I Feel Like Lot

I made another Costco-cheese pizza yesterday. Blogged it at Manly Grub. I have no complaints. As far as I can tell, their shredded mozzarella is fine, apart from being part-skim. If you like part-skim, there’s nothing wrong with it at all. My one complaint is that the provolone is sliced a little thick. I used a single layer on top of the mozzarella, and I still got some oiling off. This is not exactly the end of the world, but I think the provolone would be better if you could cover a pizza with four ounces (four slices) instead of six.

In any case, the mozzarella is a good buy. If you have to get thin provolone somewhere else, you’re still saving money because the mozzarella is so cheap.

Here’s something that would be fun. Make a pie, add six ounces of mozzarella, and then add 4-6 ounces of very thinly sliced Swiss or Jarlsberg.

I can’t quite get used to Bonta sauce. It’s good, but Super Dolce is fifteen minutes away by car, and to me, it’s better.

People are still giving me comments on rifle scope choices. I have decided the best thing is to get a .22 with peep sights and practice at 50 yards. Once I feel like I can shoot a rifle, I’ll start worrying about the scoped guns.

A reader suggested .17 HMR, which is a fairly inexpensive caliber. The guns cost about what a .22 does, and the ammunition runs around ten bucks for 50 rounds.

I don’t understand ballistics at all. I don’t understand why some calibers are more accurate than others. You would think that if a caliber had accuracy problems, the people who design the ammunition and barrels would fix it, but I guess it doesn’t work that way, because some calibers shoot better than others. That is the situation with .17 HMR and .22 LR. Supposedly you can shoot the toes off a fly with a scoped .17 HMR, and you can actually kill vermin at three hundred yards. I’m starting to think a .17 HMR rifle might be a good move, once I feel good about the way I shoot with open sights.

In connection with this caliber, I found what may be the greatest website in the universe. I am referring to Varmint Al’s. This guy shoots pest animals for money, and he has some crazy gear. He lives in Northern California, where they have a ground squirrel problem, and ranchers pay him to go out and pop ground squirrels on their property. He’s also a machinist, and he has all sorts of skills. He seems to like the .17 HMR a whole lot. You can go to the site and see photos of his many victims.

Last night I tried to find Brother Andrew’s book, God’s Smuggler. The B&N site said a local store had it, but they were wrong. I tried another store, and of course, they didn’t have it either. But if I had wanted books on witchcraft and idolatry, or if I had wanted books by shiny-haired, disappointing televangelists, I would have been all set. They had plenty.

It’s peculiar, but it seems like bookstores down here really push the occult stuff. For years, I’ve noticed that they tend to put it on the eye-level display areas behind the checkout counter. And the kids they hire always seem to be creepy little Goths. Am I the only one who has noticed this?

The second store had Corrie ten Boom, so that’s good.

I took a look at The Screwtape Letters. I don’t think it’s for me. It just doesn’t speak to me. It seems like it’s about an intellectual approach to Christianity, whereas I see Christianity as a matter of faith, character, and emotion. I’ve had certain types of experiences, and I want guidance from other people who have been down the same road. I don’t see how a completely fictional book could serve that purpose. When religious writing becomes too theoretical, it loses me. Even Christians can be effete. I want to hear about things that have worked in practice, in the real world. A real-life example is worth more to me than a library full of theory.

I had to order God’s Smuggler online. I wonder if the US is becoming a country where you can get any kind of porn you want locally, but you have to have a computer to find religious instruction.

A reader sent me a link to some downloadable sermons, and I listened to a Baptist preacher who said he had slowly been squeezed out of the public eye. When he was young, people used to ask him to pray at public functions, but the invitations dropped off with time, and people even turned down the free use of a building belonging to his church, because he refused to cover up the scripture on the walls. In the sermon, he flatly stated that America isn’t a Christian nation any more. Man, that is scary. God made us great, and he can take it all away. It’s strange to realize that the United States needs evangelism. This is one reason I want to move to a nice backward area where you can have a flag in front of your house and go to a church with a heterosexual pastor. Maybe that’s wrong; maybe the proper thing to do is to try to improve the area where you live. But I don’t like being in a place where people are beginning to see Christians as evil. If things continue to deteriorate, I can see us winding up a persecuted minority within 25 years, at least in some areas.

Can Anything Good Come From the Internet?

