Fun Turns to Tragedy!!!

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I am a gun enthusiast trapped in the People's Republic of Maryland. My political affiliation is Independent, as the Ruling parties are both full of crap, and long ago stopped representing the common man. If the Libertarians weren't such freaks I would probably be one. I am a member of the Nation of Riflemen and damn proud of it. I once took an oath that I would support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. As far as I know I never broke that oath, and will continue to follow it. I am not Politically Correct and will NEVER be Politically Correct. If you need to know more, feel free, Ask.

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Well I made it to Lewiston Idaho after 3 hops on Delta.  Had no neighbors the whole way…  Made for some nice flying.

The town that I am staying in was only 40 minutes away from the hotel (well it would have been if not for the construction on the highway (ok 2 lane road with a 65mph speed limit) which cost me 20 minutes.

I drove through some really nice country on my way here.  Liz would love it.  Maybe I will be able to drag her here next year (we will already be in Montana) if the drive is not too long.

The suite at the hotel is cool.  Ben is out so I have yet to meet him and lunch is calling my name.  So I am going out on the town…

Oh and it is as I thought.  No cell phone…  GSM is a no go out here…

But the hotel does have working wireless…

Well in less than 12 hours I will get on a plane for Idaho.

My bags are packed (mostly I still have to put clothes in the bag, but all of the shooting stuff is in there) and my firearm is also packed. 

I will be posting while I am away.  I may even put up a short video clip if I find the time.

I am going to use just my video camera as a camera this time since I am already traveling heavy enough with all of the gear for shooting that is not going in my carry on (spotting scope and such).  The video camera is a 2 megapixel camera that will record onto a SD media card with decent quality.

Submachine Gun You preferred a weapon with 89% power over speed and 70% range over melee.

You use an SMG. Though short-range and prone to run out of ammo, the SMG's destructive power is remarkable and fearsome. Few weapons provide better cover fire, and focused fire from an SMG can decimate most targets. Your enemies won't last five seconds after a single sweep from your gun.

I frequently read the comic Day by Day from Chris Muir.  I almost always enjoy his comics.  I am not sure if he is published in any other format than the web as I have not read the comics since Calvin and Hobbs ended.  I used to love Bloom County, but it also ended a long time ago.  So I have no real interest in print news papers any longer, as they really don’t print the anything without a political slant on it any longer.  Seems the truth has become overrated in the MSM.  But back to the topic at hand.  these two Day by Day comics strike a cord with me.

Now what would your reaction be if confronted with this situation?  I know what mine would be…

Yep that is just what my reaction would be, if only I did not live in a state where you are supposed to “rely on the police to protect you”. 

We had a good chance to change that this year, but for one politician who is a gun bigot it probably would have made it to the floor for a vote.  Next year is another year and it will be even better as we will be working very hard for the rest of this year to make sure that it gets to the floor.  As a bonus it will be an election year, we will work hard to make sure that being able to protect ourselves is a major issue that we won’t let politicians hide from.  We will also be working real hard at getting rid of politicians that are clinging onto the gun control issue.

The real telling piece of the cartoon actually happened in the last segment of the cartoon “Oh, like the papers’ll EVER report self defense”.  That is a hang up for the MSM.  If they ever were to report on a regular basis the number of self defense uses of firearms, the gun bigot groups would be forced to scatter like the roaches.  But the MSM needs to report on the criminal use of firearms because it sells, and it sells much better than the stories about a 70+ year old grandmother killing burglars who have broken into her house.  Or a mother who killed her estranged husband/boyfriend who was coming to kill her even though she had a restraining order.

The MSM is so full of crap they can’t even get the facts strait when they cover a story where a criminal has used a firearm illegally (or most other stories for that matter).  MSM just does not seem to be able to get much right now that they are reporting “politically” instead of factually.  If you doubt me, just read an article written about something in which you specialize, see if they get the facts strait.  You may get lucky but I doubt it…

Well I have a few new adds for the blogroll.  I previously added American Drumslinger with little fan fare (my bad).  He does a very nice Friday skin pics, girls with guns are pretty damn sexy…  I did put the rated R notice on the link (hover over the link) as the Drumslinger likes being a bad boy.

