Observations From the Life of a Runaway Slave

More stuff is breaking loose in my life.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be able to use tools. I wanted to be able to fix things and make things. A few years ago, I started making it happen. I got a table saw, milling machine, lathe, welder, and a bunch of other stuff. I’ve enjoyed it tremendously, but it seemed like I was being restrained. I was never able to make myself come to terms with CAD software, and there were essential things I chose not to buy, because I was cheap.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve returned to the workshop. I’ve spent some money; a low four-figure sum. I picked up a few little things that made things much, much easier, and plans I had put on the back burner are beginning to come to fruition.

I also got started with CAD. Og and other Internet friends gave me advice about this a few years back, and I tried a few things, but I got nowhere. It was very frustrating. I’m not going to say what my IQ is, but it’s sufficiently high that you would think mastering a piece of software would not be beyond me, and I was completely confused. I could have fixed the problem by spending tons of money on training, but I already felt a little queasy about the money I had spent on tools.

A few weeks back, I started looking at the programs again. Og had recommended Allycad and Alibre Design, and I looked into other things, like Turbocad, Autocad, and Draftsight. I wanted 3D, because I don’t need the aggravation of trying to picture a pile of 2D drawings as an assembled machine, so I ruled out simple, free programs.

I signed up (again) for a free Alibre trial, and once again, I was utterly flummoxed. I could barely draw a line. If you ever want to fully grasp the meaning of the word “counterintuitive,” try this software, or any CAD software. Alibre publishes a book of step-by-step exercises, and I downloaded a few pages, but it turned out the book is completely obsolete. It goes with a user interface which bears little resemblance to the current version and is currently unobtainable. I was going to give up and get Turbocad, plus training, but then I found the Youtube video that appears below.

That guy does everything wrong. Anyone who produces training videos knows that you go step-by-step, and you include every detail. He doesn’t do that. He flies, and he leaves things out. And it WORKS. Watching the video, I managed to draw an oddly-shaped tub with chamfered edges.

That was a breakthrough. Using what I had learned, I was able to go through the first three exercises in the Alibre book. I managed to translate the old interface into the new. Here’s a useless and unrealistic part I created (but did not design).

I say it’s useless because you can’t really attach the flat piece to the handle and axle that way. If it’s a press fit, the thickness of the metal can’t go to zero around the inserted portion of the metal, and there is also nothing there to allow a real-world weld. But that doesn’t matter. I drew it successfully, so now I have a foothold in the world of CAD. I’m ordering the rest of the design book. And I bought the program, which, “coincidentally,” was on sale for 50% off this week.

This may seem unimportant, but it’s a huge leap. The actual work you do when you make things is of trivial importance. What really matters is the design. Most of the act of creation is mental. The actual cutting and welding…that’s just housekeeping. I would rather design a thousand parts and make one than make a thousand and design one. If I can use CAD, I can exercise my creativity, and I can keep the results forever.

You can do all sorts of stuff with CAD. I don’t know much about it, but my impression is that you can send designs by email, print them, use them in patent and product submissions, have parts made from them, and even send them to machines that crank the parts out for you. Compared to anything that existed thirty years ago, that is godlike power.

So I’m happy about that. And I’m getting interested in 3D printers. They make actual parts from sturdy plastic, at a cost which is not prohibitive for a hobbyist. My gut tells me that as the technology advances, ordinary CNC may go the way of manual machining. Who knows what they’ll be able to do with lasers and plasma in the future? Today it’s plastic. Tomorrow, you may be able to cut metal on a printer, in your own house. And prices are dropping. In ten years, everyone will have a 3D printer, or they’ll have them at Home Depot, to be engaged at affordable prices.

This is exciting. It gives individuals a level of control they’ve never had before. Democrats are already wetting their pants over it, because it will make home gun manufacturing easier. There isn’t one thing they can do to stop it. They can pass laws, but we all know how well gun control laws work. And the First Amendment will guarantee that people will be able to pass designs around.

Sooner or later, technology is going to make us so powerful that Democrats are going to have to give up on controlling the means and look toward improving the man. And only God can do that.

I am not interested in printing guns, but the possibility shows how powerful the new technology will be. The printing principal is packed with potential. It provides mankind with a type of leverage that rivals the mental augmentation of computers. In fact, it’s the reason computers exist. If we couldn’t print circuits, the PC would be impossible.

So the CAD thing is good news.

Here’s another thing: I’m getting more original music. I used to have a constant flow of variations on existing tunes, but I wasn’t really able to write original music. Common sense told me the same gift had to be the source of both types of music, but it wasn’t happening for me. Lately, that has changed. I get original tunes more and more often. I got several over the last few days, and they’re not bad. Composition is like cooking with sound, so if you know what tastes good to the ear, you should be able to write good music. I’m going to write some worthwhile stuff, if God stays with me.

I used to be bummed out because I didn’t receive original tunes. Now I realize there’s a new danger. Soon I’m going to receive more tunes than I can finish. What do I do then? I keep reminding myself that it’s better to waste than to want.

It’s wonderful to be able to budget and economize, but truthfully, I don’t think that’s what God intended for us. I think he wanted us to live in such abundance that things would serve us, instead of lack that requires us to serve things. If you have too much, you can focus on what you’re doing. If you have too little, you have to focus on getting more. You shouldn’t serve the dollar; the dollar should serve you. I would rather have more than I need and have to give things away or even throw them out than not have enough. It’s better to receive a hundred tunes and write three than to receive and write one.

Here’s a hard thing to accept: God is not against waste. Or at least, he reckons waste differently than we do. That’s my opinion, based on my observations. Consider the loaves and fishes. Did God pass out just enough? No, he gave the people so much, they had baskets of scraps left over. Consider Solomon. God gave him so much, he really didn’t know what to do with it. Consider the way America used to be blessed. We fed the world, and then we let crops rot, because we had no place to put them. God told the Jews not to harvest every square foot they planted. They were ordered to leave crops untouched, in case the poor wanted them. What we call “waste” is a symptom of abundance.

This principle is found over and over in the Bible. We are told that he who waters will be watered. We’re told that being stingy will make us poor. We’re told that when we’re asked to carry something one mile, we carry it two. God ordered the Jews to give up about 14% of every work week, plus holidays, in times that were very, very hard, when every penny counted. I believe we’re supposed to have and give more than we need. Otherwise, there will always be gaps that aren’t filled.

I don’t think God wants me to work hard. I think he wants me to have ample time to pray and minister every day. I believe that every hour I spend in prayer saves me hours of work, just as the sabbath made the Jews more successful. And I think God is going to give me many more tunes than I can complete. I am an heir, and this is how heirs live. Our cups run over, our yokes are easy, and our burdens are light. Or God is a liar.

I think excessive devotion to work is a Satanic notion. It seems very natural to expect people to earn things. The problem with that is that God wants to give us things that are greater than what we can earn. I believe we limit him when we insist on earning.

Think of the beggar the disciples healed. They didn’t ask him to do their laundry or make a pilgrimage on his belly. They touched him and healed him, for nothing, and he got the use of his legs back. If he had had to earn that, he would have stayed on the ground for the rest of his life.

A while back, some Obama underling told the press the Bible said, “God helps those who help themselves.” Clearly, this person was not familiar with the Bible. The Bible does not say that. It says you shouldn’t be lazy. But it doesn’t say blessings come primarily by, or with the prerequisite of, great effort. Not unless you’re cursed.

Adam didn’t earn the title to the earth or his life of ease in Eden. Noah didn’t earn preservation in the Ark. Lot didn’t earn his angelic rescue. Samson didn’t earn his strength. Gideon didn’t earn his improbable victory. These examples are shown to us to make us understand that faith, submission, and humility are what bring us blessings and power.

Offhand, I can only think of one person in the Bible who thought he had earned his blessings, and that person was Job. And God set him straight, but good.

Satan wants us to think we have to earn things. With this lie, he gets us to devote way too much time to work and way too little time to prayer. And then we don’t get what he promises. For example, you may get rich, but your family may be messed up because you weren’t around to pray for them and teach them.

Prayer is job one. I’m sure of it. Quite literally, prayer is an investment. It is the seed God gives the sower, and in your season, you will get the harvest.

I feel much freer than I did before. I feel like the restraints are being removed. In ignorance, I buried myself in curses, but God is washing me clean and killing their effects.

Spend time praying in tongues every day. Try to make it add up to at least an hour. And pray for God to guide your steps, leading you to the experiences you need to have. Good things will happen. It may take time, as a tree takes time to bear fruit, but it will happen.

And I am a Kangaroo

I’m going to have to quit listening to the radio.

Once a week, while I’m on the way to have breakfast with my dad, I hear talk radio. Usually, it’s a guy named Jimmy Cefalo. He’s a former football player. He claims to be conservative, but the more you listen to him, the more you realize he’s the lowest grade of RINO. Couldn’t care less about moral (“social”) issues. Likes using our money to buy football stadiums for rich people. Supports increased gun control.

Today he was joining in the mindless hysteria over the Newtown shooting. Never mind that these atrocities are on the decrease in the US, or that they also take place in nations with gun control, or that the worst mass murders in US history (I may be wrong if we include those committed by the government) used kerosene and fertilizer instead of guns. Liberals like Cefalo are flipping out, based on the following evidence that mass murder is on the rise: two mass murders occurred within a year of each other.

Today he declared that it was a settled fact that gun laws had to change, and he said it was reasonable to force people to take exams and get licenses in order to get guns. This is pretty much what people said about literacy tests and poll taxes, and if anything, the racists were more credible than the gun-haters. Facially, it seems smart to prevent stupid people from voting. Problem is, we have a Constitutional right to vote, and apart from that, literacy tests were applied just a tiny bit UNFAIRLY. It may seem bright to license gun owners, but the right to bear arms is a RIGHT, like the right to breathe, and according to the highest law of the land, it can’t be “infringed.” And like the literacy tests of the past, licensing requirements will be (ARE) corrupted and used primarily as barriers. Ask anyone who has tried to get a permit in DC.

He interviewed Ed Schultz today, as he often does. ED SCHULTZ. The guy who called Laura Ingraham a slut. Do I even have to explain what Ed Schultz is, or that it’s insane to treat him like a credible commentator? Of course not. Some people on the left are merely wrong. Schultz belongs in the wacko pen with people like Saul Alinsky, Abbie Hoffmann, and Emma Goldman. He would gladly take away all of our rights and install a hardcore Stalinist regime.

Cefalo, the “conservative,” didn’t disagree with a single thing Schultz said. He did no research. He presented no facts. He let one of the nuttiest leftists in the mainstream media say anything he wanted, and he agreed. He thinks like a woman in a shoe store. All emotion. No brain involvement.

Honestly, I am starting to think RINOs are more dangerous than socialists. They’re like kapos. They supposedly come from within our ranks, so they have our ears. They drip socialist, anti-Christian soft soap into our minds, killing our brain cells with friendly fire.

Look, if you’re for substantial gun control, and you think morals can’t be discussed in a political context, you are not a conservative. End of discussion. You’re just a stingy guy who wants lower taxes and tough judges. You should do what the other liberals do. Vote for higher taxes and then avoid paying them.

Here’s the truth. 1) Mass shootings are on the decline. 2) Semiautomatic weapons are essential for effective self-defense. 3) Licensing and registration are used dishonestly to prevent deserving people from owning weapons. 4) We aren’t providing armed protection for children the way we do for politicians and judges, and we need to fix that before we start taking away civil rights. 5) There are some problems the government can’t solve, and we should accept it.

