Guns Answer All Questions

I think I finally figured out what to get my father for Father’s Day. This issue has driven me insane for weeks, but I have arrived at a pretty good answer. I’m going to get him a carry permit! How can you beat that? He keeps saying he wants one, but he hasn’t done anything about it. Miami has a well-known range that supposedly has quality instruction, so I plan to sign him up.

For a while I thought it would be fun to get him an M1 rifle. But a thousand bucks is a little steep for Father’s Day. More problematic: it’s always a bad idea to buy someone a present you would like to have for yourself. To provide an exaggerated example, when your aunt Susie lives in an iron lung and you’re a triathlete, you don’t buy her a racing bicycle. It looks bad.

I used to get him good cigars and expensive brandy, but I have begun to think those are questionable gifts for a Christian to give. A carry permit poses no ethical problem. After all, Jesus told the disciples to buy swords, and His followers carried them in His presence.

Actually, it’s kind of strange, how many ostensibly sound Christians love to shoot. Makes me wonder if there is some kind of divine purpose to it. And Christianity is big among the armed forces, too. The Bible predicts a lot of armed conflict in the future, and I have never seen any indication that when these conflicts occur, Christians or Jews are expected to disarm and allow themselves to be massacred. I don’t think the admonition to turn the other cheek means you have to allow your family or your country to be subjected to slaughter.

I need to figure out my moral position on cigars. There is no doubt whatsoever that using cigarettes and smokeless tobacco is immoral. Tobacco delivered by those means is an addictive drug, and it’s also abusive to the body. An occasional cigar is almost certainly harmless, judging by statistics. But is it okay to promote tobacco use in one form, when the other forms cause so much misery? Cigarette smokers are deeply affected by example and the desire to fit in; that’s why they become smokers in the first place. No one does it for the wonderful taste of cigarettes. Maybe using tobacco in front of cigarette smokers and potential cigarette smokers is wrong.

Maybe the answer is to smoke what I have and quit. I can’t remember my last cigar, anyway. The nicotine was ruining my sleep, so I had to stop.

As for brandy, I think the morality of giving it as a gift depends on the nature of the person to whom you give it. Over the last couple of years, I have cut way back on drinking. I can make a fifth of whiskey last months. I have been trying to make myself have one drink every day, and I usually forget. But for other people, booze is a challenge.

I think a permit is the way to go. Now I’m in the clear until his birthday.

Indoor Shooting the Next Step?

Today’s shooting did not go well. However I was at a gun range, in the greatest country in the world, in a red state, blasting away with two beautiful pistols. So it was still a good day.

I started out with the .45 at 50 feet. I felt good about my shooting. Last week’s big lesson was to watch the trigger pull. This week I tried to make my sight picture extremely consistent. Things went well, although the wind was rocking my target a bit. I had three duds that would not chamber. I am still the world’s worst reloader. From now on, when I reload for my semi-automatics, I plan to keep the gun barrels by the press and chamber every round before approving it. That should help me avoid chambering problems at the range.

Here are 47 shots at 50 feet.

I got out the .38 Super, and things went a bit better. I continue to suspect that this gun is more accurate than the Smith & Wesson. However, I had to quit after 20 shots because I had another damn undercharge. I have no idea how this happened. When I get one of these, the bullet goes about a quarter of an inch up the barrel and sits there, and the only way to get it out is with a dowel. So the .38 went back in the box. This was probably a round I loaded before I got the press mounted correctly.

There was a guy there with a 9mm, shooting nearly as well as I did. I was glad to see him. When everyone else shoots badly, it makes you feel great about what you’re doing, so you don’t try as hard.

I went back to the .45, and damned if the wind didn’t kick up and turn my target sideways. And the target was rocking back and forth in a four-inch arc, which drove me nearly crazy. After half a box, I had to quit and wait for the line to be called safe so I could fix the target. Between the motion and the effect it had on my concentration, I ended up with pretty big group.

The target holders at seven yards are better than the ones at 50 feet, so I moved the target closer for my remaining 25 rounds. I noticed something odd. Shooting at 50 feet made seven yards easier.

A cop showed up and took the spot next to me. He was shooting a 9mm Glock 17L, which is the 6″ target version of the 17. His shots covered an area about a foot wide at 50 feet, which is not great, but it’s much better than most people at the range can do. And he was doing a weird exercise which must be a cop thing, moving the barrel back and forth over a four-inch distance and then firing.

The target gun was clearly a waste of time. I have the 3″ Glock 26, and it shoots just fine at 50 feet.

Jim from SOTW gave me some advice on revolvers this week, and it got me thinking about a blue 5″ Smith & Wesson 27-2. This is a nice revolver about 30 years old. Supposedly better than the current production. It’s like a Dirty Harry gun, except for the caliber and length. That got me thinking about Dirty Harry, and that got me to thinking about the way Clint Eastwood’s .44 Magnum sounded in those movies. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they really sounded like that?

