Taylor and Nova Ride in on a Horse

Remember watching the World Trade Center fall? First, one plane struck. TV heads marveled and speculated, and most of us thought the attack was over and that we were already in the response phase. Then the other plane struck. Then journalists, who are generally neither bright nor knowledgeable about practical matters, tried to guess what would happen next. They wondered aloud about the future of the buildings. How bad was the damage? Would they be repaired?

Of course, every witness who had ever held a tool in his hand knew the buildings were coming down. It was obvious. But when the first tower collapsed, journalists were shocked. It also shocked some responders who had made the remarkable mistake of setting up near the bases of the towers.

Watching what’s happening to America is a lot like watching coverage of 9/11. Things we thought would last forever are being dismantled like props being torn down by invisible stagehands.

It turns out the press is ignoring a lot of what’s happening. In particular, they’re ignoring the transformation of liberal-dominated cities.

A man named James Altucher wrote a blog post about New York, and people all over the net are talking about it. He’s a New York hedge fund manager and entrepreneur. He has mentioned some things the press has surely witnessed yet chosen not to discuss. His blog post is titled, “NYC is Dead Forever…Here’s Why.”

I can give you the basic gist. New York is turning into a ghost town because coronavirus has shown people something that should have been obvious several years ago: we no longer need office buildings to do many of our jobs. People are using a service called Zoom to have virtual meetings, and presumably they also use email, texts, and calls. They’re realizing they are not merely nearly as productive, but more productive, working at home.

That’s a very big deal. Office buildings and commuting are extremely expensive. City rents are obscenely high. Even if human beings resist giving up their comfort of their old ways, and even if stodgy managers push back against telecommuting, accountants will see to it that businesses do whatever makes sense economically. If buildings are unnecessary, many people who used to work in big cities will never return.

To give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem, I’ll share this quotation: “The Time-Life Building can handle 8,000 workers. Now it maybe has 500 workers back.” He uses it as an example when he says there are buildings that are 90% empty.

You have to think about the ramifications.

When you own a big building like that, you make income from it, so you pay taxes. You also pay huge sums of money for maintenance and repairs. You may make mortgage payments to a bank. A lot of money goes in, and a lot goes out. If your occupancy rate drops by 90%, what happens? You end up in a situation where you can’t pay your taxes or your lender. You can’t pay to keep your property up. You have to slash rents in order to maximize your income. You end up with substandard tenants who can’t begin to keep you afloat. Then you abandon your property, and your corporation declares bankruptcy. If Altucher is right when he predicts people will not return to New York, we could be looking at a future in which New York looks just like Detroit.

Detroit is an amazing place. It’s strange that Americans pay so little attention to it. I suppose the liberal press suppresses information about Detroit because it’s a beautiful example of a city utterly destroyed by leftism. If conservatives had ruined it, we would hear about it every day.

As everyone knows, Detroit used to be a prosperous city. Wealthy people and companies built beautiful structures. Now many of the places look like sets from post-apocalyptic movies. That’s not hyperbole. It’s exactly what they look like. These properties can’t be given away. I’ll root around and find videos for you.

It’s not just an inner-city thing. In 2018, the median price of a Detroit house was $35,000, and that represents a huge increase from a few years earlier. I can buy a house in Detroit for less than it would cost me to renovate my kitchen in Florida, and the odds are high that I would lose money, because Detroit property values are probably benefiting from temporary optimism related to a dubious renewal campaign.

I’m not sure, but it looks like suburbs depend on cities to a large extent. If a city dries up, presumably many people, who only live in its suburbs so they can commute, will leave.

Ten years ago, people had to live in New York in order to keep corporations running. Now we are getting close to a model in which a big percentage of people can literally live in Egypt, work in New York, and never, ever have to meet their coworkers.

There are things people like about commuting. It gets you out of the house. You can socialize. You can have lunch at restaurants. You can shop after work. On the other hand, people really, really like working from their couches while wearing stained sweatpants. You don’t have to dress up. You don’t have to be around annoying coworkers and bosses. You may be able to set your own hours. You can forget about trains and traffic. You may save enough money in one year to go to Europe twice. Not that you can go to Europe in 2020, but still. You can buy nicer sweatpants and a bigger SUV.

If Altucher is right, and he surely is, then Manhattan residents should get used to blank storefronts, shuttered restaurants, and a theater scene that looks more like Knoxville than Broadway.

What will happen to the hordes of perennial government sucklings? Many, many New Yorkers live off the labor of others. Who will bums beg from? Who will fund hobby philanthropy organizations? What will happen to locally-funded poverty projects?

If the dogs leave, what will happen to the fleas? They can’t go to the suburbs or the country. People move to those places to get away from them. Dependent people have to have cities in order to thrive. Maybe they’ll be able to get by on what the feds give them.

We already knew the Internet would devastate stores. Now it looks like it will work in concert with coronavirus hysteria to gut cities and suburbs.

Many years ago, I predicted that with the advent of online retailers, people would start moving to the country. It didn’t happen. At least not when I predicted it. It was hard for me to relate to people who actually liked cities, so I think I projected my own desires onto the general public. Many people love city life. Now we may see the abolishment of that lifestyle in many places. We also see how unpleasant life is in cities during crises. Maybe my prediction will finally come true.

Will it happen everywhere? My guess is that leftist cities that reacted hysterically to coronavirus will be hit hardest. They destroyed their economies and forced people to experience a new web-based lifestyle they might otherwise have avoided trying for years. They killed businesses that were necessary to lure people back. It looks like New Yorkers don’t have much to return to. Maybe that’s true in other leftist strongholds where mayors and governors overreacted. Eventually, though, I would expect the trend to spread to other places. Freedom to choose and design your own environment and social circle is very seductive, and financial concerns are compelling.

I saw an interesting Internet comment the other day. Someone mentioned polio. The commenter said a relative had gone through a polio epidemic, and people hadn’t reacted like little girls in a room where a rat has been released. They didn’t kill local economies. People took reasonable measures and accepted the risk. We do the same thing with the flu every year, and the seasonal flu has killed millions of us over the years.

Death is bad, but it’s part of everyone’s life, and liberty and prosperity are very important.

Americans were wrong to flip out over coronavirus. If we hadn’t panicked, we probably would have lost more people, but the effects on our way of life would have been more tolerable. Look at Sweden. They didn’t have lockdowns. They’ve had a fairly high rate of infection, but so what? It has not been catastrophic, and the country keeps chugging along, just as countries do after wars and natural disasters.

It’s interesting to see how coronavirus continues to hit leftist areas more severely. My county has had an explosion in the official infection count, but it’s not a disaster, and we haven’t seen the severe shortages or economic problems places like Chicago have endured. I can think of a few things that have been hard to buy. Disinfectant wipes, alcohol, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, paper towels, and eggs. There are probably some other things I’m not recalling because they have had no significant effect on my life. I never ran out of meat. I was always able to eat nearly anything I wanted. I never had to go home because I couldn’t get in a store.

My cousin in Chicago still can’t get toilet paper. She went through a period where it was nearly impossible to go to stores. Getting inside her local Walmart took hours. Once inside, she couldn’t get meat. For all I know, she still can’t. A few weeks back, long after talk of meat shortages had ceased, I sent my cousin near Atlanta a photo of steaks on sale, and he said it had been months since he had seen anything like that.

I’ve been predicting this county would hit something like 9,000 known cases and then see a sharp dropoff. I based this guess on the New York figures. It looks like I won’t be far wrong. I was mistaken when I thought the US-case collapse we saw earlier in the year would continue, and I didn’t think this county would blow up the way it has, but even true hot spots calm down eventually, and surely that will happen here, in an area where things have never gotten very bad.

Much of our virus-figure explosion is atypical and not useful for drawing conclusions because we increased testing dramatically and because we have a big locked-down prison population that got hit very hard.

To get back to the point, it seems like God has been much gentler to rural and conservative people. We’re getting virus upticks after the nationwide shortages abated and after better ways of addressing the epidemic were learned through the painful lessons endured by New Yorkers, Bostonians, and other subjects of the leftist elite. There is no panic. There is no real deprivation. Economic damage is minimal. As an example of the contrast, South Dakota never had a lockdown, and their governor just turned down a round of government handouts because they don’t need it.

It seems like ungodly people are much more likely to suffer, and they’re much more likely to give up their freedom and dignity because they’re much more afraid of death. This is something to think about as America continues to deteriorate. We will continue to see two different schools of thought. We will see the fear-based, desperate, selfish, bestial mindset of leftists, and we will see a calmer, more altruistic, less hostile attitude among people in areas that are heavily Christian.

People who don’t love God will do nearly anything in a crisis. During famines, they have been known to kill and eat their children. That kind of thing makes sense to people who think this life is all there is and that you have to make the most of it. Real Christians, on the other hand, have a history of allowing themselves to be martyred during prosperous times. Real Christians are less likely to panic. To us, death is like being sent home from a war zone, and maltreating others in order to stay alive is a frightening, off-putting idea.

When I think about leaving this earth, I don’t get scared. I long for it. My body is not what it used to be. I use reading glasses. My appearance is deteriorating. I forget things more often. The thought of being in a renewed body far superior to my earthly body at its best moment makes me wish the end were closer, as does the thought of getting cataracts and arthritis and being unable to do the things I enjoy. I don’t want to be a 75-year-old on this earth, shuffling around in this body. The thought of making it to 90 is genuinely disturbing.

People don’t believe in God generally want to hold onto whatever they have, regardless of the cost. It’s undignified. Look at Joe Biden, with all of his age-denying cosmetic procedures. Sometimes I think he smiles just so he will have something to show the IRS in case they object when he deducts his dental expenses.

I wonder if Hollywood stars are panicking because it’s harder to get elective surgery now. The pandemic must be harder on female stars because they have much shorter shelf lives than men. It’s not unusual for an actress to get her breakthrough during a certain year and be supplanted by younger, more attractive women 5 years later. One season of diminished activity could be very hard on certain female stars; especially those in their mid-thirties.

It will be interesting to see how Altucher’s predictions hold up a month from now. It would really be something, seeing Fifth Avenue turn into the South Bronx.

I Almost Know What I’m Doing

Today I got back to handloading, although I should not have. I was supposed to wait for a new Glock barrel.

I’ve been trying to develop a load for 9mm semiwadcutters. I could not find a recipe for the bullets I bought, so I looked for something close, dropped the charge down something like 8%, adjusted the overall length (OAL) for longer bullets, and made test rounds. I got up to 5.5 grains of BE-86, which is the flash-suppressed version of Power Pistol.

The recipe I started with came from Alliant, the manufacturer of BE-86. It was for 125-grain lead round nose bullets. They got 1179 fps at 5.7 grains, and for 9mm, that’s a nice speed. It’s supersonic at the muzzle. They recommended an OAL of 1.120″. They didn’t say how long their bullets were. I used a Laser Cast 124-grain bullet as a stand-in, and it measured 0.06″ shorter than my semiwadcutters. I figured that meant I needed 0.06″ more length to get a similar case volume, but I didn’t want long bullets hanging out of my cases, so I tried 0.04″.

When I shot these things with 5.2 grains, I got an average of 1082. That was not too bad, but it wasn’t 1179. I knew Alliant had probably tested its rounds with a longer barrel, so I didn’t expect to equal their speed, but I figured I ought to be able to hit 1125. This was a wild guess. My barrel is 3.43″ long. I figured it was probably 50 fps slower than a full-size Glock barrel, which comes in at about 4.5″. This is sort of consistent with wildly varying figures from the web.

When I moved up to 5.3 grains, I got a very small increase in speed. I got 1088. The velocity spread dropped, however, going from 65 to 14. I thought that was nice. Then I moved up to 5.5 grains, and I got 1078 fps and a spread of 51. I had actually gone backward.

I sought advice and read up. Some people say that when you plateau with a given powder, it’s time to quit adding weight.