The fact that the hysterical mainstream press is currently engaged in tendentious, histrionic bedwetting over a non-issue doesn’t mean all the smart people in the universe agree with them. The current surge in gun sales proves Cefalo is part of a small minority.

I really did not want to buy any more guns this year, but I may have to join the intelligent people and stock up. I don’t know what I’ll need in the future, but I do know I don’t want to be stuck with a duck gun or a 5-shot pistol when I need an AK-47 or a full-size Glock. I feel like our Chauncey Gardiner President and his talking-head flying monkeys are forcing my hand. I might have to suck it up, set several thousand dollars aside, and buy a bunch of guns and shells I don’t even want. The wise thing would be to get the products we are in danger of losing. High-capacity rifles like AKs and AR15s, and high-capacity semiautomatic pistols. Maybe I should get a couple of Springfield XDs and three or four AMD65s.

Thanks, Jimmy Cefalo. You and your pals are putting more guns in the hands of the American public than we know what to do with. We should be grateful for the kick in the rear end.

They had it Coming

My former church has finally gone completely insane.

Today they welcomed Kim Kardashian. Yes, the Kim Kardashian who poses nude. The sex-tape Kim Kardashian. I don’t know if they took her into the green room so she could bless the pastors with her wisdom, but she tweeted about her presence at church, and they proudly re-tweeted it.

People are saying it’s wonderful that she went to church. Uh…no, it’s NOT wonderful. Not unless she repented. Churches are supposed to welcome REPENTANT sinners. The other kind screw churches up.

Think of it as an immigration problem. Say you live in a Christian nation, and Muslims start showing up. When there are 50 of them, it’s no big deal. When they’re 50% of the population…big deal. You’re going to have Sharia law, honor killings, an end to the pork industry, lots of terrorism…it will be bad. When sinners come to a church and don’t change their ways, and their numbers get too high, they convert the church. Not that this would be a big change for Trinity. It’s barely a church as it is.

I was furious when I heard about this. It’s bad enough that the pastor sucked up to R. Kelly, who narrowly avoided conviction on a statutory rape beef with video evidence. Do they really need to use Kim Kardashian to prove they’ve made it?

The name “Kardashian” used to be associated with top-notch legal representation. Those days are gone. Now it connotes promiscuity, nudity, stupidity, and shallowness. As the good book would put it, it has “become a proverb.” Why would any pastor be proud this person came to his church? Only a desperate self-promotor or a feckless infant could think this was a good thing.

It would be wonderful if Miss Kardashian went to a church and told everyone she regretted all the dumb things she had done. I’d be the first to welcome her. Well, actually, I think a woman should do that, just to be safe. But I would be all for it. But for her to roll in and out with no evidence of change…how is that a victory for anyone?

I really blew up about this on Facebook. The gloves are off. I said the leaders of the church clearly did not know the Bible, and I posted a long series of verses about respecting persons. The pastors are like children. It’s as though they had never heard of the Bible. This stuff is obvious to teenagers who read the word, but these adults don’t have a clue. Or they just don’t care, which is looking pretty likely.

Some lady tried to “correct” me, saying I should not “touch” God’s “anointed.” That’s sad. Preachers have succeeded in brainwashing many Christians, so they will cover up their pastors’ backslidden behinds. They say all sorts of curses fall on those who speak up. But God didn’t curse Jesus, Paul, Isaiah, Micaiah, Malachi, Peter, Jude, Jeremiah, Samuel, Nathan, or any of the other Biblical figures (or if you’re Catholic, figurines) who spoke up. If you took the negative remarks out of the Bible, the remaining text would be a pamphlet.

She said I should only correct people privately. But she said that publicly, which is a little hard to explain.

As Perry Stone teaches, there is a difference between “anointing” and “gift.” A person who is anointed has God’s authority to do some job or other. He has God’s approval. Anointing is not always permanent. God anointed Saul, and he took the anointing away. A gift is a natural or supernatural ability. It may persist when the anointing leaves. This is why truly foul preachers sometimes continue to function in their gifts. It helps explain why some very bad churches stay very big for quite some time.

Anyway, a preacher who teaches false tradition and serves his belly is not acting under an anointing. Not in my book. And because they commit their sins publicly, it only makes sense to correct them publicly. Besides, the leaders of Trinity Church know exactly what they’re doing wrong. People have spoken up. They just don’t care.

God is not going to stand up and give me leprosy for criticizing people who milk the poor and lie to them. If he did things like that, John the Baptist would have exploded. Repeatedly.

Quite honestly, I think these people are idiots. I have tried to show restraint. I’ve said I disagreed with them. I’ve said they were off the path. But after a time, you have to start using terms like “idiot.” Even Jesus did it. After a certain point, mildly critical language just doesn’t do the job. If you speak about foolish people too respectfully, there is a danger that other people will not understand just how foolish they are. “I’m going to try Trinity Church.” “DON’T!” “Why not?” “They’re…missing the mark.” “Well, I’ll just check it out.” “THEY’RE IDIOTS! THEY’RE IDIOTS! DANGER! DANGER!”

I think God takes a similar approach. He starts by sending you little hints. Then he sends people to correct you. Then he might let you get a physical illness. He might let you suffer defeat. Eventually, if you keep pushing it, he buries you in burning sulfur and pitch. Or he sends you to hell.

I wish I had never heard about this. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life reflecting on the stupid behavior of a group of carnal ministers. But there it is. And I don’t investigate this stuff. People bring it to me.

How about some positive news? Today Apostle Michael Tomasulo visited my church. My denomination, or whatever it is, is big on apostles. They seem like the real thing. They have shown up and said some very solid, very impressive things. Mr. Tomasulo is one of them.

I met him on his last visit. He’s an EE (electrical engineer). I was building guitar amps at the time, so I was really glad to meet him. I have a lot of weird interests, so it’s always comforting to meet someone who can relate. When I meet a person who shares one of my interests, it’s like meeting someone from home. Which is odd. And I can’t combine all, or even most, of my interests in one friend. I have to have an assortment. The gun friend. The cooking friend. The physics friend. The law friend. And so on.

Today he lit into TBN (he can’t stand watching it) and megachurches that teach self-help and motivational gibberish. LIKE TRINITY. He said exactly what I was saying to my prayer group three years ago. I said we didn’t need Dr. Phil and Oprah. I said motivational speakers were not what God wanted for us. He said these things today, even referring to Dr. Phil and his mothership. I saw a preacher on TBN say the same things last year (no word on whether his body has been found). God tells all of his people the same things. The church is unified, as Jesus prayed it would be. It’s just scattered. Like golden tickets in a pile of worldly Wonka bars.

Before he spoke, and before I knew what he would talk about, I put this on Facebook: “At my old church we had great motivational speakers who promised God would make us rich if we gave them money. Here at New Dawn Ministries, we have to settle for prophecy.”

Lately I’ve been getting back into tools, and I’ve started watching engineering lectures. Engineers don’t know where formulas come from. Physicists do, but they don’t know what to do with them, so I’m hoping to bridge the gap a little. I’ve been watching EE and ME stuff from NPTEL (Indian universities) and other sources. Today I decided to ask Mr. Tomasulo a few things, to see if he could steer me in the right direction. So far I’ve learned how much a truss can hold when the beams have been tempered in a tandoor.

Lo and behold, it turned out he wanted to talk to me. He remembered that I had been building tube amps. We started talking. I kept trying to tell him how much I admired engineers for knowing how to do USEFUL things, and he kept trying to tell me how much he admired physicists for knowing the root causes of stuff. Anyway, it turned out he was considering supplementing his income with EE work, and we started talking about amps. I told him it might be possible to generate some money building amps, and now he wants to come check out what I’m doing. Even if it goes nowhere, now I’ll have a friend who is almost a physicist. An EE is really not that far off. They are not the dumb engineers. What they do takes brains. They don’t seem to realize that, though.

An EE is actually more useful to me than a physicist, because a physicist wouldn’t know anything new.

We talked for quite a while, and unfortunately, his wife was standing right next to him, and she was bored so severely she required medical attention.

So here is what happened today. As a former physicist and amp builder who was recently told he had the anointing of a prophet and teacher, I met a guitar-playing EE apostle who wants to build tube amps. Tell me that’s not a weird day.

I want to introduce this guy to my dad as “Apostle Mike,” and I’ll insist he call him that. Come on. That’s irresistible. “Glad to know you, Mike.” “APOSTLE Mike, Dad.” “Uh…”

“Dad, I’m going to Five Guys with Apostle Mike. Do you want anything?”

I guess I’m stupid. That cracks me up.

But hey, it’s what he is.

I think if I could pick a job, it would be prophet. Apostles have to travel. Prophets can hang out in their garages and mess with tools most of the time, and every so often, they pop out, go to the local church, and say something that scares the living daylights out of everyone. Then they go home, and people leave them alone. It’s like Punxsutawney Phil, only holy.

“An earthquake is going to destroy the city next week, and afterward, an omer of organic dove’s dung from Whole Foods will cost as much as an Ipad 2. Plus God is going to give Deacon Fred a withered foot for playing Powerball. See you later, and stay off my lawn!”

I’m not positive my expectations are totally realistic. But it’s my understanding that a prophet can command a she-bear to eat punks that get on his nerves. That could be really handy.

Heathens, Prairie Dogs…What’s the Difference?

I had a good range session today.

In 2005 (I think), I bought a PSL (Romak III, FPK, whatever). This is a medium-range rifle made in Romania. It’s based on the AK74. I don’t really know what an AK74 is, but I would guess that it’s the 7.62x54R version of the AK47, since that’s what this gun is. Some people call the PSL a sniper rifle, but the general consensus is that sub-MOA performance is not a realistic goal, so some say it’s a DSM rifle. I don’t know what DSM stands for. “Designated Something Marksman,” maybe. I think it’s a guy in a platoon who carries a scoped rifle for shooting people too far away for unscoped AK47s. Look it up. I can’t do everything for you.

When I fired the PSL, I had horrible problems with trigger slap. This means the trigger was propelled forward when the gun went off. It happens so fast you can’t detect it, but after a while you realize your trigger finger is numb and shaking. This is bad.

I stuck a Red Star fire control group (trigger) in the gun, and it quit working. It wouldn’t cycle. My solution to this problem was to put the gun in the closet and lose some of the parts.

Recently I dug it out and worked on the trigger. I also got myself some cheap spam-can Russian ammo (147-grain light ball). Today I decided to see whether it worked.

The gun shoots very well now. The trigger is very, very nice, now that I’ve ground off all the parts that bothered me. When I pull the trigger, I can’t really tell when the gun is going to go off, and for slow shooting, this is what I like.

I shot at 50 yards, and I’m going to say I shot about 3 MOA, although I don’t have a photo of the target in front of me. I am not much of a rifle shot, but my impression is that I shot better than the ammunition. Maybe I’m wrong. I was pretty happy, considering what I paid for it. I moved the target back to 100 yards, and the groups opened up by a factor of two. It’s not really satisfying shooting a gun that inaccurate, but it proves I would have no problem blasting zombies at that range, since they’re more than six inches wide. On that basis, I feel that the ammo was a good deal. I’m considering splurging on a new scope. The gun came with a used Kalinka with dead tritium, and you can’t fix it.

I really regret not buying more 7N1 ammo when it was selling for $200/880 rounds. I shot most of mine before I got the gun working, so I never found out whether the gun could shoot well with it.

I should really get off my behind and buy more K31 ammunition. It’s still cheap, and the quality is wonderful.

I believe I need to put a bipod mount on the PSL, and my impression is that it should be near the center of mass. This is not where the bipods fit on my other guns, and I am starting to think that’s unfortunate, because it seems to be the steadiest location. In order to put one on the PSL, I’ll have to install a swivel myself.

