Author: Sebastian

What Gets Me Worried About Pennsylvania

This article explains the struggle for the GOP to maintain it’s traditional dominance of the Philadelphia suburbs.  No single political party has clearly wielded total power in the state over any length of time.  I think this has been healthy for our politics in general.

The consequences of this are enormous for the balance of power in state politics. For decades, support from these suburban Philadelphia counties has been crucial for GOP success statewide. To control the state, Republicans needed the suburbs. But beginning in the 1990s, the suburbs began to tilt toward the Democrats in some very important elections.

This erosion in GOP support can be traced across presidential, statewide, and congressional elections.

I worry very much about Pennsylvania turning into a single party run state like New Jersey, New York, or Massachusetts.  I am not pleased with the political climate in any of those states, and corruption is a more serious problem when a single party has total control over political institutions.

This, quite honestly, is the fault of the Republicans themselves.  Pennsylvania suburbanites voted Republican because of fiscal issues.  We’re not a markedly socially conservative area.   With the GOP having all but abandoned any sense of fiscal discipline or smaller government, it’s leaving GOP supporters in the area hard pressed to find reasons to keep affiliating.   I myself used to be a Republican until the national party pissed me off with their crap.  They have yet to do anything of substance to bring me back into the fold.  I have been willing to punish the party for by voting for some Democrats in certain races, and I will continue to do so.

But if the Philadelphia Suburbs start voting in lock step with the city, I’ll move to Texas or Arizona faster than you can blink.  I have no desire to leave Pennsylvania, but I won’t live in a state run by Democrats.  I’ve seen our neighbors go that route, and it doesn’t end with happy results.

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They didn’t ask us Pennsylvanians…

… if our ban on private sales actually works.  From Wisconsin:

With all of the violence on Milwaukee streets, three mothers who lost their sons in a triple shooting are working to keep guns out of the wrong hands.The three are rallying behind a gun-control bill to be introduced to the state Assembly Tuesday which also has support from Milwaukee’s most prolific gun dealer.

Hey folks, we already did this in Pennsylvania. Guess what? It doesn’t work. Now Philadelphia says one-gun-a-month will solve the problem. What happens when that doesn’t work? There’s no gun control measure that will fail spectacularly enough that the politicians and anti-gun groups won’t call for more of the same.

You’d think a gun dealer would know better than this. I have to wonder if he’s willing to sell out other gun owners so he can get more business by forcing people into using FFLs for background checks.

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Hate Mail

According to SayUncle, the kid that shot the monster pig is getting hate mail from PETA types.   I have to wonder how many of them would have been happier if the hog had killed the kid.   I wonder how many of them know that was a very real possibility with a wild pig this large.

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More Hydrogen Inventions

Instapundit seems to be a lot more skeptical than some reporters are. Follow the story to a guy who seems to have stumbled across a way to make hydrogen using a radio frequency generator. I’m not an expert in this area, but I do think this is possible. There’s already a patent on it, actually. The problem is that it’s not revolutionary. The radio frequency generator will consume more energy than is released by burning hydrogen. This article suggests that the efficiency is around 76% of ideal, which is less, I’m fairly certain, than conventional electrolysis methods, which are more like 80%.

Thermodynamics is a real bummer. It will always demand that you use more energy breaking the hydrogen/oxygen bond than you’ll get out of burning it.  I’m sure someday someone will make a fool of us all by figuring out to convert matter directly into energy, but when one sees inventions like this, the conventional laws of physics will apply.  There’s no such thing as free energy.

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He understands the issue…

… about well as he can act. Kevin Costner is following the pattern:

The Dances With Wolves star admits he loves to hunt and often heads out with his dogs and a shotgun passed down through generations of his family, but he’s the first to admit that America’s gun laws are too weak. And following the recent tragedy (Apr06) at Virginia Tech college, where English student Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people in what was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, Costner feels that legislators should get tough with firearms owners, who refuse to accept their practices could harm others.