The other day I asked for book recommendations, and someone mentioned Brother Andrew. I got a ton of good recommendations, and this was just one of them. I’m checking him out online, and I plan to see if I can find his biggest book, God’s Smuggler, locally.

I know almost nothing about this man. People suggested I read his books because I said I enjoyed Corrie ten Boom so much. His story is somewhat similar. He was born in Holland, and he converted to Christianity while recuperating from a war wound. Then he dedicated his life to spreading the Gospel. He is famous for smuggling Bibles into countries where Christian materials were banned. He used to drive through customs checkpoints with Bibles on the seat beside him, in open view, and God saw to it that he wasn’t hindered. Wonderful stuff. I can’t wait to take a look at it. It’s easy to read the Bible, and it’s easy to pray, and it’s easy to go to church. In my view, from what little experience I have as a serious Christian, the thing that divides your life between real Christianity and phoning it in is proving you trust God, by your actions. When you’re not doing this, you’re really almost dormant. When you are doing it, God seems to come alive. Obviously, that’s a trick of perspective. It’s like saying the world seems brighter when you open your eyes. But it’s true.

While Googling Brother Andrew, I just found an exciting website. It’s exciting because it deals with an issue that has been bothering me. I gripe a lot about the way Muslims behave these days, and I support the war on terror. But I never get around to mentioning something else that has been on my mind. These people need evangelism. They think they’re doing right; they are completely lost. They are being used. We have to fight them militarily, but hard as it may be to say, we should also be trying to help them out of their ignorance. I believe that, but I have done virtually nothing about it. And I am not alone, among conservatives. Maybe this is a sort of Achilles heel for us; it’s so easy to talk about nuking them and turning their cities to rubble that we may have forgotten we are talking about human beings. The leftist approach of unconditional forgiveness, appeasement, and self-blame is completely wrong. But Christians should be reaching out to these people. The terrible obstacles that have been thrown up should be a clue that this is something the enemy really doesn’t want us doing, and that it will have a powerful effect.

It turns out that Brother Andrew has a website called Secret Believers. I’ll bet a lot of you knew about it way before I did. It’s a site that helps believers in Muslim countries. They can’t get up on Sunday morning and go to church, but maybe they can use the Internet to help them find their way. This is fantastic. Things like this redeem the Internet. They almost make up for the constant flood of porn.

According to Charity Navigator, almost 80% of donations to Open Doors, the parent organization for Secret Believers, goes to programs. Not administration or fundraising. That’s pretty good. A really efficient charity will be in the high 80s.

I guess people wonder why I have been drawn back to my faith. Why I say I can’t get away from it. I generally keep that kind of information private, largely because I have never succeeded in convincing a single person that God existed. I really don’t have the gift, and I have found sharing my experiences with unbelievers to be a colossal waste of time. But I am getting older, and I care less and less what people think, so I have started to feel more willing to talk about reasons why I believe. I can’t pin it on one or two things. It’s a big three-dimensional matrix of facts and observations, and when you add them together, the sum is faith. It amounts to proof.

I was thinking about one of the reasons yesterday. Back when my mother was alive, she dealt with a person who had become delusional due to drug abuse. And this person was in my mother’s house. And this person hallucinated. Some of my memories of this are a little fuzzy, but as I recall, this person saw little beings on a TV screen, communicating with her and doing various things. She had names for them and so on. It was a complex hallucination. Maybe “hallucination” is the wrong word, since it implies the perception of something that isn’t real. Later, away from the TV, she claimed they were trying to contact her using the phone wires. By making little noises. The phones were on the hook, you understand. But this person heard the noises.

My mother told me about that not too long after it happened. But much, much later, she admitted something to me. She said that when this person claimed the beings were trying to contact her from the phone wires, she was in the same room. And she heard their voices, too. Coming from the phone wires.

It probably doesn’t mean much to you, but you don’t know my mother. She was an honest woman, and she didn’t make up stories to get attention. She was clearly reluctant to let anyone know about it.

That’s just one of many pieces of the matrix. One of the few that don’t come from my personal experience. If it were true, would it prove God existed? No, but it is consistent with the notion that there are evil beings assigned to certain families, to vex, separate, and destroy. I think my family has always had more than its share. When I was very young, I used to wake in the middle of the night and see hideous creatures crawling over the bed and across the ceiling and up and down the walls, and I have never been totally convinced they weren’t real.