I can’t help wondering if this gun is capable of better performance, but since match-grade ammo is outrageously expensive, I may never find out.

After I put the PSL away, I got out my new AMD65. This is a short (12.5″ barrel) AK47 folder. I’ve put a foregrip and green laser on it, and I got some Tapco magazines, even though people hate them. The goal was to have a nice truck gun that wasn’t so expensive losing it would give me an ulcer. I figured the laser would be a lifesaver (literally) in short-range defensive situations, and the compact size of the gun would make it handy.

The gun has exceeded expectations. The Tapco trigger is like glass lubricated with snot. It’s just plain wonderful. I had no cycling issues. The recoil was a joke. People said it would be loud because of the barrel length, but it didn’t bother me.

The sun was bright today, and my local range has stupidly set things up so you can’t shoot a rifle at under 75 feet, so finding the green laser dot was a challenge. I had to fiddle with the zero a lot, since the 50-foot zero I set up at home was no longer anywhere near right. When I finally got the gun working, the bullets appeared to be going into an area about 4″ in diameter. I was holding the gun away from my shoulder (the range doesn’t permit firing from the hip), to simulate the way it might be used in a confrontation, and it worked just fine.

I can’t recommend this thing highly enough. It’s a better caliber than 5.56mm, the gun is inexpensive, and it’s a pleasure to fire. Tulammo hollow points are supposed to be pretty lethal, and they’re cheap. I’m sure you can build something better if you spend enough money, but for five hundred bucks, this is very impressive.

Things are starting to shape up, firearms-wise. When Obama drives us into a depression and the filthy transgendered socialist hippies show up on my lawn to steal my homegrown right-wing Christian end-time turnips, I’ll be able to slay them like ants. I got a lot of my guns for fun, and that’s why I have so many, but a number are actually useful.

I really hope the good Lord is kind enough to prevent the pinheads from gutting the Second Amendment. My feeling is that as far as God is concerned, the Second Amendment is a Constitutional firewall. He’ll let them spy on us and force us to buy things and molest us at airports, but we get to keep our Mausers and AR15s and Norincos. I hope so, anyway. I joke, but persecution is already starting, and if socialism ruins the economy, it will get worse. Everyone will want a piece of the 1% or the Man or whatever it is they’ll be calling us at the time.

Now if someone would just invent a gun that cleans itself.

Where the Cows Lick Pillars of Salt

Sorry I did not come by to weep with everyone on Tuesday night. On Monday, I had a 2-phone-battery conversation with somone who thinks going into drug rehab is somehow a service that benefits ME, and I decided to get up the next day and get out of Miami.

Ocala. That’s what it’s all about.

To recap, I went to Winter Haven to help launch a new church, and I felt like a runaway slave. Afterward, I started thinking about moving north. Then my buddy Mike started talking about Ocala. Either that, or I came up with the idea myself. Can’t remember. I started looking at Ocala real estate on the computer, with the intensity of an Obama campaign staffer researching Romney’s overdue library books. I found out that you can get a magnificent farm up there for the cost of a little-bitty house in Coral Gables. I’ve been making lists and looking at Google Earth a lot.

Originally, I thought I would go alone, because I didn’t think my father would ever leave this place. Then he started coming around. That was great, because I refuse to have a mortgage, and if we both go, we can have a much nicer property.

I checked out fourteen places, from two acres to forty, if I recall correctly. If I had to describe this area, I’d say it looks a great deal like the area outside Lexington, Kentucky, only without the backwardness and bigotry. I hope. Mike says everyone got along great at the racially mixed school he went to in Ocala.

I had read that the dirt up there was too sandy for growing things, but that’s not true. I saw all sorts of hay, and people were growing stuff in their yards. It may not be the finest dirt on earth, but clearly, it works. We don’t really have dirt in Miami. A lot of this area has a few inches of white sand over oolite (coral rock), and when they build houses, sometimes they add a little muck from the Everglades, so you end up with grey sand. To plant a tree in my yard, you have to use a mattock and cut a hole in the rock. I’ve pretty much had it with our dirt.

I was able to move between properties ten miles apart in about as many minutes. As a victim of Miami, I can’t even express my joy. The traffic here is nearly unbearable, and the worst part about it is that when you finally get out of the car, you’re still in Miami.

There are actual hills up there. At one point, while driving, I felt pressure in my ears. I didn’t think that was possible in Florida.

I also enjoyed hearing English. Diversity is swell, but I get very, very, very tired of playing charades to make myself understood in the United States of America, by individuals who have been here since Carter.

People get mad at me because I can’t understand their bad English. One of the biggest night school subjects here is ESOL, or English for Speakers of Other Languages. That’s great, but they haven’t gotten around to adding UESOL, or Understanding English for Speakers of Other Languages. Funny thing, I find it easier to talk to relatively new Haitians than Cubans who have been here 20 years. The Haitians learn English very quickly, and when their English isn’t good (very rare), I can talk to them in French.

Anyway, I do look forward to saying everything ONCE.

The Romney signs…they were everywhere. I saw a few Obamas, but not enough to matter. Mike says a politician who runs as a Democrat in Marion County has no shot. I love that.

I would say the Ocala area looks, well, not hectic. I suppose it could get dull. But I don’t do much anyway, in terms of going out on the town. I don’t like movies because my feet stick to the floor and people yap in Spanish. I don’t like restaurants because I cook better than they do. Clubs…don’t even joke. I can generally be found at home, at church, or running errands. My assumption is that if I join a good church up there, I’ll have a social circle within two to three months, and after that, life will be much as it is here, only without the unpleasant sensation of being in Miami.

I saw a lot of wonderful things. Barbecue restaurants, plural. All sorts of businesses related to farming. They would be helpful to a tool-oriented person hoping to get into things like canning food and maintaining a workshop. There’s a Krystal restaurant in town. They don’t have a Costco, and that will smart, but you can’t have everything. There’s a Gordon Food Service 60 miles away. I wanted to be remote, so I shouldn’t complain.

It may be hard to find a place that doesn’t have horse paraphernalia. I am not going to have much use for a barn. I know people will say I can put a workshop in it, but horse barns are cut up into little stalls. I think it would be pretty hard to convert one. Mike says we can rent stalls to people. Basically, they would be paying to give me handy manure.

I don’t know much about maintaining rural property, even though I’ve owned a ton of it in common with family. As far as I know, you don’t have to do much with barns and land. We did virtually nothing to the farms we sold, and they held their value. I don’t want to end up bush-hogging thirty or forty acres once a month, or mowing a giant yard.

I’m going to try to put together a plan and get this done. Things are probably going to get very bad now that we have chosen Obama a second time, and if a depression hits the cities, the entitlement flash mobs will be invading houses en masse, raping, killing, and stealing. Or “stealing BACK,” as they would say. Places like Ocala will be very dangerous for that crowd. Up there, a guy with scoped rifles (and friends with scoped rifles) might have a real advantage over liberal dentists and accountants in Coral Gables. I guess it sounds like I’m planning to move so I can shoot a bunch of people. No, but I don’t want to be an easy target when the anti-Christian, anti-conservative Kristallnacht comes.

I guess I should write about the election.

Many conservatives are questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s victory. Let me give you a bitter pill. It’s completely legitimate. Unless they turn up an extremely unlikely election-rigging scam which spans many states, no reasonable person will ever be able to deny that we chose this man. We know what he is, and we want it.

People are saying he won because the media didn’t go after him. I’m sure that helped him, but his screwups have been covered fairly well. Everyone who owns a PC or TV should be aware of his failures and negative traits. People claim he won because the public has drifted left. I very much doubt it. I don’t think the public is smart enough to know what left is.

Obama won because a big percentage of the electorate is ignorant and/or not very bright. Grab a typical college graduate and ask him if he has any idea why entitlements lead to unemployment and low productivity, and chances are, he won’t have a clue. The people who decided the election were not favoring leftism. They went for the guy they liked best. They saw the debates, and they thought about things like hair and suits, and at the end, they decided Obama made them feel better.

People who are obsessed with politics think everyone worries about things like the proper level of taxation and the size of our military. In reality, the average voter votes based on instinct, which is something that exists to help creatures who lack the ability or inclination to reason.

Ronald Reagan ran against Carter. He projected confidence and charm, so he won twice. Bush I ran against Dukakis, who looked short, dumpy, and timid, so he won once. Clinton charmed female voters, so he beat Bush I. Bush II seemed less crazy than Gore and less snotty than Kerry, so he got eight years.

I know it’s not really that simple. Policies matter a little. But it’s very obvious that we are as willing to vote for extreme leftists as right-of-center conservatives, so I don’t believe substance means much.

Anyway, Obama is the President, and he is the true choice of the people, so get over it.

As to why Obama won people’s hearts, I believe the answer is supernatural. We have killed tens of millions of unborn babies (and quite a few that were born), we have turned against Israel, a huge percentage of us support perversion, we think fornication is a God-given right, and we are becoming cruel and extremely proud. We pray less than ever, and church attendance is dropping. We are becoming God’s enemies. In my opinion, our reward is national decline. God has blinded us to Obama’s revolting shortcomings, so we did something no reasonable nation would do. We chose Obama not once, but twice.

I was highly disturbed when I saw the election results. I was in a hotel room, trying to sleep, and I stupidly forgot to turn off my phone. People woke me up more than once, calling to express their horror. At some point in the wee hours, I gave up and looked at Drudge. Arrgh.

Before the election, I spent a great deal of time in prayer. I felt great faith pushing through me. I thought a Romney victory was very likely. When I saw that I was wrong, the thing that disturbed me most was not the Obama victory, but the fact that I had believed he would lose. It’s very unusual for me to have strong faith for a result and then to see something different happen. It affects my relationship with God. I will never doubt him or criticize him, but a failure like this makes me reevaluate the things I do in my walk of faith. Am I praying correctly? Am I interpreting what I feel correctly? Is there something else I should be doing? If I’m wrong about this, what else am I wrong about?

I believe God sometimes sets his seal on things. By that, I mean he decrees that a thing will be done, with complete finality. He doesn’t say “if” or “maybe.” It’s done. Period. I believe he reveals this to some people during prayer. Sometimes the rush of faith that follows a request is so powerful, it’s overwhelming. There’s no way to deny it.

This happened to me back when an ex-girlfriend was filing nutty lawsuits against me. One day I was praying in my truck, and a wave of faith hit me, and I grabbed the console between the seats because I felt I would be pushed over if I didn’t have something to hold. After that, I knew I was going to win, and I was right. On top of that, I asked for very specific things in the last two hearings, and I got them.

I’ve also had it happen with regard to other things I’ve asked for. I asked God to do everything within his power to get my father and sister to accept Christ, be baptized with the Spirit, pray in tongues, be freed from their iniquities, and live in power and blessings, and my faith told me it would be done. God didn’t say they would change; he just said he would do everything possible. They still have free will.

I have found that usually, a strong rush of faith that doesn’t reach the threshold of a sealed answer will still get the job done. But sometimes–I think–a small amount of doubt is enough to sink the ship. I think that’s what happened with the election. I felt great faith, but I also felt something pushing back, and I wasn’t able to get to the point where doubt was completely destroyed. It may sound like I’m giving a lot of importance to my prayers, but my religion tells me the prayer of one man held the sun still in the sky, and I am not willing to limit God.

I think that in the future, I’ll have to be careful not to conclude that something is sealed when it isn’t. I also think that when I’m not sure a thing is sealed, and it’s an important matter, I should continue in prayer until I get resolution. That’s my take for now, anyway.