I thought maybe I should give up and try Accurate No.7. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to find a use for my BE-86, and although it will sound silly, I could swear BE-86 feels better when I shoot it. It seems to feel friendlier and less snappy. I noticed this while working on 10mm rounds, and today BE-86 felt good while I shot 9mm.

Then I read up on barrel leading.

Glock barrels are polygonal, which means the bores are shaped like hex nuts with rounded corners. Ordinary barrels have grooves. The raised parts between the grooves are called lands. Polygonal barrels are not optimal for lead ammunition. Lead can accumulate in them, and if it gets bad enough, it can cause obstructions and explosions.

I had been under the impression that hard lead alloys were okay for Glocks. That was what past research had told me. While I was working on this latest load, I read that many people disagreed. I read that an amount of lead which seemed very insignificant could slow bullets down and cause case overpressure.

Okay.

Now I had some decisions to make. Should I buy coated bullets and throw out my lead bullets? That would take a while, given the ammunition panic. Should I buy a new Glock barrel made for lead? Should I go ahead and shoot lead and not worry?

I finally decided to spring for a Storm Lake barrel made for lead. I’m waiting for it to arrive.

Today, I forgot about that, and I decided to make several rounds of ammo with shortened cartridges. I knocked 0.020″ off.

I had been wanting to shorten the cartridges anyway because they have lube grooves with wax in them. A lube groove is a slot that goes around a bullet near the base. It’s okay to have lube grooves exposed. It won’t affect how the ammo works. It is ugly and messy, however. I wanted to reduce the amount of exposed wax, but shortening a cartridge too much can cause overpressure.

What the heck. You only live once. On Earth. Not including the Messianic Age. I decided to try it.

I cranked out a few rounds, and I tried them. I got an average of 1112 fps with a spread of 24. This was much better. I looked at all the cases I could recover. The primers looked okay. I could see tiny bulges near the rims. I tried shoving spent casings into a cartridge gage to see how bad the bulges were. It was possible to jam them in, and after running a spent casing through a sizing die, it dropped it without a problem. I figured I was safe.

Now I’m almost supersonic at the muzzle. Should I try to do better? I don’t know.

If I get, say, 1150 fps, I’ll only be around 35 fps above the speed of sound, and I assume that would drop off to subsonic a short distance out. Does that mean anything with pistol rounds? Will it have a noticeable effect on accuracy? Probably not. If it did, I’m sure it would be the talk of the forums. Everyone who shoots accurately would want to stay above or below the speed of sound.

I am tempted to shorten the cartridges to the point where the lube is covered. It might give me better speed with no ill effects. I think I’m pretty cautious. The web is full of people pushing 1300 fps from bullets this heavy, and I would be excited if I could do 1175.

I’m anxious to settle on a recipe. I need to get this 9mm lead loaded so I can move on to other things.

Biggest Danger to American Christians: Friendly Fire

Christian pride and self-righteousness are very destructive things. They lead us to become the worst enemies of the church. I have very few problems with nonbelievers. The people who mistreat me because of my beliefs are generally Christians. This is normal, and that’s sad.

I published a Youtube video about a rapture dream I had. I’ve written about the dream here. I said my mother and I were in her parents’ house, a huge horn blew from somewhere out over the Pacific, and we rose through the ceiling. In discussing the rapture, I talk about my belief that it will happen before the tribulation. I don’t mean nothing will go badly for Christians before the rapture. I mean whatever happens prior to the rapture will be an hors d’oeuvre, not the main course. I believe the real tribulation will be much worse. Whatever I said in the video was consistent with these beliefs.

This makes me a believer in the pre-tribulation rapture. There are also people who believe it will happen in the middle of the tribulation or at the end.

Have I said I was certain the rapture would come before the tribulation? I don’t think so, because I’m not. I just have a very strong impression that God says it will happen that way, and I have a lot of evidence from the Bible.

Some character with zero Youtube content showed up and started making comments of little value. First, he said something like, “Dude, young men will dream dreams, and old men will have visions.”

Of course, that’s not what the Bible says. Joel said old men would dream dreams and young men would have visions. Everyone knows that. It’s something every Christian should know, like how many commandments there are.

Eventually, I decided to say something. I replied and said, “Have you gone back and checked that yet?”

He (gender assumption) deleted his comment. No reply. Just an effort to hide the mistake. Then he posted a big, long comment saying 2 Thessalonians 2 proved the pre-tribulation theory was wrong and evil and so on. His comment was rude, and he said something about how he would rather be dyslexic than a “pre-tribber.”

This is the kind of thing people get wound up about. Not how to get rid of pride and hate. Not how to get love to flow. Not how to become one with the Holy Spirit.

I replied again, and I mentioned the deleted comment. I pointed out that dyslexia doesn’t make you say–deliberately–things which are incorrect. He really believed the verse said old men would have visions. I said he should try to be more honest. I didn’t think deleting the comment and then lying about it was the best course of action.

The 2 Thessalonians 2 passage he referred to mentions “the day of Christ.” He thought this was a reference to the rapture. I thought about it, and I felt I had a revelation. I said “day of Christ,” which clearly isn’t necessarily the rapture, might well refer to the Messianic Age. The Bible says a thousand years are like one day to God, and there is at least one example of God using “day” to mean “millennium.”

When Eve and Adam (in that order) sinned, they faced a punishment God had ordained earlier. He had said they would die during the day they ate the forbidden fruit. Then Adam lived another 900 years. So God lied, apparently, or…he was referring to a heavenly day, not an earthly day.

Obviously, he didn’t lie.

It seemed to me that this might explain some Biblical references to “the day of the Lord.”

Anyway, the anonymous commenter got really angry and said all I had to offer were “smarmy insults.” Then he demanded I produce documentation proving something or other I said I believed, as though Internet participants were entitled to make each other write research papers. He said, “I am going to dismantle your cult.”

This is when I found out he had no content. I wondered what was setting him off, so I went to see his videos to find out if he was a nutbar. There was nothing there.

I don’t know how he plans to dismantle my cult without creating content on his channel. I didn’t even know I had a cult.

I decided the best thing was to delete his weird comments and get on with life. In a way, this was like the rapture. One of the purposes of the rapture is to put an end to the necessity of dealing with people and spirits who are irrational and emotional and not worth talking to.

It looks like there is a battle going on among the people I call “Jesus buffs.” They’re like Trekkies, except their thing is Jesus. They speak nothing but Christianese. They wear shirts with huge crosses on them. They take pride in having gone to more revivals and concerts than you have. They make a point of telling everyone how they know this or that semi-famous preacher personally. They study the Bible and listen to theorists instead of spending time with God, and they use their studies to prove their strange theories. Generally, they do not claim their ideas came by revelation. They claim they figured things out on their own. Sounds a bit like pride.

I have been lumped in with a faction known as the pre-tribbers. I’m not sure, but I think the mid-tribbers and post-tribbers think we’re going to hell. We’re not just mistaken; we’re mouthpieces for Satan himself. There are also no-tribbers and rapture deniers. I suppose they also think we’re going to hell, along with the mid-tribbers and post-tribbers.

I’m not surprised that people disagree about things. Most Christians do not believe in the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and he is the only source of knowledge. Many who do believe in the baptism and have received it don’t spend time with God or pray in tongues, so they have logins they rarely use. Most Christians don’t hear from God, so they make things up. Even the ones who hear from God don’t get complete information. Disagreement is inevitable. The thing that’s disturbing is the factionalism and hatred, over trivial things.

We are supposed to shed the works of the flesh, and the Bible says factionalism is a work of the flesh. There are times when we have to break with people, and we are often required to point out their errors, just as other people are required to point out our own. That doesn’t mean we’re supposed to hate each other and condemn each other to hell based on whether we use Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon to take communion.

I suspect spirits of delusion are sent to Christians because of pride. Many Christians take pride in their denominations and their doctrine, without realizing how crazy that is. In addition to looking down on other Christians, most of us have a condescending attitude toward Jews. The premise is that modern Christians would never have crucified Jesus, had they been around in Pilate’s time. Of course, most Christians would crucify him right now if he came back under an assumed name and taught the same things he taught 2000 years ago. Many feel superior to the Jews who were, and are, against Jesus. They don’t realize faith comes from God, not from innate superiority.

Pride goes before a fall, so it makes sense that so many of us would fall into hateful factionalism.

It’s a very good sign when preachers and Jesus buffs mistreat you. They’re the same sort of people who killed the prophets and clamored for the crucifixion. It’s important to be able to tell when friction from other Christians means you’re on the right track.

Disagreement over the timing of the rapture should not be so significant to us that we attack each other and tell each other we’re going to hell. You don’t have to know the date of the rapture to go to heaven. It’s very telling when a person is so deluded he becomes infuriated with people who disagree with him about relatively trivial things. When all you have to offer is anger, you ought to know you’re not serving God.

We should be living as though the rapture were coming in the next hour, all the time. Knowing when it will happen is not necessary to living a holy life.

Varmint Rifle Becomes Relatively Cheap Teaching Tool

I have .17 HMR ammo figured out.

Today I went out and fired 20 rounds of ammo at 100 yards. I used a 4-bullseye target. My goal was to decide whether I should buy 17-grain or 20-grain ammo. I wanted to get whatever was the most accurate.

Here is the target. I wrote “17” and “20” on it so I would remember what went where. I started at the bottom-left, and I moved clockwise, shooting 5 rounds per target.

The first group came in at just under 1 MOA. That proves this ammo is good enough for hunting. For all I know, it will work for target shooting, too, if I practice more.

The second group does not seem to exist. I was fooling with the scope, and I think I adjusted three shots off the target.

The third group is under 0.7 MOA. For some reason, I fired at the lower-right bullseye, and as you can see, the points of impact are pretty high. I adjusted the scope again, and I shot at the same point of aim, figuring the top bullseye was already messed up. I shot a little over 1 MOA. I think the two holes to the right may be flyers. Maybe I did something new. I felt pretty good while I shot, though.

Anyhow, it certainly looks like the 20-grain stuff is accurate in this gun, and at least one other Internet person got the same result, so I think it’s probably more accurate than the lighter bullets. The 17-grain ammo may not shoot quite as well. I’m not positive, and I don’t want to shoot all day to find out whether it’s 0.3 MOA wilder than the heavy rounds.

The 20-MOA scope base is not working out. It was fine yesterday. I had to move the scope forward last night, and when I did that, things moved around, and when I tried to fix the elevation, I ran out of clicks. Oh, well. A new base is on the way. Not a big deal.

I thought the base might conceivably have some use if I shot at really long ranges, past the subsonic transition, but it looks like it won’t work closer in if the eye relief is set correctly. I’m surprised to see how much the point of aim moved when I moved the scope up one picatinny slot.

It was not a brilliant idea. Even if I hadn’t run out of clicks, you don’t really need a super-low base if you have a mil-dot reticle.

This will give me an opportunity to use the mil dots while I wait for the new base. I’ll try to figure out which dot to place on my point of aim, and it should work.

Now I feel confident ordering more ammo.

Shooting this thing is a joy. No worries about ear damage. No recoil. Excellent accuracy. Nice glass.

Maybe by the end of the month, I’ll be able to post some targets showing that I’ve improved.

Do I Smell Squirrel Gravy?

My EGW scope base arrived today, so I mounted my Athlon Ares 6-24×50 on my Savage 93R in .17 HMR. Behold.

I am extremely pleased. It fits nicely.

I didn’t intend to shoot today. It was supposed to rain like crazy in the afternoon. That didn’t happen, and at about 6:40 p.m., I found myself with a shiny new scope and good weather. I did the obvious thing. I did some zeroing.

I learned that buying a 20-MOA scope for a .17 HMR rifle makes zeroing an interesting experience. I had to go through quite a number of shots and turret clicks to get close to where I wanted to be. A 20-MOA base starts you out 20 MOA below where you would be with a flat base. That’s what? Around 6 mils? My scope didn’t come with a whole lot of mils in the tank, so I was concerned that I might not be able to get a zero at 100 yards.

As it turned out, I could zero at 50 yards, so everything is fine. The sloped base didn’t hurt me up close, and it certainly can’t hurt me when I move back to the rifle’s limit.