At least Eastwood’s movies were realistic when it came to accuracy. I’m still irritated with Mel Gibson over “have a nice day,” which is physically impossible with anything other than a rifle.

I’m not sure whether I’m still improving or not. When the wind is blowing so hard your target turns completely sideways, you probably aren’t getting optimal results that reflect your ability. But I enjoyed myself, and even if I’m not getting better, I’m definitely not getting worse.

And More Reloading Antics

South Florida is finally having what may be a decent gun show. I went to a show a while back, and it wasn’t that great. But the Suncoast gun show is coming to Fort Lauderdale this weekend, and I may check it out. If what I read is correct, it’s supposed to be bigger.

The show I went to last month was small, and I didn’t see any great bargains. I would love to pick up some .357 and .38 Super brass and maybe check out some old .357 pistols or 1911s.

While I was researching the show, I found an article from 2003. The Suncoast show was in the Tampa area, and dealers were talking about things like MREs and hazmat gear. We were really worried back then. Not as badly as they were right after 911, but much more than they are today. People were going to gun dealers to buy things like gas masks. I had forgotten, and I’m sure you have, too. No wonder we’ve all turned our backs on George Bush and pretended we never endorsed the decision to go to war. We can’t remember what it was like to be afraid of terrorism on our own soil, effected with WMDs produced by the Hussein regime. We were very nervous back then.

That story underscores the importance of gun dealers. Sooner or later, there will probably be large-scale terrorism in the US. Who will you turn to when you want to prepare? Uncle Sam? The same outfit that couldn’t even equip our soldiers with body armor? If the government couldn’t put armor on thousands of soldiers to keep their arms and legs from being blown off, it won’t be able to get millions of people the things they need to protect themselves from attack and infrastructure disruption. Most of us won’t get what we need. But the ones who do will get it from gun dealers.

And of course we’re trying to drive them out of business.

I learned something new about reloading today. If you lower your belling die so it opens the cases more, you have to lower the seating/crimping die. Otherwise you get cases that are too big around up by the bullet, and they won’t chamber. I had to run about 40 rounds through the press a second time. Fortunately I didn’t have to take them apart.

The new bench top is more rigid than the old one, so I’m not having as much trouble with the mount flexing. Guess I’ll head for the range and see how my handiwork pays off.

The Usual

Someone asked me for my hummus recipe. I’ll tell you what I’ve got so far.

Yesterday I glanced at some online recipes. You can probably guess how much I trust them. I did my own thing. I wrote about the results, and I inquired about tahini, which I had not yet added to the recipe. Johnathan said tahini was essential, so this morning I added some, and it did the trick. It adds a peculiar bitterness you can’t get from lemon juice or vinegar. He was absolutely right.

The results are good enough to post, but you may be able to do a lot better. I think I’m going to add more garlic next time. The reason this is worth posting isn’t that the recipe is so great. It’s that prepared hummus is obscenely expensive, and this stuff is nearly free.

INGREDIENTS

2 (around 14 oz. each, I guess) cans garbanzo beans, drained
juice of 2 lemons–buy 3 just in case
1 tsp. cumin
4 cloves garlic
3 tbsp. olive oil
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. tahini (not prepared sauce)
1/2 tsp. paprika

I also added a ton of Crystal hot sauce, which I can still barely taste. I’ll bet I added a quarter of a cup.

Toss this stuff into a food processor and blend until it looks like hummus. Save the water from the canned beans until the end, and add it judiciously if you have to. The mixture may be dry. I’ll bet cooking your own beans would make it better.

If I had it to do over again, I think I’d omit the Crystal and toss in part of a habanero, or maybe–better–three or four fresh cayennes. I don’t know if the paprika serves any purpose. It’s just ground-up red peppers. It’s a nice thing to dust on the top of a mound of hummus, with a little olive oil and a couple of black olives, before you serve it.

Johnathan says hummus should be fresh. He knows more about it than I do. My plan is to make it once a week and eat it for five days. If it’s not as good as fresh, I’ll survive. It sure beats oatmeal. I think he also said the cumin was not standard, but I like it.

Here is what I had for breakfast today. I cut a quarter of a big sweet red pepper in strips. Did the same with an entire carrot and a quarter of a big cucumber. Meant to add a tomato, but I forgot. I put three globs on my plate: sour cream, cottage cheese, and hummus. Added two boiled eggs. I tossed a big whole-wheat pita on it and made myself an iced tea. This is pretty much what I used to eat for breakfast and dinner on the kibbutz, except that they served white toast. I think it’s better than oatmeal, which is carb soup. And it’s better than the five eggs I used to eat, because it’s lower in cholesterol, for which my gall bladder will hopefully thank me. You don’t really need a fork. That’s what the pita is for.

I find that if I eat too much pita with the meal, I feel bad afterward. Damn carbs.

