Get in the Ark

I’m so tired of being lectured and told I have to fight racism. I completely understand why duped, hateful BLMtifa protestors would be excited about what they’re doing, but I’m getting micro-lectures from companies I pay for goods and services. That’s idiotic and presumptuous, and it’s not good business.

I bought an Amazon Kindle because it was time to admit that the Asus tablet I had bought years earlier was a terrible product and of little use. After the rioting started, I started seeing messages about BLM when I turned my tablet on.

I have Amazon Prime because there is really no other way to shop now. All restaurants aren’t Taco Bell yet, but most stores are Amazon or Ebay. I made a rare decision to watch a movie a few days back, and Amazon Prime filled my screen with a bunch of ads for horrible movies about black victimhood. I’ve already seen A Raisin in the Sun and Imitation of Life, Bezos. I don’t need you telling me I need to be reeducated. What if I forced Jeff Bezos to look at ads for Christian movies every time I bought a product?

Over the last few days, I’ve come to a very mature realization that I now live in a mental ward. A huge percentage of Americans are literally insane. Reason never meant as much to Americans as they pretended; it was something they resorted to when emotion and lusts didn’t work. Now it means nearly nothing.

I love Youtube because I have so many interests. Whether I feel like learning about rifles, welding, complex analysis, engineering statics, quantum mechanics, electronics, cooking, God, or nearly anything else, Youtube can provide me with useful input.

Sometimes I see people talking about the riots and the PC insanity. They try to correct people. Maybe I’m doing the same thing now. For example, they may say we should focus on the enormous, astounding, perennial problem of black homicide while we’re thinking about helpful reform. They may point out obvious things such as the terrible cost of rioting. They may propose solutions such as buying guns and making public shows of force in order to protect their towns. The sad thing is that all these effort to provide information are based on a faulty premise, which is that people listen to reason.

Americans are insane now. You can’t cure a crazy person by arguing with him. He lives in a false reality where logic is optional or where his corrupt imitation of logic leads him to ridiculous conclusions.

Spirits work in everyone. The Holy Spirit works in a small percentage of human beings, and evil spirits work in just about everyone. Spirits shape our feelings and thoughts. Evil spirits are like their leader, Satan. They are liars. A lie is something that conflicts with reason. Reason always leads to truth.

The Bible plainly says that God gives people over to evil influences when they rebel long enough. The New Testament says this is an explanation for homosexuality, which is an inherently absurd practice. If you were a farmer, and you had a rooster that only had sex with other roosters, you wouldn’t paint a rainbow on the henhouse and adopt chicks for him. You’d know something was seriously wrong. Somehow, though, human beings are able to look at two men who engage in ludicrous parodies of normal sex and conclude that what they do is healthy and right.

You can explain the birds and the bees to pro-homosexuality people all day, and you can point to the plant and animal kingdoms all you want, but they can’t perceive the obvious. They are literally insane. Spirits have convinced them evil is good.

Spirits are telling mobs white people cause their problems, which is beyond absurd.

White people have spread the gospel around the world. White people are primarily responsible for science, engineering, and medicine. White people spread the concept of civilization that incorporates strong individual rights, including rights for minorities. White people gave us the only tolerable systems of government. Whatever the faults of Caucasians may be, we do not cause all the world’s problems, and we have done a tremendous amount of good.

White people deserve most of the credit for civil rights reform. No one likes to hear that, but it’s true. White people are the only people who will march to protest their own racism. Black and Hispanic racism are intense and widespread. They are mainstream. You never see non-white people marching in the streets protesting their own dangerous, self-destructive bigotry.

We’re just not that bad, but the insane, many of whom are white, are convinced the nation would be better off with blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians in charge. It’s probably not a great idea to look at Africa, Mexico, South America, or Haiti when you make that claim, but they make it anyway.

Haiti is one of the worst places on earth, and their BLM movement achieved complete and permanent success over 200 years ago. People of other races cause problems just fine without white involvement.

Racial disunity is a great evil, and BLM perpetuates it through slander and violence. The Holy Spirit unifies people who are physically descended from different races. He makes them brothers and sisters in ways genetics can never rival. People who choose sides based on physical race and genetics are fighting God, who says all those who are led by the Holy Spirit are siblings.

Isaiah says God’s house will be a house of prayer for all people. How is it, then, that we still have Christians who separate themselves by race? If you run a black church, how are you going to feel if you go to heaven and find yourself surrounded by whites and Asians? How will you explain how you practiced segregation on earth?

There I go again, using reason, as though it had some sort of power.

Much of the time, the truth is spoken not to bring change but to facilitate judgment. Often, God speaks to people who won’t listen, simply so there will be evidence to use against them when they are judged. And sometimes the truth is spoken as confirmation for those who already believe.

Here’s another truth that has been brought home to me: the justice system is useless because it heeds the voice of the Beast.

I’ve always known courts functioned poorly. Many jurors are stupid, stubborn, and dishonest. Many judges are stupid, stubborn, and dishonest. If you have a very strong case, you will probably win when you go to court, but if there is any room for squirming, there’s a good chance you will be wronged by the judge or jury. This has always been true. Lawyers aren’t supposed to say things like this because we’re generally full of it. We’re supposed to have a sort of thin blue line. We’re supposed to talk about the majesty and holiness of the legal calling, but we all know what I’m saying is true.

These days, things are worse than they used to be. In the past, your main problems were the biases of your judge and jury. Now you have to worry about the opinions of complete idiots jumping up and down on overturned police cars. Prosecutors, judges, and jurors are going after people because they want to placate rioters and potential rioters. They want to please utter morons.

Well, maybe not morons. Psychotics. The hopelessly, willfully insane.

The kind of people who motivated the invention of the water cannon.

We saw this in the Zimmerman case. A man who was Hispanic, partly black, and partly white was recruited and trained by the police so he could do neighborhood watch work. He saw a stranger on the grass between residences in an area where property crime was rampant. He followed the stranger, legally, in order to guide the police to him. The stranger, who was younger, bigger, stronger, and in better physical condition, attacked him illegally and began beating his head against a concrete sidewalk. Zimmerman, who was armed legally and modestly, fired a single shot and then stopped.

Prosecutor Angela Corey committed perjury–a felony and disbarment offense–in order to get Zimmerman into trial. There is no doubt about it. I read the documents and watched the hearing. Alan Dershowitz agrees.

The other day, a man tried to drive past a belligerent crowd in Seattle. I’ve seen the video. He rolled up to an intersection at about 10 miles per hour. Protestors blocked him, which is a crime. A big man reached into his window and punched him in the face for no reason. The injured victim got out, waved a gun, and ran to the nearest police station. He could not drive away because he was blocked and his car had stalled. He shot his attacker in the arm and then withheld fire. Now he has a felony case to deal with. That’s amazing.

He may have been seconds away from being pulled out of the car and being beaten like Reginald Denny.

The standard justification for using lethal force is a reasonable fear of serious injury or death. This man was in a sea of angry lawbreakers, in a country where people were being beaten and killed by rioters. He was attacked for no reason. He did nothing wrong while he approached the intersection. He was attacked viciously by a larger assailant who was part of a group, and he used restraint in defending himself. Obviously, his mental state met the criteria for the legal use of deadly force.

Doesn’t matter. The Beast cried out for blood, just as it did in the Coliseum in Rome.

The prosecutors would have been happier had he been kicked to death.

They didn’t arrest the man who beat the victim or the criminals who blocked the road.

Witnesses and news anchors said the victim drove at the crowd at high speed. Nothing could be further from the truth. There was no crowd in front of him. Criminals stopped him by throwing an object in his path, and he was moving slowly. Internet stories say the attacker is a hero who was shot while shielding others!

Your rights don’t matter very much now. Not when you’re against the Beast. He has most people intimidated. They want to curry favor with him. They want to appease, just as Jews appease his servants in Israel by giving them land. The truth won’t necessarily help you. The law may not help you, because it may not be applied.

The law does whatever the police, prosecutors, judges, and jurors want it to. That has always been true. Lawyers are not supposed to say that, but it’s true. When the Beast infects the minds of people who decide what the law means, the law itself becomes clay in the hands of sadistic children.

You can’t make the law your messiah. You can’t expect to be treated well just because you’re innocent. There are a lot of conservatives who want to go as far as the law permits. That’s dangerous. Sometimes you need to yield a considerable distance from the boundary where your rights end. You don’t have to go everywhere the law lets you go. You don’t have to say everything the law lets you say. You don’t have to protect yourself with violence just because the law permits it.

I’m not saying people should bend the knee every time, but an intelligent person chooses his battles. Even Jesus avoided his enemies.

What if the victim in Seattle had decided not to assert his rights as fully as he did? He shouldn’t have had to take another route, but if he had, he would be at work today without the threat of imprisonment and poverty hanging over his head.

The press has largely ignored the story since the victim’s name was released. He’s Hispanic. His name is Nikolas Fernandez. If his name were Flaherty, we would still be hearing about him.

Imagine what it must be like to be a Hispanic man in prison for shooting a black man. In Washington prisons, there are about 4 times as many blacks as Hispanics.

The proper answer to your safety problems is to get to know the Holy Spirit. You need to know how to pray, bless, and curse. You need to hear God and obey him when he tells you what to do and what to avoid doing. Physical weapons are better than nothing, but you shouldn’t settle for better than nothing. You should be obtaining the best weapons and cover there are.

I support the people who mass at BLMtifa protests with displayed weapons. Don’t doubt that. Today I saw a ridiculous article about armed people ruining a “peaceful” protest. What the biased writer didn’t say was that the weapons were what kept the protest peaceful. There have been a lot of riots that could have been prevented by the presence of armed citizens. It’s great that the police are cooperating with armed citizens in so many places. But ultimately, you need God to wrap himself around you like a shield. You can’t buy that at a gun shop.

A pistol is a third-rate weapon you should only use to fight your way to a rifle, and a rifle is something you should only rely on when you can’t get God’s help.

People say guns at protests will lead to shootouts, but that probably isn’t true. The protestors can’t bring guns and start shooting without abandoning their pose of left-wing faux holiness. It would be even more of a gaffe than eating factory veal.

I’m not sure what to do with myself, living in world which is ceasing to function. I’m pretty sure the world has gone insane for keeps. We recovered from the 1960’s because people got tired of posing and got jobs. We recovered from the PC plague of the 1980’s because the majority of Americans ridiculed it. The response to the 2020 PC plague is weak, and it seems to be losing ground.

The Revelation tells a story of Satan’s plan for the church. It says a woman clothed with the sun gave birth, and a red dragon waited so it could eat the baby. The dragon was cast down to Earth, and the baby–Jesus–was taken out of his reach. The dragon’s answer was to try to drown the woman with a flood. We are the woman.

In the Bible, floods are voices, words, and people. Look what we’re seeing now. The antichristians are trying to drown us in words and mobthink. They tell lie after lie, just as Goebbels would wish, until the lies are accepted as truth and those who tell the truth are seen as wrong and dangerous. It’s not just our words they object to; it’s our existence and the record of our existence.

They have a new thing: “canceling.” Once you’ve said enough things they don’t like, they decide you don’t exist. It’s exactly like the Orthodox Jewish practice of trying to “blot out” the name of Yeshua. It’s not enough to win the fight; you have to make it as though your adversary never existed.

How did Peter avoid drowning? He was able to walk on water only because Jesus lifted him. He could not save himself. It’s a picture of Spirit-led Christians rising above the current flood of antichristian propaganda and slander.

Are you surprised because the social nephilim…I mean “giants”…are censoring conservatives and Christians? Why? Didn’t you see it coming? You did if you read my blog.

Do you feel safe because the things you say are protected by the Constitution? Do you feel safe because the most provocative things you’ve said were uttered years ago? Don’t fool yourself. You are liable, and you will always be at risk. The antichristians don’t respect the Constitution, and they have no statute of limitations. We’ve already seen people have their lives ruined over things they said decades ago.

I hope they never get their hands on the Trumps. If the family exists long enough, there will be attempts to have mock trials accompanied by atrocities.

I fully expect the antichristians to come for me eventually. My blog will be all the evidence they need. They will need to erase me and everyone like me in order to perfect their fantasy world.

What am I supposed to do with the remaining 30 or so years I may have left? Three decades trapped in a mental ward, with people who can’t be cured because they hate the medicine. Three decades of humoring lunatics. Is that my future?