I’ll post a target photo. The cows are probably chewing on the target right now. It’s a mess. Up toward the right, you can see me walking the bullets in with the turrets.

There are a bunch of rounds in the center of the bullseye. I would love to say those were my last few shots, after I got things dialed in. They are not. My last shots are off to the left. They cover a little more than 1 MOA.

Now that I think of it, I’m not really sure where those shots in the center came from. I was concentrating on a lot of things, so I didn’t do a great job keeping track of shots.

I don’t know how well I can do with this gun, scope, and ammo. I have not shot it in optimal conditions. I didn’t have my parallax fixed, the scope was too far back on the base, I forgot the reticle battery, and I didn’t finish adjusting the comb. I know it will zero at 100 yards, though, and that’s all I wanted. It’s more than I expected to get done today.

Now I need to run out, fire a few rounds to get everything together, and then shoot two different targets with 17-grain and 20-grain ammo. That should tell me whether I should buy the heavy rounds or the light ones. Then I can try to load up online.

With a reasonable effort and no disasters, I should be able to make my mind up by lunchtime tomorrow.

I like the scope a great deal. It replaces a Burris Fullfield II. Unlike the Athlon, the Burris was made by a real American company with a long history. The Athlon is made in China for a relatively new American company, and it’s a steal at $380. As far as I can tell, the glass on the Athlon is just as clear at 24x as the Burris’s glass is at its maximum magnification of 14. People say Athlons track well, too. We will see.

I have a dedicated bipod on the way. I hate switching bipods. The one in the picture has a bizarre mounting system, and I don’t like fiddling with it. Pretty soon, it won’t be an issue.

This is a super-comfortable rifle to shoot. The nicest thing I can say about the trigger is that I never think about it. That’s as big a compliment as there is, when you’re a trigger. The comb I attached to the plastic…I mean “polymer”…stock works perfectly. A vertical grip would be nice, but I don’t need it. I don’t have to fight to get behind this gun to shoot. It lets me have its way with it.

“Polymer” is like “action figure.” You can’t call a boy’s Star Wars dolls “dolls,” and you can’t call a man’s plastic gun “plastic.” It’s POLYMER. End of discussion.

My hope is that I’ll shoot one unimpressive target tomorrow, as a final shakedown cruise, and then I’ll do some 1-MOA shooting. That would be nice.

Savage now makes a .17 HMR bolt gun which is supposedly better than this one. The magazine is a selling point. My magazine has to be installed pretty carefully, or it falls out and vanishes. It’s not a big deal if you make sure you pound it into the rifle. Also, I have two spares. The stock on the new model is supposed to be better, but I have this one fixed so it suits me perfectly. I don’t know how a new one could be an improvement, and if it were not, I would be looking at a considerable amount of aggravation, fixing the new gun so it worked as well as the old one.

Time for a cold beverage. The 93R is operational.

Angry Armed Civilians will Make Cops Look Like Wet Nurses

What’s going on here at the compound today? I know people want the inside dope.

I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of my EGW 20-MOA scope base. It would be neat if I could plop it, and my new scope, on the Savage 93R and start shooting beautiful little .17 HMR rounds today. I don’t think that will happen. The mail arrives late in the afternoon, and there is apparently a new county ordinance that says it must rain torrentially at 4 p.m every day. It will take me an hour just to get the rifle set up. Looks like tomorrow will be the day.

I feel like I should order even more ammunition. I saw some guy on a forum apologizing for only having 20,000 rounds of .22 LR, and I felt inferior. I have a lot of .17 HMR, but Joe Biden just picked Kamala Harris to be the Democrats’ real candidate for the presidency, and supplies may get even tighter than they are now. I enjoy shooting a great deal, and I don’t want to have to quit.

I want to find out whether 17-grain or 20-grain bullets shoot better before I commit. Should I wait for the scope to arrive, or should I use my old one to get it over with? Is it safe to wait a couple of days? Maybe not.

Biden, who is getting an MSM/MeToo pass on exposing himself to female Secret Service agents, will be dead by the 2024 election, and he will probably have his public appearances limited during 2021. Not that anyone will want to see him after he is forced from office. The left will want to move on ASAP so they don’t have to talk about lying about Biden’s illness. They’ll want to pretend they were all about electing a semi-black woman all along.

If Biden wins, we will soon be able to say we’ve had a black president. Obama was half black, and Harris is half black, so together, they make one president. As it stands now, we’ve only had half of one, and his black half wasn’t really black. It was African. His ancestors never worked in the Americas as slaves. They had no idea what cornbread or biscuits were. They made no contributions to the blues, ragtime, or jazz. They never participated in civil rights marches. Obama has no idea what it’s like to part of American black culture, but he could tell you about the comfortable suburban culture of the white grandparents who raised him when his parents ran off.

People are claiming Biden’s selection is groundbreaking. Everyone forgets Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. They forget Herman Cain’s flirtation with the presidency, which was embraced by conservatives. They forget the fact that Democrat cabinets tend to look like Romney family reunions.

Well…I shouldn’t say that. There is at least one non-white Romney.

I keep asking God whether I should spend money on guns and ammunition. I feel he wants me to do it. I have asked him why. I now think the answer is that it’s for the people who don’t make it in the rapture. Lots of Christians, and nearly all Jews, will still be here, surrounded by violent, infantile people who are no longer restrained by the prayers of the people God removed. They will need guns and ammo to stay alive until they can get right with God. Or maybe God will give them a choice between using the weapons and accepting martyrdom in order to be saved.

I still feel like December will be the month, and somehow, the 11th seems like the day. Not pretending I’m certain, though. I haven’t seen a scroll appear with the date written on it in flames.

Imagine the simian behavior we will see from the left after the election, regardless of who wins. If they win, they’ll gloat and march and riot. It will be remarkable if leftist pogroms don’t begin in November. In January, the DOJ will give them license to riot all they want. If they lose, they’ll riot for months as their way of throwing a tantrum. Ruling by tantrum is their goal already.

I’ve been thinking about what they’re up against. They will need serious supernatural help from Satan. Leftist men tend to be feminine and soft. They tend to be unacquainted with weapons and tactics. Leftist women are women, and women don’t fight very well. On the other side, there are countless conservatives who have been stocking up on equipment since Obama was elected. Some started earlier.

I have been wondering who buys things like plate carriers. A plate carrier is a garment that holds bullet-resistant armor. I’ve wondered who buys dozens of AR-15 and AK-47 magazines. I think I know the answer. People aren’t preparing to protect their houses. You will never need a dozen magazines to put down a deer or a burglar. They’re preparing for civil war, and they’re doing a fine job.

I used to think people would give up their guns, just like Australians and the British. Now I don’t think so. I think the left taught conservatives they didn’t have to obey the law as long as they had numbers. I think tens of millions of conservatives will tell the police to jam it when they ask for their weapons. If you can take over a city with rifles and not be arrested, you can keep your AR-15 collection and your bump stocks and binary triggers.

It looks like leftists will be taking pepper spray, bags of feces, and bottles of urine to gunfights. To harm conservatives in a post-election scenario, you will need to be able to strike from at least 600 yards away, because that’s how far a cheap AR-15 will shoot effectively. No one in history has ever been able to throw pee that far.

Leftists can’t magically become competent at warfare in a month or two, and conservatives have been getting ready since they were born. Rioters do well in cities, where people are disarmed and conditioned to wait for the police to protect them. The farther out looters and arsonists go, the worse things will get for them. We’ve already seen small towns run them off.

They should start wearing camo instead of black.

The antichrist’s troops may have a false sense of safety because they’ve prepared to engage the police in cities. The thing is, the police are pussycats. They have to obey orders. They have to wear cameras. They’re forced to use non-lethal weapons. Civilians aren’t like that. They have real guns and zero oversight.

Because suburban and rural homes and businesses are relatively hard targets compared to urban ones, one would expect the leftist carnage and cruelty to be focused in cities. Of course, that has historically been the case. Rioters and looters are like animals that defecate in their own nests. Cowards who run from the strong attack the weak, and people who are too sorry to work will often be too sorry to travel. Also, many urban guerrillas don’t own cars.

Many people on the left and right seem delighted by the prospect of civil war. I suppose this is how people who have never seen real war think. It may sound like fun while you’re sitting at home cleaning your guns or filling bottles with pee, but it’s not fun when bodies start dropping and survivors have to be fitted with artificial limbs and colostomy bags.

Anyway, if the rapture comes, maybe nominal Christians who live nearby will need to use what I leave behind, to buy themselves time. I hope I’m not here with them.

On a personal level, I keep trying to get God’s help cleaning up my inner filth. I’m much better than I was 10 years ago, but the standard is Jesus, not my old self. I still let God down substantially from time to time.

I had a wonderful revelation. I think all improvement comes through divine revelation and impartation.

I’ll explain the revelation. I thought about gifts I had received from people who loved me. For purposes of this blog entry, you can think about things your mother gave you. You know how that works. She gives you something that really doesn’t work out, but 20 years later, you can’t throw it out, because your mom gave it to you. She saw it on the shelf, and she thought about her baby. She thought about how much she missed you, and she thought about you opening your present and remembering how much she loved you.

Then it turned out you didn’t have all that much use for a bread machine, so you put it in the garage and told yourself you would give it away. But you didn’t.

Every good thing we have is like that bread machine, except that the good things God gives us work.

It’s easy to get used to thinking of God as an enraged father who is fed up with your shenanigans. Things look different when you remember he’s a warm-hearted, generous father who delights in choosing things for you. It makes you feel bad about complaining and about not taking care of his gifts.

This is the person I let down when I sin. Maybe I have made him angry on occasion, but the Bible says I am like a son in whom he delights. My mother and father certainly had faults, but I know what it is to have two parents who delight in me. If I appreciate what they did for me, in their imperfection, how much more should I appreciate what God has done for me?

Thinking about this helps me with gratitude, humility, and obedience.

America is turning into a toilet because we have made ourselves fatherless. What do you see when you watch Antifa and BLM agitators hitting old people, breaking windows, stealing in mobs, and burning buildings? Punks. People who would never, ever do those things if their fathers were beside them. People who need guidance and discipline.

People are like dogs. When you walk a dog, it will see and smell interesting things, and it will try to run off to investigate. That’s when you yank the leash, tighten the choke collar, and make it clear that kind of behavior isn’t allowed to happen. People get stupid, disgraceful ideas. We pursue them. If we’re young and our parents are nearby, we get taken to the woodshed, and that helps prevent us from becoming useless punks. Fathers are generally the most effective dispensers of discipline.

Human fathers are extremely important, but they are just shadows of the father we really need. We cut off his influence when churches slandered the Holy Spirit and did away with the Holy Spirit baptism and prayer in tongues. We reduced God’s ability to correct us. This is why so many Americans think it’s okay to defecate on police cars and take over cities. It would be a great help if God sent out millions of angels who looked just like John Wayne, to shatter tailbones with steel-toed boots. It would save a lot of punks from destruction. Unfortunately, this is not the way God works. Bringing his order into the world has always been man’s job, not God’s.

I can think of a lot of occasions on which a devastating kick to the rear end would have changed the course of my life for the better.

My parents failed me. My dad was an atheist, and he was selfish and brutal. My mother was a nominal Christian. They didn’t put me in touch with God. They often spoiled me, because it was easy for them. Spoiling is a form of neglect.

Systematically, they failed to correct me. It’s a wonder I’m not worse than I am. Fortunately, God gave us this promise: “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.” That’s the only reason I am not headed for destruction.

My guess is that people see that verse and think it means God will protect them and give them things. I suppose that’s correct, but fathers and mothers are supposed to prune and shape us like trees. Apart from salvation, these are the best things God does for us. He takes us up and fixes the things our parents ruined.

For a long time, I’ve prayed for God to help me and the people on my prayer list not to be punks.

