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.