As of today, the insanity isn’t complete. We have what I would call insanity-related complex. Full-blown insanity is still on the way. I don’t want to be here for that.

Some people pity John for being exiled to Patmos, but I think it was a great break for him. It’s a beautiful island with a nice climate. It was isolated from the insanity of the Roman Empire. I think he must have loved Patmos. I live in a sort of Patmos right now, and I would literally prefer death to moving back to a suburb. Give me a meteor any day. It beats sitting in traffic, kowtowing to sleazy mayors, being threatened with riots, and having neighbors in my face all day, pressuring me with their ignorance and immaturity.

You don’t have to be in the middle of a city to serve God. We have the Internet now, we have wonderful things called cars that allow you to visit populated areas briefly, and besides, are cities very likely to be productive? If they were, would they be in the shape they’re in?

People who still think reason and their rights will protect them are going to go down just like the Jews who waited for the German government to save them. You need to get away from the Beast’s strongholds before the window closes. You need to connect with God. Otherwise you’re just driving through enemy territory without a map.

Today I Lived the Dream

This afternoon I did something some would consider unthinkable.

Long, long ago, in a country far, far away, which was known as the United States, where Bruce Jenner was male and it was okay to throw illegal immigrants out of your country for reasons everyone understood, I had my first chili slaw dog. I believe I ordered it at Uni’s, a small ice cream shack in the town of Cashiers, North Carolina. I recall being stunned that such things existed. I had to try one.

It blew my mind. The combination of cheap buns, hot dogs that were probably mostly saw dust and rat hairs, and chili which may well have been made from stray cats, was excellent. It was more than excellent; it was right.

Since then, I have often joked about eating something even more awe-inspiring: the chili-CHEESE-slaw dog. But I can’t recall actually having one. Maybe I did. At my age, a person has done many, many things. I can’t remember everything. I’m amazed I remembered Uni’s.

Today I decided it was time for my body to cash the check my mouth had written. Behold:

That’s two Ball Park dogs, homemade slaw, colby/jack cheese, and the worst chili you can buy without going to a store brand: Hormel No Beans. I think they generate this stuff from the meat residue too gross even for sausage-making.

I make what may well be the most astonishing chili on earth, so why the can of, for all I know, ground lungs and nipples? Couple of reasons. First, this was just a test run. Second, I’m not sure good chili would work in a chili dog. It’s trash cuisine to begin with, so using good ingredients could well ruin it.

I boiled the dogs in plain old water because I did not want to waste Sierra Nevada ale, and before I added the slaw, I melted the cheese with a Black & Decker heat gun. It went hot dog => chili => cheese => slaw.

Let’s state the obvious: they were magnificent. But there were issues, and I found room for improvement.

First: the slaw went absolutely everywhere. There was no way to contain it. I had to eat directly over the plate, and when I was done, I still needed a broom. In the future, I need to cut the slaw much finer. I used bagged slaw with my own sauce because grating your own cabbage doesn’t make slaw any better. The slaw was way too coarse to be managed easily.

Second: better chili would help. I was eating bland hot dogs, so the bland chili sort of blended into them in my senses.

Third: better hot dogs would help. I think a Hillshire Farms smoked beef sausage would be perfect. I’m not sure why anyone buys the unseasoned Slim Jims that pass for hot dogs in 2020 America.

Fourth: hot dog buns just don’t work. They don’t work for normal hot dogs, let alone beef sausages buried in chili and slaw. I think the best thing is to look for some kind of loaf that has a bun-like texture and cut it up to suit the geometry of the contents.

Fifth: more cheese. What food is there that doesn’t need more cheese? I would go with extra-sharp cheddar next time.

Sixth: onions. This sandwich needs chopped onions between the chili and cheese.

The slaw was pretty simple. Slaw mix, mayo, salt, sugar, celery seed, and cider vinegar. I have made slaw with Miracle Whip, but it doesn’t really work even though it seems like it should.

I recommend trying a couple of these when no one is around. You won’t be sorry.

I feel like listening to the Kentucky Headhunters.

Clean Your House in Preparation for Departure

The feeling that the age of the church, or the age of the gentiles, if you prefer, is over, hangs on me like a weighted quilt. It has settled in.

For the last two thousand years, the God of Judaism has been holding an open house. Billions of people have joined, or claimed to have joined, his family. God used churches and preachers. He showed the world great patience while he increased the number of his children. Now things are winding down. Like an orchard owner whose trees have already been picked over, he has reached the point where the remaining fruit don’t justify keeping a full crew at work.

The harvest isn’t completely over, but then the Bible says it will continue into the tribulation, after the rapture.

Perry Stone teaches something interesting. A tribulum is a board with bits of metal or stone imbedded in the underside. A person who wants to separate grain from its husks stands on a tribulum while an animal pulls him around. Tribulation is a pretty harsh way of separating food from trash. The use of the word “tribulation” to describe God’s final effort at saving people before the Messianic Age seems to imply that the whole business is getting more difficult.

I was thinking about Seattle this morning. People who are so deluded they should be considered insane have taken over an entire neighborhood, intimidating and driving out citizens who are against them as well as the police and the mayor. In doing so, they showed rioters all over the country how powerful they are. They created a pattern for them to follow. The Seattle mutineers don’t seem to be burning or killing, although they have stolen a great deal, and they use rifles to force other people to bend the knee. What will antichristian insurgents in other cities do when they take over? No intelligent person would expect them to refrain from violence. To expect that would be to demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of human nature, not to mention ignorance of history.

To me, Seattle looks like a gentle warning from God. He’s showing people in other cities what they face if they don’t get connected to the Holy Spirit and move out. It’s not enough to move out, because you might move to the wrong place. You need the Holy Spirit to tell you exactly where to go.

The flood didn’t start with a wall of water a mile high. It started as a gentle rain. A few drops here and there. Seattle is a raindrop.

The antichristians are taking over cities. Somebody has to take over rural areas. Not by force, but simply by buying land and gathering there.

In ancient times, the Jews worshiped in the city of Jerusalem, and the pagans worshiped in the wilderness. This time, the cities belong to the pagans, and Christians are the ones living among the trees. Maybe it reflects an inversion of the power structure. Pagans used to be weaker than people who worshiped God. It made sense that they would worship in the wilderness. When pagans gain control, they aren’t afraid, so they go wherever they want. The pagan king Antiochus IV Epiphanes sacrificed a pig in the temple.

We are seeing underdogs rise up and rule people who used to have power over them. Things used to go pretty well for Christians, males, white people, and heterosexuals. They took over continents and replaced primitive, cruel civilizations that worshiped fallen angels and demons. The conquering peoples weren’t particularly good, but they carried a contagion God wanted to spread. They had the gospel. They were motivated largely by greed, but God backed them up anyway. The word says he won’t return until every people on earth has heard the gospel, so God gave favor to people carrying the infection.

Now the demographic that was useful to God has, by and large, melted into the antichristian crowd it was sent to save. The salt has lost its saltness, so it isn’t a preservative any more.

What did Jesus say would happen to salt that lost its saltness? He said it was only fit to be trodden underfoot. That’s what’s happening to the kind of people who used to be on top.

There are deluded people on the right who think white people should prevail because they’re superior. They think we should rise up, shake ourselves like Samson, and destroy the Philistines. They mistake the power of man for the power of God. They don’t understand the story of Belshazzar’s feast.

Samson was taken easily, and he was blinded and forced to grind grain. The far-right people who exalt themselves above God are as blind as he was, and they are going to grind grain. When you grind grain, you destroy its ability to reproduce, and you get a product which is only fit to be put in an oven and eaten. Jesus used a reference to a millstone to threaten clergymen who ground people up and ate their wealth instead of teaching them to grow and bear in the kingdom of heaven.

Leftist pagans and conservatives who deny the Holy Spirit serve Satan. They’ll be here after the rapture, after people who actually know God are moved home. The Bible speaks of antichrists who came out of Christianity. They still do. You can call yourself a Christian and still be a very damaging antichristian.

Leftist antichristians who think they’re fighting Christians are really fighting right-wing antichristians who merely claim to belong to God. The fight between these factions has nothing to do with real Christians. It’s a family squabble which will continue in hell.

The only true races are the family of God and the family of Satan. Color and geographic origin have nothing to do with race. Heaven and hell are full of people of all colors. The notion that white blood will save the world is a delusion that leads to damnation. So is the delusion that white people cause the world’s problems.

I’ve been listening to the Revelation. It speaks of four horsemen who are released before the end of the age. The first is a man on a white horse. He wears a crown and is sent out to conquer. The second is a man on a red horse, symbolizing blood, sent out with a sword to take peace from the world. The third is a man on a black horse, carrying scales, sent to bring lack. The fourth is a man on a pale horse, sent to spread plagues. The word translated as “pale” means “pallid” or “pale green,” like a very sick person or a corpse.

There is a difference between the first horsemen and the others. He is the only one with a crown. He can’t be a spreader of war, because the man on the red horse does that. After the horsemen are introduced, the last three horses are mentioned as a group, not including the man on the white horse.

The man on the white horse must be Jesus. He is royalty. His horse is white, symbolizing purity. He conquers. Christians are supposed to conquer. We aren’t supposed to subjugate people by force. We are supposed to spread salvation, conquering the kingdom of Satan. Jesus goes out gathering whomever he can before the others follow and judge the world.

The first horseman is sent out first, so he finishes first. His work is wrapping up. As he leaves center stage, the other horsemen get more power.

The story of the horsemen seems very consistent with what we’re seeing in the world today. And our president’s name is Trump, which almost seems too obvious. It’s a German word which means “drum,” but in English, it means “trump,” or “trumpet.”

“Donald” means “ruler of the world,” so “Donald Trump” could mean “trumpet of the ruler of the world.” His middle name is John, which means, “Yahweh is gracious.”

The trumpet of Yahweh, gracious ruler of the world?

“Joseph” means, “Yah increases.” Biden’s middle name, Robinette, means “little robin.” “Biden” means “button.” Not much there to work with. Of course, he would not rule long because of dementia, which will almost certainly kill him by 2025, disabling him much sooner. What if he picks Kamala Harris to be the next president?

“Kamala” means “lotus.” In Hinduism, the lotus symbolizes a person’s power to let demonic power flow through him. Her middle name, “Devi,” means “goddess.” Her last name means, “home ruler.” It doesn’t sound very good.

Harris was raised Hindu, so unless she has changed her mind, she worships demons. She also attended a Baptist church when she was young, but if you’re a Hindu and a Baptist, to God, you’re just a Hindu.

Barack Obama carried a Hindu idol in his pocket for luck, meaning favor from false gods, and he also contaminated the White House with a gold-covered statue of the same false god. The false god is named Hanuman, and he is like one of the nephilim or children of the fallen angels. He is the son of a false god. He has the form of a monkey, symbolizing the flesh, but he is immortal. Jesus died to cause the kingdom of heaven to invade the earth, which was ruled by fleshly people who served false gods. Satan wants to invade heaven and take the kingdom of the flesh there. He wants to “raise hell.”

Hanuman could be considered the Hindu antichrist. Jesus was a man conceived by God in the womb of a woman, and although he was flesh, he had the character of the Holy Spirit. He is the king of the body of Christ, a group of people who have transcended the nature of their monkey-like flesh. Hanuman was conceived by a fallen angel in the womb of a woman, and although he was supposed to be a god and a spirit, he had the form of a monkey. He was the king of the monkeys; animals that look like people yet which are no better than pigs.

Maybe the abomination Obama put in the White House was a foothold for a future invasion.

Very soon, we will reach the 2000th anniversary of the crucifixion. Historians think it happened between 30 and 33 A.D. Would God be that obvious? Would he really give us exactly 2000 years between the cruficixion and the rapture? The Bible says no one knows the date or hour when Jesus will return, but it doesn’t say you can’t know the year or the decade, and it doesn’t say anything about knowing the date of the rapture, which is a different event. The rapture is not the return of Jesus. In the rapture, we go to him. The return comes later, after the tribulation.

Will the rapture take place before, say, 2035? Will Jesus return and begin the Messianic Age by then? If he returns by 2035, he has to rapture us by the end of 2027. The tribulation, during which the saved will be in heaven at the marriage feast of Jesus, will take 7 years.

In other news, God have me a weapon which seems useful. I look at the undesirable things in my life, and I say, “I reject this delivery in the name of Jesus Christ. It does not belong to me.” I say it with regard to negative compulsions, physical problems, and so on. I feel things leave me when I say it. If you have the ability to perceive the supernatural, you know what I mean. I plan to keep doing it. I’m supposed to rule my own house.