One nice thing about hearing things like this from me is that you are reading the words of a person who has absolutely nothing to gain from this. I have no yacht to maintain. No pink silk suits. No private jet. No giant church with forty-foot ceilings. No airtime bills to pay. I will not lay hands on you. I do not want to send you a free book in exchange for a love gift. I may be the worst Christian in my entire zip code. In an odd way, maybe that makes me more credible.

Anyway, Secret Believers looks very interesting. If you know anything about it, let me know. It’s hard to imagine a better cause to give money to.

More

Here’s a link to some mp3s of Brother Andrew’s sermons. I’m listening to “Unhindered.” Very good, so far. Funny, he hasn’t said anything about me sending him a thousand dollars and God making me rich as a reward.

So Sorry

While I should have been doing something else, I happened to end up reading about Mount Everest. I think it happened because a headline about the recent K2 disaster caught my eye.

K2 is in Pakistan. It’s the world’s second-highest mountain, but it’s harder to climb than Everest. One reason is that the surrounding terrain is farther from the summit. I guess that makes sense. You could have a plain at 25,000 feet and then a 4,000-foot climb, and it would be easier than climbing to 28,000 feet from 5,000.

I’m always horrified when I read about mountaineering. I hate the cold. I’m not in love with heights. I can’t imagine deliberately injecting myself into an environment where, if something goes wrong, I could lose my fingers and toes. Apart from that, it looks like a filthy business. How do you wash your hands at 20,000 feet? When you relieve yourself, do you just keep the residue on your hands and gloves until you get home? Probably. And what if you’re taking a popular route, like one of the more touristy Everest paths? People bag their waste these days, but that wasn’t always true. There must be a lot of frozen filth up there.

Another type of trailside debris that would be troubling: frozen bodies. There are about 120 dead bodies up there. They’re heavy, so they’re not easy to bring down. And some can’t be found. One of those is a guy I went to high school with. I was told that he didn’t listen when they told him to stay with the sherpas. Wandered off and presumably fell into a crevasse. After what I’ve seen about this place, well, first of all, I wouldn’t go. But hypothetically, if I were there, you better believe I’d treat every word that fell from my guides’ lips as though it were gospel. Maybe Everest seemed safe to him because thousands of tourists had been to the top. On the other hand, some people just don’t like taking advice. Maybe the same thing that makes you risk your life on a frozen mountain will also drive you to ignore safety warnings. A few added risks make for a better story when you get home.

You never see the bodies when you see Everest on TV or in a magazine, but various websites say some of them are right on the trails and that you have to step over them to get to the top. Imagine what it has to be like for people who know them and who continue to climb. Imagine going to work every day and seeing a dead co-worker sitting in his chair as you walk to your office. And the families! It has to be very unpleasant, knowing that tourists are parading past the stiff, dried-out bodies of your loved ones every year.

I just read about an Austrian who died on Everest. His name was Markus Kronthaler, and his brother Georg led an expedition just to retrieve his body. Markus died near the top, and his brother and his porters had to get close to the top to retrieve him, but they refused to climb a few extra meters and take the summit. They did that to make a point. Shockingly, many people who climb Everest feel no obligation to help others who are in trouble. Because it would endanger them as well? Partly. But also because…climbing Mount Everest is expensive. How expensive? One outfit charges $65,000 per person. That does not include airfare or your personal equipment, so call it, what? Maybe $85,000? I don’t get it; I don’t know what you could do for another person over the course of a few days that would justify a price like that, but I suppose people are willing to pay. Maybe it’s a supply and demand thing; lots of rich people want to go, and there are only so many spots. And it looks like one result is that guides are reluctant to stop and help climbers in trouble. The people who pay them get angry, and it hurts business! So some leave people to die, and this is considered acceptable.

Even worse, some people pose for photos with the dead, and some corpses have been stripped of various items by souvenir hunters.

Imagine a similar situation down here near sea level. Let’s say you go diving with a group. And you get your hand stuck in some coral. And while you’re breathing the last of your air, a guide swims by and ignores you, because the people paying him will be angry if they don’t get to dance with the tame sting rays or whatever. That is essentially the moral structure we’re talking about. I suppose it would happen regularly, if a scuba excursion generated $65,000 per customer. Unbelievable.