Next up is Anthroblogogy.  He is a Gunnie in California who had to wait 10 days to pick up a relic firearm, even MD is not that bad (yet).  You may want to relocate to say Arizona or Montana…  His taste in WWII weapons was right on par with mine.  I also got a K31 swiss rifle, mine was pre WWII by a few years and his was right in the middle of the war.  It looks judging from his pics that the swiss may not have cut corners during war time.  I have spent a bit of time reading his stuff and have like it a lot.

Finally I am adding WTF or Wiskey Tango Foxtrot to the blogroll.  The name says it all, one of my favorite sayings (first picked up in the army).  I have often mutter WTF under my breath while working at my day job, working with the government can make you say that an awful lot.

Question,  If you have linked to me can you tell me why???
Thanks.

Well my lovely wife (of going on 4 years this year) is having her birthday today.  I have already gotten her present and she has been using it for more than a month now.  Her Cube had been having problems with its DVD drive and I got tired of fussing with it every time it burped.  So she is the proud owner of a Mac Mini.  She loves how small it is and how speedy (the cube was a 1.2gig G4) it is.  I got her the high end with all the bells and whistles so now she can burn DVDs also. 

I won’t mention her age.  She may have but a man never tells his wife’s age…

Sorry for not getting any posts up as I have been working on an article for the Savage Shooters web site.

Well it is the third iteration of BAG day, the first in which I have been a participant.  I will blame my choices (yes I got two to make up for lost time) once again on Kim du Toit for all the raving reviews of these two weapons.  I am also keeping with the guns of WWII theme that I have been going through lately.

I had never been very interested in purchasing one of these guns but after reading Kim’s post extolling the accuracy of the Mosin Nagant I decided to go looking around for one.  The bonus is that the Nagant can be had quite cheaply (90 bucks), I paid a bit more for a very nice Hungarian model that had very nice furniture with lots of nice hardware attached to the hardware. 

I looked at a lot of Nagants before I found one that I really liked.  I dragged my friend Ron who is more of a collector than I am over to look at the one that I had finally selected.  His comment was “I wish that I had seen that one first because I would have bought it”, so at that point I knew I had a winner and forked over the cash.

So now I am the proud owner of a 1953 M44 Mosin Nagant Carbine.  Here is a pic of the new gun.

See the nice hardware installed in the stock at the sling points, I saw no other Nagants that day with an attention to detail that matched this one. 

I have yet to fire this particular rifle but will try and change that either late today or tomorrow.  The thing that always turned me off about the Nagant was that the rifle has a rather “crude” fit and finish.  I later found that the reason that the tolerances are so loose is because the environment in which the Russians trained and fought.  In order to keep their rifles from freezing up (a problem that the Mauser had in combat) the guns were much “looser” in the operation and fit of the bolt to the action.  This is also a “feature” of the AK series of weapons that helps make them so friendly to harsh environments.

My second BAG day purchase the Mauser K98.  I have long wanted a nice pre war German Mauser.  Well in my search for an appropriate BAG day gun I went to the Fredrick gun show and low and behold there was a guy selling Mausers there for the fine price of 200 bucks.  I go there pretty early and looked through the whole show and came back to pick one up.  I spent a lot of time looking around.  Mausers almost never have matching numbers these days and these examples were no different in that respect.  I went through all of the examples that he had out with a fine tooth comb and this was one of the 3 that were pre war builds.  It had the best barrel and wood out of the 3 so after a little paperwork and a couple of minutes it was mine free and clear.

As this was probably a Russian captured weapon it has an X mark on the receiver.  I had heard that the russians were supposed to grind off the Nazi markings on the weapons but this one had not had the markings ground off (most of them never had the marks ground off).  It was made in Obendorf in 1938, this one was particularly well marked also.

It also has the Nazi markings on the other side of the action 3 times…  Guess someone got happy with the marking tool that day.  I Have shot this rifle a few times already as I wanted to see what the recoil was like since it is a 8mm rifle.  I am sure glad that we have modern recoil pads now.

And here is a pic that is unrelated to the BAG guns. 

I have had one or two people comment on the colors but once they see it shoot they generally don’t mention the colors any longer.  The just start asking me what I have done to it to make it shoot so well…  I give them the improvements that I have done to the weapon so far (which is only an new stock and a bedding job) and they are impressed with the factory Savage rifle quality.  I am also impressed with the quality of the shooting that this rifle is capable of, once I get more trigger time in I will be able to keep from having flyers.  My best group so far was .3 inches all in the same hole at 100 yards. My average group is .4 inches, I am not sure that getting an aftermarket barrel will make much of a difference.  Although a longer barrel would help a bit with the velocity as a 24 inch barrel is a bit short in my opinion. 