For a long time, I’ve prayed for God to bless and empower Christians, not America in general. I won’t pray for America’s success because America has been harmed by false prosperity. When things go well, we do what the ancient Jews did. We turn away from God, credit ourselves, and sink into sin. I see that happening around me, so I have prayed that God would bring down ungodly people who are in power and strengthen believers. I believe this will help people turn back to God, where they will work to achieve his ends. They will work as they were intended, with his authority, to increase his kingdom in the earth. I think the Obama disaster is God granting prayers like mine. Like the Hebrews who feasted on quail till they puked, we’re going to feast on our own conceit. God will give us the incompetent, dangerous leaders our egos tell us we need, and they will lead us over cliffs until we repent. That’s my best guess.

God is taking away the things we believe in. He is taking away every stable investment. Stocks are shaky, and Obama’s tax changes will kill them. Gold is volatile. Real estate could plummet again at any time. Even cash is sinking. Thanks to Bernanke’s backdoor socialism, if you sell your risky stocks and put the money in the bank, you still lose value. It looks as though a time is coming when everything we cling to will turn on us, and unless we have a good grip on God, we will sink.

This is why I like the rural-compound-with-no-mortgage idea. Little properties in places like Manhattan and Coral Gables are only valuable in good times. They have no real value. A Park Avenue condo, for example, is a tiny box with no soil, even if it costs ten million dollars. Right now it’s valuable because there are a lot of people who have money. When things go bad, people won’t want little boxes. They’ll want acreage, so they can grow things and defend themselves. Bernanke can wreck the dollar, but he can’t dry up your well or prevent potatoes from growing in your yard.

I keep meeting people who have Ocala connections. Mike was the first. I went to church and mentioned it, and I found out that one of the armorbearers already owns 20 acres there and wants to move, but his wife won’t let him. He has a carry permit, and he’s learning to can! One of my best friends, a former armorbearer, is married to a woman who has family in Marion County. She has wanted to move there for a while now. The other day, I mentioned the idea to a friend who used to be part of my prayer group at Trinity. He goes to New Dawn now. He says he went to high school in Ocala. To me, these things seem like confirmation.

I think God is probably going to protect Christians in the years ahead. I think we will do better than ever, while the country sinks. I think Israel will also prosper. America is abandoning Israel, and God never will, so he will find other ways to bless his nation. If Christians and Israel do well, it will serve to ground persecution. No surprise there. We’ve been told to expect it.

When I say “Christians,” I mean charismatics who really know God. I don’t think he’s going to do much for people who don’t have the Holy Spirit, because they don’t hear his guidance as well. They say 20 million confused people who claim to be evangelicals voted for Obama. I think that should tell you how lost a so-called Christian can be.

If I learn anything new, I’ll let you know.

Truck Gun Progress

I don’t know what traditional Christians think of evangelicals and charismatics, with our backyard bunkers and gun collections. I assume they think we’re pathetic and insane. I guess when they come to this blog and see posts about prayer alternating with photos of rifles and reloading tools, they assume there is no possible way I could know anything about the real Jesus. The touchy-feely, Oprah-in-a-Jewish-man’s-body, probably-gay, warm, fuzzy, Jesus who never, ever criticized anyone and always wanted us to be nice.

Can’t do anything about that. Anyone who has ears to hear should already be aware that the Bible really says, “You shall not murder,” not, “You shall not kill.” Anyone who knows anything about God should be completely comfortable with Christians serving in the military and shooting our enemies. By now we should all realize that Jesus was not always nice, and that when he returns, he is going to kill a whole bunch of people (not for the first time).

I’m not saying a Christian should dedicate his life to becoming a killing machine, but increasingly, people who are close to God are getting close to guns. And criticism and rebuke have always been part of the Christian life.

With that, here is what’s happening with the truck gun. I found a foregrip on Amazon, with a 1″ hole for a laser or flashlight. It came with a light (no way to avoid that), but once the light was removed, I was ready to install the laser.

It’s all mounted and ready to shoot now. Photo below.

There is a tiny bit of flexibility in the laser mount, but that’s not a foregrip problem. It’s a Hogue handguard problem. Hogue makes its handguards out of the same flubber it uses to make pistol grips. That means the handguard can flex a little. Not a brilliant idea, when it’s used to mount stuff that needs to stay still. I may replace the handguard. I’ll be eating maybe thirty bucks, but you live and learn. Better to do it right than save a few pennies.

The flexibility isn’t bad enough to cause a problem. It just bugs me. I can’t really detect any dot motion related to the foregrip flexing.

I thought I’d have to use the laser’s pressure switch, which is on a wire with a springy, coily bit in the middle. I figured I’d cut a hole in the mount somewhere, run the wire through it, and mount a better switch on the end, attaching it to the handguard.

I found out this was not necessary. The laser came with a totally pointless (but solid) aluminum cap, and when you install it, the laser is always on. When you back it out a couple of turns, the laser operates when you press on the cap. I installed it this way. The laser is enclosed in the mount, so the cap can’t unscrew and cause a problem. The mount has a button on it, and when you push it, it presses a doodad against the back of the laser, turning it on. Perfect. Or nearly so. If I put the button part of the cap on the lathe and turn down the flange that goes against the ring part of the cap, I’ll be able to tighten the ring and still use the button.

I like this, because it will work better than the scary pressure switch, which sometimes fails to go on when I push it, and it will save battery life, because it will go off when I release the button.

The bad part is that I can’t change the battery without removing the laser. I’ll have to re-zero it a lot. But it only has to work for like twenty seconds in a gunfight, so I’m okay with that. The battery doesn’t have to have 90 minutes of charge in it every day.

Overall, this is a very cool and economical solution to the vehicle security issue. The rifle is $440. The laser is about $50. The other junk can probably be had for $100. It’s as cheap as a Glock, and it should be way more effective. I just need to put some earplugs in the truck.

The gun is a little heavier than the Vz2008 I considered, and I assume the shorter barrel will cost me some fps, but 2300 fps, 30 rounds, and good short-range accuracy should be a great combination.

I’ve been trying to come up with a good container for it, so it will pass the “securely encased” law. I’m thinking I might just find a cheap flat cardboard box. Believe it or not, that’s completely legal, and it will look really boring to gun thieves. Maybe I’ll find a box with lettering on it and repurpose it. “What kind of idiot keeps a Scrabble game under his back seat? And look at that crappy stereo. Forget this truck.”

I know the serious right-wing conspiracy nuts say you should never talk about your guns on the web. What can I tell you? If you have them, one way or another, Uncle Sam will be able to find out about most of them. I’ll cross the registration and confiscation bridge when I come to it.

Still thinking about Ocala. Yesterday I got stuck in traffic THREE TIMES, and I got so mad I nearly drove to Ocala last night. I wanted to look around. I may go in the near future. It’s funny, but suddenly I know several people who want to move up there. A friend from church says he owns 20 acres there, but his wife won’t let him move, because she hates the country. Meanwhile, he’s learning to can. Today another friend said his wife has family up there, and she wants to go, but he’s stuck here because of his job. And then there’s Mike, who used to live there.

I’m starting to feel like this is confirmation.

When Romney wins, the price of real estate may shoot up. Real estate is an investment, and under Obama, people are afraid to invest. It would be nice to avoid getting stung in a post-Obama bubble.

Anyway, life is neat. And to all the appalled gay-Jesus Christians, all I can say is “BOO!”

Plus Some Important Revelation

I guess I should tell my sad tale of AK-47 woe in order to help others.

I’ve been modifying my AMD-65 to hold a laser. I want the laser to be in the same plane as the magazine and grips, so the gun lies flatter. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to rig it up this way. Most foregrips that hold a laser are way too long. When installed, they interfere with the magazine.

A Mako potato grip will work, but it has a big lip hanging off the front, and the lip would interfere with the laser adjustment screws, so it would have to be ground off.

I picked a foregrip from Amazon. It has a 1″-diameter flashlight holder. It comes with a flashlight, which I don’t want, but I can take the light out.

I also discovered that my new laser has no on/off switch. It came with a pressure switch, but it doesn’t have an optional pushbutton rear cap. It has a rear cap, but when you install it, the laser goes on and stays that way until the battery dies. I can’t figure out why anyone would design something that stupid.

I don’t trust the pressure switch. It seems cheap. I was going to send the laser back, but then I realized I could cut the switch off the wire leads and run them to a better switch mounted somewhere on the gun. I think this is an ideal solution. Pushbutton switches tend to fail. I can get an industrial toggle or something. It might not be as water resistant as the rubber-covered pressure switch, but I don’t plan to shoot people underwater.

I think it’s safe to assume that most criminals, being lazy and stupid, will not attack in bad weather.

I put a Hogue handguard and pistol grip on the gun. The pistol grip isn’t made to go around the stock-release button at the rear of the gun, but a rotary tool with a sanding drum corrects that easily and cleanly. The upper handguard can’t be installed on this gun, because it’s not rigged up for an upper handguard. I suppose there are parts you could buy to fix that. Maybe the standard thing is to steal parts from the wooden handguard you replace, but this gun did not come with an upper handguard.

The lower handguard is disappointing for two reasons. First, the lower rail that comes with it is short. It could be an inch longer, which would make life easier. Second, there are no instructions for installing the rail, and I guessed at it, and I guessed wrong.

The handguard has a sheetmetal support inside it. I thought this was a permanent part of the handguard. It’s not. You’re supposed to remove it to drill holes to insall the rail. I ended up drilling a totally unnecessary hole in the support.

I mounted the new laser on the rail. It’s not satisfactory. It sits so far back, it makes it impossible to get a good grip on the gun. Looks nice, though. I’ll post a photo.

I was going to go to the range today, but with no laser, it’s a waste of time. Shooting for next week.

I guess I should put up some news of interest, for Christians.

A friend of mine has been having all sorts of problems. I wrote about him the other day. He got up during the night and saw a white spirit sitting on his living room couch, tapping its foot. The spirit remained after he turned on the light and stared at it. He got a good clear look at it. This was not his imagination.

On Monday, we both fasted, and I prayed for an end to the strife in his family. I prayed for God to give him a good living, a house, and a wife who would help him work in God’s kingdom. I felt explosive faith, all through the day.

Yesterday, he called me and asked me to pray. His younger brother had been in an accident. I’ll link to story from the local news. Six people were sitting on a bus bench, and a bad driver ran off the road and hit them. One woman lost a leg. Another lost an arm and a leg. Another was killed. My friend’s brother was pinned under the car, and people at the scene had to lift it off of him.

I didn’t understand how serious it was until later, when I Googled the accident during church. When I saw what had happened, a couple of us started trying to contact my friend so we could go to the hospital, where his brother was in surgery. We were hearing all kinds of rumors. The news people said four people were in critical condition, one was in serious condition, and one had minor injuries. I had no idea which category applied to my friend’s brother.

I know my friend from my old church, and he’s still in that social circle. It’s extremely hard to communicate with these people. Their cell numbers change constantly because they can’t pay their bills. Their providers turn the phones off. Even when the phones work, these people do not return texts and calls the way they should. It was impossible to get a clear idea where this kid had been taken. I got in the car with one of my friends, and we drove around, and we eventually gave up. Later I learned that we had gone to the right hospital, but we were told he wasn’t there.

This morning my friend called and said his brother had pelvic injuries and a broken leg, but that he would recover completely.

I didn’t know what to make of this mess. It happened one day after I prayed for my friend and his family. I admit, I focused mainly on my friend, not his brother, but still, I was surprised.

