Prairie Dogs Never Have a Nice Day

It irks me that I know nothing about long range rifle shooting. I bought a .308 over a decade ago for the purpose of learning to shoot at long distances, and nothing came of it. I bought something like 1700 rounds of military ammunition made for machine guns, figuring it was good enough to start with and good enough in case I ever needed the gun for zombie hordes. I shot maybe 200 rounds. Then I quit. I have a million interests, and I flit from pursuit to pursuit like a fly meandering through a pasture full of unusually alluring cow pies. I’m fickle. Also, I lived in a city where shooting over 100 yards is impossible, except when firing into the air on holidays, if you’re Cuban.

The authorities actually had to inform citizens that shooting guns into the air on New Year’s Eve was a bad idea. They were not able to figure this out for themselves.

Yesterday I started looking around for a book on long range shooting, and someone said I should go take a class.

I scoffed. Long range shooting classes near me? Maybe in Montana or New Mexico. Not here.

Then I actually made an effort to find out what I was talking about, and it turned out I was wrong. Florida has been home to a number of facilities that teach long range shooting. Some are still around.

I emailed a couple of outfits, and naturally, I only got one response. Human nature never fails. I’m trying to blow hundreds of dollars, and only 50% of the people I’m trying to give it to thought it was worth their time to acknowledge me.

The guy who emailed me is a teacher. I sent him an email asking if my equipment was okay. The site says you need a rifle capable of 1 MOA shooting, plus a scope that doesn’t have a duplex reticle. I had to look that up to find out what it was. As for the rifle, how do I know if my guns will shoot 1 MOA? My .17 HMR definitely will, but it’s not useful past 200 yards. I have some other guns that probably will, but I haven’t been able to prove it, so does that mean I should go ahead and bring one, or do I wait until I’ve proven one of my guns will work?

Single-MOA shooting at 100 yards is no joke. It means you can usually hit a large grape a football field away. Most rifles can’t do it regardless of the ammunition or the skill of the person shooting. The rifles that can have to have the right ammunition, and you have to be able to shoot very well. You can’t just grab a random deer rifle at Dick’s, fill it with random ammunition, shoot leaning against a tree, and shoot 1 MOA. They do it in the movies, but movies are for idiots. I saw a movie where Will Smith threw a sperm whale.

The teacher said my .204 Ruger and my .308 would work, but he said my scopes were no good. What?

When I got the .308, I thought I splurged on the scope. The rifle was a screaming bargain at $775, and I probably paid $650 for the glass. I got a Leupold 20x scope with a 52mm objective and a varmint reticle. It’s not a 25x $2000 sniper scope, but on the other hand, it’s 10 times the scope Carlos Hathcock used to kill half the Viet Cong. I figured it had to be good enough for a hobbyist.

The course requires “target turrets.” Turrets are really dials. They move the crosshairs in your scope to the point where you expect your bullets to land. Most scopes have screw-on caps over the dials to keep them from getting banged up. A target turret–I am an expert after 15 minutes of Googling–is a big dial with large characters on it, and it’s not meant to be covered. If you’re a typical hunter, you don’t turn your dials much. You sight your scope in before you go hunting, and you cover the dials. If you’re a serious shooter, you want your dials–your turrets–available all the time so you can fiddle with them.

The teacher said I could rent a scope from the school, but then I would be paying someone to teach me how to set up a scope I would then remove and give back. That seems stupid. I want to set up my own scope.

I’m still not sure how turrets work, but it appears I can get aftermarket turrets to replace the ones that came on the Leupold. It’s very complicated, though. My existing turrets aren’t specific to any particular ammo, distance, or weather. Companies that sell turrets customize them to account for variables like these. I’ll bet that’s not necessary for what I want to do. I think the custom jobs are intended for people who want to be able to zip to predetermined settings for certain situations. There must be non-custom turrets out there for people who aren’t professional snipers and don’t mind doing more work.

This is my hope, anyway.

So this is where I am. If I can make the Leupold work, I will do just that. I know it can be done, because other people have done it. I just need to know what it will cost and whether it can be done in a time frame I can accept. I don’t want to wait for January to take a course.

While I’m figuring the scope out, I’m waiting on my LaRue AR triggers. Barring a negative miracle, they should fix my AR guns up so they shoot as well as possible for what they are. Both have free-floating barrels, so I don’t think I can improve them a whole lot after the triggers are installed. I may get a better buttstock for the LR-308B. The one that came with it is like the one on Elmer Fudd’s shotgun. A better buttstock will include some kind of riser for a better cheek weld.

I should bite the bullet and get a bipod for the AR15. I’m not a huge fan of rests. They always seem to be too low or too high, and for some reason, bipods have more range. Also, a bipod can’t fall off your shooting table.

I’ve been thinking of getting or making a dedicated shooting bench, but I have realized it’s a waste of time. I thought a dedicated bench would be lighter than my Home Depot folding table, but if it was, it wouldn’t be by much. Snob shooters may object to a table without a cutout, but the truth is that if you angle the table to the line of fire, it works just as well as a table with a cutout. On top of all this, it has a lot of extra area for ammunition and beverages. I would love to convince myself I need a new bench, but I can see that I don’t. I may need a new table, though, because I like having my only spare folding table in the house, and when I put it in the pasture for shooting, the cattle lick it and smear snot all over it.

What will I do with my long range shooting skills? Take a prairie-dog-killing vacation, maybe. I can shoot targets up to about 400 yards here at home.

The .204 Ruger is supposedly good for 500 yards with prairie dogs. That would be neat.

That’s a great caliber, because you can do match-grade shooting with cheap ammunition. I pay about 50 cents per round.

I think I’ve picked the final must-have caliber for my armory. Hornady just released something called the 6mm ARC. It’s blowing people away. You can shoot it from an AR15. It’s super-accurate, and at long distances, it outshines the .308. It doesn’t have much recoil. It’s supposed to be superior to other miracle cartridges like the 6.5 Grendel, to the point where some of them may be rendered obsolete. You can shoot big animals with it, so if I got one, I would no longer feel there was a gap in my capabilities. Right now, the only deer-worthy rifles I have are pretty strange.

If I can get 1 MOA from my CORE15 in .223, I’ll probably buy another one in 6mm ARC. I don’t know if CORE will offer it, but they’ll offer a lower and upper. I can get a barrel and scope myself.

I thought the CORE15 would be an entry-level weapon. I’m not so sure now. I keep learning whatever I can, and it appears that a suspicion I had is true: the guys who insist on $3000 AR15’s are buying flash, not function. My understanding is that an $800 rifle will do everything just as well, once you fix the trigger and possibly buy a barrel. If that’s true, do I really want to spend for something like a Daniel Defense? What do you really get? A prettier gun?

I saw a guy on Youtube going over an extremely expensive AR. It wasn’t available to the public, but it would have cost something like three grand. It had a weird bolt carrier with holes in it to lighten it, and everything was finished with some kind of space age stuff. He said it would cycle faster than a mid-tier AR. So what? A normal AR will do 600 rounds per minute if you can pull the trigger that fast. Am I missing something?

The lower on my AR is generally aluminum and plastic (“polymer”), so it should last 200 years. The barrel is a consumable item, easily replaced. The trigger I’m buying should be phenomenal. If there’s a good reason for moving to the top tier, I don’t see it. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

Let’s see. It looks like I can get most of a new AR for maybe $500. A precision barrel would probably run $200-$500. Trigger: $80. Then a minimum of $250 for glass. Not too bad, considering what a 1911 costs. And it would turn prairie dogs into vapor, if not plasma.

Know your enemy.

I think just about any gun purchase I make after 6mm ARC will have to fall under the heading “collecting.” I won’t be able to say I need anything else.

Well. Maybe a 12-gauge hunting shotgun, as contrasted with the video-game-looking semiauto I already have.

I’m going to try to get into a shooting class this summer. Thousands of miles away, prairie dogs are snickering at me, and I simply won’t have it.

Magic Cartridge Still Evades Me

How long have I had my AR15 and my new 1911? Like a year? Well, days, anyway. And I can’t shoot them. Not without getting wet. A ridiculous storm is in the Gulf, and it’s raining all the way over here.

Part of the fun of having firearms is the illusory sensation that you’re a tough guy and a potential sniper, ready to rise up and save his neighbors and livestock from bothersome zombies. When men shoot, they feel like soldiers and spies. When women dance, they feel like dancers. It’s pathetic, but this is how we are. Rain ruins everything. I can’t indulge my Chris Kyle fantasies if it means I have to get wet. I’ll be here when my country calls, as long as it’s dry and I get to shoot in the shade. From a reasonably nice chair next to a full cooler.

Yesterday, we had a tornado scare. They actually said we should seek shelter. Of course, I prayed. Not much else I could do. I texted my friend Amanda to see if she got the warning. I said I promised to wave if I flew by, and I said I hoped the next time she saw me, I wasn’t wearing Hillary Clinton’s slippers.

I have not solved my 10mm problem. I thought I was getting over 1200 fps with Accurate No.7, but yesterday, I made up a few rounds, and I got an average down around 1150. I had maxed out the charge according to whatever data I was using. I had to figure out what to do. New powder? Go a tenth past the maximum? After all, published charge limits ought to be pretty conservative.

I was using a new Storm Lake barrel. Maybe it killed my velocity.

I decided to make 6 rounds with 12.1 grains of powder instead of 12.0. If that doesn’t work, maybe it’s time to look at a different powder.

There are a lot of things to consider when you reload. If you’re making defensive rounds, you might want to think about flash. Criminals like to show up at night, and for all I know, a big flash would make landing a second shot hard. Alliant has a powder called BE-86, and it might be good for my purposes.

I read up on this stuff. When an Alliant powder has the letters “BE” in the name, it means it’s based on a powder called Bullseye. That being said, the Alliant people say it’s like another one of their powders: Power Pistol. It’s like Power Pistol with a flash suppressant added. I guess Power Pistol must be descended from Bullseye.

I would love to have some BE-86, but getting it in my county is an impossibility. There are tons of gun owners here, but it appears that nearly all of them are unsophisticated. Buy a gun at Rural King, leave it unmodified, get bulk ammo, shoot 5 MOA, and be happy. That’s not me. I modified my AR10, my Marlin 60, my two Savage rifles, my SW22 pistol and its magazines, the magazines for my Colt Woodsman, my PSL, and probably some other things. I’m going to modify my AR15 shortly. I reload for all my centerfire pistols.

When you order reloading stuff online, you may have to pay big fees. Primers and powders require hazmat fees. If I order a $22 jug of BE-86, it will cost me at least $50. It’s best to order large sizes when possible and to wait for occasions when you want multiple items.

At the end of that sentence, I remembered there might be a gun show in town, so I looked it up. Turned out I was right, so I shot over there to see if there were any reloading components. No luck. You could probably get together with 4 of your friends and have a bigger gun show in your backyard. The usual venue has been closed because of the epidemic, and it’s still not open, so they had the show in what I would describe as a banquet room. I didn’t see good prices on anything, and I saw nothing I had to have, so I hit the road.

I don’t know why Florida is such a lame state for reloading. Georgia seems pretty bad, too. Tennessee has Midsouth, Natchez, and Widener’s. Kentucky has a number of stores. Maybe deep-Southerners aren’t as gun-savvy as Appalachian Southerners. Maybe they’re happy as long as they can point a gun at a quail and make it go boom.

People are saying I need to use Accurate No.9. My only concern is the flash. Maybe it’s better to have more flash and more velocity.

Anyway, these are fun problems to work on.

Hope the Girls Get Along

Today I picked up my new 1911. I started my NICS check yesterday between 2 and 3 p.m., and I didn’t receive notice that it was finished until 10 a.m. today.

I can’t help wondering if the FBI is slow-walking checks for people who buy multiple guns in one month. It would serve as a nifty, sleazy way to create an illegal waiting period for people like me who have permits and are used to taking their guns home on the same day they buy them.

I guess some type of incompetence is at the root of the problem. It can’t be anything special about me. I cleared a background check fast on Monday, and if I were having problems because of some red flag or other, it should have come up both times.

Aren’t they supposed to destroy all records of background checks as soon as they’re performed? I’m sure the FBI would never lie.

The gun is very nice. It’s a Smith & Wesson Performance Center PC1911 with weird weight-reducing holes machined into the slide. It has G10 grips so grippy you could use them to file your way out of jail. The bead-blasted finish is gorgeous, and the blue and black coloring in the grips borders on pimpdom.

It also has target sights.

I decided to clean it before shooting. People keep telling me I should do this because manufacturers leave crud in new guns. The AR15 I bought on Monday came straight from the manufacturer. They make them in the building where I bought it. The guy who sold it to me said I should clean it.

The PC1911 has what is known as a hard-fit barrel, which means a gunsmith removed metal from the barrel until it fit the gun very tightly. It also has a tight barrel bushing. This is a round part that comes between the barrel and slide. It has an incredibly strong recoil spring. It’s much stiffer than the one in my SW1911.

Taking the gun apart was not terribly hard, but it took some effort because the parts were so close together.

I greased the gun pretty heavily with Mobil 28 precision bearing grease, which, of course, I already had, along with special syringes for shooting it into small cavities. I used to believe the people who said to oil guns sparingly, but I now think they’re ignorant, so this time, I didn’t hold back. Then when I tried to put the gun back together, I had problems. The recoil spring retainer, bushing, slide, spring, and guide rod did not want to work together. I got the gun to a point where everything was back together, but there was no way to rotate the bushing into position so I could shoot.

I wrestled with it for what must have been nearly an hour. I took the SW1911 apart so I would have similar parts to look at for reference purposes. Finally, I got a clue on the web. Ordinarily, you disassemble a 1911 by loosening the barrel bushing first and removing the spring retainer and spring. Some old guy on a forum said the best way to disassemble a 1911 was to remove the slide stop first. It removes tension from the spring. If it works when disassembling, it ought to work for assembling. I removed the slide stop, and the gun finally came apart. After that I was able to put it together correctly.

Some modern 1911’s have features the old World War Two jobs didn’t. Some of the features make them more accurate, but they can make them harder to strip and reassemble. A fighting soldier could die if he took too long to put a pistol together. There is no way the Army would let you have a pistol that fought you for 45 minutes. I see why the old-style parts were made the way they were.