“If you don’t like the colors you don’t have to shoot it” is my new motto.  It will probably see lots of shooting since I sent 695 rounds of ammo to Idaho.  And it really is Violet (not pink) in real outdoor lighting, grrrrr…

Well I got out of work a bit early to go shooting with Major Mark (well he was taking a coworker out to shoot and I met him at the range).  I go to try out the new chronograph that came on tuesday.  I now have a good average velocity of my handloads (2640fps) and have made up bullet drop charts with MOA adjustments included for every hundred yards. 

After hitting the range, I got home with just enough time to get ready to go out and throw some darts with Major Mark and our dart team.  The team name this year is “Show us you tips” and two of the members are female (before I get roasted for the name) and they came up with the name.  We got our asses handed to us by a Group A team (we are B), we had our chances, but were not able to make anything happen.  I for instance was down to the double out in 301 and my opponent had not even gotten in, but I could not get out and lost the match.  I guess I really need to hang the dart board in the basement so I can practice.

And finally after that Mac rant of a couple of days ago I will post this pic.

Someone finally came up with a good use for a Windoze laptop. 

I went through 5 windoze laptops in 4 years (with lots of reloads of windoze between new laptops) and will never own/use one again if possible.  There were only two good manufacturers of pc laptops that I have seen.  One being the old Toshiba Satellites, and the second being the IBM stinkpad.  Now that IBM sold off their pc business to the Chinese you can kiss the good, tough as a brick stinkpad goodbye.  The worst laptops out there are the Dells, our company uses those and in my organization of about 120 people we have 3 failures requiring IS a week.  My coworkers are all jealous of my 17 inch powerbook and the fact that it has everything built in and it always works.

Hat tip to the Grouchy Old Cripple for the pic

Well the new Mac operating system will be released on the 29th of this month.  Unfortunately I will have to wait till tuesday to pick it up as I will be in Idaho attending Boomershoot. 

I have been waiting for this version of OS X for quite some time now.  It will be a really nice upgrade with several major improvements in QuickTime and iChat which will be very nice.

I do hope that in this release they fix the pop under issue that has cropped up recently in the Safari browser.  Until just a month or two I had not seen a pop up add in years.  well I now see a pop under add every once and while, not a real issue but I would like to see it fixed (I have heard that it is fixed). 

In my opinion the Mac operating system has been 4 ~ 5 years ahead of anything that microsloth has ever put out (except for a couple of dark years in the 90s before the second coming of Steve).  This trend will most likely continue for the foreseeable future.  Microsloth has promised a lot of new features that Apple will be delivering at the end of this month.  Microsloth has already stated that a lot of the features that they have been touting will not even be included in the latest (shorthorn) release sometime next year!  It will be interesting to see just what microsloth

Well I had my shipping adventure today.  I planned on a quick trip to the post office to send my bullets off to Idaho for Boomershoot.  I got to the post office and after only waiting for about a minute I got my box on the counter.  Once they asked me what was in the box I was promptly told that the USPS does not ship Ammunition.  WTF?  I am glad that the USPS is wholly in the black and not getting more of my tax dollars.  I was told that UPS ships ammo, so I trundled off to the local UPS store.  After a quick 10 minute drive over to the UPS store I was told that they don’t ship ammo either.  Once again WTF? 

I sure got all my reloading supplies shipped to me via UPS the first time…  I had them call corporate, in the mean time they told me I can have my local gun shop ship it since they deal with ammo all the time.  Well corporate told them that I can ship it from the local hub.  So I once again pack my box into the trunk and head to Burtonsville which is another 20 miles away.  Upon getting there I made up my label and got my box over to the nice lady who made sure that there were no firearms in the box.  Once she made sure of that there were no further questions asked.  Well the box weighed in at 45.3 pounds, I may have overdone it a bit on the ammo.  I shipped 695 rounds of ammo to Joe.  I pulled 5 rounds of Black Hills Match at the last second so I can run it through the chronograph and build a bullet drop chart from its velocity as well as my hand loads.