When my friend called this morning and gave me the news, I asked him if the spirit on the couch reminded him of a person waiting for a bus. He said it did. He hadn’t thought of it until I said it. It had been sitting on the couch tapping its foot, just like a person at a bus stop.

Here is the important lesson I took away from this. When God gives you a supernatural experience, YOU HAVE TO ASK HIM WHAT IT MEANS. It looks like God warned us about the accident, but we didn’t ask him to explain. At least not very persistently. I think I mentioned it briefly in prayer.

What if we had asked for explanation? Maybe God would have clarified, or he would have moved us to pray in a way that would have prevented the accident or prevented my friend’s brother from being there when it happened.

My friend is in surprisingly good spirits. His family problems have cleared up, out of necessity. Solutions are appearing. His mother and her landlord were threatening to evict him. Now he has a place to stay. He also has jobs lined up, and they’re going to pay up front.

He says he’s having problems praying in tongues. I hope people who read this will pray for him to be restored. He’s not going to make it without the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

I’m really sorry this kid got hurt, but it looks like it’s going to leave us more powerful and blessed.

One other thing. I’ve read a lot of things about the windows of heaven and Jacob’s ladder. There are Judaizers out there who claim “windows of heaven” refers to special times during the year, like NASA launch windows, during which God is able to bless us more than usual. They claim we have to give big cash offerings on certain Jewish holidays in order to get God to shovel the money out. A teacher who is less of an idiot–I’m sorry–has said that Jacob’s Ladder was a special thing that existed only on the Temple Mount. It was a portal through which spirits between God and earth, doing his will and carrying prayers. I think the Judaizers and this teacher are wrong.

Often when I’ve prayed, I’ve noticed disturbances around me, like ripples in the fabric of the physical universe. I once saw a spirit on the wall of a room, and it flew out through the ceiling. It had a peculiar look. It was clear and colorless, and although it was three-dimensional, it somehow seemed to be under the physical world, like a mouse in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, moving under a carpet. The little disturbances I’ve seen during prayer are like that. They form little darting streaks in the air around me, as if small spirits are leaving with my prayers, taking them to God.

I think this is the same thing Jacob saw, although it may have appeared differently to him. I think the windows of heaven are really tunnels held open by faith, and supernatural beings travel through them like cylinders through a pneumatic tube. These tunnels are like streaks of lightning, carrying power between heaven and earth, and faith is charge.

Our relationship with God has many parallels to sex between a man and wife. Since my faith has been increased, I’ve noticed that when faith rushes through me and carries a prayer to God, it’s very much like what happens at the end of sex. And why shouldn’t it be? In both cases, a seed is being transferred and planted. The body has spasms that send seed into a woman, and it appears that the mind and spirit undergo similar events when seeds of prayer are sown in heaven.

I hope this doesn’t offend people, but remember, we’re talking about the God who uses circumcision to record his promises. God is not afraid of sex.

I don’t want to go too far in the direction of sexual discussion, but if you know anything about sex, you may know that it’s possible to prolong and enhance the final event through concentration. It appears that increased faith allows people to do the same thing in prayer. If you concentrate on the faith that leaves you and holds the tunnel open, you can maintain a burst of faith for a very long time. The same thing may happen when you thank or praise God continuously. I believe that during those times, you are keeping God’s highway open and increasing the travel on it. During those times, God will be able to do more to answer your prayers. It’s also a very peaceful time, full of reassurance and comfort.

I think Jacob’s ladder and the windows of heaven are wherever you are, and if you have supernatural faith given by the Holy Spirit, you can benefit from them. But I don’t think it’s likely to happen if you’re not praying in tongues. You probably won’t have the revelation and understanding of how to do it, and you won’t have the faith to keep the doors open. You probably won’t have enough authority over your flesh to prevent it from interfering.

The windows of heaven are open in my life. I believe they will open for you, too. I believe it has absolutely nothing to do with me or any special characteristics I might have. I think God gave me revelation, showing what anyone can do. There are probably other people out there teaching the same thing.

God says the more we sow, the more we reap. For a long time, I’ve believed this was mainly about prayer. I believe prayer in tongues is sowing, and holding the windows of heaven open is reaping. We’ll see if I’m right.

I hope people will put this stuff to the test and compare it to scripture.

You Can HAVE This Place

I guess I’m on fire these days. I’m blogging AGAIN, even though I blogged once today.

I have a testimony. I always have a testimony, though. Back at my old church, when the volunteers met in the morning, there were always two people who had testimonies. I was one, and the other was a young guy who sang with the worship team. I guess people got tired of us.

I hate living in Miami. I always have, except for a brief period after law school, when I made a determined effort to fit in. People are incredibly rude here. It’s too hot for a person who likes shooting and working with tools. You can’t grow anything, because the lots are small and the topsoil is six inches deep. The traffic is like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie, if he made movies about traffic. This city is a known hub of homosexual activity. We have nude beaches. We have a yearly celebration where thousands of people go out in the bay and have sex in public. We even have voodoo, including santeria. This is no place for a decent person to live.

My new church opened a place in Winter Haven, and I went up there with a team of people who were helping the place get off the ground. I loved it. My blood pressure plummeted. I felt relaxed. The people were nice. There was lots of open country. There was no traffic. There were Romney signs everywhere. It was like heaven. I started Googling real estate in that area.

Since then, I’ve gotten interested in Ocala. You can get a nice five-acre property near Winter Haven for a very low price, but in the Ocala area, you can get ten acres, and the selection is better. The people are just as nice. There are lots of good churches. The soil is fantastic. The climate is even better than it is in Winter Haven.

My buddy Mike used to live up there. His dad had a thoroughbred farm, and Mike ended up buying in the area. I’ve been picking his brains. He says it’s paradise. Anything you throw in the dirt grows. You can shoot guns in your backyard.

Here’s the problem. My dad is 80, and he’s at the stage where he shouldn’t be alone in Miami. My sister lives here, but she’s in far worse shape than he is. He likes the idea of leaving Miami, but he prefers the Cocoa area. He has a huge boat, and he wants to live on the water. If he sold his Miami house, he could have a palace in Brevard County, with no mortgage.

I don’t want to live in Brevard County. I don’t feel God pulling me that way. Aside from that, the lots are smaller, the soil isn’t as good, and I think it’s gradually becoming polluted with the worldly crowd that has infected Orlando. They say Orlando is not much better than Miami now.

I’ve been praying about this a lot. When a potential disciple told Jesus he wanted to wait until his father was dead, Jesus told him to let the dead bury the dead. Often, you have to move forward alone, as Lot and Noah learned. But you shouldn’t give up too early.

I refuse to have a mortgage. I can do all right with my own resources, but if my father goes with me, we can have a place that would be out of this world. There are lots of properties near Ocala that have more than one house, or what are known as mother-in-law apartments. Many of them have detached workshops. Talk about bliss. I’d be able to look after my dad, I’d be away from Miami’s nasty people, both of us would have privacy, and I’d have a real workshop where I wouldn’t have to trip over things and move things around all the time.

It looked like there was no hope of getting my father to consider moving inland, but I’ve been praying a great deal (mostly in the Spirit), and the other day, he started talking like the Ocala area might be a good choice. Now I’m looking at bigger homes. I won’t even consider less than 20 acres. With the low land prices up there, there is no point in settling for less.

It’s going to happen. I know it. God has set me free from this miserable city. I richly deserved my sentence, but it’s coming to an end.

Prayer in tongues made it happen. I’ve been cranking it up lately. Things are falling into place. In nerdspeak, I feel like I’ve been held captive in a potential well, and now I’m over the hump and being propelled out.

One of the best things about prayer in tongues is that God uses it to order your life. He uses it to plan and build your future. We don’t know which way to turn, because we see so little. God knows everything. He knows exactly what we need and what will make us happy. He fully intends to give us blessed lives. If you pray in tongues enough, you’ll see it start to happen.

I’ve seen some really wild properties. One is a former airport. It’s a long lot; about 20 acres. Most of it is a grass airstrip. It has a house, a caretaker’s cottage, and TWO beautiful hangars. One has a magnificent shop area. The floor is concrete. I salivate when I look at the pictures. Another is some kind of horse-training facility. As it happens, Mike knew the owner. He knows the place. He says it’s gorgeous. It has a bunch of outbuildings and a big detached garage. I have no idea what we’d do with the barns, but that’s not a dealbreaker. And it’s 48 acres. It’s the Sofia Vergara of homes.

If we don’t get one of these places, there are dozens of others. Most of them have horse-related crap on them, but we can deal with that. I can’t imagine what life would be like, living among good Christian people who vote Republican. It would be a foretaste of my home in the hereafter.

I’ll blog more when I know more.

Truck Gun

I solved my truck gun problem. I figured I’d write about it so people could tell me I’m an idiot. Half of the fun of buying a gun is getting on the Internet, letting people know, and having them call you an idiot. You bought the wrong gun. You paid too much. You got the wrong optics. Your mother shoots homey-style. Whatever.

I found three really good solutions. One is the Yugo (Zastava) M92 pistol. Wonderful weapon. Not expensive. No 922r problems, unless I am misinformed. The second is the Vz2008. This is a Century Arms Vz58 with a non-chromed barrel. They’re supposed to be somewhat crappier than the ones Czechpoint sells, but they only cost about $400, so it’s a wonderful choice. The third gun is an AK variant made specifically for people who carry in vehicles. It’s the AMD-65, made in Hungary. It’s under 26″ long, folded, and you can shoot it without opening it up. The barrel is chrome-lined, and people say they get good accuracy. It comes with a vertical foregrip, which is fantastic. You can get one of these guns for about $440.

I probably should have gone with the Vz2008, but I don’t have any AK-47s, and the AMD-65 looked really good. I have one on the way.

My plan is to stick a Chinese laser under the gun’s barrel. That will take some thought. I’ll need to drill holes in the handguard and install a rail, or I’ll have to replace the handguard entirely and get a rail-mounted foregrip.

This gun has very few US-made parts, so magazines are a problem. You have to have a certain number of US-made items in order to beat 922r, and the AMD-65 relies heavily on American magazines. No cheap surplus foreign jobs. I decided to pick up a couple of 30-round Tapcos. They’re plastic, which purists hate, but supposedly they work well, and if they stink, I’m only out $14.

Hogue makes a handguard for it. That would count toward 922r. I think an American foregrip would, too, but I’m not sure. I can definitely score a point with a new gas piston.

I have read differing opinions of the AMD-65. Some people say it’s crap from one end to the other, except for the way it functions. Others say it actually looks nicer than other AKs, except for the Krylon finish, which can be fixed with Duracoat or something similar. Some say the accuracy is bad, but others say they get tight groups. I’m inclined to suspect that the shooters are the main problem. Hungarian barrels have a good reputation, and this gun has a short sight radius, which would tend to make a poor shooter perform worse.

We are equipping the police with this rifle over in Afghanistan, presumably so it will be more convenient for them to shoot our troops in the back.

The buttstock is wire. I have no problem with that. I don’t want to hear about cheek welds and 100-yard groups. It’s tough to plead self-defense when you’re shooting someone a hundred yards away, and I may never get a chance to open the stock anyway. If I can do well at a hundred feet or less, I’ll be ecstatic.

I shot my Vz58 folder the other day, and it has a crappy buttstock (or whatever you call a wire buttstock substitute). Without even trying, I put four shots in one hole at 75 feet. That will do. If the Hungarian rifle even approaches that level of accuracy, it will shoot better than I do in a panic situation.

I think I have my needs covered. Glock for carry. Cheap but reliable AK for true disasters that happen away from home. Both lasered.

I have high hopes that Obama will lose the election, but this makes me feel a little better.