I’m thinking I should slice up carrots, cucumbers, and peppers every Sunday night and cram them in spoilage-resistant containers for the rest of the week. That will give me a good head start and make breakfast easier. They have new chemical-impregnated containers you can buy, which are supposed to keep vegetables fresher.

I don’t use low-fat dairy stuff. It’s disgusting.

It may sound crazy, me eating vegetables. A lot of people don’t know how much Southerners love vegetables, whether cooked or fresh. My mother used to make forty-mile round trips to Homestead, Florida, just to get tomatoes and onions and corn. I remember watching a prosecuting attorney up in Kentucky, telling my grandfather about his home-canned collard greens. You would have thought he was talking about canned diamonds. Southerners get as excited about good vegetables as Yankees do about great desserts. Very strange.

You know what I miss? Falafel. The falafel they make in Afula, Israel is worth handing the country over to the Arabs for. Nearly. But it’s a huge pain to make. I think I made it too hard by using way too much oil. I’ll bet I could come up with a recipe that would stomp restaurant falafel, but I’d still be unable to duplicate the giant assortment of condiments falafel joints in Israel use. Oh, man. Falafel with ground-up habaneros in it? Are you kidding me? That would rock.

In other news, I got my Caldwell HAMMR machine rest put together. Sort of. This is like a Ransom rest, only cheaper. It must be fairly good; some magazine writers admit they use it. It turns out you have to attach a piece of wood to the bottom of it, and then you clamp the wood to your shooting bench. Oh, no. Oh, woe is me. Work. The thing I dread. Oh, well. I get a chance to fire up the table saw. I have an old piece of plywood (sign from my realtor days) that I plan to use. What’s the best way to seal up the edges of a piece of 3/4″ plywood so splinters don’t shed?

I don’t know yet whether Trail Glades will let me use this thing. I plan to set it up and start shooting, and they can raise hell if they want.

In addition to gluttony, I am trying to get a grip on laziness these days. I feel like it’s sneaking up on me. I should be somewhat more active than I am. There are things I’ve been putting off. I used to have this idea that refraining from sinning all that much was all I had to do to be a good Christian, but now I realize you have to be conscious of all of your weaknesses, and you have to try to overcome them

I read from the book of Luke last night, in The Complete Jewish Bible. The editor says the Acts of the Apostles follows from Luke as though it were a second volume. I didn’t know that.

One of the interesting ideas in the commentary is that we are too hard on the Pharisees. The editor, David Stern, believes that scriptural criticisms leveled at the Pharisees are aimed at specific groups and individuals, not the Pharisees as a whole. And that makes sense, because the Bible says some of them supported Jesus. One of them gave Jesus his own tomb. And supposedly, they were reformers, and Jesus may have been associated with them. I think things like this concern Stern, because Jewish behavior in the New Testament has been used as an excuse for anti-Semitism and the ridiculous “replacement theology.”

I don’t really worry about it, because I don’t think I was put here to punish people who offend God.

Hope I remember how to use that saw.

Cheaper, Faster, Better-Smelling

As reported some time ago, I ordered two cleaning products so I could compare them to the magnificent but expensive Hornady One Shot lube and cleaner. They arrived this week, and I just tried them. The products? Break-Free Powder Blast and Sharp Shoot R Flush Out.

Powder Blast appears to be a petroleum product similar to brake cleaner or Gun Scrubber. I don’t think it has any lubricant in it, although I am too lazy to go look. Flush Out is citrus-based. It is supposed to be a degreaser, but it claims to leave a lubricant film behind. I usually think of degreasers as products that leave absolutely nothing behind, but I guess it’s possible to degrease while leaving oil behind. I didn’t see anything on the Flush Out label about removing powder residue, but I thought I’d give it a try anyway.

The verdict? I am not positive, but I think Powder Blast worked a little better. They both worked very well. Definitely a better choice than spending three times as much on Hornady. On the whole, I prefer Flush Out, because it’s made from citrus. The other stuff is a little scary, and you can’t clean a gun without getting it all over your hands. Some of it hit a plastic vegetable container in the garbage, and the container melted. I used the sprays and the Boresnake, and then I followed with Liquid Wrench spray dry lube, and I was done. Except for cleaning off the excess with alcohol.

I think from now on, it’s Flush Out and Liquid Wrench for me.

Sins Become Apparent With Distance

It looks like shooting at 50 feet instead of 7 yards is a good idea. I learned from it. I learned that I have no idea how to pull a trigger.

I shot 150 rounds. Fifty from the .45, fifty from the .38 Super, and another fifty from the .45. Unfortunately I forgot my cell phone, so I couldn’t take photos. So I took the last target home and took a photo.

This is a second-quality Caldwell target I got from Midway for about half price. I could not find any defects. Sweet buy.