Once I got the new gun together, I took my other 1911’s apart, cleaned them, greased them, and put them back together. I’m anxious to see if the heavy grease is helpful. I don’t know why I ever listened to people who said LESS lube was better. It makes no sense. Grease attracts grit, but so does oil, and a guy on the web pointed something interesting out: grease forms a barrier to keep grease out. Also, grease doesn’t fly off in all directions when you shoot, and it doesn’t drip onto your clothes.

The new gun is heavier than my SW1911 even though it has holes in it to lighten the slide. I wonder where the extra metal is.

I tried using the new assembly and dissassembly method on my Colt .38 Super, but it didn’t work. I learned something about guide rods. John Moses Browning originally put short rods in 1911’s, but many manufacturers later went to full-length guide rods. The Colt has a short rod. The Smiths have long ones. The spring in the Colt can bend and cause problems if you try to install the slide with the barrel and spring already attached. The rod is too short to keep the spring straight.

So now I have to strip the Colt one way and the other guns another way.

Supposedly, the short guide rod does not adversely affect accuracy or anything else. I saw a guy online making a very good case for the superiority of short rods. It’s much easier to assemble a gun with a short rod.

When I saw the difference between the Colt and the Smiths, my first instinct was to get a long rod for the Colt, but now I’m wondering if I should get short rods for the Smiths.

I have to get this thing to the berm tomorrow. I’m going to shoot it beside the older gun and see if either gun shoots better for me.

A lot of bullets, powder, primers, and brass have arrived, so I have to get started on that stuff soon.

It’s all coming together. The berm and I have a hot date.

FBI Refuses to Release new Girlfriend

While America collapses under the weight of its own pride, I’m keeping up with my frivolous interests.

On Monday, I bought my first AR15. I didn’t even try to shoot it until Wednesday. My new induction cooktop arrived on Monday, and I had to install it, and that took up a lot of time. It should have taken half an hour, but you know how things like that go.

My house is built beautifully, but if you pick at the construction of any home, you will find problems. My problem this week was an improper cutout in the stone countertop. My stove is just a cooktop, so it has to sit in a cutout. The problematic, uncleanable old stove sat in a cutout 33-1/2″ long. Guess how long the cutout for my new stove had to be? Here you go: 33-7/8″. Either the person who installed the old stove screwed up and then covered his tracks by dropping a cooktop over them, or Frigidaire screwed up by making a new cooktop that required an oversized hole.

My guess is that Frigidaire got it right.

I had to buy a diamond saw blade for an angle grinder. I put on a quality respirator, moved my pets to another room, marked the counter with painter’s tape, and went to town.

Grey dust went everywhere. There was no way to control it. The blade sliced right through the granite or whatever it is, but the mess was apocalyptic. I didn’t finish the job until late afternoon, and then the dust cleanup started. I’m still working on it. I mopped the downstairs for the third time this morning.

Of course, the wiring for the new stove was in a larger flex conduit than the one on the old stove, so I had to install a new handy box in a hard-to-reach location.

I know a fair amount about metalworking, basic electronics, and basic woodworking, but when it comes to the kind of work contractors do, I’m not the guy you want. I don’t know how to do drywall or install tile. I don’t know how to replace windows or carpeting. I have to figure this stuff out by looking at Youtube and other websites. My buddy Mike remodeled his own house. It must be nice to have those skills on tap. I have to create them on demand.

Yesterday I finally got to shoot the AR. I put some Norma bulk ammo in it and went to the berm. Unfortunately, when I got the gun, I didn’t think about the length of the magazine. Apparently, 30-round mags are standard except in places where 2A means nothing, and these magazines project downward so far, it can be impossible to shoot a gun from a rest.

I managed to pop off enough rounds to get the scope pointed more or less at the place where bullets landed when fired from 50 yards, and I was happy. I probably fired fewer than 20 shots before the rain started falling, and I was done.

I lost considerable time adjusting the eye relief. As any experienced shooter would have predicted, the fact that a salesman and I set my scope up in the store meant nothing. It was a good half-inch too far back, and I have read that this particular scope is not tolerant of big variations. That seems to be true. The rifle has a continuous rail on top, but there is a place where the rail has an oversized step between picatinny slots, and one of my scope’s mounts was right behind that place. I couldn’t just slide the scope forward in the mounts, and I couldn’t just move the mounts forward one slot. I had to move one of the mounts forward on the scope and then move the whole mess forward.

The AR surprised me a little. I thought it would have less recoil, but it does jump a little. It’s a joke compared to a .308, which is one reason our soldiers carry the military version of the AR, but recoil moves the gun, and there is no way to keep the scope on target. You have to bring the scope back down to see where your bullet landed.

The trigger seemed fine when I dry-fired the gun, but when the shooting started, it became obvious to me that it was unbearable. There was a certain amount of resistance until I pulled it back to the point where it was about to go off, and then it was as if it hit a wall. At that point, I had to pull much harder to get the gun to go bang. Not acceptable.

Last night I watched a video, and I learned how to do an AR trigger job. A monkey could do it, so I may have a chance. I also researched replacement triggers. All basic (i.e. mil-spec) AR triggers are terrible. They’re made to be reliable, not to shoot for money. There are tons of replacements out there, and the good ones generally run around $250. I have two mil-spec AR triggers, so I was not eager to spend $500.

I caught a break. I learned about LaRue triggers. LaRue is a top-tier trigger company, and the make a replacement trigger which gets rave reviews. They used to charge $250 for it. Now, for some unknown reason, they have dropped the price to $80. It’s still the same trigger they used to charge big money for. I was all over that. I placed an order, and we’ll see how it works out. In the meantime, I plan to do a trigger job on the parts I have. It should take about 40 minutes, and it ought to work well enough to make me happy while I’m getting to know the gun with cheap FMJ.

Today I went to the CORE Rifle Systems factory and got myself two 10-round magazines plus a sling stud that fits my M-Lok hand guard. If it ever stops raining, I should be ready to shoot.

I shot from a folding table and chair, and when I went back home to work on my scope, I left them in the pasture. I was gone maybe 10 minutes. When I got back, there was a slimy substance all over both.

The miserable cows had slimed my furniture.

My grandfather had cows, and I spent a lot of time with them, but I guess I didn’t know them, because it wasn’t until recently that I learned that cows are completely insane, not to mention mischievous. I can’t imagine why cows would run over to my table and lick it as soon as my back was turned. Maybe it looked like a giant salt block. Maybe they thought the cow messianic age had begun, and that a cow savior had come to fulfill their wildest dreams. Anyway, I had to hose both items off.

I can put a sling on my gun now, but I don’t have the sling I want. Something else to look for. I’ve decided to go with a two-point sling. The whole single-point sling seems like a weird and unfortunate fad to me, and I don’t understand why anyone would want a gun barrel to bang against his crotch all day.

Maybe it works well when you’re in Fallujah and you really, really need to be able to shoulder your gun in half a second.

One reason I went to CORE was to see if there was a post-riot panic. It didn’t look too bad. Caveat: CORE is a manufacturer, so it may not be that easy to deplete their supply of rifles.

One thing I really wanted to see was their ammo supply. The pallet of Norma .223 from which I took a crate on Monday was over a foot lower today. I think the coronavirus panic was worse than the riot panic has become as of today.

I have more ammunition on the way. I got the Norma because I needed something to get started and because my policy is to keep a certain amount of bulk ammo on hand for any weapon which could be useful if my home is attacked. It seems silly to buy a gun and not buy fuel for it. I have enough 30-ish-caliber high-powered bulk ammo to shoot a whole town full of violent agitators, should they choose to visit.

I didn’t buy this gun with people in mind, and I am not excited at all about future zombie scenarios that seem increasingly likely, but I want to be in a position to decide what I want to do. Also, someone who is more gung-ho about the whole pre-tribulation dystopia picture might need the ammo or even the rifle, and if I have these things, I could be a resource.

The fact that I want nothing to do with that kind of shooting doesn’t mean I don’t recognize other people’s right to do it. Not everybody is ready to be a martyr.

I ordered myself some Fiocchi 40-grain V-Max rated at 3650 fps. I don’t know how fast it will fly out of my 16″ barrel, but my guess: pretty fast. I read about people getting sub-MOA groups with it, and I’m hoping that’s true, because it would allow me to do some real shooting while getting my .223 reloading game in order.

This particular load is supposed to be very good for pest control. I have no idea whether it’s appropriate for self-defense, but it seems unlikely. It wouldn’t be a GOOD thing to be shot with it, but it’s not made for shooting people.

I’m hoping I can use it on coyotes and whatever.

Some people have gotten MOA performance out of 16″ CORE rifles shooting factory garbage. That would be fantastic. I want this gun to be accurate, and I’m expecting to have to buy a designer barrel, but what if I can shoot well with the barrel I have? I’ll just keep it and save money.

Fiocchi is typically not expensive, but it’s excellent. The brass should be great for reloading. I hope. Haven’t Googled to find out what people think.

I finally broke down and ordered a couple of holsters. I’m tired of putting my 1911’s down in the back of the utility cart when I shoot, so I have a Miami Classic II on the way. I also got one for my full-size Glock. This is the holster I wore to church as an armorbearer. I’m very familiar with it, and I like it a lot. I don’t know whether the tacticool crowd likes it, but then they poop all over pocket holsters, and I am completely certain they’re the best option for concealed carry of compact guns.

Digression: I watched the upsetting video of the West Freeway church shooting. This took place in Texas. A nut (Caucasian, if that’s of interest) entered the church with a shotgun. He seemed to whisper to an usher, which was oddly polite considering he was wearing a hood and carrying a long gun. He apparently asked the usher a question, and the usher seemed to answer him, pointing to the rear of the church. A security team member sitting on a nearby bench saw him, stood up pretty slowly, and fumbled around for a rear belt holster. The gunman shot the security and then shot the usher in the upper body. Both victims died.

What if it had been me with my pocket holster, instead of an usher with a tight, uncooperative belt holster? I would have had a better shot at winning. I wouldn’t have had to stand up. I could have straightened my right leg and drawn in about half a second, without throwing off all sorts of signals. I hate belt holsters that require a lot of struggling. I can’t believe anyone wears one. Speed is really important sometimes.

Looking at the video over and over, I get the impression that the security guy may have caused things to go haywire. It looks like the gunman was calm until the security guy started talking to him and reaching for his gun. Things might have gone better had he pretended to be a harmless usher, waited for the murderer to focus his attention elsewhere, and then shot him from behind or from the side. But with that terrible holster, he might have alerted him to his intentions with all of the reaching and yanking.

The dead security guy is a true hero, but he may not have handled things well. Impossible to say from watching a video. I don’t know what the murderer said before the shooting started. He may have made it clear that there was no time to wait.

I don’t know if I would have been as brave as he was. I might have jumped under a pew. How can you know unless you’ve been there?

The man who killed the murderer shot him about a second after the first shot went off. No intelligent, informed person can say speed isn’t important. He only fired at the killer once, and that seems like a huge mistake. He was also very slow to go check on him after he fell out of view. Maybe that’s attributable to age.

When you shoot an armed assailant, you shoot him as many times as possible in the first volley unless you have a very good excuse. You don’t stop until you’re sure he can’t hurt anyone. That’s what I think. Most armed people are still dangerous after being shot.

The Miami Classic II is much faster than the belt holsters I’ve seen in person. It’s a little slower than a pocket holster, but it’s not a dreadful two-second belt holster.

Unlike a belt holster, it will hold two spare magazines.

It’s what I’m getting. I’m familiar with it, it’s very comfortable, and if I want to carry while working outdoors, it will be out of the way. I know that from experience.

In late May, I ordered a new 1911, and it arrived today. I actually fondled it briefly at the gun shop where the transfer will take place. The FBI is acting funny right now. Some NICS checks take a couple of minutes, and some take an entire day. Earlier this week, I was cleared in a pretty short time, so I thought I would have a similar experience today. Not so. The shop closed three hours after I filled out the form, and they still had my new gun.

Maybe the FBI deliberately sticks it to people who bought another gun recently. They’re not pro-2A conservatives. They’re bureaucratic Deep Staters. If they’re anything like other Deep Staters, they lean left. Look at Comey, McCabe, Page, and Strzok. Maybe the NICS workers received a memo telling them to slow-walk frequent buyers.

Or maybe it’s a fluke.

It was rainy today, so I wouldn’t have been able to shoot anyway. I do wish I could do all the usual new-gun things. I wish I could clean it and caress it and name it Naomi and so on. Maybe put a little Chanel No.5 on the slide. Just the normal stuff every guy does.

While I was at CORE, I picked up a box of cheap Aguila .45 ACP FMJ. Some firearm makers void their warranties if you shoot handloads. Smith & Wesson doesn’t have that policy, but they do object to ammunition they don’t like. They call it “improper” or something. It gives them weasel room which could turn handloads into a problem. I want my first 50 rounds to be from a box. A lot of things that go wrong with new products go wrong right at the start, so if this gun has a defect, I want to see it while I’m shooting crummy, unimpeachable factory ammunition.

The 1911 is not for self-defense. The caliber is great, but if you carry a 1911 for self-defense in 2020, you have a religion, not a reasonable preference. They’re heavy and they only hold 9 rounds. You would feel really stupid if you carried one, fired at an attacker 9 times and missed, and then got a clear shot.

No one ever said, “Gee, I wish I had brought less ammunition to this gunfight.” No one ever said, “I may be dying from multiple stab wounds, but it’s better than carrying a plastic gun.”

I got the new 1911 because it’s a really neat gun which ought to be very accurate and a joy to shoot. It has a hand-fitted barrel, and that’s a big plus for 1911 accuracy.

Yes, I will have several hundred rounds of defensive ammo for it. Because you never know.

I truly, truly hope I can get the AR15 sighted in tomorrow, and I may actually get to bring Naomi home. Things will be great if the cows will just stop licking my table.

Cursed Nation Consumes Itself

One of the interesting things about America’s sudden assumption of a kneeling position is that America is not being murdered. It’s committing suicide.