Churches don’t seem to talk about this. They let the punks teach them. Churches are full of awful ghetto music. Preachers and even their wives cover themselves with trashy tattoos. They try to turn Jesus into an MTV host. When the Holy Spirit is ignored, things like prophecy and healing stop, and church becomes painfully boring. Then preachers try to tart it up by adding worldly features. Meanwhile, the Bible reminds us to “remain unspotted from the world.”

The purpose of the crucifixion was to lift us, not to lower Jesus.

I can still see across the gun room, so maybe it’s time to buy more cartridges. Hope we meet in a better place while someone else is shooting up my ammo.

Money-Throwing Abates; Practice Begins

It’s a banner day. I shot a scoped rifle at something and actually hit it.

As noted in earlier posts, I put a new trigger spring and a Vortex Viper on my Ruger Venture in .204 Ruger. This was after some incredibly bad shooting with my AR-15. With the Ruger put together, I was ready for some redemption. Today I took it out to the pasture to zero it.

Apart from missing the paper entirely with several shots, due to a decision to turn a scope turret the wrong way, things went very well. Until the deluge started. I was only able to shoot one target before getting drenched. I’ll post a photo.

I know what you’re thinking. That looks pretty bad. Okay, yes, but it represents several groups.

I started way off to the right, turned the turret the wrong way and sent several shots past the target. Then I started bringing them in. I would love to say all the holes in the center are part of one group, but they aren’t. I startled myself by putting one there unexpectedly, and then I decided to improve the zero by giving the turret one more click.

After putting four holes in the center, I shot at a place to the left where two yellow lines crossed. I hit it square. By the time the 6th shot was off, the rain was getting out of control, so I quit. I didn’t measure, and the cattle will probably eat the target before I can put calipers on it, but I’m pretty sure that whole group is under 1 MOA. If not, it’s close enough for government work.

I can’t be positive, because the clouds will not let me shoot long enough to find out, but it sure looks like this gun and ammo will do sub-MOA pretty consistently at 100 yards, if I practice a little more. If not, well, 1 MOA is clearly doable, and that’s excellent.

It’s a major relief to confirm that I can shoot. It looks like I still have horizontal stringing, but there has to be a way to fix that.

The trigger is as good as it can be, within my ability to judge triggers. The scope is very nice. I need some way to tighten the bipod up a little; they sell aftermarket levers. Anyway, I can finally say I have a gun that will shoot well enough to let me focus on technique instead of equipment. For all I know, it would shoot even better with handloads.

This is a bad, bad day for coyotes and coons.

The End of Days Is no Excuse for Bad Cooking or Poor Shooting

I dare anyone to say I don’t make great use of my time.

Today two wonderful things happened. I got over the local-pizza-ingredient hump, and I put a new scope on my Thompson Center Venture rifle.

I probably should not be thinking about pizza, but the pandemic and the mythical food shortages associated with it shift one’s thoughts in the direction of shopping and cooking, and I am a casualty. Early in the crisis, flour disappeared from shelves, and when it reappeared, bread flour lagged by at least two months. I bought some wheat gluten before everyone else thought of it, and I started fooling around with it. I tried to make baguettes, for example.

Pizza is a mysterious food. It only has three major ingredients, and preparation is extremely simple, but it’s one of the hardest things to figure out how to make. I figured it out when I lived in Miami. It turned out ingredients were extremely critical. I had to use certain things, or it didn’t work. Then I moved north, and I was no longer able to get those things.

You can use just about any flour to make a great Sicilian pizza, but for some reason, thin pizza doesn’t work that way. Most of the flour at your local grocery just won’t cut it. The texture or the flavor or both will be off. Bread flour works well, and some bread flours are better than others. Some people insist on Caputo 00 flour from Italy. It’s a low-ash flour without much gluten. I tried it, and I didn’t think much of it.

A local store started stocking King Arthur bread flour a couple of weeks back, so naturally, I have been making pizza. The flour gave me good results, but I was not completely happy.

I researched, and I decided I should try diastatic malt powder. This is a dough conditioner. You add a small amount to your flour, and it makes the product blow up better and brown better in the oven. I couldn’t find it around here, but Amazon sells it. Today I put a little bit in my flour, and the result was very good. The dough browned earlier, it blew up better, and it wasn’t as chewy as it had been in previous efforts. It rose fast, and the flavor was good.

I knew something good was happening when I rolled the proofed dough out and started tossing it. It had a silky feel to it, and it opened up beautifully. It didn’t even try to tear. Tossing a 10″ pie took less than a minute. It was a snap. I don’t know how malt works, but it worked great today, and I plan to keep using it.

I also tried a new tomato product. Nearly all of the tomato products stores sell are useless for pizza. The manufacturers use unripe tomatoes or the wrong varieties. It’s easy to get or make a sauce that looks red and tasty, but when you take a bite of a slice, you will know you’ve been had.

My go-to sauce is Saporito, from the Stanislaus company. It’s tomato paste, basil, and citric acid. It’s very sweet and fruity. I doctor it up with a few things, and it’s excellent. But I can’t get it around here.

I’ve been trying various items from local stores. Today I decided to try Muir Glen “organic” paste. I put “organic” in quotation marks because “organic” is an empty Pavlovian stimulus which motivates people to spend three times as much for food that isn’t any better. There are no real standards for organic food production, except that you have to put “organic” on the label.

The can says Muir Glen is made in Central California, and the Muir Glen website shows big Roma tomatoes, just like the ones Stanislaus uses. Stanislaus is a California company.

I combined some paste with garlic powder, oil, salt, oregano, and a couple of other things, and I put it on a crust made with diastatic malt. I used sliced Sargento mozzarella and sliced Boar’s Head fontina. I sprinkled oregano and salt on top of the cheese, and I baked at 500° on a preheated stone. I can’t do better than 500° with my oven.

The pizza was very nice. I used too much cheese and not enough sauce, but it was a lot better than pies I had made earlier in the week. I feel like my suffering is over. Not that I plan to make a lot of pizza. I was just frustrated because I couldn’t figure out how to do it with things I could buy here.

I really want to make garlic rolls with malt, but I have to maintain some self-control.

I can supply the ingredient list, if you want to try it.

INGREDIENTS

125 grams King Arthur bread flour
80 grams warm water
2 tsp. instant yeast
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. diastatic malt

You can add oil to make it softer. My understanding is that you should knead, add oil, and knead again. Some food reason I no longer recall.

I gave it a pretty decent “kneading” in the food processor, going for at least 30 seconds after it formed a ball. I prepared the pizza on a square of non-stick foil, which I removed from the stone after two minutes. You just pull it out from under the pizza. If you use this method, you won’t have to try to shove a sticky raw pizza off a peel. You put it on the foil, and the foil slides off, taking the pizza with it. After two minutes of cooking on the foil, the crust is strong enough to tolerate having the foil yanked out.

As for the rifle, some Seekins scope rings arrived today, and I was able to mount a Vortex Viper PST 6-24×50 on it. This is a discontinued scope I bought accidentally. I was going to return it, but I decided it would be more than adequate for .204 Ruger, which is only useful at or below 400 yards. I think I did a good job of mounting it. I used a torque wrench and all that. I changed the trigger spring two days ago, so now I have a killer varmint rig with a very light touch. I still have my ATN night scope, so I have the Vortex for daytime, and if I ever decided to try shooting coons at night, I’ll have the ATN ready to go.

Very nice. It’s wonderful when you get a firearm working correctly. I can’t wait to zero the scope and see what the gun can do. Based on earlier results with a scope which is hard to use, I have high hopes of being able to put 10 rounds in a 1″ circle at 100 yards.

People call the Venture a cheap gun. Maybe so. I have never shot an expensive bolt rifle, so I don’t know what I’m missing. I think the most expensive bolt guns I’ve shot were a 6mm and a 30.06, probably Remington, when I was a kid. With the Venture, I have what appears to be a phenomenal trigger and a highly accurate gun, so what’s not to love? The bolt has been very sticky, and that led me to blow a hole in the pasture while trying to close it, but I have been running it back and forth in order to loosen it up, and it seems to be working. I should be able to make it nice and slick with some effort. After that, it will be really hard to see what an additional thousand dollars would have bought me.

On Wednesday, the scope base for my .17 HMR should arrive, unless it’s in the mailbox already. Then I can put an Athlon scope on my Savage 93R, and I’ll be all set for inexpensive, nearly recoil-free 100-yard practice.

Scoped rifles have been a source of frustration for me, and a lot of it has been equipment-related. By the end of the week, I should have 3 rifles set up well with MRAD scopes, and I may even have my AR-15 set up correctly. After that, I should be able to focus on learning to shoot instead of subduing uncooperative weapons.

I’m not shooting today because I don’t want to make my neighbors miserable. Any sane person should be satisfied with three sessions a week.

That’s what I’m telling myself at the moment.

I’m blessed to have a few readers who give me good advice and save me from myself. Jim from the now-defunct Smoke on the Water pops in from time to time to cut through the BS I’ve read and heard. Recently, he provided some tips on leveling scopes, which is a BS-intensive topic from one end to the other. I believe I will only need such information for my Ruger Precision Rifle and LR-308, because nothing else I have will shoot far enough to make leveling matter. Anyway, his comment will be there when I need it.

I still want to get a Tikka T3x in 6.5 Creedmoor. I do not hunt at all, apart from small annoying creatures of the sort taxidermists hide in their back rooms, but I have dreams of getting out there and trying, and I need at least one rifle for large game. The hunting picture is not rosy for me. There is nothing worth shooting (legally) on this property, and I feel funny about wandering around on public land wearing day-glo overalls, surrounded by beer-drunk weekend warriers with itchy trigger fingers and cataracts. Even if I did get out there and try, I don’t know what to do with a whole deer, and I can’t make myself shoot a bird smaller than a turkey. That’s what owning parrots will do to you. It’s really too bad pigs don’t come to visit.

I could pay for a guide and shoot some pigs on a hunting property, but that’s a little bit like going outside and shooting one of the cattle. I hope they would at least let me get out of the truck.

I shouldn’t joke. I remember shooting a rabbit from my grandfather’s Buick Riviera. He was a great grandfather.

My 6.5 Creedmoor dies arrived. I’m waiting for a case trimmer. I think I ordered bullets and powder. Yes, I remember it now. Primers are on their way to the nearest Bass Pro. Once my rifles are functioning, I’ll be able to think about making my first rifle rounds.

That’s all that’s happening here, apart from the apocalypse. Hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.

Kindly Stop Breathing Near Me

What’s going on with coronavirus? I wish I knew.

My county is up to 6,573 known cases, or about 2.2% of the population, based on a mental calculation I just did, which I am too lazy to check.

Does it mean the virus is spreading as quickly as the number suggests, or does it mean we’re just testing a lot?

You tell me.

The number of coronavirus deaths here is currently 89. That’s about 5 times what it was a couple of months ago. The known-case number has multiplied by something roughly like 20, but the death number is not keeping pace. That seems to suggest that the real infection rate has probably only multiplied by about 5, and that suggests testing is the main driving force behind the known-case number.

Of course, there are reasons why no one can rely on any of these figures. For one thing, medical institutions have big financial incentives to attribute deaths to coronavirus. Because medical people lean left, they also have political incentives. People in my area are talking about falsified records, and I have no reason to doubt what they say. The tests aren’t very good, and people lie.

Another problem: roughly a third of our known cases come from prisons. That’s a freak thing. This county has a lot of prison–not just jail–beds. Compared to other counties, we have more prisoners per capita. Prisons are not normal environments. The residents are confined in very small spaces, and that’s the single most important factor in coronavirus transmission. Also, a disproportionate number are black, and black people are more susceptible to infection.

Prisons are getting a disproportionate death rate. I suppose people in prison are more likely to have underlying conditions. They are not responsible people. A lot of them are probably former smokers. Many are probably obese. Then there is AIDS. And hepatitis C.

Another strange thing: women make up a big portion of the known cases. Is that because we have women’s prisons? Search me.

Anyway, you can’t look at a 2.2% known-infection rate and draw solid conclusions.