I’m very happy with that. There are flyers, but the core seems tighter than what I’ve been doing. I experimented with different trigger pulls today, and it seems like it helped.

I was trying to get away from a ridiculously gradual pull which caused the gun to go off completely unexpectedly. But the results were spotty. You can see some wild .38 shots off the orange in this photo, which probably demonstrate my point. Going back the gradual pull sucked things into a smaller area. I think. If I’m right, I should be able to repeat this performance next week without nearly as many flyers.

I believe it may be time to spend a little cash and get some instruction. I may check out that school in Frostproof.

Last week I had problems with .38 Super rounds failing to chamber, so this week I took the remaining ammunition out, cycled every round to see if it chambered, and got rid of the duds. Then I made new cartridges to replace them. I still had a few failures toward the end of the shoot. I suspect this is caused by one of two things. Either heat makes the chamber tighter, or debris does.

This taught me something new about reloading. The sizing die has to come down until it touches the shell plate, so as much of the case as possible is resized. I believe my problem was caused by cases that had bulgy lower ends because the sizing die didn’t go down all the way.

I had adjusted the sizing die to leave maybe 3/16 of an inch alone, because I had had a bad experience with the seating die mashing the case-eject wire. The seating die had been too low, so I somehow got the idea that the casing die AND the sizing die had to be kept up off the plate. And that was wrong.

The .38 Super scared me to death today. The first five rounds went through three holes. That thing may be super accurate. If I can learn how to pull a trigger, maybe I’ll find out.

My dad got me a Caldwell HAMMR machine rest for my birthday. If the range people will allow it, I want to test my 1911s with it. I suspect that the .38 is more accurate than the .45. Proof would give the Colt worshipers a big thrill.

I am so tempted to buy that used Special Combat carry model. If I get into combat shooting, that would be a super cheap gun to fix up. Although I guess .45 is not the optimal caliber.

That’s today’s big news.

When They Won’t Buy What I Want

This is horrible. Mike still hasn’t chosen a 1911 to buy, and today he is asking me about GLOCKS.

Oh, man. Not that. Anything but that.

I have Glocks. Wonderful guns for self-defense. Accurate. Easy to shoot. Durable. Reliable. Light. They strip in five seconds. But man are they boring. And as heirlooms they’re about as exciting as shoehorns. “Here, Butch, this is your dad’s boxy, dull-finished plastic gun, which he bought because he watched too many Vanilla Ice videos. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal…”

This can’t be happening. I was counting on him getting a sweet new 1911 for me to shoot.

I found a sweet used Colt Special Combat carry model for the price of a new Dan Wesson. Mike thinks it’s ugly. I’m tempted to buy it myself, even though it has fixed sights. I’m not a Colt lover, but I hear nothing but good things about the Special Combat models. And if I take care of it, it should hold its value or appreciate. Does anybody out there know how big a deal it is to put adjustable sights on an old Colt with fixed sights? I might want to do that, if I buy it. If it had Novak sights, I could screw adjustable Novaks right into the same mount. But it has the old-style rear sight, which is just a bar.

I guess messing with it would hurt the collectible value.

Mike is all hot for a Glock 17L, which is the 6″-barrel competition version of the 9mm. Doesn’t do much for me, but I shoot extremely well with the 3″ Glock 26, so I would guess that the 17L is like a laser.

I think his son put him up to this.

Has this ever happened to you? You help a friend shop for a gun, you find something he should buy, and then you end up buying it yourself because he won’t listen to you?

He asked if the Glock was an okay gun to learn on. I think I gave him a complex the other day, shooting better than he did. He has been shooting twice since the 1990s, and he shot better than nearly everyone at the range, and he feels like a failure. Arrrgh.

I was wondering last night; does anyone collect Glocks? Is there any point? Wouldn’t it be like collecting cinderblocks or ping pong balls? Aren’t they all nearly the same? “Here’s my 1992 Glock 17, in black plastic with a dull finish. And here’s my 2004 Glock 22. In black plastic with a dull finish. No, wait. That’s the 17.” Ahh. What works of art.

Range time later.

These are Today’s Themes

I gritted my teeth and watched Hillary Clinton for a while last night, hoping–I know this is crazy–that she might do the humble, honest thing and make a short concession speech.

I know. I know. I am an incurable idealist.

After maybe fifteen minutes of what was clearly a Bizarro victory speech, I had to change the channel. While observing politics, I have seen cheerful losers. I have seen gracious losers. Until last night, I had never seen a loser who was cheerful and gracious because she couldn’t tell the difference between defeat and victory. It is as though Al Gore laid his hands on her and transferred his special spirit of craziness.

Only a liberal could be so unacquainted with the concept of rules that she would persist, at this point, in thinking she was the nominee. You have to give liberals credit. We give up when we know we’re wrong. Liberals get back up and yell “‘Tis but a scratch!” Imagine playing Monopoly with a person like that. Every game would end only after a costly lawsuit, with David Boies arguing that everyone knows you get money when you land on Free Parking.