Chalk up one more for the “I’m a gun owner but…” campaign.  I’ll make Kevin Costner a deal.   I’ll give up my guns when he learns how to friggin act.

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Memorial Day Shooting

Bitter and I went to Myrtle Grove WMA shooting range in Maryland.  It’s a nice facility, except we learned a few things.   For one, you need to bring string.  Targets are placed on pieces of string strung between posts.  Lots of string was cut, or not placed in the right places.

One guy had a neat contraption made of PVC pipe that hung off the baffling, and looked like it provided a much more stable target platform than string.  My preferred platform would have been a thick twine, with the target held up with black clips.

On Pennsylvania PGC ranges, the state provides target backing, but it’s at fixed 25, 50, and 100 yard intervals.  The nice thing about the string system is you can place targets at 10 yard increments all the way out to 100 yards.  It makes shooting pistol easier.  Maryland also allows up to ten rounds in a magazine, as opposed to Pennsylvania’s three, which means you spend more time shooting rather than reloading.

The other thing is to take bug spray.  It was a hot sticky day, and the flies wouldn’t live me alone.  Sunscreen probably would have been a good idea as well, though we managed a bench in the shade, not all of them were.  One guy brought a big patio umbrella.  I think he planned on staying a while.

The range was a little messy, and needed some cleaning, and maintenance.  To be fair to Maryland, Pennsylvania ranges can get pretty ugly if they are at the end of their maintenance cycles, but shooters tend to keep them from getting too ugly.  There was also brass everywhere that looked like it had been there a while.  I’ve been to ranges at home where guys are there picking up brass quite literally as soon as they cooled down enough after being ejected from my rifle.  Our grounds do tend to get littered with steel casings, but reloaders gobble up the brass.  Are there no reloaders in Maryland?

All in all I liked the facility.  It was run safely, and I was happy to see it busier on a holiday weekend than I see a lot of Pennsylvania ranges.  Worth the yearly $20 dollar shooting permit.  I will have to return sometime when the weather isn’t so hot and sticky.

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Advice Needed: Shotguns

After doing some clay shooting with Countertop this weekend, it got me thinking two things:

  1. I suck at skeet.
  2. I think it’s high time I got myself a decent shotgun.

I would have been lucky to hit a fourth of the clays on the skeet range. I did 21 out of 25 on the wobble trap range. Skeet is a lot more difficult than other clay sports.As for the shotgun, I currently have a Mossberg 835 pump action, which I’ve generally found adequate for the few times I would go shoot clay birds. I never got out much to shoot at clays, but not because I don’t enjoy it, rather because there are few places in my area where you can shoot clay birds that aren’t private clubs. Well, now I’m in a private club that has a really good skeet and trap range.

So what should I get? I’m looking to move away from pump. I’m not sure semi-auto is the way I want to go either. So that leaves side-by-side and over-under shotguns. The only problem is, that class of shotgun will generally push you over the $2000 dollar mark if you want anything halfway decent, and I’m not sure I would use it enough to justify the cost.

I’ve always been partial to the look of side-by-sides myself, though, I suspect for clay shooting the over-under configuration is probably better. Any thoughts on that? I’ve also noticed that CZ makes shotguns at what seem to be bargain prices, but I don’t know much about the quality. I know CZ pistols are low cost and high quality, so I’m hoping their shotguns are similar. I have my eye on these:

  1. CZ SXS Ringneck
  2. CZ O/U Canvasback

I’ve also been considering these models from Charles Daly:

  1. Model 306 Side-by-Side
  2. Model 106 O/U

If anyone has any experience with these or can offer advice it would be appreciated. Also consider that I’m not about to spend $4000 bucks on a shotgun. I don’t envision myself getting serious enough about the shotgun sports to justify a ton of money being spent, but I would like to have something that’s a bit nicer than your bargain basement pump shotgun when I do want to shoot some clay birds, which should be more often now that I have the opportunity.

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