I’m going to keep listening to the Revelation, and I am going to try to get more and more of God’s guidance. Even if the rapture doesn’t come by 2027, I don’t have a lot of time left.

Home Depot Table + Railroad Spring = Shooting Bench

My new .223 ammo arrived over the weekend, and today I got to shoot the AR15 again. The results were good.

I was upset after my first outing because I bought Norma 55-grain Tactical FMJ and got bad results. I shot something like 5 MOA. I thought maybe the gun was screwed up. I knew Fiocchi Extrema ammunition shot like a laser in my .204 Ruger, so I ordered some for the AR, figuring it had to be a good choice for determining whether a gun could shoot straight.

Last time I shot the gun, I was not happy with the table. I found the point of aim moved about an inch when I rested my hand on the plastic. Today I came up with a remedy worthy of my Eastern Kentucky heritage. I took an old railroad spring and put it on the table. I figured the weight would preload it and take out the bounce. It must have worked, because I didn’t see any changes when I put my hand on the table.

It’s not ideal, but it’s good enough to get the scope on paper.

I used a rabbit-ear rear bag. It’s not my favorite rest. It seems like it’s never the right height. I need to find something else.

Instead of my Rock Jr. front rest, I used a new Magpul M-Lok bipod. Pluses: it’s well-made, and it seems to be great at what it’s supposed to do. Minus: it’s not supposed to be adjustable for precision shooting. You get big jumps in leg length or nothing. You have to choose a bipod height and make your rear rest adjust to it, and that’s no fun when your rear rest is a problem.

My solution was to set the bipod as well as I could, lean into it to take out as much wobble as possible, finesse the gun’s butt until the crosshairs were on the center of the target, and fire. It worked fine for 50 yards. The shots were so close together, I started wondering if I was missing the paper. Here’s a photo.

I fired 8 rounds to the lower left, and the I moved the scope 12 clicks up and to the right. Then I shot 12 rounds in the center of the bullseye. The point of aim was the same for all shots. I had a flyer during the second group, but it was still not far from the center.

I am relieved. The gun will shoot. If it will shoot this well with cheap ammo, a terrible rest, and a dubious shooter, it will probably do 1 MOA at 100 yards with better treatment.

I don’t know if this ammo is right for pigs, but if it is, they wouldn’t stand a chance against this gun and these cartridges. If the ammo isn’t right, there is definitely something else that will work with the same or better accuracy. As long as the gun is good, accurate ammo can be found or made.

In other news, I got some pleasing information regarding my 20x scope. No, my other 20x scope. I wanted to use it for a long-range shooting class, but when I emailed the instructor, he said it wouldn’t work because it didn’t have target turrets. Now it looks like it will work after all.

I didn’t know what a target turret was. In case you’re wondering, I’ll put up a photo. Most scope turrets have tiny dials with microscopic graduations. I have no problem with them, but serious distance shooters use dials with huge markings. For about a week, I tried to get information about target turrets, and even with the Internet, it was not easy. It took me a long time to piece things together. It looked like I would have to spend around $200 even if I installed them myself.

I emailed Leupold, which is the company that made the scope. They pointed out that I already had target turrets. I just didn’t recognize them because they looked so different from the ones I had seen on the web.

A lot of long-range scopes have big turrets with enormous markings on them. I thought the big markings were part of what made them target turrets. In fact, they are not. It looks like a target turret is just a large turret with markings around the sides.

I think I’m all set. I have the scope. I have a couple of rifles to choose from. I already have ammunition. It should work out.

It will be neat to have someone telling me how to shoot. Generally, I have to figure things out myself.

I can’t imagine shooting at 1000 yards. It must be a blast to hit anything at all at that range. Also, I know what happens when you learn to shoot at long distances. It makes you shoot better at short distances.

If I can shoot well at 1000 yards, 100 yards, 25 yards, and 7 yards, I will be a very dangerous person indeed, which seems like a waste given my lack of hostile intent. It almost makes me wish zombies were real.

I guess squirrels are my zombies.

The People You Admire Reveal What’s Wrong With You

I was thinking about writing about the body of the Beast and their 100% Biblical, yet seemingly new, policy of “canceling” people they disagree with. But then I got distracted by a Clint Smith video.

Clint Smith is probably the leading Internet firearms comedian, but that’s not his only credential. He’s a former marine. He was a cop for a while, and he was a SWAT team member (hopefully not like the one in Miami who shot at an autistic man from about 100 feet and hit the black guy next to him). He has all sorts of firearms stuff in his resume. He co-founded Thunder Ranch, which is a respected school for people who want…actually, I’m not quite sure what they want. To be militia members? To convince themselves they’re Clint Eastwood? The facility teaches all sorts of things that seem to go way beyond anything a normal person could expect to experience as a crime victim.

It looks like he’s a bona fide authority with a remarkable trove of knowledge, but he’s mainly famous for crabby Youtube videos in which he goes off like Sam Kinison on a gallon of espresso.

The strange thing is that people post comments I would describe as worshipful. They thank him for setting them straight and correcting all the nonsense they learned in the past.

I just saw a video on which he offered all sorts of strange pearls for the faithful.

Let’s see.

1. You shouldn’t swim in the ocean, because most shark attacks occur in less than three feet of water. A Marine said that. A former SWAT team member. Be afraid of fish.

Don’t Marines show up in ships and storm beaches? Am I wrong? Was that the Air Force?

2. He jabbed people for failing to keep fire extinguishers beside their beds, because statistics say you’re more likely to “burn alive” in a fire than in a home invasion. What about the low odds of shark attacks? Should you carry a fire extinguisher while you swim?

I don’t have a fire extinguisher by my bed. I do have a ridiculous network of smoke alarms connected to a wireless system that calls the fire department, and I sleep next to a plate glass door that opens onto my yard. The fire extinguisher is in the kitchen, next to the shark repellant.

There are a lot of bad things that can happen during a home invasion that don’t involve death. Beatings and rapes come to mind. So does theft. When you think about odds, shouldn’t you consider the fact that bad outcomes other than death are much more common than death?

Burning alive is pretty rare. People who die in fires are generally killed by the smoke.

3. He said he wouldn’t have a .380 up his behind if he had room there for a tugboat. This guy has to be pushing 80, and he has exactly the kind of mouth you don’t want around your grandkids. This is what he has learned in all those years. Even if you liked him, you could not invite him to a barbecue at your house. And what about people who can’t handle a 9mm? There are plenty of them out there. A .380 you can shoot is better than a 9mm you can’t.

4. He criticized .300 Blackout, an AR15 caliber similar to 7.62x39mm, because it supposedly has a trajectory like a mortar round for long shots. Do civilians make 400-yard shots in self-defense? Has that ever happened in the history of the United States or even the world? The .300 Blackout has more killing power than the 5.56mm at realistic distances, and it penetrates obstacles, such as walls and furniture, better. Should you give all that up just in case you happen to become the only civilian in the history of the world to kill in self-defense at 400 yards?

5. He picked on people who question his choice of a 1911 for carry. He admits he and the gun are old. Then he says, “Did you ever think there’s a reason I got this old?” Wow. Wouldn’t you be more likely to live to be old if you carried a high-capacity gun? I love the 1911, but I’m not going to give up 3 to 10 rounds just so I can carry a gun I love and be a wise guy.

6. He said all horses and motorcycles were good for was turning people into “bone donors.” New phrase to me. He went into the infantry and then worked on a SWAT team, and he thinks people who take unnecessary risks are foolish. Okay.

7. Regarding .223 Remington, he said he had never wanted to take the place of anyone who had been shot with it. Couldn’t you say that about a BB gun? Is this really the standard by which you judge a caliber? He also said he didn’t know if it was the best choice in the world. If he doesn’t know that by now, what has he been doing all these years? This is pretty low on the difficulty scale for an expert, and it’s pretty much a threshold question when you’re teaching people how to defend themselves.

8. He said serving on a submarine was stupid and asked who would get into a can with a bunch of other people in the middle of the ocean. Subs are the strongest part of our nuclear deterrent, far and away. Isn’t that a good reason for a person to go live in a can?

9. Regarding custom guns, he said something incredible: “What makes you think you’re going to fight with your gun?”

Okay. First of all, I don’t have anyone else’s gun. All I have are my guns. I don’t know how to get my hands on someone else’s gun. What makes Clint Smith think someone else’s gun is going to be handy when I have to defend myself? How is that supposed to happen?

Customized guns can have great things like laser sights, flashlights, red dot sights, night sights, improved triggers, improved grips, and larger magazines. I’m just listing things that would clearly be helpful in a gunfight. What conceivable reason could you have to turn all that down?

How will having a customized gun hurt me if I have to fight with someone else’s gun? That is not clear at all. Would I somehow lose the ability to use other guns? Should I get rid of most of my guns and only keep one, because if I keep shooting my .22’s, I’ll be totally unable to work a Glock?

10. He criticized people who put a lot of junk on their rifles, not because the junk doesn’t work, but because it’s heavy. He said, “There is not an infantryman alive who wants a heavier gun.” Is he teaching infantrymen? I think it’s obvious that you don’t want 10 pounds of tactical junk on your rifle, but even if it’s there, you can probably carry it across your living room or yard. Shouldn’t instruction and equipment have some relevance to the needs of the people you’re teaching?

He said, “You don’t need a heavy rifle. You need a rifle that functions.” But he promotes the AR15, which…often fails to function, shooting a caliber that often fails to incapacitate.

11. He said a woman who wanted to buy her first gun should get a Glock and 25 magazines. He really said that. What is a housewife going to do with 426 cartridges in one gunfight? Find me one example of any human being, anywhere, including Fallujah, who needed 426 pistol rounds to deal with a single engagement. Well. Maybe in Fallujah. In America, you won’t be facing the Republican Guard, and you have to stop shooting people once they quit.

I think this guy is proof that being funny, having strong opinions, and intimidating people with your resume and with insults can get you a much bigger audience and more respect than you actually deserve.

“He’s an expert! He has a rare collection of knowledge and skills!” So what? When you’re learning to defend yourself with a gun, you don’t need Isaac Newton to teach you. It’s all simple stuff. There are probably half a million people in the US who could teach you just as effectively as Clint Smith. Here’s how you hold a gun. Here’s how you aim. Here’s how you use cover. Here’s what you should be thinking about in a gunfight. It’s not advanced physics. The guy at your nearest instruction facility can probably teach you just as well as Clint Smith, without the profanity or weird, inappropriate SWAT and infantry stuff.

Look, if you were the best woodworking instructor on planet earth, and you acted like this guy, I would be perfectly content to go and learn from the thousandth-best instructor and deal with someone more mature. Running a table saw is just not that hard. It works the same way with shooting. Clint Smith didn’t invent anything, and he can’t patent anything. He’s not doing well because he can give you something no one else can give. He does well because he’s a great self-promoter.

There’s a guy up the road from me who has a school. I’m sure he can teach me anything Clint Smith can, without lecturing me about his phobia of carnivorous fish.

Here’s another problem: he contradicts himself. What good is advice if it’s self-nullifying? Example: he says having a lot of ammunition is very important, and he says people with backup guns should have backup guns as powerful, or more powerful, than their primary guns. Then in the same video he tells his audience how great revolvers are, and he says you should fear a man who carries one gun, because he knows how to use it. He makes fun of young people with plastic guns and big magazines. What happened to the housewife with 25 Glock magazines? Have we decided that was a bad idea?

No one calls him on his nonsense because it would be like going into a room full of Jimi Hendrix fans and reminding them Stevie Ray Vaughan was better. The worship has nothing to do with logic. They’re like the food nuts who clap when Alton Brown ruins a steak.

Smith’s outfit created a Thunder Ranch .44 Special revolver. The cost was $750. It came in a pretty box, and it had pretty wooden grips and a ridiculous Thunder Ranch plaque sort of a thing attached to it. People criticized it for reasons which should be obvious. He wrote a column in a gun magazine and called them…dirty language alert…”turd suckers.” He marketed a very silly gun out of pure materialism, and people who didn’t swallow the bait got called a dirty name.

I’ll link to a blogger who provided a concise essay showing not everyone was drinking the Clint-Aid back then.