Funny thing, I had to pay a hazmat fee when I got my reloading supplies shipped to me, but I did not have to pay the fee shipping loaded ammunition?

Well House bill 948 otherwise know as “Maryland Assault Weapons Ban of 2005” is officially withdrawn.  The Concealed Carry bill is still technically alive but more than likely out of time.

Well the holding action in MD continues…

Well April 15th is the third annual Buy A Gun day.  This is much like Kim du Toit’s Ammo Day.  Unfortunately I would not be able to purchase a gun on or near that day. 

I was able to go out last weekend and get my BAG stuff done.  I know it is not on the 15th, so sue me.  My purchase was once again a Kim du Toit inspired purchase, so I have no one to blame but Kim.  I will in the spirit of BAG day not post about my Gun till the 15th.  I just wanted to let everyone know that I had not forgotten about BAG day.  Like that is possible since every gun blogger is talking about BAG day.  If you want to know a bit more about BAG day you can go here BAG History.

I got a late start out of work and was worried that I would not make it to the range in time to be let in.  Well I made record time from work to home,  then got my gear all put in the truck and made it to the range at 4:04 PM.  Fortunately the gate had yet to be opened.  I spoke with John Pepper real quick as this was a Fort Meade Rifle and Pistol club event and he remembered me from 10 years ago when I was a member of the Rifle and Pistol club.  Additionally the Rod and Gun club has an agreement with the Rifle and Pistol club to allow members of each club to participate in each others range time. 

We had range One (which is the 600 yard range) we spent 45 minutes setting up the targets and range and then half of us drove out to the 300 yard line.  I was putting nice groups in at 300 yards (Just a hair under 3 inches) and my first shot was only a couple of inches high.  So with just a few clicks it was putting the shots where I wanted them to go.  We then moved out to 500 yards and few adjustments to the scope and I was up and shooting.  I had one low shot and the rest center of mass with 4 inch groups being the norm.  We then went to work the target pits for the other shooters.  Our next shots were taken at 400 yards and once again things went quite well and I did not have any really out of whack shots but I was a bit erratic as my shooting position was not comfortable.  By the end of our 400 yard adventures it was pitch black on the range.  We then moved to the 600 yard position and got busy.  My first shots were 4 to 6 inches low and I corrected in the scope for that and got busy putting down my best shots of the night.  I was shooting 4 inch groups consistently with only one group getting to 5 inches.  To say the least I was stoked, my first foray past 400 yards and I was hitting what I was aiming at with no issues.  I am officially ready for Boomershoot as far as my gun and ammo are concerned.  I will be shipping out my ammo before Friday.

It turns out that there is a 1000 yard range in MD but the Secret Service Owns/Runs it and won’t let anyone else play play on their range.  They are probably just afraid to get their ass handed to them in a friendly shooting competition like the Navy Seal sniper team, the Canadian Army sniper team, and few local police snipers did a few years ago at a sniper challenge.  One of John Pepper’s team members wiped the floor with them.  Seems that they could not handle the shifting wind at the Ft. Meade ranges.  Fortunately for me the winds were either coming from 12 o’clock or dead calm all night.

I have had a visitor to my blog recently that really spurred the evaluation of my favorite contemporary authors.  Most of the books that I have been reading lately have been Science Fiction in nature.  I have in the past spent a lot of time reading fantasy (my first read was The Hobbit

) and still like that genre.  I have also spend a lot of time reading fiction (Clancy, Cussler).  But my true love in books has always been Sci-Fi and Fantasy.  That being said I do have a short list of authors that I enjoy immensely.  Some of these authors are new to writing, and some have been writing for a long time.  Here is my list in no particular order.

L.E. Modesitt:  L.E. Modesitt’s fantasy works were quite well written and particularly engaging.  His character/world development for the Recluse series of novels is quite impressive.  When I first started seeing his Sci-Fi I was very impressed and immediately sought out as much of it as I could find.  He will remain as one of my favorite writers of all times and his body of work puts him on par with the great Sci-Fi fantasy writers of all time.  I particularly like the political slant of the Ecolitan series.

David Webber:  Webber’s

was a book that I picked up on a whim while in an airport.  I finished that book in a nonstop cover to cover read and then went in search of more.  I have since read everything that he has written and have most of his books in Hardcover.  An exceptional writer with an excellent sense of humor in his writing.  I love an author that writes with a good sense of humor, it certainly makes reading his works again a pleasure.  Oh and his War God’s Own fantasy series is also a well written series that is well worth the read.