For months now, I’ve been hoping the bug would turn out to be more contagious than it appeared. The experts kept telling us it was more contagious than the flu, but the infection numbers are still nowhere close to those we see in an average flu year. The flu takes around 120 days to generate the bulk of its statistics. The consensus is that Coronavirus has been in America for at least 7 months, but a smart person who knows there is air travel between here and China pretty much has to conclude that it actually got here by December 1, 2019. Whether the correct guess is 7 months or over 8 months, if this had been the flu, we would have had something like 40 million known cases by May 1, and unless we are failing to detect cases, that hasn’t happened.

If coronavirus really is more contagious than the flu, then maybe half of Americans have already had it. If that’s true, then it’s typically very, very mild. If it were not, we would have noticed the huge wave of sick people.

We have moderately large wave of people who are known to be infected, and we have a much smaller wave of people who have had symptoms.

The other day, some expert said he thought we probably had 50 million cases. I hope he’s right. That would mean the disease was not as severe as the hype suggested, and it would also mean we were pretty far into the process and therefore much closer to recovery than official figures suggest.

But you can’t trust any of the numbers, so what do I know?

The people who ALLEGEDLY died from coronavirus here were almost all afflicted with “underlying conditions.” We have 89 deaths, including 86 victims with preexisting health problems. That’s a comforting 97%. Unless you have an underlying health condition. Then it’s an extremely alarming 97%.

The news says nearly every infected person here has a known source of infection. That sounds very encouraging. It suggests you’re not likely to wake up sick with no explanation, and that suggests you have some control.

It looks like the local mask ordinance is gone. The city Karens or whatever they’re called passed an ordinance for the city, but the mayor vetoed it. Not sure why. I would have to pay money to read the story; forget that. I don’t think it matters, because businesses have signs up. No mask, no Big Mac. As is so often the case, the private sector is well able to look after itself without government coercion.

I read some interesting stuff today. They say the polio vaccine and pneumonia vaccines may confer some resistance. I’ve had a bunch of polio vaccines. I don’t know if that’s normal. Either you’re supposed to get more than one, or my mother let them give them to me because we moved around and didn’t keep my medical records. I know I’ve had more than one, because I remember how they tasted.

I wonder if I should get a pneumonia vaccine. I don’t see how it can hurt. I should definitely get a flu shot.

I have also read that they suspect that asymptomatic people don’t get sick because they’ve had other coronaviruses, or similar viruses, in the past. That would be great news. When I was a kid, I got a cold about once a month. I must have had everything by now. It would also suggest that vaccines will be incredibly effective. If a cold I had 5 years ago can protect me, surely a vaccine can.

I don’t worry. I think I already had coronavirus, I think God will look after me even if I’m wrong, I have no underlying conditions, I do well with respiratory stuff, and I do not care at all if I die. And besides, worry is sin, it’s faith in Satan, it’s unpleasant, and there is nothing good about it. Not one thing.

Do I worry about other people? Well, if worry is wrong, it’s wrong, no matter who you’re worrying about. I don’t worry about other people. I can’t do anything for them anyway, apart from prayer. I’m doing that.

I keep feeling that the rapture is coming this year. I now, officially, hope this is true. I don’t want to see anyone go through the tribulation unnecessarily, but the more I see of 2020 humanity, the more I am weary of us, and the more weary I think God must be. It must be unpleasant, watching us at each other’s throats over a mild disease, knowing almost none of us will get the message and fast and repent. He offers us all the solutions to our problems, and we are scrapping over masks and disinfecting wipes.

A sea of lies is spewing from leftists these days. It reminds me of the red dragon story from the Revelation. I’m so tired of lies. It doesn’t bother me that people are wrong, but many lies demand a response. Lying works, at least in the short term. I’m tired of contending with liars.

When I think of lies, I think about my sister. She never took responsibility for anything that happened to her. Everyone was out to get her. She was a saint, surrounded by villainous scum. She lied constantly, aggrandizing and exonerating herself and accusing other people of dishonesty. She denied she was a drug addict. She denied being arrested in Florida and Kentucky, even though the whole family knew what had happened. She accused my dad of raping her, in front of two people who had no idea whether it was true or not. She almost got him in serious trouble by accusing a mafioso’s kid of raping her; my dad went to the kid’s house to give him a beating, and fortunately, no one was home. She accused my dad of breaking her arm. She tried to get me in trouble, claiming I kicked her dog. My dad was also accused, and he wasn’t even in the room when the incident supposedly occurred.

You can imagine how tiresome it is, dealing with someone like that for decades. You can never address a problem involving a person like that in an efficient way. First, you have to have an elaborate trial, with testimony, proving that person’s version of the facts is a lie. Then you have to deal with the people that person convinced. Then when you get past one smokescreen of lies, that person puffs out another one, and you’re off to the races again.

Lying is quick and easy. That’s why Satan does it. Refuting lies is a big, big job.

Antifa is based on lies. BLM is based on lies. Leftism is based on lies. Anti-white and anti-Christian bigotry are based on lies. We swim in lies all day. In a healthy society, the truth would be settled and widely known, and people would work together for common ends. We can’t do that. We have an adversarial system. The group that lies and yells the loudest and the most persistently wins.

I’m tired of arguing and refuting. I don’t do nearly as much of it as I used to. I try not to do it at all. Imagine how tired God must be.

We all want immunity these days. Unfortunately, immunity can be fatal. Many, many of us have become immune to the truth. We treat it like a disease. We social-distance from people who spread it. This is what will bring the rapture to pass. When God decides people are so bone-headed the effort of persuading them is no longer worth tolerating the contempt, dishonesty, arrogance, and cruelty, he will pull the plug. Our presence here has to serve a purpose, and once it becomes clear we can’t serve that purpose to a satisfactory degree, we will be pulled out.

Today. Tomorrow. Ten minutes from now. I’m ready. If we can get a real revival worth the abuse we’ll put up with, I’m all for staying, but things do not look good.

I’ve often said the flood was like a flea dip for the earth. I’m sure Noah and his family grieved for the people who died, but imagine the peace they had when they came out of the ark. Imagine having all the annoying, venomous people in your life disappear. That’s what the rapture will be like. People who are removed will find themselves in a world where everyone is in agreement with them, and the rest will be like a swarm of gnats with no one left to bite and drain except each other.

I am not going to worry about other people. I will speak the truth and pray for them, but that’s it. I’m not going to stress myself. If they want to stay here after the rapture and go through hell on earth, that’s their choice. They will still be able to be saved. Maybe when the trees burn up and the fish die and people beg for death, they’ll change their minds. If not, they were not worth pursuing in the first place.

I have no doubt that there are many people in hell who still accuse God and his children and refuse to admit fault. The willful irrationality of human beings knows no limits. I think many, many people will realize God is real during the tribulation yet will continue to revile and defy him. The fact that people are going to be lost shouldn’t destroy our peace. It’s a normal part of the human experience, and it can’t be helped.

5 MOA!

I shot my AR-15 again today. Yesterday I got keyholing and weird performance at 100 yards with 40-grain bullets, so today I shot 50-grain Fiocchi Extrema rounds with V-Max bullets.

Yesterday, along with the keyholing, I got inconsistent accuracy, and because I managed to put nearly all of 9 rounds in one big hole, I don’t think I’m the problem, nor do I think the gun is incapable of shooting well.

Today, things did not go well at all. I didn’t get keyholing as far as I can tell, but grouping was so bad, I quit and took the gun indoors to see if I could find any loose screws on it.

Here is the first target. I always start on the bottom-left bullseye and go clockwise. I shot at each bullseye 5 times.

The first group looks like a 1.5-MOA group plus a flyer. Could be worse, as the second group, at top left, shows. The next group, at top right, looks like it’s centered around a different point of impact. The last group looks about like the first one, except that it’s centered below the center of the bullseye.

Here is the second target. Before I shot it, I fiddled with the scope’s parallax knob. I thought it could be the problem. I find it hard to adjust parallax out from a prone position.

The first group is wonderful. I thought my problems were solved. Then I tried to hit the upper-left bullseye, and it was like one of the scope’s rings had broken in half. I would call it 4 MOA, but that makes it sound better than it is, because one round hit the top-right bullseye. The highest hole in the top left bullseye looks like it may be a keyhole.

I didn’t try to put a group in the top-right bullseye. I shot at the one on the lower right, and at first, I thought I had missed completely. I had to go look at it. I stopped shooting. I can’t shoot when I have no idea where the bullets are going. I know I’m not going to hit a cow or miss the berm, but spraying and praying is not good practice.

Seems to me that the 5-round, one-hole group proves the gun and I can shoot. You can put 3 rounds in one hole by accident, but it’s not nearly as likely with 5 shots, and the other day, I put most of 9 shots in one big hole. So something is wrong.

Someone suggested the barrel nut might be loose. I took the handguard off the gun and looked at the nut, which turned out to be a special nut that works with a regular wrench (yay). The nut was very tight. I looked to see if the gas tube was hitting anything. I looked at everything I could think of.

Finally, I looked at one of my magazines. I saw an article about AR accuracy problems, and it mentioned magazines. The writer was talking about feeding issues, but it occurred to me that a bad magazine might damage bullets.

When I checked the magazine, I saw that it had sharp metal edges in front of the bullets, and the edges were shiny. It looked like they had brass or copper on them. I shoved a cartridge forward, and sure enough, the bullet hit the edge. I looked at a bullet, and I saw a couple of little marks on it. I don’t know if it was damaged badly enough to make it fall apart in flight, but I didn’t want to take chances. I cut recesses in both magazines so the bullets couldn’t touch them. I have some plastic magazines, and they were made with these recesses.

It amazes me that anyone would make a magazine that shaves metal off cartridges, but there you go.

I don’t know if this is what’s causing the accuracy problem, but it can’t be helping. I ordered a couple of short plastic magazines to replace the cheap metal jobs I modified.

After considering everything else, I have to think about the scope. It may be defective. Something inside it could be rattling around. I may put another scope on the gun and shoot it to see what happens.

This really looks like a 0.75-MOA gun, with the right ammo and good concentration. The gun and I can do 1 MOA if I can get the bugs ironed out. It’s very obvious that something other than user ineptitude or a fundamental gun problem is at work. No one goes from a 1″ group to completely missing the bullseye in one day without some kind of unusual mechanical problem.

The more I work with this gun, the more I realize the AR platform is a mess. It’s practically a religion. These guns have all sorts of problems unique to the genus, and you have to buy special tools to work on them. I can’t discount the fun, though. Buying an AR is like buying a puzzle. Making it function is part of the joy.

I may put a different scope on the gun tomorrow. If it shoots well, all this fuss about other sources of inaccuracy will prove to be a total waste of time.

Unfortunately, I Took Pictures of it First

I feel conflicted. On the one hand, today I got to shoot an AR-15 in my own yard, far from Miami. That’s excellent. On the other, I shot like a cop wearing tactical pants with 35 zippers.

I took the AR-15 out and shot Fiocchi Extrema ammunition from it. This ammunition has Hornady V-Max bullets. Based on my experience with Fiocchi ammo in my .204 Ruger, I have no doubt that Fiocchi makes good stuff. Still, this is what happened:

The first bullseye I shot is at the bottom left on the first target. I shot 9 rounds into it. The others got 5 rounds each. It’s pretty good, even though I forgot to extend my buttstock. I was hanging off the rear of the rifle for 9 rounds.

I always start at 7 o’clock and go clockwise. The second bullseye is not as good as the first, but it’s okay. Five rounds and 4 holes, not far apart.

The next bullseye, at top left, is not great. I got a fairly big semicircle of 4 shots, with a shifted area of impact. One shot was so bad, it’s outside the black. Three of the shots are elongated. No idea why. I don’t think bullets should tumble and keyhole at 100 yards.

The next bullseye, at 4 o’clock, is okay, but why are there only 4 holes? Sometimes I shoot two rounds through one hole out of pure luck. I certainly hope that happened here, because thinking of the alternative gives me stomach cramps.