Why would you want to be around this guy any longer than you had to? I can’t imagine paying $1100 to listen to him for three days. Three minutes of standup comedy? Sure. But not three days of teaching. Would you want to spend three days listening to Jim Carrey routines?

The .44 Special is like a .44 Magnum except for the lack of power. It gives velocities down around 750 fps. I assume it only holds 6 rounds, given the diameter of the cartridges. It weighs almost 36 ounces, empty, or 10 ounces more than a 15-round Glock 22. It’s very slow to reload unless you carry speed loaders, and then…it’s still pretty slow.

It sounds like the ballistics are about like those of a 1911, but you’re getting those ballistics from an obsolescent tool, the deficiencies of which could easily result in you being killed.

Clint Smith stands by revolvers. Even though he carries a 1911. Okay. Our military went semiauto in…1911. One hundred and nine years ago. Even the cops figured it out by the 1990’s. A revolver weighs a lot, it has a terrible trigger for single-action shooting (the only kind of revolver shooting that happens in gunfights), and concealing it is like trying to conceal a bucket of chicken.

Why would you try to get self-defense students to carry a substandard, overpriced weapon? If I ran a school for amateur drag racers, I wouldn’t put out a commemorative Smart Car.

It’s amazing how people can attach themselves to, and nearly deify, individuals who are clearly best avoided.

Real self-defense does not require a college degree. You don’t need to know how to shoot prone. You don’t need to complete combat courses with popup targets. You don’t need to stand in front of a mirror practicing changing magazines. You don’t need to be able to hit anything more than 100 feet away.

Here’s what nearly all self-defense situations look like: a drunk guy kicks your door over and over at 3 a.m. You stand in your living room and yell that you have a gun. He comes in anyway, you shoot him twice in the chest, using whatever gun you had on your nightstand, and then you call the police. Or you may be walking in a city and find yourself confronted by an assailant armed with a knife, a hammer, or his own physical superiority. You pull your gun, and if necessary, you shoot him until he knocks it off. I’ll bet 98% of self-defense shootings are fundamentally similar to these two models. You don’t have to go put on your black ninja pants. You don’t have to know anything about bullet drop. You don’t have to have Jeff Cooper’s color system memorized.

Cooper. There’s another beauty. He said it would be a public service to supply urban criminals with ammunition so they could exterminate each other. How can anyone take a person like that seriously? He also said .45 ACP full metal jacket bullets were great for self-defense, well past the beginning of the hollowpoint era. I don’t know whether he kept a 1911 in his Model T.

Guru worshipers are a mess. They’re the same people who think Massad Ayoob is right about everything. He has no degree. He knows nothing about ballistics, which is a science. He can’t design a gun because he isn’t an engineer. He knows very little about law; I’ve seen what he wrote about the Zimmerman case, and he completely missed what was important, because he was not equipped to understand what was happening. He has no experience in the military. His police experience is not worth talking about, since it was part-time and happened in a tiny town about as dangerous as the Munchkin City. But if Masaad said it, it’s automatically true.

Get a good high-capacity pistol or two. Get a carry permit. Buy a high-capacity long gun for home defense. Learn to shoot very well. Know the difference between cover and concealment, for both yourself and your assailants. KEEP YOUR PHONE CHARGED and know how to use it to call the cops fast. Keep hearing protection by your bed. Put a lot of thought into how to run away from fights, because it’s almost always the best move. Always think in terms of defusing and escape. Using a gun should be like jumping out of an airplane. It’s only acceptable when the only alternative is far worse.

That ought to set you up just fine. If you want to go to a school, fantastic, but don’t assume some doofus who looks scary in tactical pants and runs his mouth is the supreme intellect of the galaxy. I don’t care if he was a cop. I don’t care if he was a SEAL. I don’t care if he went to Vietnam or Iraq. Some cops are idiots. A lot of idiots go to war, serve admirably and with great courage, and come back idiots.

I guess I’m not a Clint Smith admirer.

Okay; “Better”

I finally shot the Smith & Wesson Performance Center 1911 today.

I bought this gun because I wanted to quit playing around and see how well I shot when the gun itself no longer held me back. I wanted a great trigger and a properly mounted barrel with a good muzzle. I think I got what I asked for.

Here are today’s 7-yard targets. I only shot 24 rounds.

I used cheap Aguila FMJ. Most product defects become obvious right away, and if this gun had had a problem, I didn’t want Smith & Wesson to be able to blame it on homemade ammo. I plan to start shooting handloads as soon as the remaining 26 rounds of Aguila are gone.

Funny thing…I found a .45 round lying on the ground behind the target. It didn’t burrow into the berm. How can that happen if a cartridge is made correctly? My experience has been that handloads are better, not worse.

Are these targets better than targets I’ve shot in the past? Yes and no. Yes, because I shot some tiny clusters that appear to be an indication of what I can actually do with this ammo and this gun. No, because overall, the targets aren’t significantly better than past efforts. Things seemed to open up after the first bullseye.

I believe practice is the issue. I need to remember to exercise my hands, too. If your hands aren’t in shape from regular hand-specific exercise, they will probably shake slightly after a certain number of shots. No one else seems to know this or discuss it, but I have found it to be true. I guess I discovered the problem, just as I discovered the problems wobbly shoes can cause.

People made fun of me because I said the wrong shoes could change a gun’s point of impact. You know what? I shoot better than they do, so who cares what they say?

This gun is much, much nicer to shoot than my big new Glock, which placed some shots three inches apart with Sellier & Bellot FMJ while also landing two inches high. I hope the ammo is the problem.

I found a video on smoothing out Glock triggers. It’s just a matter of polishing. I plan to try it. I may also buy a few aftermarket parts. The way the Glock shoots now is unacceptable. It’s my 5th Glock, and the others all did as they were told.

I really like the shoulder holster I got for the 1911. No more tossing it on the utility cart seat while changing targets, and I always know where the magazines are.

I highly recommend the PC1911. Lots of fun. Very satisfying. Very cooperative. You could even use it for self-defense if you were willing to sacrifice magazine capacity. Sounds like a bad idea, but at least you would hit what you were aiming at, and you’d have lots of stopping power. Also, you can pistol-whip a burglar with a 1911. Try that with a plastic gun.

Poodles Everywhere Would Breathe Sighs of Relief

I am still not quite determined enough to quit looking at the news. I saw a few stories this morning. Man, it’s crazy out there. The US has gone certifiably insane, and I don’t think we’re going to recover. I think this is the end. Seems like all we can do is evangelize and try to stay saved.

I don’t know what will happen in November. The utter lunacy of the antichristians is surely scaring millions of people. Maybe enough voters will swing to the right to buy us 4 more years of Trump and conservative federal judge appointments. It won’t mean America is okay, but it could give sane Christians time to situate themselves as well as possible for the pogroms, killing fields, and gulags.

This stuff isn’t the talk of fantasy, nor is it related to far-off events. As of this year, we are officially in the gravity well of the Antichrist. We are sinking quickly into Satan’s singularity of evil.

It was bad enough when you could get fired for saying you didn’t support homosexual marriage. Now people are getting fired for saying things like, “The coronavirus threat was exaggerated.” It proves conservatives were right about the antichristian hype and bias surrounding the disease, but antichristians have never been very concerned about being proven wrong, because logic is not something that concerns them.

If you think they’re vicious now, wait till they’ve spent 4 more years under Trump. When they finally get the White House back, they will be like rocks flying out of a sling. The pent-up energy of years of restrained rage will escape containment like ball bearings from a pipe bomb.

How long am I going to be here? How long will the world be permitted to exist in anything resembling the form we are used to? The age of the Gentiles is clearly over. How long will it take for the end to manifest fully?

I guess it’s okay to buy green bananas, but I would be surprised if Jesus will stay away long enough to let anyone pay off a 30-year mortgage.

I wish I had accomplished more for God. I will be evaluated like everyone else.

The word says Jesus won’t return until the whole world is against Israel. We always assume that refers to a military attack, but does it? The UN is already against Israel. When pro-Israel matters come up, only a handful of countries stand by Israel.

If the Bible says “all nations” will be against Israel, does it really mean every single nation? I will make some people mad when I say this, but sometimes when the Bible says “all,” it really means “most.”

I’m not a prophecy scholar, so I don’t know exactly how things are expected to proceed.

What do I do while I wait? I’ll fool with my hobbies, of course.

I think I have a plan for the AR15. That’s news.

I wanted my AR15 to be a fun target and varmint gun. I put a scope on it and shot some cheap FMJ ammo which ought to produce 2 MOA groups. I got more like 5 MOA, which is smoothbore territory. That motivated me to do more research. Along the way, I read some things I didn’t like too much.

For one thing, I saw depressing things about the 5.56 cartridge, which is what military AR-style rifles shoot. For in actual use, it’s interchangeable with the .223. Many guns, mine included, will fire either round without a barrel change. I read that the military liked the 5.56 partly because it was weak! The idea is that if you wound an enemy soldier without killing him, you take more people out of the battle, because at least one person has to stop fighting to help him. If he dies, everyone else can keep fighting.

I’ll bet this is true. Soldiers have complained a lot about the 5.56 failing to stop enemy troops. It has to be a bummer when enemy soldiers charge you and you’re stuck with a gun designed to not kill them. It turns you into a statistic. Somewhere, a defense analyst is happy with your situation, because even though you may die, overall, the gun you’re using may be more effective in achieving victory for the people who outlive you.

Weak rounds may be great for winning wars, but civilians don’t fight wars. They generally have to shoot somewhere between 1 and 5 criminals, and in those situations, they need their assailants to be incapacitated as quickly as possible. Wounding isn’t enough.

I know murderers who have used the AR15 to kill innocent people have used the .223 (or 5.56) round, but when these things happen, you generally see a very high ratio of survivors to fatalities. Would that happen if they shot M1 Garands?

People who are critical of the .223 call guns that use it “poodle shooters.”

Why do I care, if I don’t plan to use the gun for self-defense? I don’t know. It just seems silly to buy into a specialized pair of calibers that clearly were never designed to solve civilian problems. I can also say it highlights the 5.56’s total unsuitability for hunting anything bigger than a coyote.

The .223 doesn’t seem all that accurate. I should add that. A really good AR15 with great ammunition generally won’t shoot as well as a $350 .204 Ruger bolt action rifle with cheap Fiocchi cartridges. I believe this is true. Feel free to correct me. My .204 Ruger rifle appears to give match-grade performance for a budget price.

I also read about the 6mm ARC, which is the newest hotshot AR15 cartridge. The AR15 has been chambered in a bunch of calibers, partly, I’m sure, because of the problems with the 5.56. Some cartridges have done well, and some have bombed. If the current hype is to be believed, the 6mm ARC is a monumental step forward, and it solves a lot of problems well.

It’s better for self-defense because it’s much harder on human beings and obstacles than the .223 or 5.56. It’s better for hunting because it will kill deer and bears reliably. It’s better for varmint hunting because it’s crazy accurate. It’s better for long-range shooting because it’s powerful beyond distances at which the .223 poops out.

What’s the drawback? The only one I’ve seen is that it takes up more room. A 30-round magazine full of 6mm ARC rounds will be larger than a .223 magazine. I don’t really care about that. I’m not going to be carrying 20 magazines up and down hills in Afghanistan.

The 6mm ARC has more recoil than the .223, but not a whole lot more.

If it’s really what people say it is, it sounds perfect for me. I can get a new upper and some magazines, and I’ll be all set. I’ll be able to shoot deer, if I ever get around to it. It will be great for target shooting. It will work fine on coons and coyotes. It would probably tear them up pretty badly, but who cares if a coyote has a closed-casket funeral?

The big problem right now is that 6mm ARC ammunition is expensive, for no good reason. I can’t find any ammunition not made by Hornady, and Hornady charges a lot. I’ll bet Fiocchi will make an excellent version for less, but it hasn’t happened yet. If I got my upper, I would have to wait weeks or months to see ammunition below 90 cents per round.

If I do this, I can keep my .223 Wylde upper and use it to shoot up my stock of .223 in good time. I have some tiny V-Max cartridges on the way, and I think they would still be useful even in a post-6mm-ARC future.

I think the smart move is to get an 18″ barrel of very high quality and try 6mm ARC out on the berm.

I can also get a .204 Ruger barrel for my gun. That would be interesting. It’s far superior to .223 for shooting little pests. It would do everything I want .223 to do, better. If I had a .204 Ruger barrel, I could just sell my .223 ammo. Why would I want it? It’s slower and less accurate. It hits harder, but I would have 6mm ARC for that.