Rioters are doing tremendous damage all over the US, over the death of one black man, and in the process, a number of black people have been killed and many have been hurt. No one is protesting the deaths of the rioters’ victims, which is a little odd.

While all this is going on, many white Americans are enjoying the entertainment. Most of us live in areas that are somewhat safer (for the moment) than the places where rioting is taking place. Many white leftists are getting in their Priuses and joining the rioters. One could reasonably term them “riot tourists.” They go to the riots and hang out long enough to take selfies and post virtue signals on Twitter, and then they go home and sleep in relative safety.

Some white people are posting messages online, saying they support the property damage as long as it leads to “change.” They remind me of liberal Israelis who insist on ceding territory to enemies who have made it very clear they will accept nothing less than the removal of all Jews from Israel.

People are sharing a Twitter video of a young white leftist who supports the rioters. In case the video doesn’t work or stops working later, I’ll tell you what happens. The young man is on an upper floor in an apartment building. He watches the rioters from his windows. For some reason, he feels safe. He gives the rioters a thumbs-up and shouts his support. Then a hard object comes through one window and into his living room. While he reacts in shock and anger, a second window is taken out.

VIDEO LINK

This is turning out to be a recurring theme. An ESPN writer named Chris Martin Palmer posted a number of tweets supporting the rioters, including one that supported the burning of low-income housing which would have housed black people. Then rioters invaded his sister’s gated community, and he called them animals and tweeted that they should go back where they lived. Then he deleted his angry tweet and went back to posting supportive messages.

It is commonly said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, but what can you do to help someone who gets mugged, sees the light for a brief moment, and then drives the lesson out of his mind and lies about it?

The Bible says this: “A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool.” I’m not God, but I say this: hell isn’t full of sinners; it’s full of people who don’t listen.

It’s telling that he told them to go back where they lived. He was all about rioting as long as it only wrecked black neighborhoods. When it threatened non-blacks, he felt as though lions had escaped from the zoo. They were fine as entertainment, confined in areas far from him and his property, but he didn’t want them in his backyard. In his mind, rioting is only okay in poor neighborhoods.

Here’s something many Americans don’t understand: many leftists don’t see the rioting as a deplorable disaster; they see it as a dream come true.

Leftists love rioting and destruction, and it’s not a new thing. They’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. Leftists love a chance to participate in a riot, and they love bragging about rioting after the fact. Leftist males actually use riot stories to get women into bed. Women tend to be much more leftist than men, and college boys who want sex know it.

I went to Columbia College at Columbia University. I was there for three years, and then I dropped out. Columbia had been the scene of riots. By the time I showed up, the riots were over a decade in the past.

Students during my time there talked wistfully about the riots. It was as though they had missed something really important, like watching Jesus preach in person. Many wished they could have been there. Instructors bragged about their riot-era experiences. It makes a certain amount of sense for kids to have stupid desires, but it’s peculiar for a person with two college degrees at one of America’s top 5 universities to support violence and malice.

During the riots, many students picked a side. There were two groups: Jocks and Pukes. The Jocks were relatively conservative, and they disapproved of the rioting. The Pukes were like the kids who cheer Antifa today. They didn’t reject the term “Pukes.” They embraced it.

The riot nostalgia I saw at Columbia wasn’t an aberration. It’s completely normal. Today in America, many, many whites and Asians are rooting for lawless, mindless people who want to beat, rape, and kill them.

It doesn’t help that modern Americans see nearly every important event on a screen. We feel isolated from events we see. We think we’re safe when we’re not. It’s as if the riots were taking place in movie studios and we can go watch filming for short periods and then run home to drink lattes.

Of course, the cops and National Guard soldiers can’t run home, and running home doesn’t help if your home is in a riot area.

What’s sadder than our suicidal attitude? The fact that we attribute it to the wrong causes and offer the wrong solutions.

Delusion is supernatural. It comes on people when they reject the Holy Spirit. Notice I didn’t say “God.” I mean the Holy Spirit, specifically. He is the one who communicates on God’s behalf. He tells you what’s true and good and what isn’t. Many people who call themselves Christians can’t hear him. Many aren’t really Christians at all. Many who are Christians haven’t been baptized with the Holy Spirit. Many who have been baptized with the Holy Spirit don’t pray in tongues daily. If you’re not praying in tongues, you’re operating in the dark. Lying spirits talk to you all day, and you rarely hear the other side.

America turned from God, and even Christians who claim to serve God rejected the Holy Spirit. We kicked down our own walls and shut off God’s protection. Now we believe lies and hate the truth. We don’t need to be invaded by the Russians or the Chinese. We are destroying our own country.

Here’s something that always happens to people who don’t communicate with God: individuals who are filthy and base receive the ability to dominate them. It’s a form of humiliation. People who are supposed to be priests and kings are knocked off their pedestals, and they find themselves exposed and degraded. They serve hateful people who used to run from them.

You can see this dynamic at work in many Bible stories. Consider Samson. He had nothing but contempt for the Philistines, but he chose fornication and association with idolaters, and one day he woke up and found that people he used to brush aside like flies were able to handle him like a kitten. They cut his eyes out and made him a slave.

When Israel and Judah served God, things went well, but when they turned away, God put the Philistines (Palestinians) over them. He put the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and British over them. Jerusalem was sacked because of Jewish rebellion. Samson served to warn the Jews what would happen to them, and he was also a warning to us, but they didn’t listen, and neither have we.

It’s no coincidence that very low people are intimidating America right now. It’s not sufficiently humiliating to be conquered by another country. We have invited domination by people we can’t begin to respect.

Conservatives are saying we need to vote for Republicans, buy guns, and so on. These things won’t help much. America is cursed, and you can’t counter a curse with carnal actions. You have to pray and repent. You have to give your life to God. When you do these things, he puts you back on top.

Many people on the left are glorifying the hordes who are burning and stealing, and they believe angry protests are the answer to what they perceive to be America’s problems. Conservatives are saying we need to swing right. Where is the only sane response? Where are the people who stand up for prayer and repentance?

Why is it that America’s first response was to riot, and the first counter-response was to call for political solutions and arms? In a Christian country, both sides would have gone to God first. When Jonah preached to the Ninevites, the king proclaimed a fast, and Nineveh was spared. We’re not that smart, even though most of us are supposed to be Christians.

Most conservatives don’t really believe in prayer or God’s help. If they did, they would stop promoting carnal solutions. When you use carnal solutions to fight a curse from God, you’re taking a nerf rifle to a gunfight.

Satan doesn’t have to fight us directly. He just has to get us to do his fighting for him. He has succeeded. We are destroying our own country, and he is sitting back doing nothing.

The supernatural is the foundation of the natural, and we are piling bricks on a rotten foundation without trying to stabilize it. As a result, our nation has a terminal autoimmune disorder.

Is there any point in bringing up the fact that rioting is the opposite of social distancing? Liberal mask-shamers were raging all over the US before the riots. Now they don’t make a peep. Actually, they’re probably still screaming at whites and Asians in relatively safe zones.

Guess I’ll let that topic rest.

Amateur Gunsmith Gets it Done

I’m feeling quite pleased with myself. I managed to take my AR15 apart, make sure there was no gunk in it, and put it back together.

CORE, the manufacturer, is having a promotion. I got $40 off, and they included a free nickel-boron-coated bolt-carrier group. What is nickel boron coating? For that matter, what is a bolt, and why does it have to be carried? Not totally sure, but I will speculate and look around and see what I can find out.

In a bolt-action gun, it seems pretty obvious what a bolt is. It appears to be a cylinder of steel which locks cartridges in the chamber to be fired, and which houses the firing pin. I think that’s right. In semiautos, it seems to be a weird and complicated piece of metal which serves the same purpose. It looks like the bolt carrier is a hollow doodad inside which the bolt rides.

As for nickel boron, two seconds of Googling tell me it’s like chrome, only harder and more resistant to corrosion. And you really, really need it on your bolt carrier. I guess.

Anyway, it looks nice. It’s sort of a muted silvery grey with a finish that resembles bead blasting. And it was free.

The guy who sold me the gun told me I should take it apart and clean it when I got home. He said there could be manufacturing “grease” in the chamber or who knows what. I don’t think the put grease in these things. Maybe I’m wrong. I would guess they’re CNC-machined with water-based coolant. But machining can leave dirt and bits of swarf (chewed metal) in things. I took his advice.

There was a fair amount of grey stuff in the bolt carrier group (I assume it’s called a group because it has three major parts). It looked just like powder residue. Does that mean they sold me a used BCG (Us AR15 guys call bolt-carrier groups “BCG’s”), or is the crud they leave behind when they do machining just coincidentally a lot like powder residue? Who knows? Maybe they test-fire them. Anyway, it’s shiny.

I was amazed to find out that AR firing pins are held in with cotter pins. That’s how wheels are held on kids’ wagons. Do kids still have wagons, or have lawyers done away with them like they do away with every other fun thing? Ordinarily, the loose ends of cotter pins are splayed apart so they’ll stay in place, but AR cotter pins go into tight holes, and the ends stay together. The big problem, as I have learned, is that sometimes cotter pin ends splay a little bit on their own, and then the pins don’t want to go back in the BCG’s. So now I’m betting I’m supposed to order spare pins.

Didn’t have to do that with my AK, but whatever. Fine. The AR is AMERICA’S RIFLE! BRO!!! IT’S AMERICA’S RIFLE!!!

I didn’t know if I wanted to remove the extractor, but I thought about it, and I knew I would feel bad if I took the gun apart and left the extractor alone. It’s held in by a little pin. I had quite a time getting that crazy pin back in after cleaning the extractor up. I had to put the bolt in a vise and bang it in with one of my special brass gunsmithing punches.

I used Hornady One Shot to blast the parts reasonably clean, and I managed to jam them back in the rifle. I popped my crate of ammunition open, and I loaded a magazine. Now I think I’m ready to consider shooting.

I have no way of attaching a bipod. The foregrip has weird M-Lok holes in it, and you have to find some way to mate them with bipods. I’m working on it. I guess I can shoot from a Caldwell rest.

I’m already looking into reloading. Apparently, I need a case trimmer. Cases get longer when you shoot them, so you have to trim them back to size. This has never been an issue with pistol ammo. It looks like rifle ammo is different. I also have to start annealing cases. When you anneal a metal, you make it softer and friendlier. The idea, with brass, is to change it so it’s less brittle. I am told this makes cases last much, much longer. I looked up ways to do it. Evidently, you can buy a special $500 machine, or you can use the propane torch you probably already have, and it takes about 5 seconds per case. Guess which method I plan to try.

I just found out Hornady makes V-Max bullets for the AR. This is depressing, because I bought a Thompson Center rifle in .204 Ruger a couple of years ago. One of the big pluses of the .204 Ruger is speed. You can go a little bit over 4,000 fps. Today I learned I can get about 3800 from .223 V-Max bullets, along with all the things that make an AR handier than a bolt rifle. It may be that the AR can do everything the .204 can do, with huge magazines and nice ergonomics.

It will all depend on how accurate the AR is. My Thompson Center is super-duper accurate. I have a feeling the AR will win, because I keep seeing videos of people getting 1 MOA with AR-type guns. Of course, the Thompson Center was a tack driver right out of the box, and it cost very little, whereas the AR will almost certainly need a new trigger and a pricey barrel in order to do the same things. So it will end up costing maybe 5 times what the .204 did.

I feel like I should make three types of rounds. V-Max for critters, FMJ for precision shooting, and a few hunting/defensive rounds because, hey, you never know.

I still have nothing which could honestly be called a deer rifle. Some states let people hunt deer with AR-15’s, but it seems unnecessarily hard on the deer. The .223 is underpowered for the job, and underpowered bullets make for wounded deer that run away and die slowly. I think.

I have an AR10 in .308, but it has a varmint barrel about a mile long. Not really practical unless you’re shooting deer from 500 yards using a card table. I have a Swiss K31 which would work fine. I have a couple of rifles that shoot 7.62x39mm, which is considered a legitimate deer round.

I still don’t hunt deer, but that’s beside the point. I feel like a man who owns guns should have something he can shoot a deer with without looking ridiculous.

I could get a different upper for the AR10, in 6.5 Creedmoor.

I guess there is nothing wrong with shooting deer with a black rifle. It looks funny, but the deer can’t tell the difference.

Tomorrow, I really, really will shoot.

Then I’ll come back with a big list of all the things I still need to make the gun work.

Mmm, That’s Good Kool-Aid

The unthinkable has happened. I have become an AR15 owner.

This morning I woke up, grabbed the phone, and started entering searches that looked like “[CITY NAME] protest.” It didn’t matter which city’s name I entered. The story was always the same. Leftist journalists are remarkably uncreative. I kept seeing “peaceful protest turned violent.” It was as though they knew they would be fined for failing to use the approved language.

George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, but the results were coming from places like Atlanta and Miami. Mobs even attacked and hurt Secret Service agents near the White House. We have a crisis in which it is completely possible that crowds will storm the White House itself. One wonders what kind of weapons we have to counter that. Supposedly, there is a bunker of sorts under the building. Is it possible we would ever have to send the military in to rescue our president and his family and coworkers?

I just checked, and believe it or not, Donald Trump is in the bunker now. Great.

So I ran out and bought an AR15 in case I had to shoot zombies? No. I ran out and bought an AR15 in case conservatives rose up this week and cleaned out the shelves in every factory and gun store in the United States.

I had been wanting an AR15 for target shooting and wiping out undesirable critters on the farm. I didn’t want to have to wait two months while hoarders bought multiple guns and listed them on Gunbroker for twice their value.

What did I get? A CORE® Scout M-Lok with a 16″ barrel. I also picked up a Vortex scope, extra magazines, and a crate of Norma ammunition. Now I’m all set. I should be able to shoot for a couple of months, and by keeping the brass, I can set myself up for reloading.

The problem with buying an AR15 is that no matter what you buy, people will tell you it’s garbage. You don’t have the Dolce & Gabbana gas system, or you don’t have a cold-hammer-forged barrel, or you got the wrong foregrip. Your gun is mid-grade. Your gun is rack-grade. Burglars will be too offended to die when you shoot them. The AR15 world is full of what are known as “cork sniffers,” and to make them happy, you pretty much have to drop $2000. It’s kind of amazing, given that the AR15 is nothing special.

