A Big Fear of Mine

I’ve recently gotten into progressive reloading, and have several thousand rounds under my belt at the point. Enough to worry about this as a real possibility. While there are things I can get for my Hornady LnL press to boost the level of automation, a certain reduction in speed and some amount of manual steps forces me to pay more attention to what I’m doing, and offers more opportunity to catch something.

When reloading .223, I had powder stick in the mechanism and dump a light charge into one case, and then overflow the next case. Fortunately, with the powder I’m using, the charge pretty much fills the case, and all it made was a mess. But if that happened in a pistol round? Good chance I wouldn’t notice. I have Hornady’s Powder Cop, but there’s enough variation in how powder lays it would be hard to catch an overcharge. It’s useful, but not a precise instrument. It’s best, I think, for catching no-charges, which is also potentially fatal to your firearm if you plant the squib bullet in the barrel and follow up with another cartridge.

I also worry about this as a match director now. It’s not only my loads, I have to worry about the loads of the guy I’m standing behind. Shoot enough, and be around guns enough, and the law of averages will catch up with you at some point.

This Should Prove the Issue Has Nothing to do With Crime and Public Safety

Bloomberg has a hit piece on the CMP, because they spread the love of shooting, to kids, and sell “hand-me-down military weapons.”

The next big payday will come later this year when CMP starts selling thousands of M1911s, the U.S. military’s sidearm of choice for more than 70 years.

What do you want the government to do with them? Sell them to tin pot dictators? Melt them down and make flowers? This is a win-win for the government and shooting community to sell them to shooters. The hoops that must be jumped through to get one, along with the pricing, have me reluctant to get one myself.

Also note, the CMP has never sold anything that isn’t in .30 or .22LR. Handguns are a new thing, and they are selling them as an FFL rather than under their congressional charter. But these are “military weapons” that meaningless trope trotted out by people who haven’t got a clue.

At a time when Americans are sharply divided over the place of firearms in society, the U.S. government has, in effect, subsidized the metamorphosis of CMP into a deep-pocketed, nationwide evangelist for youth gun culture.

You know, you might need those kids to fight a war for you someday, and wouldn’t it be a good idea if we had some kids that, I don’t know, knew their way around a gun and could maybe hit something they aim at? I don’t have an issue with the military selling surplus to civilian shooters. They ought to subsidize marksmanship. They depend on it. If we end up in a shooting war, everyone will depend on it. They say that’s obsolete. Says who? Who decided that?

These people are not interested in public safety. They are interested in frustrating and then ending the shooting sports and shooting culture. That’s the goal. You’d have to be blind not to see it.

Levi Strauss Being Anti-Gun is Nothing New

I haven’t worn Levi’s jeans since I was in my 20s, when I found out they donated to anti-gun causes. They were on NRA’s “blacklist” of anti-gun companies back in the day. When I do wear jeans, I wear Lee. But mostly I wear “Work Khakis” by Carthartt. They hold up pretty well even for doing real work, and they are more comfortable in the summer than jeans. The cell phone pocket is nice too.

So I can’t unfortunately announce I’ll never buy another Levi’s product again, because they are anti-gun bozos. Been riding that train for a while now.

Labor Day Reading

I hope you find these as interesting as I did:

Fascism and the Future, Part One: Up From Newspeak

Fascism and the Future, Part Two: The Totalitarian Center

Fascism and the Future, Part Three: Weimar America

Also from the same author:

The Kek Wars, Part One: Aristocracy and its Discontents

The Kek Wars, Part Two: In the Shadow of the Cathedral

The Kek Wars, Part Three: Triumph of the Frog God

The Kek Wars, Part Four: What Moves In The Darkness

I’ve never hung out on the “chans,” so I can’t speak for how true this is, but it’s an interesting analysis. I’m not sure what I think about it yet, but it’s a damned interesting take.

One reason I haven’t been blogging as much is because everything is up in the air right now. The old order is being smashed before our eyes, and I have no idea what the new order will look like.