I guess it’s good for Republicans. John McCain can sit around and wait while Hillsy and Snobama eat each other alive. I haven’t contributed a dime to the campaign, simply because I haven’t seen any need to. If McCain gets the money now, he’ll blow it on ads that will run way too early. He needs to wait until the Democrats have a candidate the public takes relatively seriously.

I am getting comments about the Colt Python revolver. One commenter seems to think I own one. I don’t. I was Windows-shopping out of boredom, and that’s how I came across the Python. I knew it existed, but I hadn’t really read much about it until yesterday.

I was complaining because my Googling brought a disturbing revelation: Pythons are too weak to stand up to real .357 ammunition. One reader says Ruger is the answer. I know I’ll catch it from Ruger owners, but some of those guns are a bit frumpy. Even the grips are awful. In fact, I think that’s the main problem. Why didn’t Ruger pay an industrial designer five hundred bucks to pretty up the plans before they went into production?

I guess they look pretty good once you get new grips, and quality makes up for a certain amount of ugliness. Hey, I own Glocks.

A GP100 is a tempting item. Available for under $500. Very tough. Accurate. I think I paid around $650 for my 6″ Smith. You can get an old Security Six for like $300. Some people claim the Security Six is better than the GP100. Don’t ask me. No idea. Here’s a GP100.

That one comes with Hogue grips. Same ones I have on the Smith, I think. I don’t like them–I think they feel wobbly–but they look better than Ruger’s own grips.

Here is what would be fun. Buy a 6″ GP100 and have it ported and shortened to 5″. And I don’t see anything on Ruger’s site about an idiotic internal lock on the gun (like the one Smith shoves down your throat). I found a site where some guy shows you how to do your own Ruger trigger job. That might be fun.

Is it okay to have a blued gun ported, or will the gases eat the barrel’s finish? I know Mag-na-port will do it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea.

Incidentally, it looks like Cabela’s is a much better place to look for used guns than Gunbroker.

I don’t know why I’m writing about this trivial stuff, since today is WINN-DIXIE EMAIL AD DAY. Let’s see what I can buy with my Customer Reward card.

Oh, man! They’re having a “MEGA-MEAT SALE!”

Pork chops (assorted), buy one, get one. Same deal for boneless chicken breast.

Drumsticks, 99 cents per pound. Wish I knew how to get the “cents” character out of this keyboard.

Center-cut pork chops, buy one, get one.

Wings, $1.79.

Hickory Sweet bacon, buy one, get one. This is good bacon.

Lamb chops, buy one, get one. Oh, yes. It may be time for lamb stew.

They also have boneless top sirloin for cheap. If that’s the same thing as palomilla steak, I am in business.

Sure Looks Like It

Og says the Colt Python will not suit his manly shooting needs. I put a photo of the Python up, before I learned of its shortcomings.

I was reading about the Python today, and it seemed like many gun enthusiasts were so excited about it, their zeal was pretty much sexual. It was worse than Chris Matthews and Barack Obama. They practically squealed. One noted guru called it “the Mercedes-Benz of revolvers.”

Funny thing, saying that about a gun which, I later learned, isn’t strong enough to put up with prolonged shooting of real-world loads. The Python has a wimpy frame. Seems like a major design flaw to me. Would you want to worry about the size of your bullets every time you shot your expensive pistol? I sure wouldn’t.

Weirder still, Colt used to make a “budget” .357 which was actually tougher than the Python. I am referring to the mighty King Cobra, which has the guts of the .44 Magnum Anaconda. Apparently, the King Cobra was not as slick and polished as the Python, so it sold for less. And it’s cheaper, used. But the up side is that it won’t shake itself apart when you use it for the thing it was designed to do.

Seems to me–I am guessing–that the smart Colt revolver buy, for a person who actually shoots, is a King Cobra. If you want it pretty, you spend three hundred bucks having it customized. Buy it in stainless, get a trigger job, crown the barrel, put grips on it, have it refinished, and be done with it. Or you could get a Python and shoot quasi-squib 38 Special loads. Or just polish it real nice and put it in your safe. No way do I want a Python now. If it can’t stand up to real ammunition, it’s junk. Or…let’s be nice…it’s an excellent .38 Special, mislabeled at the factory. A marvelous, attractive pistol. For old ladies.

And for some reason, people are paying a thousand dollars apiece for used ones. I guess when someone tells you he paid a grand for a gun that won’t do its job, you know he’s a collector, not a shooter.

My Smith & Wesson 686 Plus is supposedly tougher than a Python, but the 8-shot Model 627 has a heavier frame and ought to last for eternity. And it has that sweet 5″ barrel. A 6″ barrel is heavy. A 4″ barrel has a shorter sight radius than 5″. I think 5″ is the way to go. It’s just a feeling.