Next, at 7 o’clock on the bottom-left bullseye on the second target, I did okay, with a flyer. After that, things went completely nuts. The bullets went in random directions, and I got elongated bullet holes. No idea what that’s all about. I’m hoping I can blame the bullets. If they’re tumbling at 100 yards, I want my money back.

I’m starting to think this may not be the most accurate gun on earth. I am not a great rifleman, but I’m better than this. If I were the problem, you would expect my shooting to improve during a session, but my last three bullseyes are scary.

It sort of looks like things went utterly sideways, with elongated bullet holes, and then things started to get normal again on the last bullseye. Is that even possible?

I’m using a LaRue trigger I installed. I liked it at first because it was a great improvement over my stock trigger. Now I like it less. It seems like a quality trigger, but the pull is just too heavy. It’s not made for precise shooting. At least I don’t think so. I think it’s aimed at people who put on plate carriers and walk around shooting at steel with their thumbs on top of their barrels. I could use something lighter.

I changed my rear bag. My first rear bag was a leather rabbit-ear bag. When I bought it, I assumed it was a useful item, because legitimate companies sold leather rabbit-ear bags. I didn’t think they would sell something no intelligent person would use. I eventually found out real shooters used soft rear bags. I bought an Armageddon Gear X-wing fabric bag, and it was not bad. It seemed too small, though. I found I was always working to lift the butt of the gun high enough. I got a larger one, and it’s much, much better. Not good enough to make me shoot well today, however.

Now I have a puzzle to solve. What’s causing the keyholing?

It may be that the gun just doesn’t like 40-grain ammo. I should shoot a little 55-grain before I give up on it. It has a 1:9 twist, and that is supposed to be a little fast for light rounds.

Actually, I read that barrel twist actually correlates with bullet length, not weight. Life is never simple.

If the twist rate is the problem, why is the keyholing intermittent? It seems to appear and then go away. Is something collecting in the barrel, causing keyholing, and then blowing out so the gun can shoot accurately again?

I feel like I should quit changing the gun until I get some more shooting time in with something that actually works. I can’t eliminate the human factor unless I’m sure I’m shooting well. Unfortunately, it will be at least Wednesday before I can shoot the .204 or the .17 HMR with new glass. I could always stick the ATN night scope back on the .204. The problem is that I’m reluctant to keep shooting with fuzzy imaging when I can wait a couple of days and use a Vortex.

I can shoot the Ruger Precision Rifle. I have a sanity-hearing-level stockpile of ammo.

I’m starting to wonder how good my Sellier & Bellot 6.5 Creedmoor ammo is. A Youtube guy appeared to shoot it into under 1 MOA with an RPR, but people have been known to lie, and ammunition doesn’t always perform the same way in different examples of the same gun.

The RPR has a new bolt shroud. I am eager to try it with live ammo. Maybe I should take it out to the pasture tomorrow.

I was not totally happy with the trigger in my Thompson Center Venture, which is my .204 Ruger gun. It seemed heavy for an adjustable trigger. I contacted Smith & Wesson (Thompson Center is a fiction) and asked about buying parts so I could upgrade to the Venture II’s trigger, which is better. No dice. They refuse to sell the parts. I guess I’m all done buying Thompson Center rifles.

I found an aftermarket spring. A company called Mcarbo sells it. Today I installed it. I was hoping for a pull weight of maybe 2.5 pounds. I don’t have a gauge, but when I was done, the trigger felt lighter than that. Mcarbo has an installation video, and their own guns came in under 2 pounds.

I like a light trigger, but I don’t want my rifle to go off every time the wind blows. If my scope rings ever arrive, I’ll take the gun out and see what it feels like in use. The impression I get is that instead of shooting this gun, I’ll be thinking the bullet into the target. I’ll think about pulling the trigger, and the bullet will take off. The pull may be lighter than desired, but the gun may turn out to be a dream to shoot.

I guess I should clean the AR’s barrel and try 40-grain and 55-grain ammo. If heavier ammo doesn’t keyhole, maybe it means the gun has a peculiar hatred for light bullets. If both weights keyhole, something abnormal must be happening.

Of course I want a new barrel. I always want new gun parts. But maybe a new barrel won’t help.

I should have known this was going to be a rough session. When I set up my first target and got settled in to shoot, a calf wandered over and started chewing on the tape holding it up. I used to think I was crazy for thinking they were eating my targets. Now I’ve seen it. I had to jump up and run him off before he ate everything.

Maybe I can get some Ruger redemption tomorrow. I can break out the Sellier & Bellot, and if I can’t make it work, I have two flavors of Hornady match ammo standing by.

Lee Dies Ruin my Day

I have an extremely important message for all users of the Internet.

Do not use Lee carbide 9mm dies on a Hornady Lock n Load AP progressive press.

A while back, I loaded up on 9mm semiwadcutter bullets. I wanted them for practice, and they’re also not bad for self-defense. Then I found out I didn’t actually have 9mm dies.

All the dies I had were made by Hornady, and I wondered if I was cheating myself by not trying companies like RCBS, Lyman, Lee, and Redding. I ordered a set of Lee carbide dies.

The carbide was what got me going. If you use carbide dies, you don’t have to use case lube, and presumably, carbide dies will last a long time.

I took these things out of the package a few days ago. The first thing I noticed was that they didn’t have Hornady-style locking rings. They had weird rings with slots cut into them for grip. It took me a minute to realize they were locking rings.

I stuck the dies on my press, and guess what. They didn’t fit. The threaded parts of the dies were maybe 3/8 of an inch too short. When I screwed them into the press deeply enough to make them work, the locking rings, which were on the upper side of the press (where they should be) were barely engaged. Only a thread or two held them on. At least one of the dies seemed to wobble when I pushed on it.

I Googled around and learned that this is a well-known design flaw. It’s amazing that Lee let it happen. There are probably less than 8 prominent companies that make reloading equipment, and they don’t make a huge number of products. Hornady’s press is very popular, Lee knows about it, and they made no effort to make their dies work with it.

I’ll tell you how you solve the problem. You buy new dies. That’s what I did. But you can also move the locking rings from the top of the press to the underside of the die platform. It allows you to screw the dies down where they need to be without sacrificing locking rings.

The problem with this crude solution is that you end up with dies that take a long time to swap. With Hornady dies, you just twist the die and the whole assembly pops out. The locking ring comes with it. With Lee dies, you have to remove the locking ring first, and Lee makes them tight and puts some kind of sticky goop on the threads to make the rings harder to turn. It’s probably great when you use a Lee press and you’re able to put the rings where they should be, but it’s a royal pain if you own the press I have.

I managed to crank out a few rounds, but I ordered Hornady dies anyway.

Figuring out which dies I wanted took hours. It’s not as simple as it sounds. When I bought dies years ago, they all came with roll crimpers. A roll crimp turns the mouth of the casing inward, and if your crimp is too heavy, it makes the metal bulge out slightly below the mouth. Then you get a round that won’t chamber. This is not a great design for most pistols I own.

There are a couple of other options. One, which I’ll get rid quickly by discussing it first, is the Lee Factory Crimp die. I’m not sure I understand this thing completely, but my understanding is that it pushes a sort of sleeve down over the casing and sizes it from the mouth down. This tightens the casing on the round and makes it less likely that the cartridge won’t chamber. It also makes it less likely that the bullet will be pushed deeper into the casing while its being handled and chambered and so on.

Problem: it’s a Lee product, and it has short threads. Forget that.

The other option is a taper crimp. This compresses the mouth of the casing without forming a rolled area or a bulge. I decided I wanted this.

Now I had to decide. Did I want a set with a separate crimping die, or did I want a set with a single die that crimps and also seats the bullet?

It turned out I had no choice. The Hornady set with the dual-function die cannot be had. The apocalypse has dried up the supply. But I learned that this was a good thing, because a separate crimping die produces better results, and it’s easier to adjust two dies than one dual die.

I found what may have been the last Hornady three-die set on earth, and I ordered it. Before you ask, I could not find other brands. That may not be entirely true. Redding may have a set that costs $200. I didn’t bother with products like that. I also ordered a Hornady taper crimp die.

The set comes with a dual-purpose die, but I can fix it so it seats bullets but does not crimp them. It will go size and decap, expand, fill, seat, crimp.

There will be no room for a Powder Cop, but I think they’re stupid for short casings anyway.

I the end, if I manage to sell the Lee dies, I figure I will come out $50 in the hole. That’s life.

I’ve only made 5 charged rounds, and something is going on with the press. When I pull the handle, the press moves until it gets to a certain point, and then it stops. Then if I push it harder, something gives way, and it finishes the cycle. That’s not good. I seem to produce good ammo, but I have to be very careful with every turn of the handle. I think I’ll end up producing a lot of rounds that have to go through twice. I’m going to leave it alone and start over with the new dies.

I’m using Missouri Bullet cast semiwadcutters. The Missouri Bullet company is not brave like other companies. They will not publish load data. This may be why other bullet makers are more successful. Oregon Trails, for example, wrote a whole handbook which you can download for nothing. Missouri Bullet is cowed by lawyers, so you have to find data for similar bullets and do your own work-ups.

I couldn’t find anything that was really good. I admit, I forgot to check the Lyman manual. Accurate publishes load data (brave) which you can download, and I found a recipe that looked okay. It was for an Oregon Trail bullet I had on hand. Problem: that bullet is shorter than the Missouri SWC. That means using the same overall length will push the bullet farther into the casing. This can increase the pressure and cause problems. How big would the problems be? How would I know?

I measured the bullets and found that the Missouri SWC was 0.06″ longer. I decided to increase the OAL by a fraction of that number, and I used a conservative charge. I ended up with bullets that did about 1080 fps, which is fine for 9mm. The casings looked good, so I don’t think I have pressure issues.

These bullets have lube grooves. Lube is wax. Lube grooves are deep, wide slots that go around the bases of bullets, and they are packed with wax. Because of my long AOL, my bullets each had one groove exposed.

I had to read about this. I found out it’s not a big problem. The cartridges will work. Wax can get on things, however, and I don’t like that. I’m thinking I’ll decrease the OAL and see what happens. I read the SAAMI specs, and I will be well within them. That doesn’t mean it will work, but it means I’m not off the reservation.

I would like to get up to maybe 1175 fps. That figure appears in published loads. It would be really nice to go that fast with 9mm.

You’ll never guess which powder I ended up using. Not unless you’re a stalker who actually reads everything I write and remembers it. I found that Accurate No.7 was a top choice. Is there anything that powder can’t do? If you have No.7 and Unique, you can load just about anything. No.7 is extremely versatile, and it’s also flash-suppressed.

So I used No.7. Not.

I have a bunch of BE-86, and I didn’t have a use for it. It’s also flash-suppressed, and it works for this bullet. It’s what I decided to use. I am very happy.

Now my press is set up for 9mm, but I can’t use it. I have to find another firearm job to do while I wait for new dies.

I’m thinking of buying Lehigh Defense bullets for self-defense. I keep reading about them. They look like Phillips screwdrivers, and they’re solid copper. They have provided very destructive results in testing. They also go through barriers like crazy. Ordinary hollow points have problems with things like windshields and drywall, and if they clog with fabric on the way into a perp, they don’t expand. A Lehigh Defense Xtreme Defender will go right through a windshield, even at an angle, and it doesn’t have to expand, so it doesn’t care about clothing. Bonus: they only weigh 65 grains, so the recoil is light, assisting with followup shots.

A guy on Youtube shot right through heavy bulletproof glass with Lehigh bullets.

A lot of people sneer at these bullets. Yeah. I remember sneering at Facebook. Look where it is now. I saw a Youtube expert say he wouldn’t trust them until they had been tested on live animals and so on. So I guess he only buys hollowpoints that were tested on live animals using the scientific method? What brand would that be?

One of the most lethal and experienced police gunfighters wrote about the real-life problems he had in shootouts. His name is Jim Cirillo. He made it clear that failure to penetrate was a huge problem. He shot a man in the skull with a .38, and the bullet slid around his head under the scalp and never entered the cranium. He and a partner shot a man in the face a number of times, and the same thing happened. The man got up and walked to the police car with them. If he had been up against unarmed women, he could still have raped and murdered them.