I ordered better .223 ammo 9 days ago, and UPS says it has been sitting in Salt Lake City for 4 days. Not normal. I feel like I can’t make a decision until I’ve tried this stuff.

If 6mm ARC and .204 Ruger work out, I can put two nice uppers or guns together and then forget all about the AR platform. I’ll have my AR experience, I’ll have the performance I want, and I won’t have a good excuse to buy anything else from the realm of Stoner.

The New Crazies Make me Miss the Old Crazies

Today I had fun mowing my yard in a T-shirt and a shoulder holster. And pants. Then I came indoors, made hot dogs, turned on Youtube, and found out Seattle had been taken over by leftists with AR15’s.

Okay.

By the way, something seems to have gone wrong with hot dogs. I am not a big hot dog eater, so I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure they used to be a lot bigger. I picked some up at the store the other day, and no matter which brand I looked at, they all resembled pink noodles. I grilled a couple of Ball Park bun-length hot dogs yesterday, and when I added the requisite ketchup, mustard, relish, and onions, the meat disappeared. I can only guess how awful it would have been had I gone to a full-throttle chili-cheese-slaw dog.

Let me digress from my digression. Smoked sausages are the best hot dogs. Unless maybe bratwurst counts. A Hillshire Farms smoked mystery meat cylinder is actually a lot thicker than hot dogs used to be, and it tastes a lot better, too.

To digress even further…”bun-length” hot dogs??? Isn’t this a blatant admission that most hot dogs are too short? It looks like they shrunk the dogs lengthwise even before they went after girth. Now they’re selling length back to us, like they’re doing us a favor.

This tyranny has to end.

Slob cooking tip: when grilling hot dogs for one, nuke them first. Then they’ll be nice and hot in the middle, and you can grill them a lot faster. Just burn the outsides a little, and you’re off to the races.

So. The exact thing I predicted has happened, except that the rioters are white, not black, and the authorities are in favor of it.

The other day I pointed out that there was a huge danger BLMtifa nuts would realize they could take over cities, and when that happened, we would be in big trouble. Not “we,” really, because I live on a farm surrounded by wonderful people and zero targets of leftist interest. But still.

I figured black rioters would be the culprits, because they have gigantic support from huge ghettos. It didn’t occur to me that white lesbians and man-bun-sporting baristas would beat them to it.

Seattle is a very white city. Less than 10% of the population is black. Compare New York with 25%. Even with the huge white and black exodus and Latin influx, Miami is almost 20% black. Chicago checks in at around 30%. Black people like cities. They just do. But they don’t like Seattle. Maybe it’s the rain.

The takeover includes City Hall, and one of the rioters’ demands is that the mayor, who looks like someone on the editorial staff at Cosmopolitan, resign, immediately. Not one to take this lying down, the mayor says…wait, she agrees completely. I think. In any case, she is on the news forcefully defending the people who put her in the street.

She may not have a good answer to the problem of displaced people and illegally seized property, but she has pinpointed the true source of all of Seattle’s ills. Of course, I refer to Donald Trump. Obvious?

Why do I call these people rioters, given that they don’t seem to be very violent at the moment? Look, if you take over a city using semiautomatic rifles, it’s a riot. It may be a nice, polite, Caucasian-heavy riot, but it’s a riot.

It’s a wonder to behold. I knew white liberals were suicidal, but it’s still amazing to see them self-actualize.

There are a lot of weird things about the takeover. When did leftists decide it was okay to carry AR15’s openly? When did they even decide it was okay for AR15’s to exist?

Part of me wants to cheer them on for buying rifles, because it will be hard for leftists to keep throttling our civil rights if they’re also carrying guns. But capturing cities is not really consistent with the intent of the non-trans cis men who wrote the Second Amendment.

Here’s something weird: leftist crazies can legally carry rifles in Seattle, which is insanely off to the left, but I can’t do it here in Florida, where we are constantly under attack for our “loose” firearm laws. How did that happen?

I’m allowed to carry openly in two places: my home and my business, which, sadly, is my home. It’s really one place. That’s all I get. And I can’t permit you to carry openly on my property, in case you’re wondering. Of course, I would let you do it, if you’re a friend, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be committing a felony.

I saw a fascinating video by a guy in North Dakota. He calls himself Tiborasaurus Rex, if I spelled it right. Weird guy. I thought he was just another grumpy dad bod with various beefs he wanted to air, but I looked at some of his old videos, and I saw a young military-looking guy teaching viewers how to be snipers. Is it really the same guy? It’s terrible what a few years and some kids can do to you.

I’m kidding. You can’t spend your whole life living on the edge and looking like a recruiting poster. Sooner or later, you will probably find yourself wearing Crocs and driving a minivan.

This is why they always kill the girl before James Bond marries her.

Anyway, he apparently lives near a town called Dickson, which is across the state from–you guessed it–Minnesota. BLMtifa terrorists decided to send rioters to various small towns in North Dakota, perhaps because they thought they were good places to commit violent crimes and take selfies. Soft targets, they must have thought.

Oh, you didn’t hear about this on the news? Amazing!

The folks in Dickson knew they were coming, so they got out their guns and invited some bikers. When the BLMtifers showed up, they were greeted with a wall of barrels, more or less. The local mall was completely blanketed in parked Harleys. The people of Dickson must have realized that stealing TV’s was always high on the BLMtifa agenda. You can’t protest from the heart when you don’t have Ultra 4K on the wall in your mom’s basement.

According to Mr. Rex, the BLMtifers packed up and went home without damaging anything. Total buzzkill.

He says he sat at a table in a local restaurant and listened to BLMtifers planning violent crimes and thefts. He said they even planned rapes. He says they were intercepted outside a bank they intended to knock over. For the cause. Hey, lattes and American Apparel shirts aren’t free.

What he said was highly disturbing. It shows how dangerous and cruel these people are. They’re no joke. Well. They ARE a joke, but they’re still very dangerous.

What would have happened had Mr. Rex and his friends lived somewhere else? Exactly what happened somewhere else. There would have been looting, beatings, and fires. Fortunately, he and his friends had the full cooperation of the police, and with their help, they not only kept their town safe; they made a name for it so BLMtifa will be very afraid to return.

Seattle, now…that’s another story. It’s BLMtifa paradise. But it’s relatively safe because the population is mostly whites and Asians who don’t want police records to prevent them from getting jobs at the Genius Bar.

I’ll tell you what I wonder. How are small-town Floridians supposed to be safe if we get arrested when we show up to deter BLMtifa with rifles? How can we help the police if open carry is a crime? It’s illegal to carry a rifle openly, and a concealed weapons permit doesn’t cover rifles, so it’s also illegal to carry openly.

What have we learned?

1. BLMtifa now knows it can take over cities.
2. Leftists may respond to BLMtifa aggression by apologizing and asking what they can do to assist in their own destruction. This feeds back into observation 1.
3. Open carry is the immediate answer to BLMtifa threats in small towns.
4. Open carry won’t be possible in Florida unless the cops issue statements waiving arrest in exchange for help.

One city has fallen. How long will it take for the next one to surrender? Of course, you could say places like Compton, Overtown, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Chicago’s south side already exist in a state of perennial surrender. I grant you that. But when will we see blatant, Seattle-style takeovers spread, with more violence?

I would love to be a fly on the wall, watching girls in short haircuts waving rifles telling Seattle…ites? What to do. They’ve declared their area to be a “cop-free zone.” Okay, so that means you can do anything you want there, right? Probably not, because people would be going in and taking their property back. So if the short-haired ladies are not permitting that…wait for it…aren’t they…the POLICE?

What if someone resists them? Will they shoot? Will they get out the cable ties and pepper spray? How do you restrain suspects–people accused of eating meat or whatever–without force? What if they kick you or punch you? What if they grab you by your blue mohawk, pull your head down, and rain blows on your skull? Do you just walk away? Do you knock them down and kneel on them for 9 minutes? One wonders.

There is a musical called Pippin. It’s about Charlemagne’s son. It’s not all that historically accurate, because Charlemagne’s father was named Pepin the Short, and while he did have a son named Pepin, the son who succeeded him was named Louis. But let’s go with it.

In the play, Pippin gets all soyed up and woke, and he finds his father’s harsh treatment of his subjects reprehensible. He murders him and takes over, eager to show how nice life is under an enlightened king who loves chick flicks and walks on the beach. Of course, he finds he has to be tough in order to prevent everyone from taking advantage of him. Things come to a head when he tells the leader of a besieging army he wants to begin a new day of peace, joy, hot yoga, and pointless sham recycling. The leader sends word that he agrees wholeheartedly and will depart. As soon as Pippin sends him his severed genitals.

At this point, he pulls the knife out of Charlemagne, who magically comes back to life to say, “I told you so.”

In a truly dark country with heartless, despotic rulers, change may be a good thing, but here in the US, every insurgent who gets anywhere will eventually have a Pippin moment. It’s like the first time you open your mouth and, to your horror, hear yourself say something your dad used to say.

Maybe I shouldn’t take such a lighthearted tone, but what else can I do?

Since I appear to be predicting the future successfully, appling a mystical gift known as the ability to perceive the obvious, I’ll say we should expect more takeovers with a more violent, race-tinged (i.e. hostile to whites, Jews, and Asians) flavor. If it doesn’t happen during the current wave of insanity, it will happen during the next one. I’m not sure the current one will end, though. It may be of of them “new normal” deals.

I foresee people using cyberspace to rule through mobs. We are not quite at the point where that would be a slam dunk. Maybe the bread needs to rise a little longer. Maybe America will succeed in getting the current crop of babies to take their pacifiers and nap for a bit, and we’ll see them return with more power when Skynet gets its fingers into all of us sufficiently deeply.

I could totally see Google and Facebook working to make that happen. I’m sure there are Google kids talking about it already. If I’m smart enough to see true technocracy on the horizon, people who actually work for social giants must have seen it years ago.

They saw it if they read my blog.

If you don’t know the Holy Spirit, you better introduce yourself. You’re already way late for boot camp. You can’t save yourself, and the government will either be unwilling or unable to help. You need to know someone who can surround you with favor and tell you where to move and what to do.

Sometimes You Just Have to Troll

I spent a lot of yesterday learning about AR-type rifles. Now that I have two of them, I need to be up to speed. I guess I’m trolling, but the more I learn about these things, the more I think they’re like Porsche 911’s.

Porsche invented a very ugly platform about 80 years ago: the VW Beetle. It was fine for poor people who wanted to get to work, but that was about it. They turned it into a sports car, it had lots of handling problems, and instead of admitting they screwed up, they continued making rehashes and claiming the problems were actually virtues. It seems like the AR works the same way.

It’s nothing like the 1911. John Moses Browning made it nearly perfect, and it is still wildly popular a century later. Just like his .50-caliber machine gun. Just like his lever guns. Just like the Hi-Power. Just like a bunch of stuff he created.

As for the AR15, I’m not sure where to start.

Okay, how about this? AR15’s are still not too reliable. Enthusiasts will say, “THEY ARE, TOO! YOU JUST HAVE TO MAINTAIN THEM!” Okay, well, I have a whole bunch of other guns which go off reliably every single time whether I clean and lube them or not. Some of those guns, like the AR15, are civilian versions of military rifles. If they don’t require nannying, and the AR15 does, isn’t it fair to say the AR15 has a problem?

I like typing “AR15” more than “AR-15,” by the way. I don’t care if it’s wrong.

When I bought the other guns, no one gave me special lessons on how to keep them working. No one said, “If you don’t want your AK to bind up, you need to use this special grease on the gas tube.” No one said, “Once a month, you have to scrub your K31’s bolt with toothpaste.” I just put ammo in them and fired away.

When I bought my AR15 from the manufacturer, which had ample reason to give me the impression it was reliable, the guy who sold it to me took me all the way over to the accessory display and told me I had to buy a very unusual wire brush for cleaning the chamber. He said reliability problems were almost always caused by failure to clean the chamber.

He expected his product to not work, and he was doing damage control in advance. The manufacturer!

On to the next issue. Can someone explain the charging handle to me? Who puts a charging handle directly in front of a shooter’s face? How is that smart? Pulling it back with the left hand is very awkward, and you have to move your eyes off your target. Also, I’m not an engineer, but it sure looks like the handle could be fired into a shooter’s face if it caught on the bolt carrier.