Colt worship is really something to behold. If it can make you ignore a gun with an inadequate frame, it must be pretty powerful.

I am Perspiring

Colt Python Elite, 4″ barrel, blue!

Nice

Don’t mind me.

A++++ GREAT ONLINE AUCTION SERVICE!!!!!!

I Ebayed myself a Hornady Reloading Manual, and when I went to leave feedback, I saw that Ebay had a new policy: no more negative or neutral feedback from sellers. Sounds unfair at first, but it’s probably a good thing. A lot of jerks were putting up notices threatening to leave negative feedback for trivial reasons. And buyers are much more likely to be cheated.

I’ll bet a lot of creeps are running for cover now. See ya. Straighten up your act or be gone.

I’ve accidentally bought things I couldn’t pay for with Paypal. I never do that intentionally. A demand for a money order is like a big disclaimer reading “I do not want to be accountable when I cheat you.”

Paypal is stupid, too. I had to get their credit card in order to avoid giving them my bank information, and they have their system rigged up so it defaults to their card. You have to go through several screens to put payment on your preferred card. I prefer to avoid using my Paypal card, ever. But I have screwed up twice.

Here is a question for reloaders. I will never have to pay for ammunition boxes, because the trash cans at the range contain a nice selection. But I can see how it would be nice to have something a little tougher and more elegant. What would you do? Looks like two bucks is a good price for hundred-round boxes, and I’ll need five in each caliber.

A commenter is poking me for owing a Smith & Wesson 1911. I should take macro photos of the obvious manufacturing defects on my Custom Shop Colt and post them. I have two Smith & Wesson guns, and I plan to buy more, because they’re magnificent. I wouldn’t buy a new Colt unless I got to look it over carefully first. My Colt is going back for repairs, and I have to pay for shipping, killing the good deal I shopped to get. The Smiths? They go to the range.

More

Forgot to mention this. Speaking of 1911s, Michael Bane has a dandy. He participated in something called a Wild Bunch shooting match. If it’s not obvious, the participants are limited to weapons consistent with those used in the 1969 movie, The Wild Bunch. That includes 1911 pistols. His gun is a 1911A1 made by Remington Rand, and his father carried it in World War Two! How would you like to have an heirloom like that?

I don’t know how a service gun ended up property of a civilian. I think I won’t ask.

Provincial city-born gun-phobics in the Northeast and on the West Coast do not understand that guns are like jewelry. Men pass them down the way women pass down wedding rings. When I was writing about gun safes, readers told me about their irreplaceable guns. Try and explain that to a narrow-minded denizen of Greenwich Village or Malibu.

If you have an heirloom gun, send a photo and I’ll post it. I have a few.

…Tred Barta

There are a lot of good reasons for having Mike as a friend. One is that every phone call brings a complete surprise.

Tonight Mike says he intends to go shoot mooses, and he wants me to help.

As I have noted before, Mike lives in New Hampshire, which is a couple of hundred miles north of Canada. I think. And they have mooses. So naturally, every man in his right mind wants to kill them. Mike is no exception. He said something about how it works. You buy a ticket or enter the Moose Murder Raffle or something, and then they clear you to whack the moose. Unless of course it’s a “made moose,” in which case, you have to go straight to the Don.

Here’s one possible obstacle to the plan. Mike doesn’t own a single firearm. He owns three Dan Wesson barrels, but some crackhead in Ocala Florida has the gun itself, which is now the ultimate snubnose. Every hunting expert except Tred Barta agrees: when hunting mooses, a firearm is a good thing to have. Barta falls on møøses from the branches of trees, naked except for a pair of pink bunny slippers and a coat of Kiwi shoe polish, and kills them by squeezing their carotid arteries with his thighs.

He wasn’t able to sell the video to the Versus Network, but a certain segment of the German population eats it up.

I was thinking it might be incredibly cool to waste mooses with the Desert Eagle. Finally, a legitimate use for it.

Mike’s theory was that I would let him use my K31, while I would rely on the highly questionable Romak III. I still don’t own a hunting rifle. I have a 16-gauge shotgun which accepts rifled slugs, but I have no idea whether I can hit anything with it or not.

Here’s another possible obstacle. Neither one of us knows a damn thing about hunting. The most rewarding type of hunting I’ve done involved sneaking up on rabbits and blowing their tiny brains out with a .22. Other than that, I have done things like 1. waiting unsuccessfully for foxes to walk by, 2. waiting unsuccessfully for groundhogs to go after my grandmother’s garden, and 3. waiting unsuccessfully for squirrels to come out where I could shoot them. I’ve also wiped out entire communities of blackbirds and killed an entire generation of lizards with a BB gun. I think Mike has shot some pigs and turkeys. Not sure. And I shot a fine bass with a deer rifle. But neither one of us is ready for the Outdoor Network.