Markus Kronthaler couldn’t be helped, but his brother felt that leaving him up there unnecessarily, in plain view of other climbers, reflected a very poor code of ethics. So he spent money on a climb, and he went and got the body, and he refused to climb to the summit. Good for him.

One experienced alpinist has said that it’s unfair to take the risk of climbing Everest and expect to be rescued. Does that really make sense? Isn’t it better to say that it’s wrong to blow $65,000 on an ego trip, unless you’re prepared to abandon it in order to save a life? Think of the two sides of the equation. If you keep climbing, what do you get? A story to tell your friends at cocktail parties. What does the person you didn’t help get? Frozen extremities and slow death from hypothermia, plus the knowledge that no one tried to help. Seems like a very small benefit with a very high price.

I think I’ll stay down here with the oxygen and the grocery stores and the ambulances and cable TV. If other people want to pay sherpas and guides to carry their inexperienced selves up Everest, that’s up to them, but there are a long list of things I don’t want to happen to me, and one of them, I’m afraid, is freezer burn.

Nonprofit About to Get Going

Don’t forget; Baldilocks is still working to get help to the Senator Obama Kogelo School, a little school in Kenya which Obama promised to assist. You remember the story, I’m sure. He was in Kenya in 2006, in his father’s former village, and he said he would help the school get going, and then he stiffed them. Baldi’s dad came to the US on the same plane as Pops Obama, and she would like to see to it that the school gets the assistance it was promised. At last report, she had collected over $3000. So that makes the score Baldilocks: $3000; Obama: 0.

The site for her nonprofit is not up yet, but when it is, you will be able to find it here.

It’s fun to embarrass Obama and show how he mistreated these people, but the real point here is to help. Who knows? Maybe he’ll get wind of the site and take up a collection of his own, using his outstanding contacts and Internet fundraising methods. That would certainly be more efficient than relying on GOP bloggers and readers. Babs Streisand could put things right with a single check.

Of course, one problem with tying his Internet collections to this project is that jihadists and the communist Chinese probably aren’t all that excited about donating money to African charities.

More Scope Info

Remember when I asked for advice about scopes? Chris Byrne tried to post an informative comment, but it was too long for Haloscan, so he reposted it at his blog. You can find it here.

He also posted it on the Manly Grub forum, and you can find that post (and you can reply) here.

Thanks again, Chris.

Fausta Lands a Big Fish

Fausta has an interesting podcast interview lined up. She can explain it better than I can:

“I am thrilled to have as a last-minute guest Marsha Blackburn, who http://blackburn.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=99396 is joining the House Republicans protesting Congress adjournment without an energy policy.

The show starts at 11 a.m. Eastern, and you can find it here.

If you’re wondering why Congress adjourned without doing anything about energy prices, I’ll help you out. It’s because–as usual–the Democrats want things to get worse. They think it will buy them votes. I wonder if it has occurred to them that making the public angry at Congress may not be a great idea, when control of Congress is in your hands.

Confusing

I thought Ann Althouse was annoyed when I said I didn’t want a law professor running the country, because she commented: “Law professor says ahem.” Now she says she was not annoyed. But I think she may be annoyed that I said she was annoyed. Which gives me a headache.

I still say I don’t want a law professor in the White House. Not even Ben Stein, who seems sane until he starts spouting about how we need $11-per-gallon gas. Hello, Ben? Real people have to drive to work and get their kids to school. Unlike you, they can’t rely on a limo from Fox News.

Is it appropriate to apologize to someone for saying you thought she was annoyed, when she wasn’t? Is that legitimately considered a gaffe? It’s a question I don’t have to address often, because generally, when I think I’ve annoyed people, I’m right.

Pedal Your Tricycle Back to the Faculty Lounge

I am not a political pundit. I don’t know everything. But I have good instincts, and I’ve been right a lot. And I have a wonderful feeling.

I think Obama royally shafted himself over the last month.

1. He was completely wrong about the troop surge, and he wasn’t man enough to admit it.
2. He took a stupid position on offshore drilling and then changed positions in a way that was obviously driven by poll numbers.
3. His ego has gotten so bad, even the liberal press is making fun of him. People are finally starting to realize what a clown he is. Imagine four years of this effete former academic.

Ann Althouse got annoyed when I said I was horrified by the prospect of a law professor running the country, but I stand by what I said. Ask any lawyer. Ivy League attorneys don’t teach law for a relatively paltry hundred grand a year because they want to. A lot of them have no choice. Law schools are asylums for the idiot-savants of the profession. The people who graduate summa cum laude and then have to bail after six months at the public defender’s office, because they can’t hack it.