How about the bolt assist? This is a device that helps you ram your cartridge into the chamber when it doesn’t want to go. The very existence of the bolt assist tells me Mr. Stoner knew there was something seriously wrong with his gun. An AK-47 doesn’t have a bolt assist. A Ruger 10-22 doesn’t have a bolt assist. I have to wonder if there is any gun on earth, apart from the AR family, that has a bolt assist. If Stoner chose to put this weird device on his gun, he must have known the gun was going to give people problems.

Today I learned there are AR15’s without bolt assists, and you can even get one with the charging handle on the side of the receiver. I must not be the only person who thinks something is amiss.

The AR15 has a little projection on the receiver for the purpose of knocking spent casings away from your face. What does this tell you? It tells you the gun originally shot hot brass into people’s eyes, and the answer was to put a bump on the gun so the brass could slam into it, remove some paint, and bounce off into the grass. That seems strange to me. I have no other guns with brass deflectors. Amazon sells a special pad you can glue to your brass deflector in order to keep the brass from eating your AR’s finish.

The word “kludge” means a clumsy solution to a problem. A kludge fixes the symptom, not the disease. Most repairs made with duck tapes are kludges. Duck tape is the Excalibur of kludge artists. The brass deflector on an AR15 is a kludge, and the special brass deflector protection pad is a kludge on a kludge. It’s a second-order kludge.

I’m going to put electrical tape on my gun. Duck tape is the wrong color.

What else? AR triggers are bad. Not mediocre. Bad. You can say this is because it’s a military weapon, and they chose reliability over accuracy, but if that’s the case, why does a K31 have a magnificent trigger? Lots of guns, including military weapons, have nice triggers fresh from the factory.

What about the AR’s incredible, unparalleled usefulness for self-defense? Unfortunately, it does not actually exist.

Let’s say someone breaks into my house, intent upon stealing the growing collection of parts I discarded in order make AR-style weapons work. If I have a choice between my $800 (base price) AR15 and my $400 AK-47 with cheap steel-cased ammo, which will I choose?

Wrong. I’ll choose the AK-47. Here’s why.

1. Reliability. The AK-47 WILL go off. No question about it. I dont have to clean it. I don’t have to oil it. I don’t have to buy just the right ammo. It’s going to shoot every time I pull the trigger. Won’t the AR15 go off, too? Probably. I estimate the chance of a malfunction at one in several hundred, as compared to one in thousands for the AK-47. I have had guns fail to fire, many times. It’s a real thing. If the odds are one in 500, that’s just too high when my life is on the line.

2. Better terminal performance. The .223 round or 5.56 or whatever is great, but it’s easier to stop than a 7.62 soft point and it won’t penetrate things like walls and furniture as well. If you’re in my house without permission, I want to be able to hit you wherever you are, no matter what you’re wearing. If I have to shoot through a chair, I don’t want to worry that the hard parts will save you. If you’re standing behind a wall, I want to know that I can kill you through two layers of drywall. The AK-47 is just plain better for these jobs.

People say the AR15 is more accurate. I put this to the test this week, and I got 5 MOA, which is abysmal. I can add a $250 barrel and fix it, I guess, but as of this moment, the gun appears to be no more accurate than an AK-47. But that’s a side issue. What if the AR shot 1 MOA and the AK shot 5 MOA? Who cares? Inside 100 feet, shooting at a large, i.e. human, target, 5 MOA will do just fine. Before people got all excited about accuracy, hunting rifles typically shot something like 4 MOA, and people were very happy to use them on deer.

So if I need to defend myself, the AR15 gives me less reliability, the same capacity, less ability to incapacitate, and no more accuracy.

“You can tune your AR15 so it’s just as reliable as an AK-47!”

Here’s a question no one will be able to answer: why?

It reminds me of what people say when they want to convince you cats are real pets: “My cat is just like a dog!” Why didn’t you just buy a dog, then? No one ever says, “You’ll love my dog! He’s just like a cat!” This is true for the same reason no one ever tries to make fake vegetables from meat.

Of course, my AR15 is not set up for personal defense, so if I had a home invasion, I wouldn’t care about its problems any more than I would care about my .38 Special’s problems. If it had any, which it doesn’t. I’m not going to use either gun to defend myself.

I’m no expert, but I think the AK-47 is still way better than an M-16 or similar gun on the battlefield.

I can hear people gasping.

Okay, the AK-47 is still more reliable than the M-16, after decades of trying to fix the latter gun. It’s cheaper to produce. It’s much easier to operate. You may have a problem with the heavy 7.62 ammo. Fine. Make AK-47’s in a different caliber. It has already been done.

Even with the heavier ammo and the slightly reduced accuracy, the AK works just fine up to 300 meters. With a different cartridge, couldn’t that be extended? The cartridge is the whole reason the AK doesn’t hold energy at longer distances.

There are a lot of things I don’t know, and maybe I’ll feel totally differently in a year, but this is how things look to me right now. It will be interesting to look back and see how my opinion has changed. If it does.

Would I still buy AR rifles if I had it to do over again? Yes and no. I would not have an AR10, because there are bolt guns that do the same thing better for less money. I would definitely buy the AR15 again, and I will explain why.

It’s fun. I think this is the reason most people buy them. When you buy an AR15, you enter a world of modification and problem-solving which is very enjoyable. If the gun actually worked when you bought it, you wouldn’t have any of this fun. It’s a blast picking out and installing parts to get different results. I guess it’s like buying an old leaky Harley and making it run right.

The gun is also very versatile. You can change the caliber. You can change the barrel type. You can try new triggers and optics. You can turn your AR15 into a defensive gun, a pig-hunting gun, a target rifle, or just about anything else.

If you own an AR15, you become part of a sort of club. You get opportunities to talk to other AR15 owners, mostly about fixing the gun’s problems. It makes you feel more like part of the firearms “community.”

It’s a toy. That’s the bottom line. It seems to be a very flawed weapon, but as a toy, it’s hard to beat.

I could see rigging one gun up for targets and varmints and another, in 6mm ARC, for deer and long-range shooting.

I just can’t imagine defending myself with one. A Glock would be better. A Glock would go off.

AR15-armed intruder: I HAVE YOU NOW! I’LL JUST CHARGE MY $3000 DANIEL DEFENSE AR15, LOOK THROUGH MY $1500 RED DOT SIGHT, AND PULL MY $250 GEISSELE TRIGGER! WAIT! WAIT! IT’S NOT IN BATTERY! HANG ON WHILE I BEAT ON THE BOLT ASSIST!

Me, armed with $400 AK-47 and cheap Russian ammo: BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

AR15-armed intruder: [hacking and wheezing] I got it in! Now you die! I will RAIN tiny bullets on you! BANG! [casing sticks in chamber]

Me, armed with $400 AK-47 and cheap Russian ammo: [mag swap] BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

AR15-armed intruder: [gurgling] I…I spit at your rifle! Rack-grade…surplus…

Me, armed with $400 AK-47 and cheap Russian ammo: [mag swap] BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

The M-16 and similar guns seem to be awfully popular with armies around the world. Is that because they work, or is it because America arms a lot of people? I don’t know. Googling around, I see a lot of “experts” who still criticize AR guns. Some say H&K has a much better offering.

The complaints about Vietnam-era guns are well-founded. I just read an article that said “80 percent of 1,585 troops queried in 1967 had experienced a stoppage while firing.” The article says many stoppages involved failures to extract. When this happens, your spent (or live) casing is stuck in your chamber. You can’t just eject it and start shooting again. At best, you’ll have to shove a rod into your gun’s barrel and knock the round out. This may not work, and you may have to take the gun to an armorer with special tools.

Eighty percent!

Failure to eject still happens today. There is a Youtube video of a guy whose round was so tightly ensconced, he had to use a special fitting to connect a grease gun to the barrel so he could force the cartridge out with high pressure. When it emerged, it hit a wall and made a deep hole. It was jammed in the rifle pretty good. Has that ever happened with an AK-47?

Imagine how you would feel if RVN soldiers were converging on you, and a casing got stuck in your chamber.

I’ll just publish this and let it ferment for a year. Maybe I’ll come back and say I was wrong about everything.

Doubt it.

Ballistics Just Were not Complicated Enough

I’m finally able to carry a full-size automatic while wandering around my property. My Galco Miami Classic II holster arrived.

Until I started looking at it, I didn’t see that it was the same holster I already had for the subcompact Glock. I could just use one holster for both. They have different weights and lengths, however, and adjusting them is difficult, so I decided to have one set up for the Glock 20 and another for the Glock 29.

The Glock 20 is a far superior weapon. It holds almost 50% more ammunition, making it nearly 50% better. The added capacity is more than enough to make it much better than the smaller gun. It has the advantage of being somewhat more comfortable to hold, and it has a longer sight radius, but those things don’t mean nearly as much as 5 extra rounds per magazine.

The big drawback to the shoulder holster is that it has to be adjusted carefully in order to allow the gun to be drawn without a lot of yanking and dancing. It also requires a lot of breaking in before it can be trusted to release a weapon.

It will never compare to the $5 pocket holster I use with the subcompact. That thing lets the gun go instantly and reliably. But the shoulder holster gets things out of the way, and it holds two spare magazines. It also looks nice and could make a useful impression on potential intruders. Open carry is legal on my own land.

Now that the 29 has a Crimson Trace laser on the grip, the Miami Classic will not snap shut on it. The retention strap is obstructed by the laser. I have to decide whether the laser is really a good idea. It works beautifully, but it would require me to cut up my shoulder holster, and it bruises my thumb when I shoot more than a few rounds.

Do I really need it? The gun has night sights, and I’m not the kind of person who needs a lot of help with accuracy. It’s a nice tool, though, and what if I were in a situation where I couldn’t use my usual grip on the gun? That could happen. I might have to use my left hand or something. The laser would make it very easy to aim effectively.

I have some leatherworking skills. I could cut the holster to fit the laser without completely ruining the appearance.

I haven’t decided whether to put a Crimson Trace on the Glock 20.

I’ve been trying to figure my AR15 problem out. I’m just about sure yesterday’s terrible accuracy was not my fault, so the gun or the ammo has to be the problem.

A reader offered a helpful comment about barrel twist. A rifle barrel will turn a projectile 360° in a certain number of inches. Barrels are rated according to that number. For example, a 1:9 barrel has a one-in-nine-inch twist. Different projectiles need different twist rates. A big projectile needs a fast twist to give it a lot of spin, but a small projectile can have problems with too much spin.

What do “big” and “small” mean? I’m not sure. Traditionally, people have said heavy bullets need fast twists and light bullets need slow twists, but I’ve been reading a site that says length is what really matters. Longer bullets need more spin because they’re harder to stabilize. Heavier bullets are usually longer, so people think heavy bullets need more spin. This is the argument.

I don’t know what’s true. As a physicist, I would guess that length is what matters, because a long object will have mass far from its center of rotation, and that mass will have a large effect on rotational stability, so there has to be increased angular momentum (provided by spin) in order to fight any torques that come from that mass.

My barrel has a 1:9 twist, and the sort of bullet it’s made for is not clear. Different “experts” say different things. I saw a source that said it was fine for 55-to-68-grain bullets, but other sites disagree.

I was shooting 55-grain bullets when things went badly. I am guessing, but I don’t think a 1:9 twist is so far off it could account for shooting 5 MOA.

Of course, I am learning these things after spending money too quickly. I ordered a bunch of 40-grain cartridges for the gun days ago. After learning about twist, I was concerned that my non-returnable 40-grain bullets might have been a waste of money.

Not so. I have found out that a gun like mine with a 1:9 twist can shoot the 40-grain bullets I bought with incredible accuracy.

An old guy on Youtube bought the same ammunition and shot it through a gun with a 1:9 twist, and he shot four rounds that made holes that touched each other…at 200 yards. He had some flyers, too, but they were also extremely close to the four adjoining shots. He couldn’t figure out why cheap ammo with the wrong bullet weight worked so well for him.

If the bullets I bought won’t shoot, it won’t be because I have the wrong barrel twist.

I decided to get some 50-grain and 55-grain ammo of the same type, just to see what the story is. I won’t try smaller bullets because I read that really tiny bullets can fly apart and disappear when they spin too fast. They literally disintegrate in front of you while you shoot.

For anything up to the size of a coyote, 40-grain bullets are jim dandy, and light bullets recoil less, so I figured they were a good choice. Now I don’t know. It’s not like the maximum recoil from an AR15 is bothersome, and heavier bullets could be better for some things.