John Ringo:  I first ran across John Ringo when he co-authored as series with David Webber.  The March Upcountry series of novels I picked up just because David Webber was one of the authors.  This was also another cover to cover read.  I promptly wend to the local borders book store and looked in the R section and sure enough there was another book there written by John Ringo.  After reading

in record time I was throughly hooked and have picked up every other book he has written in short order.  The latest March Upcountry book is out this month.  Bonus.

Michael Z Williamson:  I have now read three of Michael’s books and once again I was inspired to read other books by Michael since I read a book that was co-authored by John Ringo and Michael.  I was very impressed with his first novel Freehold, it was another book that I picked up before a cross country flight.  It was finished before the flight was over and enjoyed it immensely (I have read it twice since then).  As this was his first book I was forced to wait a wile until I was able to read another work by him.  I recently purchased

) which should be in my local book store now.  Additionally the second book set in the Freehold universe will be out in august.  I hate waiting till august…  (on a side note isn’t the M4 a single shot / 3 round burst only weapon?)  Oh, I totally agree about the Black Beret.

I have found that in the last few years I am reading much more Sci-Fi that has a political slant that favors the individual and minimizes the government.  As our government becomes bigger and more intrusive in our daily lives, I really wish that there was a way to make it once again smaller and less intrusive.

Michael Williamson’s book

was really the first book that I have read post 9/11 that really takes a look at some of the feelings that go on when you have to go through any sort of security (and general post 9/11 feelings).  We see the TSA doing more silly things like confiscating all lighters before you can board a plane, but yet we get reports of real weapons still passing easily through the system quite frequently.  Security as we have it now is not the answer, as it just disarms the law abiding citizen and not the person intent on a criminal act.  It was nice to see an author hit upon the post 9/11 feelings in a fairly open fashion.  I expect that you will see more people writing more candidly about where we are after 9/11.

I have written before about how one of the publishing houses that I like the most is Baen books.  All of the books that I have picked up from Jim Baen’s publishing house have been fantastic.  I highly recommend picking up almost any book that has Baen logo on the side.

I have been trying to get this particular post out for quite a while now.  I have been having some weird hardware issues with my laptop which has wiped out this post several times now.  I of course took the laptop in for service, it promptly displayed the dreaded fear of technician syndrome and would not display its problem.  So now I am saving quite frequently.  Thanks once again to Michael Z. Williamson for stopping by and getting this bug in my head…

Looking at the Maryland grass roots gun organizations from the outside, just my thoughts on the state of things.

There are basically 2 grass roots organizations in Maryland (of course there are lots of county level organizations, but I am talking state wide) The first being MPFO (Marylanders for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership) and the second being MSI (Maryland Shall Issue).  Now both of these organizations work hard for our firearms rights in MD, it does seem that things would be much better if the two organizations would work together instead of infighting. 

MPFO seems to only want to engage in a holding action.  There are many bad laws on the books in MD and they seem to not be interested in turning them back, but only trying to keep more from happening.  MSI is primarily concerned with changing the current May Issue concealed carry law to a Shall Issue law.  They are also concerned with pushing favorable issues for gun owners forward and keeping unfavorable issues held back.  But there do seem to be some egos in play between the two organizations.  The infighting between these two organizations is probably partly responsible for the legislative gridlock on all firearms issues this year.

Now I don’t totally blame the two organizations for the gridlock as we seem to have a politician who is hell bent on getting an “assault weapons” ban to the floor for some kind of vote.  Neil Quinter put forth the same bill forward as last year and it has been pretty well shut down just like last year.  He vows to append it to any pro gun bills that make it past the judiciary committee which will pretty much make sure that nothing escapes committee.  So due to the efforts of gun bigots like Mr. Quinter we have a very slim chance of seeing any improvements in the People’s Republic of Maryland as far as regaining more of our rights. 

Poor Mr. Quinter also believes that he is a target for being ousted from his house seat due to his anti-gun stance.  I can promise Mr. Quinter that the gunnies of MD will pull out all the stops to make sure that he is gone in 2006.

It is time we get our act together in Maryland and go on the offensive instead of the defensive for once…