Mike pointed out that a dead moose weighs about 3,000 pounds, give or take, which is considerably more than either of us can carry. So he’s wondering what we’re supposed to do when the moose kacks. Is that really our problem? Can’t we just leave it on the ground, to molder its way into the ecosystem and become a nourishing meal for Gaia? Isn’t slaughter the whole point? Do we really have to eat the moose?

I know what you’re thinking. This would make us wasteful and unethical hunters, and everyone would despise us. But you only think that because I haven’t mentioned the crucial part of the plan: we wouldn’t tell anyone we did it.

If we cut it up and keep it, where do we put it? Especially me. There is no way 1500 pounds of dead moose will fit in a carry-on. And if we put it on the hood of Mike’s Prius, the front tires will just pop. And if it does run, it will strain the car so much, we’ll have to stop every hundred feet to wind it back up.

Is it okay for a couple of guys who shoot well yet have no other qualifications to go out and play moose sniper, or is it a shameful, presumptuous, disgraceful so on and so forth?

Naturally, I agreed to do it. There was never any question. I just want to know if that was a stupid thing to do. Not that that would change anything.

Speaking of Tred Barta, I have become completely addicted to his show. Even though he picks up absolutely every piece of excrement he sees–even those left by his crew–and fondles it and pets it and holds it right up to his face, and then he eats sandwiches without washing his hands. And the other day he did a nude scene. You think I’m kidding. They had to censor it. Except in Germany. Where they saved it for sweeps week.

I honestly think I would rather hunt with this guy than anyone else in the universe. He is so far beyond insane there isn’t even a word for it. And he’s proud of it. And he hates hippies.

You can turn on any hunting show and watch people do things correctly. Only Barta will shoot a furious grizzly in the face with a bow, from like six feet away. Only Barta will butcher a moose with a chainsaw. Or, wait, maybe that’s the way everyone does it.

I would kill to be this guy’s idiot sidekick, just for the laughs. “Tred, when you were applying shoe polish to your buttocks, you missed a spot.” “Thanks, Steve. If the moose had seen that, our whole day would have been wasted.”

Maybe Mike and I could have a show. Steve and Mike Fail to Kill a Moose. Steve and Mike Fail to Kill a Bear. Steve and Mike Forget the Ammunition and Have Their Clothes Pecked Off by Angry Marsh Hens. Whatever those are. I’m just brainstorming here. Let’s not get hung up on specifics.

As always, I await and treasure your input.

Weird Gun of the Day

I went over to Michael Bane’s blog to see what was going on, and I ended up at Shootinggallery.tv…whoops, no, Downrange.tv, where he has videos posted. One featured a very interesting newish gun: the Taurus Judge. This thing is a 5-shot revolver that will chamber .45 LC and .410 shotgun ammunition. And you can get it with a 3″ barrel. Costs about $500.

People always overestimate how much a shotgun pattern will spread. They don’t fling shot in all directions. Mr. Bane shoots the Judge at what appears to be 7 yards [further reading suggests it may have been more like 7 feet], and it turns out the pattern is the size of a human face. Which is not a coincidence. As I understand it, the beauty of this gun is that it’s harder to miss your assailant. The bad part? It’s not great at long ranges unless you use pistol ammunition. But as the Taurus rep in the video points out, explaining a long-range “defensive” shot to a non-Taurus-made judge could be hard.

Another benefit: a low risk of overpenetration. So you are less likely to shoot your neighbors. Unless that’s what you’re trying to do.

It’s an interesting idea. I don’t know if I agree that there is a great need for a spray-and-pray gun for bedroom distances. If you shoot well, you’re not going to miss at that range, and if you shoot badly–I judge from watching people who can’t hit a damn thing–increasing the hit zone to a diameter of seven inches isn’t going to help too awful much. A bad shooter can miss the target entirely at 7 yards. Mike and I shot the other day, and he told me the guy next to him actually scared him. He was a Miami kid who seemed to have an attitude, which would explain why he figured he didn’t need to be taught how to shoot. He shot so close to the frame, Mike was afraid he was going to catch a rebound.

Look cool, act tough, shoot like a girl. That mystifies me. All the tattoos in the world won’t clean up a mangled target, which is the only thing the other folks at the range will notice.

To get back to the Judge, the positives seem undeniable. It’s a legal sawed-off shotgun, it does more damage than a .357 or .45 ACP, and supposedly, it’s not all that loud. That’s a big plus in a closed space like a car or house.

I’m not in love with the idea of five shots between me and death. I would not want to shoot five times, find that an attacker was still a threat, and then have to break open a revolver and reload. And I feel sure that even if I shot with one hand, no aiming, I could hit a person ten feet away over 90% of the time with my 11-shot Glock. Also, if half of your pellets are in the perp’s face, where do the other half go? Nowhere bad, you hope.