A real cork sniffer is a guy who orders wine at a restaurant and sniffs the cork when the sommelier presents it. The purpose of presenting the cork is to show that the wine isn’t spoiled. I had to Google to get the truth about this. Apparently, you really should sniff the cork, because if you do, you can detect a chemical that comes from some corks and degrades wine. IF you know what that chemical smells like. But in popular usage, a cork sniffer is a person who snobs out over things that make no difference. If you spent more than $25 on your stereo’s speaker cables, you are a cork sniffer and a sucker.

The abundance of AR15 cork sniffers on the web makes it very hard for a new buyer to figure out what he wants. They present a lot of useless information which always boils down to, “Spend $2000.” For an okay gun in a not-particularly-accurate caliber made from fairly ordinary parts.

I gave up. I found that we had an AR15 manufacturer right here in town, so I went to their shop, figuring they were my best hope of getting useful advice. I figured I would buy a reasonably good AR15 from them, learn about it, and then, if I felt like it, get into sniffing corks.

The CORE rifle company has a gun shop on its property. I showed up before 9:30 a.m. The strip of parking spaces out front was nearly full. I thought I might be too late. When I went in, there were only one or two customers there. I guess the employees take the best parking spots. Maybe that’s smart. If your gun shop looks busy, people who are afraid of losing out during panics may feel motivated to run in and shop. It worked on me.

The people were wonderful. A lady greeted me before the door closed behind me, and she told me where to go. A guy named Pat started helping me as soon as I got to the counter. He answered all my questions. He advised me on optics and ammunition. He set the scope up. He even carried most of the stuff to my car.

Were they busy? Yes. But most of the business was phone business. Calls kept coming in. It sounded like people were calling to see if they still had guns for sale.

Pat was interrupted many times. I kept telling him I was not in a hurry, but he was very concerned about it. He kept apologizing. I guess the shop will fill up later today.

I asked him how things had gone during the covid panic, and he said they had been cleaned out. He said their status as a manufacturer made it easier for them to restock. They had a tremendous amount of AR ammo, and the prices were fine, so I’m glad I know about the place.

They even had .22 LR.

I was there for maybe 90 minutes. The phone kept ringing. They’re going to have a good week.

I suppose some would question the taste of buying an AR15 one day after witnessing my first BLM march, but fortunately, I’m not accountable to the kind of person who has problems with things like that.

One of the customers was a young black man. He was not what you would call an Oreo. He had a hairdo that would gag Coolio, his pants were sagging, and he was wearing Nike sandals with deliberately mismatched socks. He was there to pick up an SBR or short-barreled rifle. That impressed me. To get an SBR, you have to go through the same process machine gun buyers endure. You have to file paperwork with the feds and pay $200 for a tax stamp. It seems to me that any young man who is willing to do that is probably a responsible gun owner, regardless of how he looks. Criminals make their own short-barreled weapons.

I thought about the helpfulness of high-capacity semiauto arms while I was in the store. It occurred to me that the recent attacks on semiauto rifle ownership and large-capacity magazines might result in a lot of deaths this year. Leftists love to say 10 bullets ought to be enough for anyone, but it’s completely untrue. Many, many criminals have hurt innocent people after being shot multiple times, and apart from that, in the current atmosphere, business owners and homeowners face the threat of multiple assailants. If 20 deranged individuals are approaching your house with murder and rape on their minds, and all you have are 10-round magazines, you have a problem.

I’m very disturbed by what’s happening to America. I don’t recall seeing protest waves that compared to this one. We may see lasting siege states develop in our cities.

We only have so many cops and National Guard troops. In comparison, the supply of potential vandals and looters seems bottomless. Cops and soldiers are effective in the right situations, but they can’t deal with riots on truly large scales. Rioters have the power to take cities over on a long-term basis. I hope they don’t know that, but they probably do.

If things go a certain way, we could be looking at an internal situation worse than another war. It all depends on the mindset of the rioters. We lost roughly 60,000 people in the Vietnam War. We could top that here, easily.

What if they take over cities for long periods? It could be very rough on white people, Jews, Asians, and so on. Anyone who has been demonized in the past.

Rioters could install themselves in apartment building lobbies and make the occupants prisoners. They could gather women and move them to buildings dedicated to rape. They could force people out of their homes and onto the streets. If they have the weapons and the numbers, they can turn cities into little Somalias.

I wonder how things will go.

My feeling is that rioters will cost Biden the election. Liberal politicians, journalists, and celebrities are supporting the rioters, and swing voters, exceedingly dim though they are, must have figured that out by now. How will they feel about being menaced by protesters every time they move about in their cities? How will they feel when they see the rioters strutting in their suburbs? Will they respond by voting for more leftists? I guess they could, but it would be such a bad idea that even a swing voter should be able to see the problem with it.

I wonder if we’re seeing the end of the old America. Is it part of the apocalypse? Did America end one night last year, while we were all asleep in bed? Are we just seeing the delayed decomposition of the body?

I feel like kissing the ground and thanking God I’m not in Miami. We had a protest here yesterday, but things aren’t so bad my skin has made me a target.

If anyone harms me here, it will have to be by my consent. I am just too well prepared. I didn’t buy all this stuff so I could shoot other human beings, but it can be put to that use. Somehow I feel I could stomach being martyred better than shooting immature idiots and sending them to hell before they can change.

It’s time to start learning how to deal with this new rifle. Hope I made a good choice.

BLM Invades Paradise

I have been to my first Black Lives Matter protest.

I drove to Ocala today to get some shelves and to see if it was true that there was a protest. Things looked normal until I reached a certain point on State Road 200, which is the city’s main artery. I saw flashing lights, and traffic slowed down. Then I saw police vehicles parked in the street. Then I saw the marchers. Then I heard the screaming.

I would guess there were 400 marchers, and that’s a large number for a small conservative town. There were a few white marchers, but the vast majority were black. They were marching down the center of the road.

It was a peaceful protest, but “peaceful” is a deceptive term. It just means I saw no vandalism or violence. It doesn’t mean “peaceful” in the usual sense of the term. If people were sitting at your dinner table yelling at the top of their lungs with angry expressions on their faces, you wouldn’t say you were having a peaceful evening.

I heard a lot of cars honking. I thought it was coming from people who were angry at the protesters, but then I saw signs saying people should honk in support.

I got stuck in a group of cars that were moving very slowly. Part of the time, this made sense, because there were pedestrians ahead, and the cops were directing traffic. When the pedestrians were no longer in the way and the cops had moved, traffic still moved slowly. Why? Then I looked into the cars around me. Many were being driven by blacks and Hispanics. Some were holding smartphones to film the marchers.

Here is what a cynical person would say: the organizers knew they wouldn’t get a lot of support in Marion County, so they had some of the protesters drive instead of walking. They were instructed to move slowly and obstruct traffic, and to blow their horns to make the march seem more popular.

Call me a cynic.

This is the most conservative county in Florida. You can’t be elected dogcatcher here if you’re not a Republican. Trump signs are everywhere. Yet most drivers support BLM? No.

I saw some people who had come out of businesses, waving in support. That surprised me. Then I looked closer and realized that the ones who appeared white at first actually had olive skin and black hair.

Some marchers had signs advertising the Bridges Project. When I got home, I looked it up. It’s an organization which says its mission is to help blacks and whites get along. Oddly, nearly all of the officers are white. Their site brags that they got Confederate flags removed from certain places.

I do not have any Confederate flags. I had a couple of items with Confederate flags on them, and they had a lot of sentimental value to me, but I got rid of them many years ago, thinking it might be considered tasteless to appear to support the Confederacy. Nonetheless, I take a dim view of the sudden, manufactured flag hysteria that materialized out of nowhere a few years back. One year, no one cared, and the next year, you could literally have a problem for owning Dukes of Hazzard memorabilia. There were a lot of black people who wore Confederate flags because they saw it as a way of celebrating their Southern culture, but even they had to get rid of them.

I am not favorably impressed by any organization that bought into and fed the hysteria, and anyone who wants to have a Confederate tag on his car or a flag on his hat should be allowed to do so without being accused of racism. It’s possible, and healthy, for the meaning of a symbol to change.

I started thinking about what I was seeing at the protest, and I asked God to tell me what to conclude.

First, police brutality is real, and bad, and more likely to be a problem for you if you’re black.

Second, it’s important to fight injustice. Protesting is a legitimate way of doing that.

Those things are obvious.

Here’s where it gets complex. What if you’re fighting a problem we can’t do much more to fix, and in doing so, you do a lot of damage to your country?

We are not going to get rid of police brutality, because this is a very big country, we have thousands and thousands of cops, and we do not have an extremely effective way to screen or control them. We have tools that are limited in their effect. The job attracts bullies, and it always will, and they will never stop getting past the barriers.

The police will continue to murder people occasionally, and some of those people–the minority, if you check the facts–will not be white. These killings will sometimes make the news. It’s not going to stop, even if BLM gets everything it wants. This is undeniable. Instead of reacting to every killing as though it were utterly intolerable to go one more day without a magical cure, we should be asking ourselves what level of damage we have to accept.

We hate traffic deaths, but we don’t consider 40,000 per year to be indicative of a protest requiring street protests. We hate murders committed by civilians, but we aren’t out in the streets over the 16,000 or so that take place every year. More than half of those murders are committed by black people, according to the FBI, and black murderers generally kill other black people, but we don’t see a lot of marchers or signs. Abortion is murder, but there are very few protests over the million or so babies we rip apart every year.

Sometimes we accept the fact that we can’t do much better than we already are without consequences that make the cure worse than the problem.

Putting an end to police murders is not something that can be done abruptly. I can tell you with great assurance that very few protesters are aware of this or would try to understand it if you told them. They want a quick fix. In reality, the best we can do is to improve things incrementally as we come up with new strategies. That takes time, and it will never get us to the zero-murder point.

There isn’t that much that can be done in a hurry, but the protest movement can do a lot of harm. For one thing, it stimulates anti-white racism, which is a huge problem in America. There are many places whites simply cannot go. It’s known. It’s accepted. We don’t need to see the problem exacerbated.

The movement also fuels leftist political campaigns, and leftism is evil. It’s based on class hatred, racism, and envy. It’s based largely on ignorance. Leftist politicians convince voters who cause their own poverty that a cabal of whites–especially Jews–are sitting on a mythical pile of gold somewhere, and that all poverty can be erased if the politicians take it and pass it out. In reality, most poor people will remain poor no matter how much they’re given because they have bad habits. No matter what we do with wealth, it will tend to end up in the same hands over and over.

Leftism destroys initiative, and when it gets bad enough, it drives productive people to emigrate. It leads to totalitarianism, political imprisonment, and often, mass murder. But the average voter who can’t get past minimum wage doesn’t want to, and therefore will not, hear that.

The movement is also likely to drive the police to underenforce. Underenforcement is already a problem in many places. Black neighborhoods are notorious for it. The police don’t like to go in. The citizens don’t like to cooperate. There are many, many black people who can kill just about anyone they want in broad daylight in front of witnesses, because they know nothing will happen. On Martin Luther King Day in Miami, black people who have grudges go out and hurt their enemies because they know the police give up on that day.

How do I know this? Honest black people told me.

What if underenforcement becomes a problem everywhere? We tend to think of police work as a calling, but in reality, it’s just a job. There is a limit to what a person will do for a paycheck. If we’re going to charge innocent officers, drive them out of cities, and terrorize their families, just because they were involved in the deaths of suspects, should we expect good cops to continue taking the risks without which they can’t do their jobs effectively?

The movement teaches minorities to stop growing and improving. It teaches them nothing that happens to them is their fault. That’s exactly the opposite of what they need. The more you examine yourself and make corrections, the more successful you are likely to be. The victimhood mindset is poisonous. It teaches you that other people are villains and that every evil thing you do to them is justified. It’s why Pol Pot was able to convince ordinary people to line innocent individuals up beside ditches and machine-gun them.

Leftism is always about killing the goose that lays the eggs. It’s never about becoming your own goose.

I was thinking about this today, and I started thinking about the American Revolution. No one ever says this country was founded by leftists, but it was. Maybe the chickens are coming home to roost. Maybe the revolution was evil.

The Bible makes it pretty clear that God originally wanted man to be ruled by God himself. After that became impossible, he settled for priests and prophets. After that, he permitted the Jews to have a king, even though he advised them against it and made it clear it was not his will.

Every step away from the type of government God wanted brought heavy curses.

There is nothing in the Bible that supports the next step, which is the step to democracy. In fact, when people in the Bible voted, they generally voted for evil. The Beast speaks through the will of crowds.

King George III wasn’t just a king. He was the leader of the Church of England, and it was believed that he and other kings were anointed by God. It was believed that rebellion against a king was rebellion against God himself. The term “leftist” comes from the democratic rebellions of that era. Maybe the belief that democracy was rebellion against God was correct. Maybe we did the wrong thing.

We rioted a bit ourselves. Remember the Boston Tea Party? It is said that there was no violence, but there was certainly vandalism, to the tune of seven figures in today’s money.

Think of this. Slavery would have ended in America much sooner had we not rebelled. Slavery in England was gone by about 1800. What about the Civil War, which took place only about 80 years after the War of Independence? America lost over 200,000 men. Would that have happened under the crown, with no slavery permitted? Then there’s the War of 1812. Never would have happened.

What about the world wars? Would the Germans have been so aggressive toward an England which controlled the American industrial system? Maybe they would tried to make agreements instead of striving to conquer the British Isles. England would have been an incredibly powerful country.

Maybe we cursed ourselves by founding a leftist nation. Maybe the schisms we are seeing today had their supernatural beginnings as cracks during our revolution.

I suspect that the peaceful people I saw today were only peaceful because they were few in number. I think that if there had been two or three times as many, we would have seen their true hearts. This is how human nature works. You kiss the ring when you’re weak, and you deliver kicks in the teeth when you’re strong. They looked very angry to me. Nothing like the polite, cheerful conservative protesters I’ve seen outside abortion mills.

What do I take away from this? Is God showing me this place isn’t far enough from the Beast’s militia? I have to find out.