Cirillo thought developing bullets that actually get inside criminals was extremely important, and he dedicated years to trying to develop something that worked. He came up with something similar to the Xtreme Defender, but he never perfected it. He wanted something that penetrated auto glass and sheet metal. It looks like Lehigh and some other companies are following his lead.

Lehigh says its bullets are extremely destructive inside a body. This may or may not be true in practice. Maybe they’re no better than hollowpoints. But they have the advantage of piercing things like leather and heavy fabric much better, and right or wrong, testing suggests they will do more damage than hollowpoints. They may be a smart bet.

I’ve seen Paul Harrell, the Youtube guru, test these things. He shot what looked like a 2″ group at 10 yards. This is not great by his standards, and he said as much, but on the other hand, how much will 1″ groups help you when punks attack you in a parking lot? You, the punks, and the coroner will never see the difference between 1″ rounds and 2″ rounds.

Harrell uses a hilarious meat target to evaluate rounds. Xtreme Defenders tore it up like nothing else. He uses watermelons to simulate lungs, and the bullets destroyed them. The issue here is that watermelons aren’t stretchy. Does that mean Xtreme Defenders won’t do all that much damage to lungs, which can stretch and recover? Well, he had pork on both sides of the watermelon, and the pork was ripped up pretty badly. Pork is like human flesh. It suggests, but doesn’t prove, the bullets will work.

Job 1 is to be able to hit important body parts by shooting well. Job 2 is to get the bullets inside the criminal so they can do their work. Everything else takes a backseat.

I’m thinking it over.

As I’ve often said, I have zero interest in shooting anyone, and I have doubts about my willingness to send unsaved people to hell in order to survive on this miserable earth, but when you own equipment designed for a certain purpose, the natural thing is to try to make it work well.

I received a new bolt shroud for my Ruger Precision Rifle. This is a part that attaches to the bolt, obviously. The stock part lets the bolt rattle around a lot. This is annoying, because when you pull the bolt back and then try to move it forward to chamber a round, it may actually bind and get stuck. I don’t mean it gets stuck to where you need a hammer, but you may have to wobble the bolt and push a second time. It’s amazing that Ruger let this happen.

Should I care about a sticky bolt? Yes. I don’t like moving around between shots. You want things to be consistent. If you take your face off your buttstock (that sounds bad) between rounds, you upset everything. I want “BOOM-click-click-BOOM,” not “BOOM-click-rattle-rattle-curse-shove-BOOM.” I don’t actually curse, but the temptation is there.

Today I’ll install the bolt shroud. That should take almost two minutes.

I look forward to trying it. I also got a larger rear bag, and I’m hoping the improved bolt and less-fiddly bag will close up my groups.

I’m also going to see if I can set my Savage 93R in .17 HMR up with a new Athlon scope. I did all the math for the scope, base, and rings, but when I tried putting them together on my AR-15 for laughs, I found out there was an additional factor. Even if your rings and rifle work with your tube and bell, things can bump into the eyepiece, which has a larger diameter than the tube. I couldn’t check the scope on the Savage because I was waiting for a suitable base to attach.

I made an error when I ordered the base. Reflexively, I ordered a 20-MOA base. This is a base with a 20-MOA downward slope toward the front. When you shoot long distances, you may have to drop your barrel over 40 MOA, and you can run out of clicks. An angled base will help. Sadly, I forgot that no one shoots .17 HMR at really long distances. For prey, you can do 300 yards at best. You can shoot longer distances if you’re just happy to hit anything. So I have a 20-MOA base I don’t need. When I set up at 100 yards, I’ll be starting out 20 MOA in the hole.

I don’t know if it will matter. I think I’m going to attach it and use it. If it turns out to be wrong, I can change it later.

If the rings I bought work with the Savage, I’ll be able to set it up today, and I might even be able to zero it.

I already entered the Savage and my Thompson Center .204 in my Kestrel calculator. You have to name your guns. I chose Betty and Veronica. When it comes to the Ruger, I’m torn between Naomi and Tyra.

The weather people are making horrible predictions. I choose not to believe them. It will NOT rain heavily for 10 consecutive days. I’m not having it. I’m going to get the Ruger zeroed, I may get somewhere with the Savage, and there is hope that I will even make it to a gun range.

To sum up:

1. Do not ever buy Lee dies for any reason.

2. Taper crimping is what you want.

3. Lehigh Xtreme Defender bullets seem pretty good.

4. Rings that fit your tube may bump into other things, so don’t throw out the packaging your rings come in.

5. Do not buy a 20-MOA base for a rifle that can’t shoot longer than 400 yards. I think.

6. Accurate No.7 is the flubber of powder. It does just about everything.

MORE

It’s like something is trying to prevent me from shooting.

I installed the new Anarchy Outdoors titanium bolt shroud on the Ruger Precision Rifle, and it’s wonderful. Installation literally takes 10 seconds once you have the bolt out. Now the bolt slides in and out like greased glass. But when I tried to put the new scope base on the Savage 93R, it turned out Amazon had let me down. I needed a base with a 1-5/8″ ejection recess, as described in the ad, and they sent me one with a 1-3/8″ recess. In case you have a Savage 93R with a 1-5/8″ port, you need the EGW base, model 41602. That’s assuming you want 20 MOA.

I have a Smaug-like mass of .17 HMR, and I can’t shoot it because of scope problems. I could just slap the old Burris back on the rifle, but I really want to use an MRAD scope.

On the up side, the low Seekins rings I bought for the Athlon scope are the perfect height, so I don’t have to go through with an Amazon return. I ordered two sets of higher rings. I’ll send one set back and keep one for the T/C Venture. I was concerned Amazon would give me problems because I had already messed up the packaging on the low rings.

I can’t reload 9mm. I can’t shoot the Savage. I can’t shoot the Venture.

I have a jug of Vihtavuori powder for .45 ACP. I have enough bullets to crank out about 300 rounds of JHP. I guess I could do that. I can still shoot the AR-15 and the RPR, and of course, there are always .22’s. Life could be worse.

If You Want the Facts, Ask God for Yourself

If you’re reading this, you missed the Creator’s Calendar rapture.

I wrote about this a day or two back. Someone came to my Youtube channel and posted an article-length comment in support of the Creator’s Calendar, which is a doctrine adhered to by certain fringe Christians. Somehow or other, it’s based on the full moon. This person asked me to take his comment out of spam so it would be published, but I felt strongly that I was not supposed to do that, so I deleted it.

His theory was that the rapture would occur today when the sun set in Jerusalem. I looked up the time. It was 12:33 p.m. Eastern. As I write this, it is 1:00, so the sun has been down in Jerusalem for almost half an hour.

I will go out on a limb and say I don’t think the rapture has taken place. If it has, no one has published anything Google News can pick up.

It will be interesting to see what the Creator’s Calendar guy says in his next video.

A lady predicted the rapture would hit on July 22. Last time I checked, after the critical time had passed, she seemed undaunted. There were people who thought the 25th was the day. Nothing happened, unless the rapture was so small no one noticed.

If you pick a rapture date, and it passes with no discernible change, you have to draw one of two conclusions. You were wrong, or you were deemed unworthy to go. If you made your prediction with great confidence, you should be humble when it turns out to be false. You shouldn’t make up a new theory to explain it.

My big issue with the Creator’s Calendar is that it appears to be the product of study. If you know the Bible, you know God doesn’t do much work through scholars. He reveals things through the Holy Spirit. This is understandable, because if people could figure things out with God’s help, they would exalt themselves. God hates pride. He does things for us so we can’t take credit. Of course, people who are proven wrong often continue exalting themselves as though nothing had happened.

Another problem with relying on study and intelligence is that it pretty much shuts people of lesser ability–a huge percentage of the population–out of intimacy with God. I can tell you from eyewitness experience that God uses lots of people who are not very bright. He fills them with smart ideas. One reason he does this is to humiliate self-anointed sages.

I look at rapture-related videos a lot. I almost always bypass the ones from channels with names like GOD’S ANOINTED MESSENGER or Holy Prophetess La-Qu’isha. I skip the ones featuring people in costumes. If you have a long grey beard, a bizarre robe, and a gold-plated cross a foot long on your chest, you’re playing a role, not hearing from God.

I like the videos ordinary people make in their poorly decorated bedrooms. Those people are less likely to be grifters and nutjobs.

I wish the rapture had been today. Would have been nice.

This morning, I tried to look something up on my phone, and somehow I ended up in a Bible app, looking at Isaiah 1. I don’t know if my fingers slipped or what. I decided to run with it. Isaiah 1 is all about the way God lets rebellious, prosperous nations have it. Along with the ensuing chapters, it seems tailor-made for 2020.

Take a look at this:

The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.

Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.

That’s us. We think our prosperity came from an imaginary innate American superiority, hard work, or other sources. God gave us everything, and we’re looking to find any other explanation.

From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.

Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.

That sounds worse than what’s happening here now, but the types of curses described are the same as some of the ones we’re enduring. Disease and burning cities. As for strangers devouring our country, that’s a perfect description of illegal immigration.

This morning I saw a clip of the 2020 Democratic presidential debate. Until today, I didn’t know Jorge Ramos was a moderator. I was stunned. Ramos is not an American. He’s a hostile alien who supports his own people and government against America. Why not have Vladimir Putin or that Chinese guy whose name I can’t spell as a moderator? It’s obscene. It’s astounding that Americans have gotten this stupid. This kind of stupidity goes far beyond what natural causes can explain. It’s too severe. It has to be supernatural in origin.

If you read the Bible, you know God allows people to be deceived. Look at Isaiah 6:

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

The New Testament says homosexuality comes on people as a delusion because of rebellion. Isaiah seems to say the ancient Jews had their own homosexual pride movement. Look:

For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his glory.

The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.

The Bible says Sodom sinned through selfishness, but generally, Sodom is mentioned as a place of sexual perversion.

We do the things cursed nations have done, but we expect to be blessed, because we think the God of the Bible is like the tooth fairy. Imaginary.

That’s a strange belief, in view of the fact that we only exist because he imagined us. There was a time when we were all imaginary.

I always say the rapture is necessary for the tribulation to start, because if Christians remained on the earth, their prayers would prevent it. And God doesn’t want his children to go through it, any more than he wants them to go to hell. Here’s something from Isaiah that supports my belief:

Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.

Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is a picture of the tribulation. Abraham got God to promise him he would not destroy these cities if there were 10 righteous men in them. If God would have saved Sodom and Gomorrah for 10 people, he will protect the world while there are hundreds of millions of real Christians here.

Notice he calls the Hebrews rulers of Sodom and people of Gomorrah. He’s not talking to the heathens. The prophesy is for Judah. He’s saying the inhabitants of Judah might as well be Sodomites.

I keep feeling the rapture will be this year. I won’t promise you anything. I won’t tell you to quit your job or load up your credit cards. I won’t claim I know more about God’s calendar than the Jews. Angels haven’t sat in my living room and given me dictation. I haven’t been summoned to the throne of heaven in a vision I will describe in my special set of affordable DVD’s. If I were certain, I would say so. Until that time, I’m not going to say anything is written in stone.

I think it’s close, though.

Fake Forecast

As everyone who knows me knows, I’m a stoic kind of guy. I never complain about anything. It’s not my style. I’m just too manly. So I know people will realize it’s a big deal when I announce that my property is currently being pummeled by Hurricane Isaias, which I mistakenly called “Isaac” the other day.

It’s pretty bad. I would say we are getting gusts of up to 3 mph, if you get on the roof and run as fast as you can, and the skies are full of rain-laden clouds which could, conceivably, release some precipitation, some of which might possibly reach the ground before evaporating.

It’s exactly the kind of disaster you would expect if you had just read a story I saw this morning. Business Insider, also known as Trump Derangement Insider, says Governor DeSantis has declared a state of EMERGENCY EMERGENCY EMERGENCY in Florida, and HURRICANE Isaias is BARRELING toward the coast.