It’s tough to figure out how to defend your house. An automatic shotgun with a laser would be great, but to get any kind of magazine capacity, you have to buy something weird. And the noise and flash would be pretty awful, unless you had a .410. A pistol can put 15-17 consecutive shots at your disposal, but most people can’t shoot, so does that really help?

Saiga makes a 12-gauge shotgun based on the AK-47, and that would be great, if they scaled it down to .410 and kept the big magazine. I have read the magazines go as big as 11 rounds. Unfortunately, they scaled it down and cut the magazine to four rounds. I fail to see the appeal.

I shoot primarily because I like to shoot. Even if the hippies managed to fix it so we couldn’t have guns to protect ourselves, I would still want to shoot, even if I had to go to a ridiculous club and check guns out of a locker. But self-defense is the primary purpose of guns, and I think about it.

I just heard from Mike. It looks like he’s finally going to make a choice. I think he’s getting a Dan Wesson Pointman 7. I feel like I’ve been at the hospital for a month, waiting for a baby to be born. I don’t care if he buys a gun that came in a box of Cracker Jacks. I just want him to buy something so I can go on with my life. And so I can shoot it.

New Bullets!

So far, Oregon Trail has really impressed me. I get great accuracy with their bullets, I have not had leading problems, the price is cheap, and they get stuff to you fast. I ordered some .357 bullets on Thursday, and they’re here. They were having a sale. I suppose some day I’ll go completely insane, as contrasted with my current state of partial sanity, and get into casting bullets. But for now, it’s hard to beat Oregon Trail.

If you know guns, you may be wondering why I’m buying “.357 bullets” when I already have .38 Super bullets, which are nearly the same thing. While I was researching, I got the impression–right or wrong–that bullets should fit a barrel fairly snugly. The .38 Super is supposed to be .356″ in practice. The .357/.38 Special bullet is supposed to be .358″. So I got the bigger bullets. Will it make a difference? Search me.

I chose 125-grain bullets, to mimic defensive loads.

I’m trying to decide what to do to keep the Hornady Lock-N-Load AP from rocking. Tightening the existing bolts won’t do it, and I am fairly sure the bench is not the problem. It may be that bigger-diameter bolts would help; perhaps the flexing is taking place in the bolts themselves.

There’s a place where I could put a plain old C-clamp, holding the front of the press down on the bench. This would almost surely work. But it’s kind of a Jethro Bodine solution. And it would mar up the press. Another answer is to drill a third bolt hole in the base of the press.

Chris Byrne says the Lock-N-Load rocks too much. A knowledgeable reader says the primer feed system on the Lock-N-Load is very vulnerable to spilled powder. That’s a bad combination. If the press rocks, some powder will be spilled from time to time, and guess where it will land? In a place where it will obstruct the doodad that loads the primer into the press. And if you spill enough powder from a cartridge, you could conceivably screw up a load.

Another problem with the rocking is that it will eventually ruin the existing 2-bolt mount. Sooner or later, the lag shields or the bolts or the wood will fatigue, and the press will pop out of the bench, and it will be time to find a new place to mount it.

I’m inclined to go ahead and drill that third hole, although I know I won’t do a pretty job, and I’ll have to take the press apart to do it. I suppose I should try bigger bolts first.

Someone suggested welding up some kind of metal base. But that won’t change anything unless the connection to that base is different from the existing connection to the bench. The press has no anchor at the front end, and a metal base wouldn’t change that.

Apart from the mounting problem, everything seems to work pretty much as advertised. The shell retainer springs fall apart in a hurry, so you need to buy extras, but that’s to be expected. And the decapping pin has a funny way of creeping downward in the sizing die. But the press works. It’s just slow, because of the problems I have to manage while I use it. I have to watch the primers carefully, and every so often, I have to take the press apart and get the excess powder out of it, and I often find myself taking apart rounds that have no primers. Also, I am fairly sure that it’s impossible to get the sizing die to index perfectly every time. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like the die sometimes hits a case incorrectly even when the shell plate is lined up. So I have to use the press very tentatively in order to catch it every time it does that. Otherwise, I would mash maybe ten percent of my brass.

I think Hornady may have erred by not putting a ring-shaped primer recess around the bottom of the press, at least as far as the sizing die. The way it is now, the shells sit on a flat surface. If a primer isn’t perfectly flush with a case, the shell leans over. This may be what causes the sizing die to hit the sides of some cases. Unless I am badly deceived, even once-fired factor brass sometimes has bulgy primers. I suppose that’s inevitable, since it’s all used. A Band-Aid solution would be to have separate dies for decapping and sizing, or to decap the shells by hand.

I look forward to reloading for the .357. I would guess that revolvers are less problematic, since they don’t have feeding problems and they can’t lock up. I continue to drool over the Smith & Wesson Model 627. I have a queasy suspicion that the free .357 brass I picked up a while back is actually .38 Special brass. Hope I’m wrong.

Suggestions welcomed.