It’s so weird that society is going through so much turmoil while I’m ratcheting up my firearms hobby. I’ve been thinking I might visit a local AR-15 manufacturer and pick one up. I was considering going tomorrow. Does that look bad?

There are a bunch of deluded conservatives who think the AR-15 will save them from the left. I don’t see it that way. I don’t even think it’s a great weapon. I think it’s a very flawed weapon, and part of the appeal for enthusiasts, whether they admit it to themselves or not, is working hard to make it function corrrectly. I have bulletproof, 100% reliable Eastern bloc rifles for protection. I think it would be fun to have an AR-15 for varmints, and I think I would enjoy learning about it and reloading for it, but I have yet to be convinced that it’s a great weapon.

It reminds me of the Porsche 911. Porsche came up with an extremely flawed design around 70 years ago, and instead of admitting it and moving on, they modify it and release a new version every year. Meanwhile companies like McLaren make cars that drive rings–or Nurburgrings–around it.

“Conservative Christian Blogger Threatens to Buy Assault Weapon in Response to Peaceful Protest.” No. When you have to start shooting fellow citizens in order to hold onto your country, you no longer have a country worth living in.

I have been thinking Tennessee might be a lot safer than Florida, but today I had a disturbing thought. What happens when leftists take over, if they manage to open the borders? That could actually happen. We’re nearly there now.

Right now, conservatives win a lot of elections, and there are areas where they outnumber leftists. What if people are allowed to pour in without limitation? We could see literally millions of legal hostile immigrants over a period of months. They would need land and houses. They could flood the lifeboat in a hurry, including places that used to seem safe.

I tend to think of America as a stable country, but in reality, anything can happen when irrational people are in charge. Maybe the ground I think of as solid is actually very thin ice, ready to snap unexpectedly.

Here’s a term engineers use: brittle failure. It describes an event in which a structure breaks without warning, with extreme speed. Think of bending a glass rod until it breaks. Maybe America is headed for a brittle failure instead of a gradual decline. It happened a lot in the Bible. Israel had several brittle failures. It’s what happens when you neglect God and feed demons. On the surface, things look good, but underneath, the structure has been removed.

Samson had a brittle failure. Belshazzar had a brittle failure. The Assyrian besiegers who were massacred by angels had a brittle failure. The flood, the burning of Sodom, the destruction of Satan’s kingdom on the cross, the fall of Jericho. It’s a repeating theme. Israel had the opposite of a brittle failure when God created it in one day. Maybe my country will fall in a brittle failure.

And here I am, just a man, unable to figure out the truth. I can’t predict anything.

I was very unhappy to see the protest today. I never thought it could happen here. It’s like Nazis marching in Skokie, a suburb where Jews thought they were safe. I have to pray about this.

Hope I won’t be on Earth when the real fun starts.

Satan Can’t Take Away as Much as God can Give

If things went according to plan, my friend Travis Quinn was buried yesterday. I am told the funeral was set for two p.m. I was not there. Instead, I spent the weekend here at the house, hosting a family that knew Travis.

I don’t know if they want their names on the Internet. I will call them Abe and Sarah. I met Abe when I was an armorbearer at Trinity Church in Miami. He was also on the team. We used to have breakfast meetings at the Denny’s on Hallandale Boulevard. Sometimes I said a few things about the importance of prayer in tongues and the need to be freed from iniquities. Abe was very quiet. I didn’t think he was paying attention. Later, I found out he was absorbing everything. We became very close.

Abe and I got tired of the way Trinity Church used people and taught lies in order to get money. Things came to a head when his son was burned in the church nursery. He had a large blister on his face, covering a substantial area. We thought he might be scarred for life.

When Abe and Sarah asked for answers, no one in the church would talk. The head pastor, Rich Wilkerson, ran away, which was S.O.P. for him. My impression was that a lawyer told him to keep quiet. When Abe and Sarah took their son to the E.R., they became the focus of attention. They were asked a lot of questions. The obvious reason: the doctors and nurses wanted to get them charged with child abuse. Had someone at the church called and admitted fault, everything would have been cleared up. That didn’t happen.

When someone associated with Trinity has a problem, Trinity discards that person, like a tire which has had a blowout. They put on a new tire and keep moving. They know new tires will keep coming in the door. They adhere to the teachings of P.T. Barnum.

Abe and Sarah left Trinity before I did, and we ended up at the same new church, where the head pastor showed an inordinate interest in their young daughter and was later imprisoned for having a sexual relationship with a little girl.

We have been through a lot together. I watched them move from home to home, generally upgrading. They moved to Orlando while I was still stuck in Miami. Now they’re in Sanford. They don’t go to a prosperity church. Things keep getting better for them.

Abe once noted that his financial situation seemed to improve during times when he didn’t give Trinity his tithes.

Abe’s dad was not around when he was a kid, and he was raised by his grandmother. Somehow, he came out of that with an extraordinary determination to be a perfect father. He watches over his family like a sheepdog watching a flock. No one makes a move he doesn’t notice. Sarah is right there with him, presenting a unified front so the kids will have stability.

Abe was like a patient older brother to Travis. Sometimes he needled him a little. He didn’t let Travis pull anything over on him. He caught things I let Travis get away with. I held Travis accountable on many occasions, but Abe had a lot of experience in the area of correcting young people early, so Travis never got away with anything around him.

There are 5 kids in the family. The youngest, Gabby, is my goddaughter. She turned out to be a real firecracker. Always saying or doing something unexpected. She used to run up to people with no warning and wrap her arms around them as tightly as possible. At one point, she became obsessed with a line from the movie The Incredibles. She would put her hands on her hips and announce, “NO CAPES!” for no apparent reason.

Abe and I have often discussed the many sorry individuals Travis associated with, as well as his sorry hometown. Travis was from Miami Gardens, and Abe was from Liberty City. Both are ghetto areas. Abe got his family out of South Florida early, and, like me, he hated the area so much he was highly disturbed when he had to make occasional visits. He wanted South Florida behind him and his family, period. No looking back. Travis wanted out, but he felt trapped by his father’s problems, and he hated to leave people behind. He had many, many music students, and he wanted them to escape Miami’s ghettos. Travis didn’t move quickly enough. Abe and I both believe this is why he died.

Travis spent his last month alone in a hospital room, with few visits and no communication with friends. I asked to be put on the contact list, but it didn’t happen. I was part of a small group of people who tried to look after his interests. We felt helpless because we were shut out. We still can’t understand why it was so hard to get things done. There are things people automatically do for you when you go to intensive care, unless you’re a serial killer or a pedophile. Those things didn’t seem to happen for Travis, and there is no excuse for anyone who should have been involved.

Abe called me a few days before the viewing. He had been planning to go, even though he hates Miami. Sarah had advised him against it. I could tell his heart was no longer in the trip. We discussed the ways in which we felt Travis had been let down, and Abe said he had decided not to go.

People say you go to wakes and funerals for the dead, not the people they leave behind. That’s not necessarily true. The dead have no idea who goes to their funerals, and they have other things on their minds. They don’t make lists and tape them to their refrigerators so they can think about the people who really loved them. We go to wakes and funerals for ourselves and for others. We need to see the bodies so we can feel the reality of what has happened. We need to grieve with people we care about. We want to support other people who need help.

In Travis’s case, there wasn’t much point in attending. We knew he was really dead. We wouldn’t have been surrounded by people who shared our feelings or who would have looked to us for comfort. We wouldn’t have been able to help anyone.

The viewing was set up so only 10 people could go in at a time, with masks. The funeral was closed to everyone except his family. It wouldn’t have been anything like a typical set of death rituals. When my grandfather died, people came from all over three counties and brought food to my grandmother’s house. Guests were everywhere. Many people attended the funeral. There was a big lunch right afterward, at the church. We were inundated with food. My dad had a fifth of Gentleman Jack in the car trunk, and we socialized over that. Afterward, the same night, the socializing continued. People told funny stories. Old relationships were rekindled, if briefly.

The events following my grandfather’s death were curative and uplifting. If we had gone to Miami for Travis, it would have been different. We would have been reminded why we left. We would have experienced much of the rejection all over again.

It would have been like a date with an ex-girlfriend. All the reasons for the breakup would have flooded back to the forefront.

Travis should have had a cortege. He should have had a band made up of his students and people he knew from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. There should have been a meal afterward. There should have been conversation. Abe and I knew those things were not going to happen. Part of it was due to the epidemic, and part was due to other people’s choices.

With Travis gone, neither of us has any social connection to Miami.

We didn’t want to have to sit and listen to hypocrites who talked about how they loved Travis even though they were never around when he needed help.

I know who Travis went to when he needed a hand moving. I know who he went to when he needed a place to live. I know who didn’t show up when it was time to carry furniture. No one can lie to me.

Not long before he died, Travis did an interview in which he talked about the importance of giving people flowers while they’re alive instead of waiting for their funerals. That says it all. The people who were good to him while he was alive didn’t have anything to prove after he died.

Abe and his family rolled in yesterday afternoon. I cleaned up the house and gave them the second floor. I went grocery shopping, and they arrived while I was gone. I forgot to leave a key. When I got back home, 4 kids were playing in the pool. The fifth starts a new job tomorrow, and she couldn’t make it.

We fired up the grill and made a tremendous amount of food. Burgers. Hot dogs. Smoked sausages. Grilled chicken. Before we ate, we prayed and thanked God for Travis and for the people who fill the hole he left behind. Abe’s kids made water balloons and took him on in a balloon war. Sarah and I sat in the shade and talked.

A lot of my conversation with Abe and Sarah was about coronavirus. I told them how I had noticed that the epidemic was completely different in godly and ungodly areas. I said I had lacked for nothing. I said that apart from what had happened to Travis, it had been a peaceful and plesant time. I said my biggest problem had been weight gain.

Abe and Sarah corroborated what I saw. There is very little disease where they live. They were able to continue working through the entire lockdown. They paid off their vehicles. They gained weight. They were approved for a home loan. They surprised me by telling me they were moving to Leesburg, much closer to me. It’s a definite step up. They’ll be farther from dangerous Orlando when persecution gets worse.

I always pray for God to move my friends away from the Beast’s hordes. I ask him to put them in houses in Christian areas. I even ask him to make other people pay for the houses.

While we were here having fun, my young friend Tina texted me. She said she had had a dream. She wasn’t sure what it meant. Either it was a vision of heaven or an indication that God was going to give her a big house. She said there was a house in the dream, and she could see hills from it. I told her it sounded like my actual life. I haven’t heard the details yet, but I will get them.

I learned some amazing things while my friends were here. They said Gabby had been very excited about visiting. She said she kept saying, “I’m going to see my god-daddy!” That was wonderful to hear. I don’t get to see the family often, so I always wonder if the kids really know who I am. I guess they do.

After swimming, Gabby and Zoey came out in matching outfits. I’ll have to post a photo. I don’t know where kids come up with these things. They wore multi-colored swim coverups and big clear glasses rimmed with rhinestones. So funny. Gabby is the one on the right.

The kids wanted to see the pasture, so they got in my utility cart, and I took them. The last time they were here, I didn’t have cattle. I told them to expect a lot of manure. They couldn’t stop talking. While I was driving, I kept hearing their comments. “Poop!” “Poop!” “Poop!” “Poop!”

The cattle are curious, so they started moving toward the cart. All the girls started yelling. The cattle scared them. They shouted for me to get away from the cattle. After we opened some distance, Gabby said, “Cows are my worst enemy!” Where do kids come up with this stuff? She also said, “Cows are disgusting.”

I kept reminding them they were full of cows at that very moment.

City kids.

The original plan was to leave them in the pasture and go get their parents. Sarah was excited about the pistol targets I had built, and she wanted to see them. Junior was the only kid willing to stay. The others thought the cattle would eat them. I dropped them all by the house and took Abe and Sarah for a tour.

In the meantime, homemade brownies were cooling in the kitchen.

Back at the house, I made whipped cream, and we had warm brownies with Haagen-Dazs vanilla, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce. Gabby insisted on having real maple syrup instead.

Abe and Sarah and I talked more about the polarization of America and the way God’s people are being sifted out.

The kids did something amazing. They cleaned up the house. They asked for brooms. They did the dishes. Before too long, I saw them mopping. Gabby, Zoey, and Cheyenne handled the kitchen. Junior took care of the trash. It was wonderful. They didn’t have to be asked. I couldn’t stop them.

They even swept up around the bird cages. They did a pretty good job of making friends with Marvin and Maynard.

By the time everyone was ready to go to bed, there was not much for me to do.

This morning, I made biscuits, gravy, and fried eggs. The cleaning continued. Gabby came over to me and hugged me and said she wanted to stay and keep cleaning.

They didn’t complain. They kept thanking me. I kept thanking them back. Abe and Sarah said they raised them to be functional kids, and they were going to be functional adults.

Sometimes having guests is hard. Having this crew is actually helpful. I will think about it the next time I’m a guest.

I took a photo of the ladies working in my somewhat cluttery kitchen. You can see Cheyenne in there to the right of her mom.

I’ve been told I have to have Thanksgiving dinner in their new home, and that I’m not allowed to do anything. I can’t imagine what that would be like.

I could have been in Miami, in a very different environment. I would have seen some people I like. On the other hand, I would have seen some people who don’t like me at all. I would also have been around racists. Some of Travis’s friends don’t like white people. Some have criticized me on the Internet in comments tinged with racism. Apparently, I can’t understand Travis because I’m white. These people weren’t around when Travis was being helped by whites and Hispanics. I guess they were busy being oppressed.

Travis passed on Mother’s Day. I suppose that will color that day in the future for some he knew. The day of his funeral, which should have been a down day for me, was a day of love and celebration. It was a day of very good news for me and others. From now on, when I think of the day of his funeral, I will think of redemption and comfort.

I thought about Job yesterday. He had 10 children, and they all died in one day. Then when his tribulation was over, God gave him 10 more. It didn’t erase what had happened to his first 10, but after the new children arrived, how much room could there have been for grief? The human consciousness is limited. You can’t entertain unlimited grief and unlimited joy simultaneously. Surely sufficient joy will displace grief.