I don’t think any of these bullets are good for self-defense, because they do a subpar job of going deep into large creatures, but the gun isn’t intended for self-defense.

If I can’t get this gun to work, I will talk to the manufacturer. Maybe they’ll take a look at it and find a problem. I’m not too worried about it, because I always thought I was likely to replace the barrel. If it turns out the OEM barrel just isn’t that great, and it’s not bad enough for a warranty replacement, I’ll recrown it myself to see if I can improve the accuracy. After that, if it’s no better, I’ll get an aftermarket barrel and whatever AR15 tools I need to install it.

Sooner or later, we will see this gun shoot 1 MOA at 100 yards. That is for certain, God willing of course.

Learn from my Bad Example

God changes lives with supernatural revelation, and he has been very generous with me lately. He gave me a compound revelation this month involving my attitude.

He showed me that I need to be much more reluctant to complain. I’ve had a lot of bad experiences in cultures where people were pressured to bury their heads in the sand, and I have come to love exposing the truth, but I haven’t done a good job of separating exposure from pointless bellyaching or from reviling or ridiculing. Revealing the truth is very important, and it’s very important to do it in situations where it will destroy your popularity, but you can’t let yourself obsess on what is wrong or let it become an excuse for giving up too early.

It’s good to say, “I hear a noise coming from my front end, so I need to have my bearings checked.” It’s bad to say, “I hate this car. It’s always letting me down. Why can’t I ever have a car that works right? Other people have good cars. I can’t believe this is happening again. I’m so sick of this thing.”

You have to appreciate what you have and what happens to you.

Here is what God has shown me: you have to have what I call an immigrant/orphan/warrior attitude.

Consider immigrants who move the USA. I know many of them are curses to us. Many come filled with hostility toward us. Some perform acts of terrorism. Some expect us to mold ourselves to their toxic, backward cultures, which they themselves fled, instead of adapting themselves to our superior culture. Many come here out of pure selfishness. All those things are true, but I’m not suggesting we be like them in those ways. I’m suggesting we be like them in our appreciation of what we have.

I read an anecdote about a visitor from Russia. This person kept telling her hosts how wonderful the USSR was and how inferior America was. She could not shut up. Then there was a trip to an American supermarket in the winter. The critic looked around at the packed shelves and the fresh fruit and vegetables and started to cry.

That individual appreciated a blessing I have enjoyed every single day I’ve spent in America. I, on the other hand, feel deprived when my local store doesn’t have the exact cut of choice beef I want to buy or the right brand and variety of tomatoes for pizza.

Consider orphans. Many are hard to place, so they get stuck in orphanages for years, or they go from one foster family to another. They dream of having their own homes, with siblings and parents. The rest of us don’t feel much gratitude for situations older orphans pray for every night.

My family did me a lot of harm, but at least I had a family. My bills were paid, and we never had to live in a shelter or even an apartment. My mother was wonderful. I knew my grandparents. I knew my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Both of my parents left me inheritances. My family damaged me more than most white American families, but it also did me a great deal of good.

Think about warriors. When a warrior in a superior force goes into battle, and enemy soldiers start shooting at his position, he doesn’t say, “I am cursed. These people should have given up as soon as they saw us, but they’re trying to kill us anyway, and now I have to go through a miserable battle.” A warrior expects conflict. It’s what he trains for. He sees it as a normal obstacle he has to pass in order to get to victory.

The other day I bought a new stove. My old primitive stove was very hard to clean, and it only had 4 burners. I was reluctant to cook because it was so difficult to get the stove back in order afterward. I found a great induction cooktop at Home Depot for something like 45% off. I measured the existing stove, and while I couldn’t get at the cutout in the stone counter to measure it, I made a reasonable assumption: because appliances are standardized, a 36″ induction cooktop would fit in a cutout made for a 36″ conventional cooktop.

I got the old cooktop out, and I found that the cutout was 3/8″ too short. I had expected the switch to take about 30 minutes. Now I was looking at hiring someone or buying unfamiliar tools, making the new cuts myself, and enduring a long, messy job. I also learned that the manufacturer had not included some brackets for supporting the new stove in a stone counter. I’m talking about two small pieces of steel plus a tube of glue. Should cost about 10 bucks. In fact, these things should be included in the package with a stove that retails for $1800. I looked online, and the price for the “kit” was about $135.

I felt defeated, and that’s ridiculous. I knew it was ridiculous. I apologized to God even while I was feeling defeated. I rejected the feeling.

I said I knew the stove was going to fit. Victory was already mine. No doubt about it. I wasn’t experiencing defeat. I was just having a setback. I was blessed with an $1800 stove for which I paid about $1000, I didn’t have to use cash to get it, I got free delivery, I didn’t need help removing the old stove, I was sufficiently handy to know I was going to be able to get the cutout enlarged, I was putting it in a beautiful kitchen in a magnificent house in an extremely pleasant county in the United States of America…what possible excuse was there for feeling cursed and defeated?

I didn’t have a warrior attitude. I had a snowflake attitude. An Antifa/BLM attitude. I knew it. I hated it. I refused to continue in it. I asked God to help me.

I knew that on the other side of the work and the mess, a fantastic new stove was waiting. The new stove has a top which is a continuous sheet of glass. Cleaning it after a messy cooking session takes less than 5 minutes. It has 5 burners, one of which is gigantic, which is a nice feature. It’s much, much faster than gas, conventional, or radiant cooking. It won’t work with certain cookware, but I can get new things, and I have additional portable burners anyway. When I’m not cooking, the surface functions as temporary counter space.

God was blessing me like crazy. Feeling defeated and wronged was not just incorrect; it was offensive.

I made a terrible mess when I installed the cooktop, but a tradesman would have made the exact same mess. Instead of getting a new stove for $1800 plus maybe $500 in installation costs, I got it for $1000, no cash left my bank account, and I learned a lot.

Along the way, I found out I didn’t need the expensive tube of glue and sheet metal brackets.

The Bible promises us victory over and over. It doesn’t say we’ll never have to fight or that things will go exactly the way we want. Victory is not the same thing as lack of conflict. When we win wars decisively, we still have to fight, and we still lose people. No one with any common sense says that makes us losers.

Sometimes God has shown me what it’s like to deal with me and my bad attitude. I have been in situations where I’ve been in charge of people who were doing various things. If you have employees, or if you have hired people temporarily, you’ve been there. I have dealt with people who whined and complained. I have dealt with people who stood around conversing instead of working, while I, the one who was paying them, worked. I’ve dealt with people who were so slow and lazy, they were literally much slower than I would have been had I done things alone. I’ve experienced resentment from people I was paying. I felt I was being punished for giving them money.

When I was slaving away as an armorbearer at Miami’s Trinity Church, I worked a couple of Richie Wilkerson’s Rendezvous meetings at the Fillmore Theater on Miami Beach. People volunteered to help the armorbearers. We were there mostly to manage crowds. I had a lot of experience, and I was in a position of authority. A young black man was part of my team.

I set things up the way they were supposed to be, in cooperation with the other armorbearers. Then this young man decided he was in charge. He started moving cordons and changing the way traffic flowed. He started telling me how things were going to be set up, as though I had volunteered to work for him!

His ideas were inept and would have caused problems. I immediately moved things back, and I told him I was running the team. I said if he wanted to help us, he had to follow orders.

He got so mad, he walked off and quit. He could not understand that he we were not equals on the team. It was impossible to explain this concept, which 98% of human beings chosen at random would have understood without being told. No one on the team could figure him out.

I never interacted with him after that. I forgot his face. I don’t know what happened to him. Another young man from the same area had also volunteered, and he could not have been more helpful. He kept making sure he was doing what the team wanted him to do. He never complained. After the conference was over, we would always wave at each other in church and converse a little.

I’ve dealt with a lot of people who could not submit, honor, or appreciate. I have often shown similar attitudes toward God.

If someone is willing to pay you and advise you when he has other options, and you make him miserable, he’s going to limit what he does for you. It’s just not worth it when you have to be treated like you’re imposing. On the other hand, when people have a good attitude, it makes you grateful. It makes you want to do more for them and to be more closely involved with them.

Surely we punish God when we aren’t grateful and respectful, and surely he responds by holding back our blessings. Surely he must increase our blessings when we have better attitudes. I believe there are things I wanted which God kept from me, and now I believe he will provide those things because I will reward him instead of making him wish he had a better son to work with.

Here is something Jesus said:

A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.

Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?

And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it:

And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.

When you’re push-starting a car, you don’t push forever. If it doesn’t start to run eventually, you quit pushing.

Every day, I need to see my blessings as though they were new. When I get in my car, I should feel as though I were driving a new car off a dealer’s lot. When I sit in my air-conditioned house, I should feel as though I had been living in a tent in insufferable heat all my life. When I eat and drink, I should feel as though I had just been rescued from a month in a lifeboat. I live in a world where billions of people don’t have the good things I have. I could easily be replaced with someone more grateful.

That’s what happened to the Jews. I’m not talking about replacement theology. They are still God’s chosen. But if you read the Bible, you will see that they got in trouble over and over for taking God’s blessings for granted, and in the end, most didn’t appreciate the greatest blessing of all: their messiah. So most of what he offered went to Gentiles. Now, of course, most Christians take God and his blessings for granted, so we’re in the same boat.

I believe this revelation is extremely powerful and that it will bring me things I couldn’t get before. I pray, and I have faith, but faith isn’t everything. How effective can faith for a result be if God knows you’re going to make him wish he had never granted your request?

I’m astounded when I look back and think of all the blessings I’ve spat on and ruined. My education is an example. I barely did anything in high school, but one of the world’s best universities sent me a letter, asking me to apply. When I was accepted and my parents paid my tuition and expenses without hesitation, I didn’t appreciate it at all. I behaved like a character from the movie Animal House. I thought the administration was my enemy. I thought drunkenness was cool. I made trouble.

I wish I could go through high school again. I went to the best school in Florida. I could have focused on math and science. I could have gone to MIT or Caltech. Even Columbia, the school that accepted me, was a top-notch STEM school.

I know I couldn’t have done much better as things were. I didn’t know God, and I truly was cursed. My family was a constant source of discouragement and pain. Things didn’t go well even when I did things right. But if I had known God and had a better attitude, I would have excelled.

I know people who were thrilled to be able to go to community college. I know people who were thrilled to go to state universities. I know people who have student loans. I had a full ride at one of the best Ivy League schools, and I resented it!

I can’t complain about mowing the yard. Most people don’t have a yard. I can’t complain about doing bookkeeping and taxes. Most people have no money to manage. It’s amazing to me that I ever complained about cleaning up after my pets. Who chose to buy them? How many people are there who would love to have two beautiful exotic birds who love them?

I have to remember that regardless of what happens while I’m here on Earth, I have victory. Under the worst circumstances imaginable, which are nothing like my actual circumstances, I would still be saved when I died. The rejection and problems I face here are like the heckling and reviling Cubans used to experience when they chose to move to America. People would spit on them and call them worms. The speed bumps I deal with are temporary and unimportant, and they precede blessings that will make me forget them.

I think my new outlook will improve my life tremendously, so I want to tell other people who make the same mistakes I did. I hope someone else can make the change earlier and have a better life than the one I’ve had.

I see Why the Viet Cong Loved the AK-47

I had my first negligent discharge today.

Actually, that’s not true, and there is more than one reason.

First, I shot my house once when I was a teenager. So what happened today was actually my first possibly negligent discharge since becoming an adult.

Second, I knew the gun was likely to go off at the wrong time, so I held it aimed at the ground while I was fooling with it.

Negligence is the absence of due care, and I did take measures to prevent problems before the discharge, but I didn’t fire the gun intentionally, so it’s not like it was a normal discharge.

Should I call it an accidental discharge?

I was shooting my Thompson/Center Venture in .204 Ruger, and I was having a hard time getting the bolt to close. This gun has not been fired much, and it’s very tight. I noticed that the natural thing to do was to put my ring finger and pinky inside the trigger guard while trying to shut the bolt. It was hard to remember not to do this. I came up with a safety strategy, in case I touched the trigger at the wrong time. When I had trouble with the bolt, I aimed the gun at the ground. I got so frustrated trying to close it, I forgot about the trigger for a fraction of a second, and the gun reminded me.