In typical alt-right fashion, the hurricane DENIERS at NOAA are calling Isaias a tropical storm, and their politicized maps show it prancing onshore in South Carolina as what I would call a Category .75.

The willful blindness is staggering. Can’t people see we need sensible gun control and a federal sensitivity commission that oversees the design of microaggressive pancake syrup bottles? How many times does this have to happen before we finally elect Vladimir Lenin’s pickled corpse president for life and declare the Salvation Army a terrorist organization?

I know what you’re thinking. Lenin was a white male. Not a problem. There is no reason why gender reassignment…I mean “confirmation”…surgery can’t take place post-mortem, and afterward, we can touch him up with a coat of brown Krylon.

I’m starting to wonder why I ever look at the news. I can’t help thinking about the old joke regarding the Soviet news agencies Tass and Pravda. “Tass” means “news,” and “Pravda” means “truth.” The Russians used to say, “The news is not truth, and the truth is not news.”

Hurricane news has been nearly worthless for a very long time. It was probably okay when we had three channels and Neil Frank used to go on the news and comfort us with his flattop, but now it’s an endless contest to see who can become most unhinged.

Every time the cone of certain death appears on NOAA’s website, a friend of mine sends me texts telling me we may have to endure the spectacle of Jim Cantore and his Land’s End jacket. I have been spared this time. I think he ought to go ahead and rig himself up with wires so he can appear to have his feet lifted off the ground. Better yet, CGI. He could lounge at home comfortably in boxers while his avatar Jim Headroom held onto a post and let his L.L. Bean duck shoes flap in a virtual breeze.

Isaias is the Smart Car of hurricanes. It qualifies for the title, but only in a way that waters down its meaning.

One of Donald Trump’s greatest achievements was coining and popularizing the term “fake news.” It condensed a pervasive understanding into a solid verbal bullet that could be fired at will from innumerable locations. It was as though America were a crime scene and Trump handed every one of us a can of luminol.

I learned something very interesting yesterday. The people who make up…I mean “compile”…our coronavirus statistics are including old cases in the total. If you get a test that says you USED to be infected, they say you’re a new case. It’s not a conspiracy theory. Bigwigs are apologizing publicly. I know coronavirus exists, and I think a big percentage of the upswing data we’re seeing is real, but I completely understand people who think the epidemic is nearly over. For all I know, they could be right.

I still don’t know a single person who has been diagnosed. We still have only two real celebrities who have died from coronavirus, and they’re not what you would call headliners. Roy Horn and that other guy. Now I have to look it up. Oh, right. Herman Cain. Of course, he was 74, he was already dying from cancer, and he was on chemotherapy. Where are the dead stars? There are none. And it’s not because they have money to protect themselves. Many very famous people are broke.

I keep having the feeling that if Obama were still in office, the MSM would be calling the epidemic itself an alt-right fantasy. I guess they wouldn’t go that far, but the coverage would be very, very different.

If you want to see coronavirus go away, just vote for Biden. A week after he’s elected, if he hasn’t already been forced to withdraw due to his suddenly obvious dementia, coronavirus will go away. It will be just like our war casualties. When Bush II was in office, the press published daily tallies of our military deaths. When Obama wafted into the White House, the stories ceased. I guess our enemies stopped shooting, out of reverence for the left’s messiah.

You have to wonder what the news will look like the day of the rapture. In many liberal cities, it won’t even be noticed, because so few people will be missing. It may take days for our city-bound journalists to realize something is wrong. Maybe they’ll accuse us of hiding. Which wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

“BREAKING NEWS: doctors add new item to coronavirus symptom list as millions of annoying people vanish. Fauci rages: ‘Masks could have prevented this!’ Scientists race to find new rationales for blaming Trump.”

It will be a looter’s jubilee. They’ll take all our liquor and jewelry and throw out the Bibles.

We finally have to wear masks here. I can’t go to Home Depot without one. Finally, I understand what other people have been going through. Masks are fine when you exhale, but when you inhale, they suck up against your nostrils and prevent air from entering. I always wondered why I saw so many people with masks slung under their chins. Now I get it. I do it, too. Expose mouth and nose. Walk down empty aisle. See someone approaching. Raise shields.

My post-upswing guess, based on the New York data, was that my county would top out at about 9,000 confirmed cases. Now I’m not so sure. We have prisons here, and the high rate of prison infections inflates the figures. If the old folks homes get hit, this county will have a major problem, because there seems to be one on every block. We might end up with an astronomical figure that has nearly no relationship to a typical person’s risk of infection. Applying data obtained from atypical people to the rest of us would be sort of like saying an average resident is likely to play shuffleboard and only wear orange.

It would be neat to find news I could trust. It would be neat if Santa and the Easter Bunny landed a Harrier sleigh in my yard and threw me 10 duffel bags full of rubies. Not sure which is less likely to happen.

As for me, I’m back to fasting. I went 9 days and then skipped a day. I was not happy with the way I acted and felt yesterday, so I’m fasting again. For a long time, I’ve asked God to help me fear him, and I have to say that my prayer has been answered. I think the rapture is imminent, I think I need God’s help in the turbulent, disaster-heavy end times regardless of whether the rapture comes soon, and I do not want to be here during the tribulation.

I have been thinking maybe I should fast until 3:00 every day from now on. Maybe I should throw in some all-day fasts. I invested a lot of time in messing myself up, so I should not be surprised if getting clean is not a quick process.

I still think I had coronavirus in February. I’m probably immune. If not, I probably won’t be infected, because coronavirus isn’t very contagious. If I’m infected, I probably won’t get very sick. If I die, I’m ready to go, and I don’t care. Nonetheless, I am trying to be somewhat responsible. I don’t like being sick, and a tiny percentage of coronavirus victims survive and have problems afterward. It’s not like mild sickness and death are the only options. There is an unpleasant middle path. And there is also the possibility that I could infect others.

I should be preparing for the flu. The infection rate is something like 10%–far higher than coronavirus–and the flu is awful. Through insurance, I’ve already paid for a vaccination. I ought to get that taken care of. They say it will halve my chances of getting sick. I haven’t had a shot since 2017, unless I had one and forgot. I made sure my dad got them while he was alive.

Tomorrow is August 4, and a fringe group says it’s the real Shavuot. They say the rapture will happen on that day. I think they’re completely wrong, but wouldn’t it be nice if they were right? Nothing could make me happier. I don’t care when it happens. Tomorrow. December. Next year. Whenever it happens, take me take me take me take me. A lot of leftists brag that they were at Woodstock. The rapture is the Christian Woodstock. You don’t want to have to say you weren’t there.

Every rapture prediction sparks a flame of hope in my heart, even when the predictions are clearly crazy.

I’m glad I had a chance to let everyone know how I was doing during the hurricane. I’m sure my tale of bravery and determination will inspire millions. It’s a good thing I’m so humble, because this is the kind of thing that makes people conceited.

Thompson Center’s $460 Laser

It may sound shocking, but I went outside to shoot again today, and it didn’t rain.

Okay. It did rain. But not enough to drive me inside.

I am still working on my ammo savings account. I want to have a stockpile in every useful caliber. In order to do this, I need to know which cartridges work. You don’t want to buy a thousand cartridges your gun hates. I have been itching for a chance to shoot my Thompson Center Venture so I could find out whether I wanted 32-grain or 40-grain bullets. Today I made it happen.

The results were pretty neat.

First, I should talk about my optic. Only noobs say “scope.” I say “optic.” And “polymer” instead of “plastic.”

I used an ATN X-Sight II night scope. Optic. I got this thing a couple of years back as a lark, using credit card points. It’s cheap by night OPTIC standards. It doesn’t do thermal. It’s infrared. Infrared is not as good as thermal, but this is cold comfort to the many pigs and coons who have been infraredded to the nether region.

I am no expert, even though I say “optic,” but I’ll give you my take on the–okay–scope anyway. There is nothing wrong with it. Expensive stuff is always better, but you can take this thing out of the box, put it on your gun, and shoot very, very well. The imaging is pretty bad, but that doesn’t matter if you hit what you point your rifle at. It’s not about pretty pictures.

It’s really just a smartphone in a metal case. I don’t think it has any real lenses in it. The magnification comes from zooming the picture. As a result, you get wavy, blurry scenes. Imagine zooming your Iphone to 25x and taking a photo. That’s the deal.

It has some neat stuff in it. You can move the crosshairs around, and that makes zeroing easy. You fire a shot, put the crosshairs on your original point of aim, move a second set of crosshairs to the place where the bullet landed, and push a button. You’re zeroed. Pretty much.

It records video. It tells you which direction you’re facing. You can set it to record your shots. It will record while you shoot, and when it feels recoil, it will save all the video surrounding the shot.

I don’t know what all it does. If you want to shoot things at night, and you don’t want to spend several thousand dollars, this thing will get it done. For the price, which was $600, it’s just fine.

That being said, shooting it at targets is unpleasant because the quality of the image is so bad. I think the best thing is to save it for night hunting and use a real scope for everything else.

I will post a target photo.

I shot three 40-grain rounds at the bottom-left bullseye. You will see the holes clearly…on the top-right bullseye. I zeroed the scope and shot 6 more rounds. They clustered in a small area to the left of the bottom-left bullseye. Can’t swear they all hit the paper, but it looks like they did. The zero was still not right, but it was close. The grouping was jim-dandy. Excellent for a hunting gun. No complaints.

I worked on the zero and fired 6 more rounds at the bottom-left bullseye. As you can see, they made one little hole. That was pretty sweet. I shoot this gun better than my Ruger Precision Rifle. At least for 6 rounds, I did.

If they didn’t go through the same hole, then they missed the paper entirely, and I’m confident enough in my shooting to say that did not happen.

I put 32-grain cartridges in the gun and shot some more, at the bottom-right bullseye. I didn’t do badly at all, but as you can see, the bullets made more than one hole. I call it 1.5 MOA. Either the 32-grain ammo doesn’t shoot as well, or fatigue got to me. It’s taxing to fight with your shooting bags when you’re still working things out, and the scope kept turning on and off because a power cable was not attached tightly.

I was tired of the scope, and I was not comfortable with my rear bag setup, so I got in the cart and drove home. Now I feel very confident about ordering 40-grain rounds. They appear to shoot quite well. They have a higher BC than the little bullets. They are more powerful. I lose a little velocity, but I think 3650 (according to the box) will not be slow enough to give me buyer’s remorse.

It’s pretty cool, putting 6 rounds in one very small hole. I don’t know how fluky it was, but it means more than a three-shot group.

The gun is very good. Thompson Center guarantees 3 shots into 1 MOA, and clearly, it will do that. The ammo is shockingly good, especially considering the price. It has ballistic tips, too, so it’s useful. It’s not just for targets. It will drop coyotes where they stand. Some people shoot deer with these things. That seems like a bad idea, but they do it.

I now have 1000 rounds on the way. That should be a sufficient buffer against Joe Biden and the day when Antifa and Congress become indistinguishable.

I’m going to put a Vortex PST on the gun and keep the ATN for shooting after dark and shooting with video. It will be nice shooting through a scope that isn’t like looking through a shower door.

I have an Athlon scope on the way. Some say it’s better than a Gen II Vortex PST, and the scope I’m putting on the TC is a Gen I. The Athlon is for my Savage .17 HMR. If it turns out to be better than my Vortex Gen I, I’ll put the Athlon on the .204 and the Vortex on the Savage. Presumably, I will never be able to use the Savage from over 300 yards, so it doesn’t need as good a scope as the .204. I think.

I’m pretty happy shooting this well with what seems to be a very basic stock. I am not totally convinced of the need for fancy stocks. If your barrel is free-floated and you have a good cheek weld, how does a fancy stock help you? Not sure. The stock that came with the gun appears to work fine, and it’s indestructible.

The results I got today give me hope that I will eventually be a good rifle shot. I’m already okay, but I want to be better.