I lost Travis for the time being, but yesterday I had 6 people here doing what he used to do, and I had Tina’s text. I also heard from another young lady I met at Trinity. She’s planning to visit along with her sister and my other godchild.

Part of me wants to say, “This is all wonderful, but I still don’t have Travis back.” It’s a very small part of me. It’s hard to hear it over the rest of me.

I hope Abe and Sarah move soon. Their visits give me life, and my floors will always need mopping.

Wearing a Red Hat is Violence, but a Riot is a Protest

The polarization of Christians and anti-Christians continues, and the Beast’s mob continues to form and train. Donald Trump just took a gigantic step to curtail the political mind control coming from social sites, and black people all over America are rioting because one man died during an arrest.

I’m always amazed to see pundits and pundettes miss the obvious when discussing our nation’s issues. One thing I have not been able to understand is the rarity of comment regarding our lack of protection when using new forms of public discourse. The First Amendment was written in a time when discourse took two forms: actual speech and writings on physical media. You could talk to people, or you could write things and disseminate them on paper or parchment or other materials. The First Amendment prevented the government from interfering, and that was adequate. It didn’t protect people from other entities that wanted to censor. It didn’t prevent private parties from censoring employees, students, and so on. But it took government out of the game.

The primary goal of protection of expression was to allow political dissent, not pornography. Many ignorant Americans would be surprised to learn that, since we generally see the First Amendment invoked in connection with obscenity.

When social media became our most powerful means of expression, everything changed. We entered an era in which a few left-leaning private entities had the power to shut people down without fear of legal resistance. The First Amendment doesn’t apply to Twitter and Facebook. We now live in a time where anti-Christians have a tremendous advantage in communication. The most important public fora are run by anti-Christians, and they can stifle us at will. Their only incentive to refrain has been monetary; they want to present a false image of neutrality in order to keep Christians and conservatives on their sites. They balance this desire with a burning drive to silence us.

The First Amendment doesn’t help Christians if they lack typical access to the public ear. Freedom to criticize Barack Obama doesn’t mean much if you’re restricted to inferior means of communication.

I knew all this, but I didn’t think there was a legal solution to the problem. I didn’t study it. To my surprise, the Trump administration just came up with a weapon. They are taking away special legal protections the anti-Christian social media rulers used to enjoy.

I’m not going to study the matter in depth, because I don’t feel like it, but the basic idea is that it’s hard to sue people who run websites for disseminating content you don’t like, because the law says that as long as they only censor content sparingly and for good reason, they are not considered content creators.

If your neighbor Bob slanders you on Facebook, you probably can’t sue Facebook, because Facebook didn’t utter the slander. They just served as a conduit. According to the Trump administration, that changes when Facebook begins nannying account holders. It’s okay for Facebook to remove child porn and other types of information just about everyone finds unacceptable, but when Facebook starts removing political material posted by conservatives, without a symmetrical response to leftists, Facebook begins to be responsible for the things that are and are not published, as though Facebook itself were creating content.

Twitter inserted a message into a Trump tweet, alerting people to Twitter’s position that the tweet should be fact-checked. Twitter generally does not do this to high-profile anti-Christian tweeters, regardless of what they post. Trump didn’t like it, so now he is trying to expose the social giants to lawsuits.

Isn’t it funny that we call the communication sites “social giants”? In the Bible, giants were evil children of Satan. They ruled the earth and intimidated righteous people.

Does Trump’s tactic have any teeth? I don’t know. The text suggests his order only applies to the executive branch. I don’t know how much power that branch has over the Internet. It would be more powerful if courts had to follow it. Federal prosecutors presumably have to obey, and it seems likely that conservative judges will be sympathetic, but I don’t think it binds anyone in the judiciary branch. Maybe I’m mistaken.

I suppose that in order to find out whether Trump’s order has any effect, people will have to start complaining to executive branch entities and suing in federal courts.

It’s a beautiful gesture, albeit very late in coming. I’ll say that.

I keep telling people Christians will be driven off the web. It’s fascinating to see the battle exposed.

Now, what about unintended consequences? Those are always fun.

I run a blog. I delete ridiculous comments. I remove spam and obscene remarks. If I were to see anything sufficiently offensive to me, personally, I would delete it.

Am I running a public forum? Will I be sued if I delete comments?

Andrea Harris, who used to blog as the Twisted Spinster, called comment trolls “blog roaches.” I agree. A blog is a person’s Internet home, and it’s unreasonable to expect bloggers to host malicious idiots.

Tomorrow, I’m going to let a whole family into my home, and they will spent the night. That doesn’t mean I have to let a vanload of smelly, violent Antifers take the remaining bedroom and urinate on the carpet.

Running a personal blog would be unpleasant and unsafe if I had to let every comment through. I delete very, very few comments, but then my blog doesn’t attract trolls the way it used to. If I had a popular right-wing blog, as I used to, I would be fielding vicious, filthy comments right and left. I used to get a lot of them. People used to threaten to mail me their feces, for example. There are many bloggers who still live under these conditions. What will happen to them if they find out they have to post every comment? Their sites will be ruined. Their enemies may figure out the unintended consequences of Trump’s order, bury them in comments, and then file complaints and even sue them.

Maybe the answer is commenter registration, but I don’t know if it will work. You have to register for Facebook, and they’re still in the crosshairs.

Does it matter if real (i.e. private) blogs disappear? They don’t have the power they once had. Still, it would be bad if an effort to promote speech anti-Christians don’t like ended up discouraging it.

The position of legislators and courts has always been that every individual’s right to free expression is extremely important.

It may be that there is no good way to restrain the political and religious censorship of the left. It will probably turn out to be up to judges. If they interpret the law a certain way, we’ll be okay. But look at all the bizarre anti-Christian interpretations courts have made in the past. For example, somehow we went from refraining from creating laws establishing religions to banning prayer in schools.

As for the rioting, it’s quite a spectacle. A man named George Floyd was killed by the police in Minnesota, and people are rioting in places over a thousand miles away. People are looting stores, supposedly as a means of expressing their political and moral views. A police station was burned in Minnesota, and the police ran away instead of defending it.

It used to be that when the police killed someone, rioters waited for the authorities to fail to react. In the case of George Floyd, they chose rioting as their first option. It appears that no one is backing the cops involved in the killing, yet there are still riots. That’s the Beast in action. He is training people who have a victimhood complex. He wants them to think that every evil thing they want to do is justified, and that mob behavior is righteous.

God showed me that the Beast would work through mobs. There is a body of Christ, ruled by the Holy Spirit, and there is a body of Satan, ruled by demons and the flesh. Satan is teaching his kids to be bolder and bolder. Eventually, they’ll riot with no proximate provocation at all. They’ll gather and go to neighborhoods where people are better off, and they’ll do as they please. The police won’t be able to do much, and in some areas, mayors will actually discourage the police. At least one mayor has already done this.

We’ve already seen flash mobs enter stores, beat people, and take whatever they wanted.

There are areas where America has completely lost control. We don’t like to talk about it, but it’s very obvious. There are places where people of the wrong race simply can’t go. There are places where you can be killed for having a blue bandana in your back pocket.

I knew a Cuban named K.C. He was a former criminal. He lived in Texas, and then he moved to South Florida. He told me he had to call himself “K. Three” because if he said “C,” he risked being hurt or killed. Apparently, the Crips think they own the letter “C.” Yesterday, I read a story about coronavirus (“3oronavirus”?) masks. Authorities delivered a warning to people in a certain area. They said people shouldn’t wear masks in certain colors because gangs might attack them. The victimhood machine rose up and shamed the authorities for trying to save lives, and guess what they got. An apology and retraction!

The Bloods and Crips are not really big gangs. They’re small gangs which belong to a bigger gang: the Body of the Beast.

Decent Christian people are in retreat now. This is how I ended up living in the country. It’s why so many other people are leaving cities. It may also have something to do with covid. It’s hitting cities hard and making people think about rural living. Maybe God is using it to move his people to relative safety.

I expect our retreat to continue and increase. We will see Cambodia-style scenes in America. It will be like the French Revolution, in which evil, bloodthirsty, victimhood-crazed peasants dragged wealthy people out of their homes and cut their heads off. Politicians won’t protect us. They’ll be under the spell. They’ll be against the innocent.

People who are on top socially tend to make a fatal error. They think they put themselves on top. In reality, all power comes from God. If you turn from him, he stops backing you up. That’s what’s happening now. It’s why England lost its empire. Americans who are civilized and well off are like Samson. They think they still have the power to rise up and rend their enemies like kittens, but while they were asleep, Delilah shaved them bald.

It’s very interesting to contemplate my situation with regard to the future wave of murder and confiscation. On the one hand, I get more and more interested in firearms, and my collection of guns and ammunition increases. On the other, I have less and less interest in using them to defend myself. A lot of Christians and conservatives rattle their AR-15’s and say they’re going to shoot “zombies” on their properties when things really get bad. Not me. I enjoy firearms as a hobby. I don’t think guns will save me. The idea of shooting a bunch of people in order to stay on this wretched planet is repugnant to me.

I don’t want to defeat my enemies by becoming like them.

When America devolves into a true idiocracy, won’t rational Christians regard execution as a favor? A bullet in the head would be a “million-dollar wound,” to use the phrase soldiers used during World War Two. It would be a fast ticket home.

Many of us like to say, “Molon labe.” “Come and take them.” Maybe we should mean that sincerely. Allowing yourself to be taken is more dignified than turning into an ape.

I’m extremely grateful to be far from Miami. I hope God moves me even farther from leftists. They are rapidly becoming so impervious to advice that there is no purpose in associating with them.

I expect to witness some very ugly things in the future, from a distance. I feel like a Jew who left Germany in 1934. The stubborn people who stay behind are going to suffer horribly, and no one will be able to help them.

Social Proximation Alert

This weekend, something remarkable may happen. I’m scheduled to have overnight guests.

Guests! In my house! Breathing the same air!

A Democrat governor should swoop in, hanging from a black helicopter, wearing a HEPA-filtered, lead-lined coronaburqa, to spirit me away to a hermetically sealed cell full of Antifa pamphlets and gay pride literature.

I suppose there will not be a lot of hugging or handshaking, but we won’t be wearing diving suits, either.

My friends Alonzo and Teri are planning to come by and invade my guest bedrooms with their 5 kids, one of which is my goddaughter. I use words like “planning” and “scheduled” because my friends have a way of not showing up, but at least we have clear intentions to socialize.

I don’t know what I’ll do with them. I have to figure that out. I assume the kids will spend most of the time in the pool. I don’t know if we’ll be able to go to restaurants. They’re open here, but there may be limitations. I don’t know how they feel when 8 people show up at once.

Are we risking death? Well, as of yesterday, this county had 240 known covid cases, and that includes people who are well and no longer contagious. Based on the length of time that has passed since testing began, I would guess that we only have a few dozen active known cases.

I feel like getting out of the chair and putting my face on the floor and thanking God. In fact, I will.

I’m back. Glad I vacuumed.

Joy is coming back into my life, courtesy of God. Grieving over my loss has been very painful at times, and during the first week I felt as though my purpose here on Earth had been largely nullified, but as God has told me, the way I feel isn’t controlled by my circumstances, and he is able to pour joy and peace into me regardless of what has happened.

If it makes sense to say there are sad things about Spirit-filled Christianity, one of them is this: youth tends to be a much less pleasant time than our later years. People want to be happy when they’re young. They want to be financially comfortable. They want to be successful in marriage and reproduction. They want to have victory in their careers. We talk of getting good things while we’re young enough to enjoy them. Unfortunately, youth is typically a time of weakness and defeat unless we get with God’s program early.

My life is vastly better than it used to be. Sometimes I remember things about the past, and I’m surprised to see how much better things are now.

I used to have headaches every day. I suppose this was true for over 4 decades. I assumed nothing could be done about it. This week I realized I don’t even think about headaches any more. I may have had one the last time I was sick. I’m not sure. I have ibuprofen, but I don’t use it for headaches.

I used to be surrounded by people who treated me badly and got victory over me. Relatives, pastors, employers, co-workers, people I encountered on the web…they caused a lot of problems. Now they’re gone. I don’t even get trolls on my blog. They used to swarm the comments.

I worried a lot, even though I hated worry. I think most people who worry do it willingly. I stopped worrying. A man prayed for me at a Last Reformation event in January and cast out spirits of worry, and I don’t worry now.

I was depressed until I was about 30. It was my normal state. Some people live to seek success and improve their lives. I lived on defense. All I wanted was to be left alone. I don’t mean I wanted to be alone. “Left alone is an idiom.” I wanted rest. I wanted shelter from an endless stream of problems and failures.

I don’t get depressed, unless you count rare, fleeting occasions. To understand depression, I now have to concentrate and bring back memories of my former life.

I feel good physically. I have some little issues, but I almost never take medicine. I took some painkillers on one occasion in January, but I can’t recall the last time I took medicine before that. I used to take acid blockers, ibuprofen, and other things to get me through my days. I used a great deal of caffeine. Not any more.

I get to do things I wanted to do but could not. I wanted to live in the country on a large piece of land. Here I am. I wanted to live in the South. Here I am. I wanted to live among law-abiding American Christians and conservatives. Here I am.

I wanted a lot of tools. I have them. I machine. I weld. I fix electronic devices. I have a tractor and chainsaws.

I wanted to be able to shoot without driving half an hour in horrid traffic and being herded into a crowded range with ridiculous rules created in obeisance to liberal politicians. Now I walk 40 feet from my house and blast away. If I want to shoot targets, I hop in my cart and drive to the berm in my pasture.

I hated Miami so much. I can’t describe it. I was like a prisoner who wanted to break out. I’m so happy to be free. I still can’t get completely used to it. Can it really be true that I won’t have to go back? Miserable place. It’s too bad we can’t rip Miami and New York out of the ground, move them to a desert in Mongolia, and surround them with steel walls.

As far as I know, my friend Travis has not been buried yet. I don’t like the idea of refrigerating a body for three weeks so morticians have to shoot chemicals into it and cake wax on it to hide the dehydration and deterioration. The only announcement I have heard said he was going to be buried on May 30, 20 days after his death. I’m not going to the funeral because I want nothing to do with the hypocrites and racists that made up much of his social circle.

