Looks Like Cody Wilson Could be Going to Jail

Breaking news, it seems:

The affidavit said a counselor called Austin police on Aug. 22 to report that a girl under the age of 17 told her she had sex with a 30-year-old man on Aug. 15 and was paid $500.

In a forensic interview on Aug. 27, the girl told authorities that she created an account on SugarDaddyMeet.com, and began exchanging messages with a man who used the username “Sanjuro,” the affidavit said.

The pair messaged online, then began exchanging text messages.

“During this conversation, ‘Sanjuro’ identified himself as ‘Cody Wilson.’ Victim said that ‘Sanjuro’ described himself to the victim as a ‘big deal,’ ” the affidavit said.

Sanjuro? Really? Even Anthony Weiner came up with better names for his alter egos. If there’s anything that all sides can agree on, it’s that Cody Wilson has more panache than using a name like Sanjuro.

According to the document, Wilson sent the girl images of his penis, and she sent him nude photos of herself.

Why does everyone and their mother send dick pics these days? You know what I’ve never ever done? Send a dick pic. If this is true, he could be screwed on the pictures alone if she was under 18. The age of consent in Texas is 17, and federally the pictures are a problem if she’s under 18.

This is disappointing. There are very serious First and Second Amendment issues at the heart of what Cody Wilson is doing, and this will seriously complicate things. But this issue is bigger than Wilson, and it will come to the front one way or another.

UPDATE: Just as SAF announces they are expanding their lawsuit to include Pennsylvania’s AG and Governor, among other state pols as well.

Good Article on Dana Loesch

“We are in the middle of a grand political realignment, and the S.S. Second Amendment is going to get tossed around by the storm along with everything else. When we find a new political equilibrium, I don’t know where the Second Amendment and a host of other cultural issues will be, and neither does anyone else.”

From “St. Louis”: “The making of NRA’s Dana Loesch” I would encourage everyone to read it, and maybe read it again. NRA should be very concerned about polling numbers. While I believe there’s an argument to be made that polling increasingly doesn’t work, that’s another post. It concerns me that you can trace movement in public opinion back to the point where Bloomberg really got his act together and started dumping serious money into gun control.You can see the expected spike post-Sandy Hook, but then around 2015 it really starts headed in a direction we don’t want. That also happens to coincide with NRA adopting what I’ve called the Angry Dana Strategy. Anger is only going to get you so far. People eventually tire of anger. I know I’m tired of seeing shit like this.

Look, I get it was a joke that was taken out of context. But what the fuck does diversity or the lack thereof on Tommy the Tank have to do with the Second Amendment, shooting, or gun rights? I’m finding I’m having to ask this question way too often these days. Who thought it was a good idea to do this? What are you smoking? This isn’t just poor judgement on Dana Loesch’s part, it took a team effort to fail this hard. Mockery is a lot more powerful than anger, and I’d cheer NRA shifting away from anger to mockery, but it has to work. You need people who can pull it off. It’s hard to do well. It takes sharp writers and a host that can deliver it.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe any of this is going to change as long as membership holds stable or goes up. Eventually the Angry Dana Strategy won’t hold back the tide of public opinion if Bloomberg can keep it going in his direction, and we’re all going to pay the price for that when the dam eventually breaks. NRA needs to get back to basics and start making grassroots organizing the heart of its strategy. The tools to accomplish that are a lot more powerful today than they were in the 1980s.

We are in the middle of a grand political realignment, and the S.S. Second Amendment is going to get tossed around by the storm along with everything else. When we find a new political equilibrium, I don’t know where the Second Amendment and a host of other cultural issues will be, and neither does anyone else. If Ack-Mac thinks they know, they are kidding themselves. Is NRA being lashed together with sinking ships? I don’t know.

Ack-Mac won’t get NRA through this. What can get them through it is their core membership, sometimes members, and aspirant members. But you have to do something with them. Feeding them a firehose of media isn’t organizing them.

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.

More Gun Blegging: Pistol Caliber ARs

I’ve never been into pistol caliber carbines all that much. I’d be interested in submachine guns if they were legal, but semi-auto pistol carbines have just never tickled my fancy. However, my club has steel targets set closer than 100 yards that are limited to pistol calibers, and our indoor range is limited to pistol calibers. We’re also about to get more pistol-caliber-only steel. So I’m thinking a pistol caliber AR-like carbine is something I could use.

But I’m not sure what to get. I’m not opposed to registering it as an SBR, and as long as I’m doing that I might as well register a can for it. To me a 16″ barrel on a pistol caliber gun is a bit pointless. But maybe I can get a pinned or integral suppressor that takes it out to 16″ and only need one tax stamp? To me if you’re going the suppressed route, the .45 ACP is a better option, but I believe that takes a more AR-10 sized lower. One thing for sure is I’d want it to take Glock magazines.

Anyone out there have any experience in this area?

What to Do with the 6.8?

Years ago, against my better judgement, I had an opportunity to buy a barely used 6.8 SPC AR-15 upper for a pretty good price, so I took it. My first clue there was trouble should have been was how badly the case head was marred after extraction. I always made my reloads lighter than factory, but reality is I could only ever push about 2100ft/sec at the muzzle without creating notable symptoms of overpressure. Factory ammo all exhibited overpressure signs.

Turns out that manufacturer’s supplier of that upper over-chromed their barrels, and so they all had pretty significant chamber pressure issues. Not knowing how safe it really was to shoot, and not liking the anecdotal evidence that suggested I could only avoid overpressure symptoms at positively anemic velocities, it’s sat in my safe for years unfired.

I’ve been debating whether it makes sense to re-barrel that upper in 6.8, or just repurpose the upper for a standard 5.56x45mm AR, sell the 6.8 brass, bullets, etc, and move on. The only reason I’d even re-barrel in 6.8 is because of just a little inner gun hipster. But I don’t really know how much of a future 6.8 has, and I can’t abide by modern guns I don’t ever shoot taking up safe space.