve their shooting faster than men.
This data is good news for us, and not very good news for the anti-gun folks. The stereotypical soccer mom is the gun control key demographic. What’s going to happen when their key demographic keeps a Glock in the glove compartment?