I’m thinking about this now because Travis and I used to talk about Miami a lot. We agreed that it was a terrible place to live, and I told him how I had prayed God would help me never to go back. Sometimes he would call about a problem, and he would say he wanted to work things out so I didn’t have to visit. He said he didn’t want to drag me back there.

It’s very fitting that I’m not going to the funeral. He didn’t want me to have to go to Miami while he was alive, and there is no way he wants to bring that misfortune on me now that he is gone.

When we talked about the area where I live, he invariably said he was jealous. He always said the best people he knew were leaving Miami, and he wanted to join them.

Life keeps getting better for me. If you’re really Spirit-led, that’s how it’s supposed to be. You can’t be considered a success unless things get better with time and then end well. If the best part of your life happened 20 years ago, something is wrong with your relationship with God. As the Bible says, “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.” If you own the end, you own the whole thing.

Travis’s death caused me a great deal of suffering, but the hard days are over, and things are going to keep improving. Surely God will reward Satan by sending me multiple people to take Travis’s place. I’m not going to end in failure. Even in Travis’s case, I won. Before I knew him, he was headed for hell. I was one of the people God used to help him receive eternal salvation.

The other day I wrote about a revelation I had. God showed me that I should call him my master. I do that all the time now. I wish I could help people understand how powerful it is. I can feel the Holy Spirit growing in power in me when I say it. I feel weight falling off of me. It’s a way of acknowledging that only God gives me victory and good things. When you acknowledge this, he works with more power. He doesn’t want you to help yourself and build up pride.

God isn’t a genie who shows up to give us what we want, without asking for anything in return. He expects us to be willing slaves who are determined to be one with him. A good master feeds his slaves well. He gives them the best medical care. He gives them the best tools and the best workspace he can afford. He gives them complete protection. When he sends them out in his name, he backs them up 100% with his power and authority. What’s not to like?

The word “slave” is deceptive because human slavemasters generally coerce. Satan coerces. You sin until you get a habit, and then the habit takes away your free will. Satan is a pimp. God’s slaves serve by their own free will. They can quit whenever they want.

I’m finally cutting back on reading the news. Covid got me started again. I love not reading that mess.

Why should I read it? It’s for citizens of the world who are Satan’s subjects. I’m a citizen of another country, and I’m not subject to the laws and dangers of this place. If I were visiting Botswana, would I read the newspapers and get upset over politics and problems? Of course not. Those issues are for citizens of Botswana. Why should I waste a lot of time reading about the misery carnal Americans live in? If they want to rip each other’s throats out and insult each other and spit at God, that’s on them. Like a friend of mine says, “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

I’m an enemy agent; an insurgent. I call people to become citizens of my country. I don’t have to get bogged down in their foreign squabbles. America has economic problems? God says he will supply me abundantly. America has diseases? God says no plague will come near my dwelling. Anti-Christians are becoming more and more violent, and they will eventually form mobs and come after us? God protected Lot, Moses, and Jesus from mobs.

I live in a different reality. I’m here, but I’m not here. We have seen how COVID-19 hits anti-Christian areas much harder than Christian areas. That’s a picture of the way God wants us to live.

If you want life to go smoothly, it’s extremely important to pray in tongues every day. A lot. It’s very important to ask God for correction and revelation. It’s important to remove preachers from betweed you and God. The Bible says God will teach you directly.

It’s important to submit. You have to understand that God is your master, not your concierge or butler.

You need to listen to the Bible. Read it, but also listen to it.

You have to stop trying to change the world. You have to stop trying to adapt to it. Accept the fact that you are rejected, and get used to helping individuals, not neighborhoods, cities, or nations.

Be glad you’re rejected. Satan keeps his enemies close.

I love God’s joy. I have to decide what to do with it. The pool needs some work. I need to get the house ready for guests. I should go buy some driveway sealer. Joy gives you enthusiasm to get things done, because it fills you with hope. It destroys discouragement.

Favor is everything. Line yourself up to receive it. Stop trying to get God to do things your way.

Hope this helps.

Gun Nuttery Moves to New Level

The other day an idea came to me: an ammunition “savings account.” The idea was that I would put a large amount of ammunition aside and then either leave it alone or rotate it out as I shot. I have concerns that anti-Christians will make ammunition much harder to get in the future, before coming to confiscate it entirely, so it seems to make sense to be ready.

I have been working on my stockpile. I made a large number of .45 ACP rounds for target shooting, and I also made hundreds of .45 ACP hollowpoints. I have 9mm and .38 Super components on the way. Before the end of the year, I should be sitting on a pretty decent cache or “arsenal” as the TV news people like to call anything beyond half a box of CCI Mini-mags.

I’m learning a lot about making ammunition, and it has affected the way I see handguns.

When I made my defensive rounds in .45 ACP, I found that they had tiny velocity spreads. One round would be 906 fps, another would be 910, and so on. When you buy factory ammo, you can expect a spread of around 50 fps.

I don’t know if it’s true, but common sense suggests that consistent velocity contributes to accuracy. After all, bullets travel in arcs, not lines, and the shapes of the arcs are partly determined by velocity.

Today I shot a few defensive rounds as well as some target rounds. The defensive rounds were made with new Starline brass, and the target junk was made with brass I found on the ground at gun ranges. Before I shot the defensive rounds, I weighed every one in order to make sure I didn’t overload any. They were amazingly consistent. Almost all were exactly 320.0 grains. From past experience I knew that random brass gave varying cartridge weights.

I shot a lot better with the new brass. It made me wonder if the interior volumes of sister cases were likely to be nearly identical. Volume affects pressure, and pressure affects velocity.

Two notions came to mind. First, I should stop using whatever brass and powder I had lying around, look for accurate load data, and buy the right stuff. Second, I should break down and get a nicer gun. I didn’t want to shell out for a Les Baer or a Wilson Combat, but I knew there were guns that were more carefully made than my SW1911 yet not prohibitively expensive.

I decided to try Vihtavuori N320 powder. Supposedly, it gives excellent accuracy, doesn’t flash much, and doesn’t stain brass. It ought to be the best powder on earth, because it costs over 50% more than other powders. I also decided to invest in semiwadcutter .45 bullets. They make nicer holes in targets. Today my round-nosed bullets tore a big strip out of a target. I don’t want to keep dealing with that. Also, semiwadcutters are supposed to be reasonably good for defense and hunting.

As for the gun, I took a long look at the Colt Gold Cup Trophy. People speak highly of it. I decided against it, though. I wanted a second .45. The Gold Cup Trophy is available in .45 ACP and .38 Super. I may want to get one in .38 Super some day, and I don’t want two Gold Cup Trophys.

I started reading about the Smith & Wesson Performance Center SW1911. It’s similar to mine, but they fit the barrel more carefully, and there are some other little touches. It’s supposed to be a $3000 gun for less than half the price.

I was thinking about it when I went to check my mail. I wondered: was it really a good idea to get another gun, or was it just my flesh talking? I decided to ask God if he was in favor of it, and I felt a wave of something go through me. “YES.” It was a little unnerving. It bordered on pain.

That settled it. I ordered the gun. If I’m wrong, the worst thing that can happen is that I have a new pistol.

I have a lot of brass and bullets on the way. Should I also buy factory ammo? I don’t think so. For one thing, I trust my own ammo more. For another, I can make exactly what I want. Finally, while paying for top components is not cheap, it’s way cheaper than buying really excellent factory ammo.

Besides, you learn very little from shooting the factory stuff.

I think factory ammo is perfect for the AK and the shotguns, and I can’t make my own rimfire ammo, but other than that, I believe reloading is the way to go.

I may go completely nuts and get some real shooting glasses. I’ve never had any. I get the cheap yellow safety glasses.

I should pick up some holsters. I need one for my full-size Glock, and it would be good to have some 1911 holsters. I don’t carry a 1911, but for all I know, someone close to me may need to borrow one in the future.

I may get a couple of Miami Classic II holsters. I already have one for my small 10mm. They’re about as unobtrusive as a holster can get. They don’t get in the way when you sit down or do most types of labor.

It will be nice knowing I have a 1911 which is sufficiently snazzy to make it easier to separate my own bad technique from problems caused by a gun that takes a little extra effort to control.

Expect target photos and a great deal of bloviation.

Wyatt Earp or Barney Fife?

While sitting waiting for the rain to end, I’ve been reading about Massad Ayoob, the firearms writer. I have to say that my awe is decreasing by the minute.

If you have anything to do with gun people, you know that Ayoob is nearly worshiped. Saying you disagree with anything Ayoob says is like pouring honey on yourself and jumping onto an anthill naked. You will make a lot of people who don’t really know that much about anything very angry. He has his own Beyhive.

He wrote some books about self-defense. I have at least one of them, somewhere. When I read it, I thought the author was a bad dude who had been in lots of gunfights and stakeouts. He certainly made himself sound like that kind of person. He isn’t, however. Nothing close to it.

Today I read a piece by a guy who has serious issues with Ayoob’s integrity. His name is Shawn Dodson. He says he admired Ayoob, but his opinion changed when he found evidence that Ayoob was dishonest. He and Ayoob had a squabble, and he went through a bunch of things Ayoob had said and posted evidence suggesting Ayoob was not exactly truthful.

Here’s a link: LINK.

Example: Ayoob said he testified in a case involving the FBI when he actually appeared in an administrative hearing before the case went to court. He calls the case Christine Hansen et. al., v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, but on the Internet, it’s actually Hansen v. Webster (1986). The Webster in question was the director of the FBI.

Ayoob said, “I testified. The court listened,” clearly claiming a judge heard what he said. Now, to be fair, Ayoob is a layman. He appears as an expert witness from time to time, but he couldn’t begin to look after or understand a court case. Maybe he really thought an administrative hearing was a court case. I doubt it, though. It was an EEOC hearing. I used to deal with the EEOC’s examiners, and their offices are not located in courthouses. Not in Miami, anyway. I don’t see how anyone could think an EEOC hearing was a court case.

The Miami EEOC office was full of amply proportioned, slow-moving ladies who padded around in house shoes. It was more like their home than an office. There was a sleepy atmosphere to the place. It was conducive to napping. My dad told me to expect this when I visited, and it turned out he was absolutely right. The examiners expected attorneys to spoon-feed them and do all the work. I don’t recall witnessing any hearings. That would have gone far beyond the degree of involvement I was familiar with.

When you want to sue your employer, you have to complain to the EEOC first. Then the EEOC does nothing, and you’re allowed to sue. That means you go across town, to the federal courthouse.

The EEOC is a big joke, to be quite honest.

It appears that an agent named Hansen sued the FBI for sexual discrimination. Somewhere in the mix, she complained about the guns women had to use. Ayoob says it was a class action, so I guess other women were involved.

Here is some of what Ayoob wrote about the case:

I testified. The court listened. The court found in favor of the women, and the Bureau was ordered to “revise and update its obsolete and sexist firearms training.”

The big problem with this statement, apart from the fact that he didn’t really testify in court, is that according to an FBI bigwig, there was no court ruling. How could Ayoob have imagined one? I don’t think he could have. He must have lied. That’s my best guess. The bigwig, [full-time] Special Agent Urey W. Patrick, said the suit was settled and that the FBI made no substantial changes to its firearms policies.

A settlement is not a court ruling. It means you and your adversary make a private agreement and go home. A court doesn’t issue orders after a settlement. There is no way a judge would have said, “This case is settled, but Massad Ayoob, whose testimony I have not read, says your policies are wrong, so I order you to change them.”

The ever-reliable Internet says the DOJ, not the court, changed the FBI’s procedures in 1981, long before the case ended. If the court listened, why did the DOJ make the changes? According to a scholarly paper, the finding that changes needed to be made was made by the DOJ itself.

Special Agent Patrick also said Ayoob was “demolished” as a witness and that he was forced to read a passage from one of his own writings, contradicting something he had just asserted very forcefully.

Ayoob also said this:

When I testified against the FBI in 1980 for the women in the class action suit of Christine Hansen, et. al. V. Federal Bureau of Investigation, I was told it would be the kiss of death to my career. So be it. The women were right and the Bureau was wrong, and I couldn’t have looked my then three-year-old first-born daughter in the face had I not gone there and spoke the truth.

This is not how it works. Ayoob is a career expert witness, or as my evidence professor Mickey Graham used to say, “Witness Having Other Reasonable Explanation.” Ayoob has testified for defendants. In all likelihood, he has never testified on behalf of law enforcement. They have their own experts, who have been to college, on salary.

I’m assuming he’s telling the truth when he says he has done this kind of work. It’s hard to know what to believe now.

If he did work as an expert, it means he worked against cops and prosecutors. It should not have surprised or bothered anyone to see him testify to help a person suing a big law enforcement organization. It was what he did for a living. The FBI case was not an outlier for him. And you can’t ruin your career by testifying as an expert witness. No one cares. No one is even likely to find out unless you, gee…I don’t know…write about it in a book or magazine.

No one told Ayoob testifying would be the kiss of death for his career. Not unless it was his wife or maybe a bartender. No one who knows anything about court cases would say something that crazy.

One notes that it did not kill his career, and that he wrote about it while trying to advance his career. Why would you publicize something you expected to ruin your reputation and force you to give up your livelihood?

I’m not saying it’s virtue-signaling, but it certainly resembles it.

Ayoob also got into it with a doctor (not a gun writer or part time cop like Ayoob) who is held in extremely high regard among forensic experts. The doctor’s name is Martin Fackler, and he founded and ran the Armed Forces’ Wound Ballistic Laboratory. Ayoob tried to argue with him about the JFK shooting, saying the head wound was not consistent with the type of gun and ammunition used by Lee Harvey Oswald. The arrogance is amazing.

Ayoob is not a doctor, lawyer, paralegal, nurse, or, unless he is uncharacteristically hiding a credential, a college graduate. Assuming you’re not an expert, he knows about what you and I do when it comes to autopsies. He still argued in print with one of the world’s leading authorities. Dr. Fackler explained why Ayoob was wrong, and Ayoob continued arguing.

Whom would you believe? Stephen Hawking or the lady who typed his papers?