Lasers are the Future

Once I got a laser mounted on my Vz 58 rifle, I had a moment of lucidity and realized all short-range weapons are incomplete without lasers. It’s a simple fact. There are a lot of people who hate lasers, calling them “crutches” and so on, but their ancestors probably whined about rifling and sights. Back when people fought by poking each other with sticks, there were probably stick gurus who said it was crazy to sharpen the sticks. Lasers just plain work. End of discussion.

Yes, the batteries can poop out. Yes, other things can go wrong, preventing a laser from working. What happens then? You’re right back where you were before you got it. You’re no worse off, so why not do it?

On the 99+% of occasions when your laser does work, you’ll shoot much better and much faster, without the need to use the sights, hold the gun with both hands, or even raise the gun. If the dot is where you want the bullet to go when you pull the trigger, you will score a hit. On top of that, you might even be able to think about shot placement, which is a gigantic advantage. A person who shoots a .22 accurately is ten times as threatening as a person who shoots a 10mm badly.

The only thing I can think of that could improve your survival chances more than a laser is practicing offhand shooting. If you can shoot well without aiming, you will rule any gunfight, because most people who get into gunfights forget their training and shoot that way. But you’ll have to use the same gun every time, and you’ll have to buy 5,000 rounds of ammunition to get there. You’ll also have to find a place where they let you practice. A lot of ranges do not like anything other than slow fire, so you might have trouble if you go to your local joint and start emptying magazines while shooting Mozambique drills from the hip.

A long time ago, I got my dad a Crimson Trace for his 9mm. It’s a nice thing to have. It turns on and off automatically when you grab and release the grip. But it’s hard to get the beam lined up with the sights, and it’s easy to block the beam with your hand while shooting. I’m told replacing the batteries is a pain, too. I decided the Crimson Trace was not for me.

I decided to try a Lasermax guide rod laser. This is a laser mounted in a guide rod assembly. You take the guide rod out of your pistol and replace it with the Lasermax. If you have a Glock, you have to spend fifteen minutes replacing the thing that releases the slide, but that’s not a big deal.

When I saw the Lasermax online, I figured it was going to be way out of alignment with the barrel. I decided I could accept a dot that was a few inches off-target at twenty feet, if it saved my life in a difficult moment. But when I installed the Lasermax, I found that it was surprisingly accurate. When I use the sights and turn on the laser, the dot is right at the top of the sights, in the middle, at self-defense distances. I haven’t tried it at the range yet, but I would guess that it will keep my shots within a 3″ circle at 7 yards. Maybe better. That’s as good as it needs to be.

The Lasermax dot goes on and off. There are two good things about this. First, it gets your attention much faster than a steady beam. Second, it makes the batteries last longer. The literature says they should run between one and five hours, continuously, and that you should have a set you use for practice, plus a fresh set for self-defense.

You turn the laser on by pushing the slide release to the left or right. This is very easy. You can do it with your index finger. Unfortunately, you may find that it turns on too easily, so you have to make sure your favorite holster doesn’t mash the release when you put the gun in it.

I had a problem when I installed it. The Lasermax is not very long. It doesn’t put much pressure on the barrel and slide when the gun is at rest. This means it tends to slip. This can make the gun hard to reassemble, and it can cause the laser to turn on when it shouldn’t. The solution is to rack the gun a number of times and release it. Supposedly, this settles the Lasermax in place and somehow makes it function correctly. It worked for me.

The dot is clearly visible forty feet away in a house in the daytime. At night, it should be considerably better.

This has me rethinking my truck gun needs. I believe the laser will extend my useful range with the Glock. Maybe that means I won’t need to keep a longer gun in the vehicle. But pistol rounds are not that powerful, regardless of whether you hit the perp. Can I hope the laser will improve my shot placement so much, the weakness of the rounds won’t matter? I don’t know.

Right now a really neat long gun is available. It’s called a PPS-43C. It’s a new semiautomatic pistol made in Poland. By “new,” I mean it’s not used. These things start life as 7.62x25mm submachine guns with folding stocks. Then they’re converted to semi-auto, and the stocks are tack-welded shut. That makes them pistols, as far as Uncle Sam is concerned.

They have 35-round magazines. They’re supposed to be super reliable.

The caliber is a little weird. It’s a .30-caliber round that can be pushed as high as 2000 fps. If you use FMJ bullets, they will zip through two thicknesses of body armor. Not all body armor, of course. But most. They go through things like car doors really well. They don’t expand or tumble, but 35 rounds with good placement…nothing to be sneezed at.

As I have said before, I am not overly concerned with “overpenetration.” Most shots fired in gunfights miss completely, which is like overpenetrating by as much as a mile. Every time you use a firearm in self-defense, you are taking a chance on hitting an innocent person. That’s just a fact of life. And the general rule is that a round that won’t “overpenetrate” won’t penetrate enough.

If I get a 7.62x39mm pistol or rifle, the rounds will move at about 2200 fps. That’s better than the 1500-2000 (probably more like 1600) you can get from the Polish gun. But I’ll also have to deal with muzzle flash. I guess that’s not a big deal. Flash hiders can help. The noise would be worse, but the sound of a 7.62x25mm round going off is not exactly therapeutic, either.

The really nice thing about the PPS-43C is that it’s very cheap. It won’t ruin your life to have one stolen. They cost about $270. Wolf makes pretty good hollowpoint ammunition for it. Presumably you lose some penetration with that.

Anyway, this is a good puzzle to have. It’s not a bad choice to deal with. In many countries (and some states), people have to choose between hiding under the bed or in the closet.

The Dot of Death

What a day I had.

For weeks, I have been trying to get to an outdoor gun range to test a pet theory. I thought it would be clever to put a laser on an AK47 pistol and put it in my truck, but I didn’t want to fool with it until I knew how well it worked in practice. To find out, I needed to shoot a similar weapon without using the buttstock. An AK pistol is really a shortened rifle with no buttstock, so I knew that if I could control a rifle, I would be able to control a pistol.

I made it to the range today, and because my last safety class was so long ago, I had to take a 20-minute refresher. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but they didn’t hold the class until an hour after I got there. Then I got ready to go in, and a static electricity alarm went off and shut the range down.

I know you have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s new to me, too. They have a machine that detects static electricity, and when it gets nervous, it sounds a horrible siren. That means there is a risk of lightning, so you have to stop shooting. Because…I guess it’s better to be struck by lightning when you’re not shooting.

We waited maybe 45 minutes for the machine to calm down. During that time, it rained like crazy. I wanted to leave, but after the half-hour drive to the range, the wait for the course, and the course itself, I just couldn’t. I refuse to shoot on weekends because it’s like a buffalo stampede, so my next opportunity would have been Wednesday. Forget that.

Eventually the machine reconciled itself with its inner child, and we were allowed to shoot. I managed to get 25 rounds off before the machine wet its pants again. I used my Vz 58, which shoots the same ammunition as an AK47. It’s a carbine with a folding stock, so it’s nearly the same thing as a pistol. In fact, you can buy a pistol version. They cut a few inches off the barrel and remove the stock.

I was not allowed to shoot with the stock folded, but that didn’t matter. I held the gun away from my body, so the stock didn’t come into play. Same thing. I did not use the sights. Without any effort at all, I got 3″ groups at 75 feet. I shot one group using the sights, and I was amazed. I was just playing around, but four bullets went through one hole, and the fifth was a nearby flier. This is an incredibly easy gun to shoot.

The recoil was pathetic. Not worth discussing. The green laser was clearly visible. The weather was a little overcast, but I think that even on a bright day, you’d have to be blind to miss it at distances under 50 feet.

I wasn’t allowed to shoot rapid-fire, but I managed to shoot rounds a couple of seconds apart, and I had no problem finding the aim point after the first shot.

The accuracy is probably better than my test indicates, because I had problems with the laser mount slipping.

Here’s the target. I realize the holes are all over the place, but that’s because I used different aim points to distinguish the groups.

If a burgler was in my house, even if the groups opened up by a factor of four, I’d still be within a circle about 10″ across. That’s at 75 feet. Who shoots people 75 feet away in self-defense? It’s pretty rare. At realistic distances of fifty feet or less, I’d be the Angel of Death himself.

I really don’t understand why gun people are so afraid to admit the mindblowing awesomeness of lasers. A lot of gun nuts hate to hear people say things like this, but it’s true: the bullets go wherever you put the dot. It’s just that easy. No sighting required.

If the laser craps out, you still have a gun with a nice long sight radius (helpful even when point shooting), plus 30 rounds of hellacious ammunition no handgun can come close to matching. What’s not to love?

Now I know lasers and 7.62 rounds work. The only question is whether I should go to a pistol or stick with a folding rifle. The pistol would need a flash hider, adding about two inches to the barrel. I think the whole thing would come in at about 22″. The rifle is 26″ long, folded. Still compact.

An AK pistol would be a lot cheaper than a Vz 58 folder, so if it got stolen, I would cry less.

I know people moan a lot about the risks of overpenetration with a rifle, but that’s silly. The vast majority of pistol shots miss the mark entirely, which is infinitely worse than overpenetrating. Rifles are much more accurate. It’s probably better to hit a criminal and then deal with a slight risk that someone behind him will be struck by the slowed-down round than it is to miss and have someone hit with a pistol round traveling at full speed. And if you miss with the pistol, you still have a criminal coming at you or a loved one.

The laser mount needs to be tightened, but I don’t think there will be any movement, once I hit it with an Allen wrench. The groups will probably tighten up once it’s secure.

I’m sold on this thing. It’s nice when a plan works out.

Natural and Otherwise

I am still thinking about a dedicated vehicle gun.

I dealt with my inner child and resisted ordering a Vz 58 or AK47 pistol. Now no one has them for sale at a good price, so I have some time to weigh the options.

There are a couple of serious drawbacks to pistol-length 7.62mm guns. They make a huge flash, and they are extremely loud. I am wondering if these things are important enough to make a longer gun a better option.

I’m not concerned about accuracy. I’m planning to take my Vz folder to the range, now that I have the laser fixed, and I expect to confirm what I learned from my experience with my shotgun. I think the laser will give accuracy superior to pistol sights, without the aggravation and delay of sighting down the barrel. But the flash could be a problem.

If your gun generates a big fireball, it can affect your vision. Self-defense situations often occur at night. You don’t want to be blinded after your first shot. I can compensate with a high-powered light mounted on the gun, but I’m already relying on one electrical crutch, and I’m nervous about adding a second. I don’t want to rely on two separate items, both of which are somewhat likely to fail.

You have to wonder why no one makes shooting glasses that darken when a round is fired, like a welding mask. Maybe they do. Or maybe it’s a stupid idea, because it would be cumbersome.

I can fix the flash with a suppressor. That’s pretty cool. But it will add inches to the gun’s length. One of the big advantages of a pistol is the shorter length, but is it really worth it to go from 26″ to 23″?

I don’t know if the noise is worth worrying about. Firing any self-defense-grade gun in a vehicle is bad for your ears. A Glock 10mm is pretty danged loud. Presumably, if you get in a real pickle and you have to shoot, you’re going to have the muzzle outside the window, so you would think the lion’s share of the blast would be outside the truck. I think anyone who carries a weapon in a vehicle should also carry electronic ear protectors or at least a set of plugs.

It appears that a gun bag under the rear seat of my truck would satisfy the requirements of Fl. St. Sec. 790.25.whatever. You can stick a rifle or pistol in a zipped bag and keep it in your vehicle interior. I’ve seen neat locks that secure weapons under rear seats, but do I really want to play around with a lock when bath-salts-slurping zombies are looking at me like I was a plate of ribs? No. That’s stupid. Zippers are bad enough. In reality, even a zipper is unnecessary, so there may be better options. Maybe I could get a cardboard box labeled “used catheters” or some such.