Sure, there are exceptions. But they are unusual, and there is no evidence that Obama is one of them. Some successful attorneys teach part-time because they enjoy it, or because they feel they have to “give something back,” or because it feeds their egos. But if you go to law school, you will find that most of your teachers are socialist nutwads who couldn’t find their way to the courthouse if you slapped a label on them and turned them over to Federal Express. Many of the profs at my law school had never even passed a bar exam!

They were pathetic, or at least the ones with big egos were. Far-left kooks who went straight from law school to…law school. Goofs who loved pretending to be brave and rebellious, while working tenured jobs with outstanding benefits, and while toeing the administration line with a scrupulousness worthy of OCD. College is the only place where you can rebel by doing exactly what people in authority tell you to do.

They worked fifteen hours a week and pocketed two or three grand for it, while mewling and puking about the evils of capitalism. I know you think I’m kidding when I say fifteen hours a week, but honest academics admit that it’s true.

That’s part of the background of the Obamessiah/Neobama. An idyllic oasis in which theory is everything, because the real world never intrudes. It’s only in places like that that socialism seems to make sense. Unplug Obama from the Matrix and turn him loose in the real world, and he’s going to greet reality the way a bug greets a windshield.

He’s in trouble. How do I know? The Oracle told me.

Here is Fausta, with more.

Costco Comes Through Again

I tried the Costco cheese. I made a 16″ pizza with Bonta sauce.

I highly recommend it. details at Manly Grub.

I am the Almighty Costcolio

I have two fantastic pieces of news.

1. Costco has moved to a new location near me, and it’s twice as big as the old place, and parking is way better.

2. The old Costco is going to be a Lowe’s!

Does life get any better than that?

I stocked up on $4.79 flap meat, and I bought a few pounds of blueberries to freeze. I can’t face life without access to blueberry cheesecake. Not sure how they’ll look after freezing, but it can’t hurt to try.

Here’s great news, for everyone who enjoys seeing me dribble my own money away on food experiments, so you don’t have to. I bought a bag of Costco mozzarella, and a package of Costco provolone slices. The slices gave me the idea. It looks like good provolone, and it’s about $2.50 per pound, so I couldn’t resist. I’m going to make a Costco-cheese pizza and see what happens. If this works out, it would be great news for men everywhere. Think about it. You go to Costco and buy 5 lbs. of each cheese, and you divide it up with one or two friends, and you get super-cheap pizza.

I decided to break down and try Costco’s 12-year-old Macallan Scotch. It costs about half what the 16-year-old does. I’m disappointed. Truthfully, I think 12-year-old blended Scotch is better. I found it harsh. I guess if you want good single-malt Scotch, you have to give up and spend some money.

Fortunately, I have no complaints at all about their $23 Pinch.

Sick List

Seems like I am constantly putting up prayer requests. How about one for Morgan Freeman, and one for Bernie Mac?

Freeman was in a car accident, and he and his passenger were injured. Bernie Mac is being treated for pneumonia.

I expect to be re-establishing my titanic web presence later today. Take heed.

Thanks, all who responded to last night’s request.

Sunday Drifts By

I hope everyone is enjoying Sunday as much as I am. I read the book of Romans, and I’m wandering through the Psalms.

Do me a little favor, if you feel like it. Last week I was working on a problem that has been taking up my time. I’m hoping the work I did will put it behind me, once and for all. If you would be so kind, say a little prayer that I succeed.

Can’t Wait any Longer

Keep the Sabbath, and every week you will learn something new about it. This week, I am learning how much it is possible to look forward to it. Have you ever had a week when you just couldn’t wait for your day of rest and worship? For me, this has been one of those weeks. I am looking forward to telling the world to get lost. In fact, I’m starting a little early.

I was just reading Isaiah 49, which is a wonderful chapter. It’s all about the Messiah and the restoration of Israel. I don’t mean to put Israel down. It’s a wonderful place, and a lot of it is very beautiful, but the only place where I’ve seen more dry rocks and dust is Utah. And a lot of Israel is empty. I hope I’m alive to see those things change.