Ayoob cited another expert named John K. Lattimer, and Lattimer was so disturbed he published a response contradicting Ayoob.

Here are Ayoob’s credentials as well as I can determine them. He was a part-time cop in a tiny Mayberry-like New Hampshire town with a crime rate about 1/6 as high as the American average. He has not been in shootouts. He has not taken down lots of scary criminals. He was never in the military, although he was of draft age during the Vietnam War. As far as I can tell, he only has a high school education. He is not a mechanical engineer, hence he cannot comment as an expert on firearms design or construction. He is not a ballistics expert, because those people are scientists, and scientists go to college. He is just a guy who read a lot about guns and crime and hustled his way into a career as an authority.

He left the Grantham, New Hampshire PD as a captain. Question: how hard is it to become a captain in a town containing about as many people as a Broadway theater? I have relatives in a town in Kentucky that size. If someone there started calling himself a captain, they would still be making fun of him 10 years after his funeral.

I remember a funny story. They tore down the Powell County courthouse and built a new one. The county judge, who was a low-level official who basically handled traffic tickets, had it named after himself: “The Billy Joe Martin Government Center.” You can imagine how long the letters stayed up.

I often disagree with things experts say, but I’m not crazy enough to do it when we’re both talking about something about which I very clearly know comparatively little. Yes, I disagree with the people who pushed the theory that covid would be a devastating plague, but they themselves admitted great uncertainty, and besides, I generally turned out to be right. I wouldn’t argue with them about the physical properties of the virus or the body’s mechanisms for responding to it. I can’t even guess about those things. But Ayoob held himself out as competent to discount the opinions of two renowned experts, regarding well-settled science, in the creation of which they were both instrumental.

He once said this:

“Those of us who have seen violent death up close, who have seen what high-powered bullets can do to living human tissue, have a horror of inflicting that nightmarish, never forgotten damage on a fellow human being.

Obvious question: if you haven’t been in violent confrontations involving high-powered bullets, and you’re not a pathologist or any type of medical professional, how did you ever manage to see violent death up close? My guess is that he was in the car with a full-time cop who went to the scene of a suicide. Or maybe his celebrity status got him into some autopsies. I have been invited to autopsies. Lawyers get invitations like that. Had I gone, I would not write about my experiences the way he did.

Is it just me, or does the quotation suggest that he has been out in the street blasting away at criminals? If I wrote something like that, I would be sure to point out the circumstances so I would not deceive anyone.

The more I read, the less I respect this guy. I think he knows a great deal about self-defense and shooting techniques, just as anyone would after spending decades reading about these things and practicing shooting on safe gun ranges far from criminals. I think his opinions on bullet performance are utterly worthless when there are so many real authorities to go to. His legal opinions are about as valuable as those of a person who drives an ice cream truck.

Given the things Dodson exposed, I can’t believe stories Ayoob tells about himself without corroboration. When he talks about preparing cases with lawyers, we don’t get to hear what the lawyers recall. Maybe they paid little attention to him. Maybe he got fired a lot. Maybe a number of lawyers talked to him on the phone and decided not to hire him, and then he went on to say he “got together with attorneys” on this or that case.

Here’s how the expert witness business works. You have a client, and you think it would help him if an expert testified to the likelihood of various facts. It might be nice if a doctor said your client would never walk again. It might be good if an accountant said the defendant’s actions cost your client 40 million dollars. There is a pool of expert witnesses out there, and they advertise their services. You pick one you know will see things your way, and you turn him loose with the evidence. If ethics matter to you, you don’t tell him what to conclude, but I’m sure many lawyers cross that line.

You can see why my evidence professor called them W.H.O.R.E.S. I’m not saying they’re all dishonest, but many are, and conveniently, they’re dishonest in ways that don’t quite amount to perjury. If there are honest ones, they’re still not breaking their backs to bring out the truth. They’re trying to generate conclusions that will help the parties whose cases they’re involved in.

Go to a trial involving experts, and what will you see? One side’s experts will say A, B, and C are true, and the other side’s experts will “prove” there is no way any of those things could be true. If experts are really experts, and if they’re honest, how can that happen?

The fact that Ayoob worked in this field doesn’t mean he was right about anything or that the parties he worked to help were right. He may have been hired to help the guilty many times, and that’s okay, because that’s something our legal system permits. He never had a client, unless you include the lawyers who paid him. A layman can’t have a client.

The more I think about it, the more surprised I am I didn’t have a change of opinion sooner.

I think much more highly of Jim Cirillo, the New York cop who shot at least 11 people. His conclusions about self-defense are based on brutal experience. His own, not just other people’s. He worked full-time, and not in New Hampshire.

He was obsessed with inventing better bullets, because he knew what it was like to fire an ineffective shot and then try to make up for it while the criminal fired back. The more I think about Cirillo’s writings, the more I think lethal ammunition is important. It makes sense. If you’re really lucky, you’ll hit an assailant once during a confrontation, and if that shot doesn’t do the job, you will be in deep trouble. The odds of a single shot stopping a criminal are not good under the best of circumstances, so you need to do what you can to improve them.

It’s all very interesting. When you listen to fervent self-promoters, you always have to think about the inherent conflict of interest and how it may drive them to give you bad information.

Beautiful, Beautiful Data

I got to try out a new product today: the Competition Electronics Prochrono DLX chronograph. It connects to phones via Bluetooth and creates files of shooting data.

My old chronograph is a Master Chrony F-1, and I probably got it in 2009. Even back then, it was not advanced for its time. Smartphones and PC’s existed, and the F-1 had no real means of connecting to them. It didn’t do much of anything.

When I use the F-1, I have to stop after every shot, put my gun down, and write down the velocity. A lot of the time, the F-1 fails to take a reading. That’s annoying when you only have 5 test rounds.

The people who make the F-1 solicit email orders on their website, but they don’t seem to respond to them. They have no electronic shopping cart, and that’s unbelievable. They sell parts, but getting them is a hassle.

The F-1 has light diffusers cobbled together from three pieces of plastic. It has diffuser supports that telescope into each other so you can separate them and put them in the Chrony’s small box. The Prochrono has one-piece diffusers and one-piece support rods.

I’m making .45 rounds out of the pile of free bullets I got from Hornady when I bought my press. It has been hard to get good information for loading the cartridges. I want a velocity of between 850 and 900 fps, and I want to use Unique or Accurate No.7 powder. I already have both, and I have more Unique than I need. Maybe. Do you ever have more powder than you need?

I found an article from the Handloader Ammunition Reloading Journal, listing a bunch of loads. The author went up to 6.8 grains of Unique with an OAL of 1.205″, which is a lot shorter than Hornady’s recommendation. At 6.8, he got 949 fps. I figured I would try 6.5 to be safe.

I set the Prochrono up in the pasture and fired away. I had the phone app running. It allowed me to set up a special list for the load I had created. I was able to enter the type of bullet, the case, primer, charge weight, OAL, and whatever else I wanted.

When I started firing, I heard a lady telling me how fast the rounds were flying. The app was announcing the velocities! That was wonderful. I didn’t have to stop to write things down or check the screen.

When I was done, I had the following info:

45 ACP XTP 230 6.5 Unique Digital Link
Test rounds for defensive purposes. Goal 875 fps.
Temperature: 93° F
Pressure: 30 in Hg
Bullet Weight: 230.0
Power Factor Average: 218
Power Factor Low: 218
Power Factor High: 219
Number of Shots: 5
Minimum: 948
Maximum: 956
Spread: 8
Average: 951
Standard Deviation: 3
Custom Attributes
OAL 1.205
Brass Starline new
Powder Unique 6.5
Primer WLP
Bullet Hornady XTP
# Velocity Ft/lbs Power Factor Date
5 952 462.82 218 5/23/20 5:07 PM
4 948 458.93 218 5/23/20 5:07 PM
3 951 461.84 218 5/23/20 5:07 PM
2 950 460.87 218 5/23/20 5:06 PM
1 956 466.71 219 5/23/20 5:06 PM

To me, that’s incredible. Writing that up myself would take forever. I was able to email it to myself as a PDF.

The velocities were way higher than I expected, and the cases bulged. I found three of them, and they had creases running across them where the chamber restrained them. Not what I wanted.

I don’t know why my rounds were so much faster than the ones in the magazine.

The rounds were pleasant to shoot, and the gun didn’t seem to mind at all. It’s too bad I can’t use this load.

The velocities were incredibly consistent. I am guessing this has something to do with the way I’ve been cleaning my powder measure. I’m using an RCBS beam scale which is very accurate. Today I set it up using test weights, so not only are my charges consistent, they should be very close to the number I want.

People say charge weight doesn’t affect accuracy much. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I know my .45 handloads have always been more accurate than factory ammo. Is it the Unique, or is it charge consistency? Can’t say, but there is no conceivable reason to want your charges to be inconsistent, so I’m glad mine are not.

I moved to 6.2 grains and started over.

45 ACP XTP 230 6.2 Unique Digital Link
Test rounds for defensive purposes. Goal 875 fps.
Temperature: N/A
Pressure: N/A
Bullet Weight: 230.0
Power Factor Average: 207
Power Factor Low: 202
Power Factor High: 209
Number of Shots: 5
Minimum: 882
Maximum: 910
Spread: 28
Average: 902
Standard Deviation: 10
Custom Attributes
OAL 1.205
Brass Starline new
Powder Unique 6.2
Primer WLP
Bullet Hornady XTP
# Velocity Ft/lbs Power Factor Date
5 882 397.26 202 5/23/20 6:18 PM
4 905 418.25 208 5/23/20 6:17 PM
3 910 422.88 209 5/23/20 6:17 PM
2 906 419.17 208 5/23/20 6:17 PM
1 908 421.02 208 5/23/20 6:17 PM

Again, wonderful consistency. The 882 figure is the least consistent, and it’s right in line with the accuracy of factory ammunition. Maybe that charge was a little short.

I should have bought this chronograph a long time ago. Comparing it to the Chrony is like comparing a Commodore 64 to a modern PC.

I don’t know what’s going on with the Chrony people. Maybe it’s a family business, suddenly overtaken by modern companies with Asian connections. Maybe they did their best. In any case, they haven’t caught up. Someone on a forum recently said they weren’t answering the phone.

I have to decide whether to stay at 6.2 grains or drop a tenth. If I take a tenth off, I won’t be able to make ammunition until tomorrow, because I don’t want to test more rounds tonight. If not, I can get started making cartridges right now.

Very nice. I think I’m finally marginally competent at making pistol ammo.

Sorry, Rocket

They say no good deed goes unpunished, and while this expression is not quite Biblical, it is often proven true.

Last night, I walked into my bedroom, which has sliding glass doors. I looked out through the glass, and what did I see? A miserable, stinking raccoon in MY yard.

I guess it was 25 feet away. It must have seen me through the glass, but it didn’t seem disturbed. Maybe raccoons are too stupid to understand windows.

It was on the small side, and a weaker person might have described it as cute.

I looked at the bolt-action rifle in .204 Ruger lying on my bed (I have a good explanation), and I had the obvious thoughts. I could slip on some earmuffs, open the door a bit, turn on the scope (I have a good explanation), wait for it to boot, and send the coon to coon heaven. Alternatively, I could sneak around the side of the house.

I was tired. I didn’t know what to do with a dead coon. I felt funny about killing a little one. I waved my hand a few times, the coon realized I was not furniture, and he ran off.

This morning I got up and saw that he had disturbed some blackberry briars in pots. One of them is not looking too good now. This is how I am repaid for my mercy.

My new policy: death to all coons regardless of age, size, or how much they remind me of Disney films.

I had a pet coon for about a week when I was a kid. I had to feed it with a bottle. The person who sold it to me told me to rub its belly with a warm cloth to aid digestion. My mother took it to a vet while I was at school, for the usual raccoon checkup, and he told her to get rid of it ASAP. Coons can carry rabies without showing symptoms, and they get mean when they grow up.

That was the end of my coon-keeping days. By the time school let out, the coon had been returned for a refund.

He was very cute. He had little black hands that were cool to the touch and looked like expensive gloves. He waddled when he was full of milk. His distant relations here on the farm are cute, too, but they still have to die.

I haven’t thought much about disposing of coons, possums, armadillos, and coyotes. You can toss a squirrel a good distance from your house and forget about it, but bigger animals stink, and friends show up for the funeral and free meal. I went online and asked around, and the consensus seems to be that tossing is still the way to go. Just increase the distance. Because carcasses attract other varmints, they can lead to more kills and fewer varmint problems.

My grandmother ate coons. She fixed one for my dad and my grandfather, and my dad said that by the time he finished chewing a bite, it was as big as a lampshade. Apparently it just expanded without falling apart. He was not a fan.

She also ate possums and groundhogs. I’m trying to think of an animal she would not eat.

I don’t really see myself eating coons. Also, my understanding is that the pelts are no good this far south. I could see preserving a coon tail for the amusement value.

I’m going to come up with a coon game plan. I think I’ll just use my carry gun if I see one far from the house. If I see one in the yard, I’ll go for the .17 HMR. If I decide to set up a blind and shoot them, I’ll use the .204 Ruger and the computerized night scope with the built-in video camera. At the very least, I’ll keep the tail to freak out visitors, and if I’m feeling really ambitious, I’ll try to cook part of the beast.

There. Plan made.

I could use the 16-gauge with #6 shot or the Saiga-12 with law enforcement loads, but I really like rifled projectiles.

I just got a new stainless barrel for my carry 10mm. Midway USA had a sale. I could not resist. I paid $79, which is a steal. It should be better for shooting lead, and it provides better case support for hot rounds. The tradeoff is that it may be pickier about ammunition. Glock chambers are loose and relatively short, so cases feed easily. Not sure if I should use the new barrel when I carry. I want the gun to feed. That’s for sure. But all my defensive ammunition is test-chambered. I think. It ought to run.

I felt bad about shooting a youngster, but then when it ran off, I felt bad about not looking after my property. Coons are bad news, just like rats. I should have blasted it.

I’m too sweet for my own good. That’s my problem.

I apologize to all red-blooded American males who don’t wear Capri pants or skinny jeans. I have let all of you down.