If I can deal with the added length of a 26″ weapon, I won’t have to fool with a flash hider, and I’ll have the option of unfolding the gun’s stock so I can shoot at longer distances. Interesting consideration: cleverer people than I have pointed out that it’s pretty unusual to have a legitimate self-defense argument when you’re shooting from a great distance. If someone is fifty yards away, you will probably be able to drive off. Maybe it’s dumb to be concerned with the sights.

Here’s a funny difference between AKs and the Vz 58: you can’t shoot an AK with the stock folded. At least, not with most stocks you’ll get at a decent price. The standard Czech folding stock does not interfere with shooting, so I could grab the gun in its folded state, flick the laser on, and start blasting. The stock works okay unfolded. It’s a bare-bones kind of thing, but I’ve used mine at the range, and it’s more than adequate for shooting a tennis-ball-sized pattern at 50 yards.

If I get an AK pistol and a flash hider, and then I add a Chinese laser and a bag and so on, I’m out something $700. That’s not bad. If it gets stolen, I’ll be upset, but it beats losing over a grand on a Vz 58.

I’ve thought about the moral consequences of having a vehicle weapon stolen. It’s a concern, but there are millions of illegal guns out there, and mine isn’t going to make difference. I could minimize the risk by keeping it indoors at night.

In other news, weird supernatural things keep happening. I came across another tool the other day. I’m still evaluating it. I conferred with my pastor, and he believes it’s kosher. So to speak.

One of the biggest problems Christians face is overcoming iniquity, which is the inclination to sin. One of the words translated as “iniquity” means “crookedness.” That’s interesting, because we use the English noun “bent” to mean “inclination.”

We’re supposed to develop and exercise authority. The concept of authority is extremely important in the Bible. Jesus is part of God, yet the Bible speaks of him as one who accepts the judgment of God the Father, as though bound. The Bible suggests that the Holy Spirit subjects himself to Jesus’s authority, carrying his power, knowledge, and inclinations to us. We, in turn, are supposed to submit to the Holy Spirit, as well as to the rest of the Trinity. Our flesh should be submissive to us, and there is Biblical evidence that our authority can be so great, even objects will submit. Jesus told us we could command mountains to jump into the sea.

The other day, I somehow got it in my head that I might be able to command my own flesh. I know it sounds stupid, ordering your flesh around, when your flesh is part of you. But telling mountains what to do is also a bit strange. I know the flesh has an awareness of its own. It perceives things, maybe the way an animal does. It has emotions and drives, with which it tries to control us. I think it may even punish us when we don’t do what it wants. It may become ill or break down when you want to get something done. It may be that physical problems we blame on spirits or our own minds come from the flesh itself.

Anyway, I decided to take authority over my flesh. I actually addressed it. Here’s what I found out. I was able to make it stop thinking about things I didn’t want to think about. I was able to make it become drowsy and go to sleep, instead of keeping me awake by being too alert. I even got relief from congestion, so I didn’t have to use nasal spray.

Sound crazy? I agree. But it worked, and it has kept on working. It’s one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me.

I’m starting to wonder if this is how hypnosis works. Maybe hypnosis is simply a way of commanding the flesh and bypassing the soul.

If you’re brave, and you’re all prayed up and so on, give this a shot. The next time you feel a compulsion to do something stupid, order your flesh to stop thinking about it. Do it in the name of Jesus. You don’t have to do it out loud. Your flesh knows your thoughts.

A couple of years back, I was supernaturally delivered from overeating. I assumed there was some kind of spirit that had been driven off. Over the last ten months, I’ve seen the iniquity try to creep back on me. I figured I needed to fast more. But I’ve found that if I order my flesh to quit craving food, the desire to eat leaves me.

It seems like the effect has a limited time span. It’s like dealing with a rotten kid who needs a kick in the rear end every so often. But if you can get a few hours or a day of relief, that’s really something. You have to brush your teeth several times a day, and you probably don’t complain about that. What’s the difference?

Here’s the advice I got from my pastor: “David said; Bless the Lord, O my soul; Bless the Lord, O my soul, (Psalm 103:1 in other words he ordered himself to bless the Lord. Best place to take authority first is self. Absolutely!!”

I should add that at one point in the gospels, Jesus said he had been given authority over all flesh. You have to take every word in the Bible seriously. He didn’t say that just to sound flowery and poetic. He had a reason. I don’t believe his reason was to indicate that he was the son of God. The people he was addressing already knew that. I think he may have been referring to the authority I’ve been discussing.

I know this stuff will sound insane to Catholics and Baptists and other people who see Christianity as a toilsome labor of love. I don’t see Christianity that way. I see it as a path to supernatural power, freedom, and virtue.

Jesus and the Apostles weren’t people who were known for working hard. They were a lot like wizards, except that they were submitted to God, and they did not use their power to satisfy the flesh or the enemy. This kind of talk has led to lynchings in the past, because Christians are so used to living without supernatural power. Christians have become used to ostracizing believers who exhibit supernatural power. We tend to accuse them of demonic possession and so on. But the Bible shows that what I say is true. Our forebears in the faith raised the dead, walked on water, read minds, and even performed feats of superhuman strength. Those are supernatural acts.

If you think about it, it’s a little odd that we expect evil spirits and wicked people to have supernatural power, while flipping out when Christians have it. Don’t forget the story of Moses and Aaron. When they argued with Pharaoh, the magicians came in and performed real miracles. Moses and Aaron responded with “magic” of their own, much greater than that of the Egyptians. Were Moses and Aaron sorcerers? Were they enemies of God? Of course not.

What if you can command your flesh to be healed? What if you can command it to stop being mentally ill? What if you can command it to stop being afraid, or to cease from laziness? Imagine the changes that would come.

On Sunday, a friend was prophesying in church. I was way in the back, minding my own business. He called me out and started telling me changes were coming. He said people would look at me and find it hard to believe I was the same person. Then these ideas came to me during the week, and things started happening.

We had an astounding teaching last night. A man named Byron Walters came. He had us all kneel at the end of his message, and he told us he was conferring his prophetic and teaching mantle on us. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve seen prophecies made in this church come to pass, so I took it seriously. What a powerful environment it has turned out to be.

I thought I’d pass this stuff on. Maybe someone else will benefit from it.

Glocks Don’t Cut It

I’m trying to decide what to get for a truck gun.

I’ve been researching the law. Don’t bet your liberty on this (I am not your lawyer), but it looks like Florida law is less troublesome for pistol owners than rifle owners.

You can keep a pistol in your truck in a zippered pouch or even a box with a lid held on by gravity. It’s pretty stupid, really. The law says the gun has to be “securely encased,” and “securely” is apparently an attempt at legislative humor, because you could pretty much toss your gun in a paper bag and roll it up, and it would be okay.

The idea, I think, is that you shouldn’t be able to grab the gun instantly and shoot someone without fumbling around. If you have to fumble around, the gun is not “readily accessible,” so it’s legal.

It’s a little strange. If you put a pistol in your center console with the lid closed but no lock, it’s legal. But if you put it under a beach towel on the passenger seat, somehow it becomes a concealed weapon. I’m pretty sure.

This is what happens when legislators argue too much. You get a legislative camel. A law with parts that don’t seem to match up.

Why do I care about pistol laws? I have a permit, don’t I? I can wear a shoulder holster under a flappy shirt, and I’m good to go. It doesn’t matter that I can reach the gun fast and shoot people without undue inconvenience. I shouldn’t care, right? Wrong. The reason I care is that I’m thinking about getting a pistol too big to conceal. If you can’t conceal it legally under a garment or whatever, you’re back in the arena of “securely encased” and so on.

I’m thinking I want an AK47 pistol. This is really a rifle with no butt. It’s a little bit less than 20″ long. It has an 11″ barrel. You can’t stick this under your shirt unless you’re really fat.

I’d like to get one of these because real (i.e. small) pistols are pretty stupid. I love my Glock, but let’s get serious. In a shooting situation, almost everyone who fires a pistol at a criminal misses. And the Glock holds a total of eleven rounds, so if I miss 11 times, I’m in deep poo.

An AK pistol holds 31 rounds. And the ballistics are even better than the remarkable ballistics of my 10mm handloads. It’s also much more accurate.

I know I’ll upset people with that accuracy comment, but I think it’s correct. People have cautioned me about the incredible difficulty of firing stockless weapons, but I took my 12-gauge Saiga to the range, and guess what I found out? When you put a laser on it, the shots go where the little green dot goes, every time. You don’t have to use the buttstock. I shot at 50 feet, and the pellets went poomp-poomp-poomp-poomp into a little area the size of a fist.

Now, maybe I’m a superhero with a unique and amazing ability to shoot this way, but whatever the explanation is, it’s very clear to me that an AK pistol with a laser will be much more accurate than a Glock, in a real-world shootout. If you can hit people reliably at fifty feet, you will be the king at any civilian firefight.

Aside from that, I have to add that I’ve fired weapons from the hip more than once, and generally, the accuracy has been way better than what I would need to hit someone within ten yards. If that makes me special, whoo-hoo, but it’s the truth. I think people get way too excited about using sights. Seal Team Six practices without using sights, so I have good company. You can get used to a weapon, to the point where hitting a can at twenty feet is no problem. It’s not as hard as people make it out to be. I used to shoot mile markers offhand from a car moving 70 mph. In my opinion, people don’t practice this kind of shooting nearly enough. In a real shootout, this is the kind of shooting you’re going to find yourself doing, so why not get good at it?

Let me get back to lasers. To use the Glock in the conventional way, you have to hold it at eye level and sight carefully down the barrel. You have to line the little doodads up and squeeze the trigger with extreme patience. If you don’t do those things, your shots will range all over an imaginary cone with an angle of–if you’re good–fifteen degrees. At ten feet, that’s a miss. With a laser, you don’t have to sweat about the sights or the trigger. You put the dot where it has to be, and as long as it stays more or less in that location when you jerk the trigger, you win. You can shoot from the hip. You can shoot behind your back. You can hold the gun like Jimi Hendrix and pull the trigger with your teeth. Doesn’t matter.

In my experience, 95% of the difficulty of target reacquisition has been in finding the sights with my eyes after a shot. Reorienting the weapon is easy, and you can do it as fast as you can move your hands. With a laser, you don’t have to find the sights again. You just have to find that dot.

The laws concerning rifles are somewhat off-putting. You can put a rifle in the window of your truck, right here in Dade County, and the cops can’t say a word. You can also drive down the road with it on the passenger seat, fully loaded. But if you cover it up and leave it within reach, it may become a concealed weapon not covered by a permit. Or something. There have been cases in which people got in trouble because their long guns were partially covered. So you could get arrested because you threw a newspaper in your truck and part of it landed on top of your AR15. I don’t know if I want to mess with a potential trap like that. In practice, I think this usually boils down to, “Is this cop an incredible jerk who likes ruining people’s lives unnecessarily,” and maybe you’ll come out okay 95% of the time, but why take a chance?

The AK “pistol” (I still can’t believe a 20″-long gun fits that legal description) is easier to maneuver than a full-size rifle. That’s helpful if–God and your ENT forbid–you have to fire from inside the vehicle. It also makes it a little easier to get to the gun and get it ready.

The VZ 58 rifle with a folding stock is about 26″ long. This is a wonderful weapon. Unlike an AK, it’s made to be fired with the stock folded, so it’s nearly as versatile as a pistol. But that extra half a foot could be a little aggravating to deal with.

