Author: Sebastian

Gun Sales Brisk in Central PA

This may turn out to be Obama’s great accomplishment in his first 100 days:

Pochron said he sold twice as many guns Saturday as he normally sells in a weekend. Everything from $250 Taurus .38 Special revolvers to $1,600 AR-15 rifles sold, he said.

In contrast, war memorabilia was moving a little more slowly than usual, vendors said.

I could have paid that much for a pre-ban AR in 2000.  I actually hoping the market cools down a bit so I can actually start finding guns and ammo again for something near a reasonable price.  Obama doesn’t have to tax guns and ammo, we’re driving the price up just fine on our own.

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MSNBC Hit Piece on Guns

MSNBC ran a hit piece on guns and kids over the weekend.  I think we’re supposed to be horrified.  In this hit piece, we see a kid shooting a machine gun, or rather, two adults holding a machine gun while the kid pulls the trigger.  Unlike what happened in Massachusetts, this is how to do it safely.  Then we see an interview with a 12 year old girl who has an AK-47 that’s really an AR-15.   No attempt is made at all to explain why you might introduce children to shooting.  That is left up to the viewers, which is entirely the point, to present scary images to the uninitiated without presenting any context.

My favorite line?

“Seven year old Teresa has an AR-15: an air-cooled, semi-automatic, shoulder-mounted rifle that is currently used by the U.S. special forces in Iraq.”

No, no, we’re not playing up irrelevant and meaningless terminology, some of which is not even factually correct, at all.  Just enjoy our freak show, and be scared for the children.

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Imagine Bush Doing This

Obama sent a letter to Jacques Chirac telling him how much he’s looking forward to working with him.  Problem?  Jacques Chirac is no longer President of France.  What would the media reaction be if Bush did this?

UPDATE: Missing context

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Butt Crack of Dawn

One thing I really appreciate about the club’s air gun matches is that the start at 10AM.  IHMSA and CMP start at 8, which means I get up earlier than I normally would for work.  Came down with a cold yesterday too, so I have a Benadryl fog on top of it all.  Should be interesting to see how I shoot with cold medication running through my system.

Either way, the AR-15 and I must be off.

UPDATE: 395 in a 500 point match.  First slow fire prone stage I bombed.  Steadily improved in score up until offhand, which wasn’t actually as bad as the first prone stage!  I think I can reasonably do 425/500 next time.  We’ll see.  I might shoot better when I’m not feeling like crap.  The top shooter, who I was scoring, did a 490/500 with 11X.  I definitely have some practice ahead of me to improve.

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CMP Season Begins

Tomorrow is our club’s first CMP match for the season.  Took the AR out today to practice a bit, and to chrony a new load.  27 grains of Varget with a 55gr Remington FMJ-BT bullet.  We only have a 200 yard range, so 55 grains works fine.  I thought 27 grains of Varget ran a little hot.  3380 at the muzzle.  I prefer about 3200 out of the 20″ barrel.

Match starts at 8:00 tomorrow.  I don’t even get to work that early.  Need to load some more ammo before I get to bed tonight.  One thing I definitely appreciate about shooting air pistol and .22LR is that I don’t have to reload anything.

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My Tired Eyes

Got an eye exam today.  First in probably five years.  I noticed my eyes were having some difficulty focusing on the computer screen, and seeing distant targets clearly.  I didn’t thnk my sight had deteriorated all that much, but as soon as I was in front of the chart, and could see all the way to the bottom on the left eye, and only down three lines on the right, I knew it going to mean a new prescription.

I’m anxious to see how this affects my shooting.  I don’t have too much difficulty with indoor or air gun Silhouette animals, which max out at 25 yards, but a military SR target out at 200 yards looks pretty fuzzy to me.  I prefer a six o’clock hold on those, and it’s too fuzzy for me to make out whether I’m lollypoping the target properly, or whether I’m a bit under it.  The fuzz kinds of runs together.  Hopefully the new prescription will help me with that.

Other than that, the eyes are fine.  I had one imperfection in my eye lens that they say is congential, and isn’t big enough to affect my vision.  Blood pressure was a little high (don’t ask me why optometrists take blood pressure), but I have white coat hypertension, so that wasn’t a surprise to me.  Put me in any clinical setting and I exhibit pretty severe anxiety.  My resting pulse rate is 60-70 bpm.  The machine read my pulse rate at 120 bpm.  I don’t like doctors offices.  The dentist is even worse.  Good thing they don’t take blood pressure.

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Site Chosen for 2012 Olympic Shooting

Looks like they are choosing the Woolwich as the venue for the shooting events for the 2012 London Olympics.  I have to wonder if a big reason choosing Woolwich is that its status as a military facility made dealing with UK law in regards to small arms easier, and avoided problems for the politicians.  The National Rifle Association of the UK had pushed hard for the shooting games to be hosted at Bisley, in Surry, and the British Army previously didn’t want the games held at Woolwich, so I’m guessing they relented.

No doubt there are many disappointed shooting enthusiasts over this decision.

UPDATE: No doubt taxpayers in the UK should also be disappointed, as Bisley’s bid was 10 million pounds cheaper than Woolwich’s.

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NPS Shuttering Springfield Armory?

Michael Bane reports that the National Park Service may be shutting down the Springfield Armory National Historical Site in Massachusetts:

Yesterday Jim Shepherd at the SHOOTING WIRE and I received information ostensibly from an insider whistle-blower that the Springfield Armory is quietly being disassembled. According to the information we received, the new director not only has no background in firearms — rather, from “textiles” — but sees no benefit in preserving “old guns.”

Again, according to the information we received, the curator has been removed, the huge arms library has been closed and the new administrator is in the process of locking up the arms collections.

Both Jim and I are working to either confirm or deny the information, but so far no one at Springfield is talking.

If this is confirmed, it would indeed be a tragedy.

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More Analysis on the National Park Ruling

Dave Hardy is far more qualified than I am to comment on the case, being an attorney, and having worked as an attorney for Interior for a number of years.  He has this to say:

Probably because this was being raced thru in the last days of the Bush Admin., that’s all that Interior did in the way of NEPA. Just applied a categorical. They didn’t put together the usual environmental assessment.

So they got nailed. You can see it coming. NEPA requires analysis of environmental impact, both good and bad. Well, if the rule does good things — allows people to defend themselves against criminals and predatory wildlife — that’s a good impact on the human environment. Which means the categorical exemption is inapplicable.

It was a rushed rule, perhaps prepared by agency personnel who didn’t care, or might even enjoy it if it got struck down. There might have been a chance at winning on standing to sue (and I note from the opinion the government didn’t argue that!).

I guess we’ll just have to take care of this legislatively.  Now where is that federal lands bill?

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Hey Mayor Nutter

If you’re looking to balance the city’s budget on the back of the City’s police officers, why don’t you take a look at your narcotics division and start looking to make cuts there.  I have no patience for this kind of crap.  Nothing undermines the rule of law more than when police pretend they are not subject to it themselves.

It’s equally outrageous that the city is taking the position that small ziplock bags are drug paraphernalia.  That the city’s narcotics unit is even wasting time on this small time crap is nuts, to say the least.  But hey, I suppose shop owners don’t shoot at the police, unlike the real bad guys.

If the state has any sense at all it’ll change its drug paraphenelia laws to deal with this.  Selling plastic bags should not, in any sane system of justice, be a crime.

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