I found an interesting page about Isaiah 49. I don’t know anything about the site. It suggests that Isaiah 49 refers to China when it talks about Gentiles coming to Israel and helping put it back together. Funny thing, and probably a coincidence, but for some reason I’ve felt compelled to keep China on the prayer list lately. I read about the growth of Christianity there, and it affected me. The Chinese people who were interviewed for the article I read made it sound like the Chinese had no commonly held moral drive to treat others well, and that the principles of Christianity had a profound effect on the way converts behaved toward their fellow human beings. I don’t know if that could be true; surely the basic notions of kindness and honesty and humanity and trustworthiness aren’t limited to the West.

Although we did get those toys full of lead, and the poisoned pet food.

I believe Hal Lindsey used to say China was mentioned in the Revelation. Someone used to say that, anyway. The Revelation mentions an army of 200 million soldiers, and I believe the eschatology buffs claimed the army had to be Chinese because of its size. But it may not be a human army.

Anyway, the page I linked to says some people think Christian influence is going to move from America to China, just as it moved from Europe to America. I can’t say we don’t deserve it. We have gotten pretty disgusting. And I suppose it would be a wonderful thing. I mean, China is the most dangerous nation on earth, and the Chinese don’t treat each other very well. So the more of them become Christians, the better off the world will be.

The Chinese may be better material for the church. We may be ahead of them in some ways, but we’ve been exposed to God, and an awful lot of us have decided we know everything, and we’ve chosen to reject Him, sometimes with amazing hostility and even a ludicrous sort of enmity. As if we can teach God a lesson, for not giving us everything we want and letting us live like one-percenters. Many people in Asia haven’t really been exposed to God, so presumably, a lot of them would react better to evangelizing than rebellious Westerners who think God is “over.”

Another Quagmire

I mentioned the notion of getting a cheap, accurate bolt-action rifle and a scope. I had the Savage FVSS in mind, I think. The plastic one, not the wooden one. Then I asked about scope choices. Right now, I have no place to shoot beyond 100 yards, but I thought it might be a good idea to get something good enough for actual varminting; you never know when you might get an opportunity. I received all sorts of weird suggestions.

Reader Blindshooter says he has a 6-24x scope he uses a lot. KDT says 10x is all you need, under 400 yards. I read up on the choices, and it looks like the best choice, without breaking the bank, would be a Nikon. People are raving about them, and they cost about a third less than comparable Leupolds. I’m wondering what makes most sense: the 6-24×50, or the 4-16×50. Even if I somehow find myself shooting at longer ranges, 300 yards is about the best I can hope to find. Is there really any point in getting magnification I will probably never need? And here’s something weird: there is no real difference in price. Due to the vagaries of Internet discounting, they’re both in the same range.

It has also been suggested that I work on my open-sight shooting. My only problem with that suggestion is that I am not anxious to do that with my current weapons. The Romak and the K31 beat my shoulder up pretty bad, and although I’m saving the brass, I doubt I’ll ever take the time to reload it, because it’s all Berdan-primed. I don’t mind the bruising when I’m shooting with a scope at 100 yards. But I’d be shooting at half that distance with open sights, and it seems silly to use a cannon for that. The Savage would be fine, but if I scope it, iron sights won’t be an option.

I have a .22 rifle, but I’m not sure it’s accurate enough to fool with. If you want to learn anything, you have to have a gun that shoots considerably better than you do. I suspect that the Nylon 66 has enough error in it to confuse me at the range.

I guess I could use the Romak. The ammunition was cheap, and it’s supposed to be very good stuff.

In the past, I’ve considered getting a cheap Savage .22 LR, because they’re very accurate, and the ammunition is cheap. Maybe that’s still the best course.

Another reader emailed me and suggested I try to carve out a niche, writing about guns. Believe me, I would love to. The main problem with that is that I know almost nothing about the topic. That doesn’t stop most writers, I know. Maybe the answer is to turn ignorance into an asset. Find someone who would publish accounts written by an admitted gun doofus, trying to improve himself.

Which Scope?

Here is a new question for the gun clingers.

Let’s say you get yourself a gun suitable for varmint hunting. You know you’ll probably do all your shooting at 100 yards, but you want to be prepared in case you completely lose your mind, get on a plane, and go shoot prairie dogs. Or maybe God will smile on you, and you’ll move to a place that has a 300-yard range.

What kind of scope do you need?

I have a 9x scope on the K31, and it’s dandy for 100 yards, but I have no idea what you need at higher distances.