When you shorten the barrel, you lose velocity. Some dude did a test. It turns out you go from around 2300 fps to 1900 fps with an 11″ barrel. I don’t know if that will prevent the bullets from opening up. It’s still an incredible improvement over 1250 fps in 10mm. Pistol rounds don’t really expand, according to what I’ve read. I mean, sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t, in spite of the pretty hollow points they put on them. When firing a pistol, you should assume FMJ performance, which is bad. I think 31 rounds at 1900 fps, with dramatically improved accuracy, has to be better than 11 rounds at 1250 fps. The extra accuracy and capacity, even without expansion, tumbling, or fragmentation, are worth a lot.

I checked into AR15 pistols, and I’m convinced they’re worthless. Since the war in Iraq began, we’ve been getting a lot of complaints about NATO rounds failing to kill or even slow down Islamist nutwads. If I understand the situation correctly, the AR15 does tremendous damage inside the body, except…when it doesn’t. Which is very often. It seems like a stupid choice to me, especially in a short-barrelled weapon with lower velocity. By the way, I have read that 5.56 mm suffers greater velocity losses than 7.62 when you shorten the barrel. Something to consider.

Oddly, when I started researching this, I learned that two 7.62 pistols had just come on the market. One is the VZ 58 pistol, and the other is the Zastava M92 AK47 pistol (Yugoslavian). The M92 is not really new, but it has been unavailable for a long time.

The VZ 58 was tempting, but it’s a $900 gun, and it’s a little longer than the Yugo. Also, when I emailed the seller with some questions, I was not all that pleased with the responses I got. The guy who sells these things in the US is named Dan Brown. I’m sure he’s a great guy, and he’s probably busy, but I needed some technical advice before buying, and I thought his responses were unnecessarily terse. That turned me off. I don’t like being referred to a URL when a one-sentence answer would work much better. When you send someone a URL, it’s like saying, “Here, stupid.” I already bought one of his excellent guns, so I think I’m entitled to a whole sentence. Making people feel comfortable is a crucial part of sales. There’s more to it than providing information.

The Yugo is under 20″ long, and all sorts of existing AK doodads will fit it. When they’re available, they run about $560. That’s not bad. The Romanian Draco is another alternative, but it’s slightly longer, and God only knows when it will be available again. Century makes something called a Centurion C39, but it gets horrible reviews, so I’m afraid of it. Arsenal makes a pistol, but it’s 5.56, which is not acceptable.

The muzzle flash from these things is supposed to be heinous, because the short barrel doesn’t give all the crap enough time to burn. It exits the barrel while it’s still on fire. I’ve seen tests that suggest the ugly cone-shaped Russian suppressor works very well.

If I get one of these things, I’ll stick a Chinese green laser on it. You can see the dot a hundred yards away on a bright day.

As of this writing, the Yugo is sold out, but it will come back soon. Obama is the best gun salesman the world has ever known.

Why go so crazy on a truck gun? Because I want to live, and half-measures do not work. As I said above, most trained shooters miss with multiple shots, even at close range. Why would an intelligent person invest in a weapon which is EXPECTED to provide that outcome? It’s like buying a seat belt made from defective cloth. It’s just plain stupid. The better question is, “Why are so many people satisfied with ordinary handguns?” The answer is ignorance. They see people do wonderful things with handguns…in MOVIES. Maybe they do well at the gun range, too. That doesn’t mean a pistol is a smart thing to have in your hand when one or more assailants are coming at you from twenty feet away, and you don’t have your $300 shooting glasses, your tactical jockstrap, or your special Cabela’s Sooper Marksman carbon-fiber range stool.

I think our notions of self-defense are contaminated by the idea that fighting is a game. In a game, you deliberately handicap yourself with rules and bad equipment. This is the main thing that distinguishes games from real life. Think how easy golf would be if you could use a scoped air gun to shoot the ball. In a defense situation, you don’t want rules and handicaps. You want to CHEAT, CHEAT, CHEAT. It’s not a game. You want every advantage.

I remember reading a book about some US soldiers who fought in Vietnam. It was nothing like the movies. In the movies, two guys will go into a town to kill fifty bad guys who have better weapons. They’ll walk right up the middle of the street and yell stupid things like, “LET’S PLAY.”

The soldiers in the book used to get together in superior numbers, using superior weapons, and slaughter the enemy in sneak attacks. If the enemy is on the toilet, great. Shoot him in the back, through the wall of the shack. If the enemy has three guys, show up with thirty and kill them in their bunks. Bomb them from the air before they can get to their weapons. Shoot from concealment, so they can’t fight back even if they want to. Determine the most likely path they’ll take to escape, and set up mines that rip them open when they run away. That’s the attitude you have to have about self-defense.

I’m not saying you’re supposed to go beyond what’s necessary to prevent a crime; I’m saying you have to go all-out, while you’re defending yourself legally. You should not limit yourself, the way you would in a sporting contest.

It’s not supposed to be sporting. Is it sporting when a criminal decides to kill or rape you, on the assumption that you can’t defend yourself? Get real. Going big is the correct practice.

Here’s what I think. When you’re attacked, and you’re trying to defend yourself with a Kel-Tec, you’ll definitely wish you had an AK on full auto, plus body armor. You’re not going to pat yourself on the back for bringing just enough gun.

If the gun is wildly overdone, and I never need it, no harm done. But if I need it and it’s not adequate, they’ll be putting me in the ground.

Years ago, a couple of sociopathic nuts made their own body armor and robbed a bank using automatic weapons. You can probably find footage on Youtube. The cops were totally lost. They shot these characters repeatedly, and the criminals just walked through the bullets and kept firing. It was horrible. They did incredible damage. But they showed the difference preparation makes.

Anyway, I think the AK pistol is a good choice, although using my VZ folder is not out of the question.

Pretty Brass; No Stench

You don’t get too many perks as a blogger. I remember when the Joss Whedon movie Serenity came out. I was invited to go to a special media sneak preview. Exciting! Then I read the fine print. They expected me to show up and wait in line, and if there were enough seats, they would let me see the movie.

Suddenly LESS exciting.

I’ve also received a couple of books for review. I turn those down now. I really don’t want to spend ten hours reading about Ivanka Trump’s tough road to success. I don’t want to wade through Pat Buchanan’s latest defense of Hitler. Saving money on a book you never wanted to buy in the first place is not a great blessing.

Not all blogger goodies are crap. A while back, I got a really decent offer. The folks at Lucky Gunner sent me an email and asked if I wanted to review free ammunition.

WHAT???

I guess you could say I was not totally opposed to the idea.

They asked me to name a few calibers I shot, and then they fired off two boxes of .38 Super, which is an expensive caliber. Not bad.

I got to shoot it last weekend, so here is my report.

The stuff they sent is made by Magtech. Here is a link, in case you want to buy a big pile of it: Magtech .38 Super +P at Luckygunner.com. It’s made in Brazil. I have never heard any negative things about the brand.

The brass looked nice, although I stupidly forgot to save it after I shot.

My friends and I went through 100 rounds of the ammunition. It seems perfectly fine. It doesn’t have the Russian stink, the casings are brass, and it fires reliably. The sad thing about an ammunition review is that you’re not likely to have much to say if it works well.

I did have two rounds which failed to eject. I am wondering if the rim is on the small side. For some reason, the ejector didn’t get a grip. But the other 98 worked fine. I was shooting a Colt .38 Super (government model) in bright stainless. I don’t know if these guns have ejector issues, but I tend to doubt it, since Colt is pretty much the iconic 1911.

I didn’t test it with a rest. I shoot to learn, not to see what the gun can do.

My shooting was not great. I don’t blame the ammunition. A long layoff, plus distracting conversation, led to problems with my trigger pull. Still, anyone coming within a hundred feet of me would have been in the zone of certain death, barring an ejection problem.

I shot a photo of the target, before I started wandering all over it with Mozambique drills.

That’s from seven yards. In my defense, I will say that the air conditioning made the target flap, but not enough to explain everything.

Kudos to Lucky Gunner, for having the class to send pricey .38 Super instead of a cheesy box of Brown Bear 9mm with cardboard casings.

Okay, they’re not really cardboard. I like Russian ammo just fine, but it’s nice to have real brass without that funky post-Soviet smell.

Wild Week

I always ask God to do impressive things so I will have a compelling testimony, and then he does it, and I end up with too much to write about.

I guess there are worse types of frustration I could be dealing with.

Week or two back, I heard from the wife of a blogging friend. Her son was sort of becalmed in life, and he wanted to get in touch with God. It “happened” to be the week my church was putting on a big play and having a 5 a.m. men’s meeting. I took him to the play, he met people who reached out to him, and he decided he wanted to go to the meeting. He also wanted to go to church on Sunday. When I texted his stepdad on Sunday to get him moving, the stepdad “happened” to misunderstand, and he ended up sending the young man AND his mother. Now they’re both going to church, and the young man is part of my prayer group, and he’s a church volunteer.

On that Sunday, I was working security, and someone radioed to tell me a guy was asking to see the pastor and claiming to be a friend of his. I had them send him to me. He turned out to be a Messianic Jew from Israel. His name is Eliron. Just “happened” to be. I lived in Israel for four months. I’ve been around Jewish people all my life. I have connections with other Messianics. And this guy “happened” to get sent to me.

There’s more to it. He knows the pastor’s sister and brother-in-law. He met them in Israel, at a Sukkot celebration. This happened while I was celebrating Sukkot with the Messianics in Boca Raton. Coincidence! He moved to Miami, and for financial reasons, he had to live with his Orthodox dad. One day he was talking to the pastor’s sister, and he told her where he lived. She told him he just “happened” to be five minutes from my church. Yeah, okay. Nothing strange about THAT.

He came to me at a time when I “happened” to be trying to set up a gun range trip with the Messianics. We had been hoping to do it for months. It came together the same week he showed up.

At church, I told him to get my contact info from the pastor so we could hook up. Naturally, it turned out that the pastor didn’t really know him, and he didn’t give him my number. But we “happened” to have a volunteer meeting last week, and at that meeting, a guy who knows a guy who knows Eliron showed up and “happened” to hear me say I was trying to locate Eliron. Fifteen minutes later, I had a text containing Eliron’s number.

We needed to work out a plan for lunch in Boca. I “happened” to invite two friends who are professional chefs. They took care of everything, free of charge. I didn’t have to lift a finger.

We got to Boca and went to the shabbat service, and the speaker “happened” to be Dan Juster, who is practically the Messianic Pope. He mentioned one of his friends by name. “Happens” to be a personal acquaintance of Eliron’s.

We went to lunch after the service, and we had so much fun, we never made it to the gun range. Now we have an excuse to go back.

When we were leaving the service, a lady waved at Eliron in the parking lot, and they started talking. She was an Israeli Messianic. Just “happened” to be there. They talked and exchanged info, so now he has another good contact. I thought this was important, so I shut the truck down and waited. A lady I “happened” to sit in front of in the service came up, asked me my name, and started telling me things she believed God had shown her about me and his plans for me. We invited her to my church, which is about 80% Haitian. “Coincidentally,” it turned out she was from Haiti. So she’s going to come and visit.

Now a former Alvin Ailey dancer at my church is talking about taking a team up to the synagogue, and people from the synagogue want to visit. I don’t know if our church’s leadership will get involved, but it will happen.

I’m hoping to go back to Boca this weekend or next weekend, with more people.

Today I’m enjoying my personal “shabbat.” Life is always nuts on the weekend, so on Monday I decelerate.

I’d like to say I’ll keep posting about all the stuff God does in my life, but the truth is, I’ll be lucky to get 10% of it written.