According to web sources, accidental discharges take place when you pull the trigger on purpose at the wrong time, and negligent discharges take place when you fail to observe one of the 4 safety rules. It looks like I had a negligent discharge.

I love the .204. It’s a wonderful rifle, but I have to figure out what’s going on with the bolt.

The safety won’t function unless the gun is cocked, and you have to run the bolt to cock the gun, so you can’t just engage the safety and then close the bolt.

I guess the answer is to sit on the couch and operate the bolt a thousand times to loosen it up. And maybe there is something in there that could use some filing.

The Venture was the second gun I shot today. The first was my new CORE15, which is an AR15 with a 16″ barrel. The AR shooting went very badly.

I bought this thing last week, and I got a moderately priced scope with it. I also bought Norma Tactical .55-grain ammunition to get me started. This is the ammunition I used today. I knew it probably wasn’t fantastic, but I assumed it would be good for maybe 2 MOA. Today, I would say I shot more like 5 MOA. I had no idea where the shots were going to land. Things seemed to get better after the first 40 shots or so. Maybe it took a few rounds to wear the new off the bore. After that, things improved, but only up to a point.

Now I don’t know whether the problem is the ammunition or the gun. Frustrating. I’ll have to see if there is ammunition other people do well with.

The trigger is great. I would be very surprised to learn that the barrel can’t beat 5 MOA. I’m pretty sure I can do better with a .22 and Mini-mags, so the AR15 has no excuse.

I wonder if Fiocchi cartridges with V-Max bullets would help. In the .204, they appear to be extremely accurate, although I’m not positive, because every time I start to get the .204 working, something bad happens, and I have to quit. Last time, the ridiculous battery that operates the scope died. This time, it started raining. From what I’ve seen, though, it appears one-hole accuracy is easy at 60 yards. Actually, I was shooting at 58 yards. I wanted to shoot at 50, but there was shade at 58.

I don’t know if .204 is inherently more accurate than .223. I haven’t been able to find good information. I do know my Venture is guaranteed to produce 1 MOA 3-shot groups at 100 yards, and my AR15 isn’t.

It’s somewhat amazing that you can buy a relatively cheap .204 rifle with a guarantee like that and an adjustable match trigger and then shoot it well with cheap factory ammunition, but that’s how it is.

If .223 is not inherently less accurate, then I ought to get 1 MOA with the AR15 and Fiocchi ammo, unless the rifle itself fails to get the best out of cartridges. If .223 is less accurate across the board, the manufacturer can point to that and claim not to be at fault, but if .223 is not less accurate, then T/C is just plain shaming the folks who made my AR, which cost twice as much and still came with a mil-spec trigger.

As luck would have it, I have a crate of V-Max .223 ammo on the way. It got stuck in a UPS hub in Oregon for two solid days, and now it’s in Salt Lake City. I need to try it as soon as it gets here.

I also need a shooting table. I thought I didn’t, but I do. I thought my folding Home Depot table was actually better than a dedicated shooting bench, but today I learned I can move the aim point of my scope down about an inch must by resting my left hand lightly on the table. I had not seen that before. I got very good accuracy with my .17 HMR using the same table, but maybe that was luck.

I have to take the flex out of the table or get a new bench. I guess I could put a piece of plywood or something on the table under the gun. That would be somewhat aggravating. More stuff to carry. I could preload the table somehow, but again, more stuff to carry.

If the table is flexing when I put my hand on it, it may also be bouncing when the gun fires. For all I know, that could move my point of impact.

The flexing didn’t bother the .204 at all, and it’s heavier than the .223. I don’t really know what’s going on. Flexing can’t be a good thing, though.

Should I just be a man and spend for a prefab table? Arggh.

My rest is not great. It doesn’t have enough vertical travel. Maybe I should get a big bag instead. I’ve never used a front bag, though.

I wish things had gone more smoothly today, but they did not, so tomorrow I’ll just have to adapt. Hopefully, I’ll master the .204’s bolt. I can’t wait for the V-Max .223 to show up.

Doing Things Right Feels Weird

Today I installed LaRue MTB-2S triggers in my AR15 and LR-308.

These guns are based on military rifles, not target guns, so they come with military-style triggers which are probably good for shooting terrorists but not much good for hitting small things at substantial distances. The standard thing, for people who care about accuracy, is to buy aftermarket triggers.

As far as I can tell, the most respected trigger manufacturer is a guy named Geissele, and believe it or not, that name rhymes with “precisely.” It’s not “gazelle.” Geissele triggers cost something like $250. LaRue triggers used to cost that much, but for some inexplicable reason, the company decided to give them a price that more accurately reflected the ease and low expense of making them, so you can buy them now for $80. It looks like LaRue is making genuine high-end triggers for almost-reasonable prices.

Even at $80, they are probably making a ton. Think of all the complicated steel objects, including entire rifles, you can buy for $250. “They have to charge a lot because they don’t sell a lot of triggers.” I can sense commenters typing that. Okay, have you ever heard the phrase “America’s favorite rifle”? It’s not the Ruger 10-22. It’s the AR15. It should be possible to sell a lot of AR triggers. My guess is that if the manufacturers don’t sell many, it’s because they charge too much. If I sold shovels for a living, and I charged $300 each, I would not expect to have high volume, either.

Maybe trigger makers have to charge too much because they charge too much.

This is just me and my guessing, based on what appears to be obvious.

FYI, Cabela’s sells Ruger 10-22 rifles for $230, triggers included.

Let me give a more apposite example. Cabela’s sells Savage’s match-grade, adjustable Accutrigger for $249, and they throw in a very nice A22 semiauto rifle.

Seems to me the AR trigger guys should be able to do very well with lower prices.

I started off with the AR15. Basically, you isolate the lower, pop the trigger pin out, remove the trigger, remove the grip, remove the safety, pop out the hammer pin, remove the rest of the trigger group stuff, install the new stuff, and have a beer.

I was very impressed when I took the CORE15 rifle apart. Here’s something I noticed: the big screw that holds the grip in place is hardened steel or something close to it. It’s a slotted screw (BAD), and slotted screws are easy to strip, but because the steel is so hard, it still works.

Someone at the CORE factory must have been fed up with stripped screws.

It’s extremely obvious it should be a socket head cap screw. Why isn’t it? I’ll go out on a limb and guess. Back when Mr. Stoner made his first AR15 in his dad’s garage in 1852, all he had was a slotted screw, and by God, if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for every easily triggered Stoner fanboi today!

If that’s not the explanation, then there isn’t one, because slotted screws are simply wrong for this application. Not “less suitable.” Wrong. To install a pistol grip on an AR, you have to feed the screw through the long hollow handle and into a hole at the top of the grip. With a slotted screw, you have to depend on luck to get it through the hole, and the screwdriver WILL slide out of the screw while you’re tightening it. You could put a socket head cap screw on the end of a big Allen wrench, and it would stay on the wrench while you inserted it in the hole. Then the wrench would stay in the screw while you tightened it.

CORE used a very high-quality screw. Which is still the wrong screw. They also put something resembling Loctite on it, which is nice.

The finish on the interior of the gun is beautiful. I have yet to see a rough edge.

LaRue includes two new pins for the trigger, and they thoughtfully put dimples on the ends so punches won’t slide out and scratch the daylights out of guns. Neither of my two guns came with dimpled trigger or hammer pins. The CORE has a dimpled pin for taking the gun apart, though.

I used a Real Avid bench block to hold the gun up while I banged on the pins. I found out Real Avid makes a huge bench block just for AR-type rifles. That would be nice to have in the future. The little block I have now is wonderful, though.

I installed the new parts in the wrong order, so I had to remove the hammer and start over, but things worked out fine. I applied a lot of Mobil 28 grease to everything that rubbed against anything else. I am now firmly in the camp of people who believe guns should be heavily greased.

When I was done, I was an AR trigger installation expert, so installing the second trigger in my LR-308 only took 10 minutes, and I didn’t have any problems.

HA.

Of course I had problems.

The LR-308 has a spring detent for the safety and another one for the takedown pin, and of course, I screwed all that up. It worked out fine in the end, however.

The LR-308 was made by DPMS, which, at the time, was considered one step above cheap AR’s. I would say it’s not as pretty as the CORE15. The finish seems a little coarser and less uniform, although I suppose any finish becomes less uniform after 11 years. The fit on everything was nice and tight, however, so I can’t say it seems like a inferior gun.

One big difference between DPMS and CORE: DPMS used a cheap screw to hold the pistol grip on the gun. I can tell by looking at it that I gouged the screw up the past time I messed with it. DPMS FAIL! It would be very hard to damage the CORE screw.

I already had a new trigger in the DPMS. I think. I must have, because I found an AR trigger in a plastic bag in the case with the gun. A long time ago, someone recommended I order a polished trigger from some guy who rehabilitated mil-spec triggers, and I believe I ordered one. The one in the bag must have been the OEM trigger.

Doesn’t matter. The polished trigger would have been a cheap end-run around the real thing, and now I want the real thing.

After a little research, I believe I paid a guy named Bill Springfield for a polished trigger. I’m sure he does great work, but even when its potential is maximized, a mil-spec trigger is still what it is. Before I installed the new trigger today, I checked the one that was already in the gun, and it felt good. Hard to tell that way, though.

I am allowing myself to indulge in a bold fantasy. I may be able to shoot tomorrow. I could have shot a little today, but the weather kept toying with me. I thought it was going to rain, and then I decided it wasn’t, so I chose to risk putting a charger on the lawnmower to make sure it would start later. The instant I walked outside, raindrops started striking all around me like suppressing fire.

If I can shoot tomorrow, I’ll try to find out what Norma bulk ammo can do in an AR15 with a free-floating non-luxury barrel and a really good trigger. I might conceivably try out the new 1911.

Prairie Dogs Never Have a Nice Day

It irks me that I know nothing about long range rifle shooting. I bought a .308 over a decade ago for the purpose of learning to shoot at long distances, and nothing came of it. I bought something like 1700 rounds of military ammunition made for machine guns, figuring it was good enough to start with and good enough in case I ever needed the gun for zombie hordes. I shot maybe 200 rounds. Then I quit. I have a million interests, and I flit from pursuit to pursuit like a fly meandering through a pasture full of unusually alluring cow pies. I’m fickle. Also, I lived in a city where shooting over 100 yards is impossible, except when firing into the air on holidays, if you’re Cuban.

The authorities actually had to inform citizens that shooting guns into the air on New Year’s Eve was a bad idea. They were not able to figure this out for themselves.

Yesterday I started looking around for a book on long range shooting, and someone said I should go take a class.

I scoffed. Long range shooting classes near me? Maybe in Montana or New Mexico. Not here.

Then I actually made an effort to find out what I was talking about, and it turned out I was wrong. Florida has been home to a number of facilities that teach long range shooting. Some are still around.

I emailed a couple of outfits, and naturally, I only got one response. Human nature never fails. I’m trying to blow hundreds of dollars, and only 50% of the people I’m trying to give it to thought it was worth their time to acknowledge me.

The guy who emailed me is a teacher. I sent him an email asking if my equipment was okay. The site says you need a rifle capable of 1 MOA shooting, plus a scope that doesn’t have a duplex reticle. I had to look that up to find out what it was. As for the rifle, how do I know if my guns will shoot 1 MOA? My .17 HMR definitely will, but it’s not useful past 200 yards. I have some other guns that probably will, but I haven’t been able to prove it, so does that mean I should go ahead and bring one, or do I wait until I’ve proven one of my guns will work?

Single-MOA shooting at 100 yards is no joke. It means you can usually hit a large grape a football field away. Most rifles can’t do it regardless of the ammunition or the skill of the person shooting. The rifles that can have to have the right ammunition, and you have to be able to shoot very well. You can’t just grab a random deer rifle at Dick’s, fill it with random ammunition, shoot leaning against a tree, and shoot 1 MOA. They do it in the movies, but movies are for idiots. I saw a movie where Will Smith threw a sperm whale.

The teacher said my .204 Ruger and my .308 would work, but he said my scopes were no good. What?

When I got the .308, I thought I splurged on the scope. The rifle was a screaming bargain at $775, and I probably paid $650 for the glass. I got a Leupold 20x scope with a 52mm objective and a varmint reticle. It’s not a 25x $2000 sniper scope, but on the other hand, it’s 10 times the scope Carlos Hathcock used to kill half the Viet Cong. I figured it had to be good enough for a hobbyist.

The course requires “target turrets.” Turrets are really dials. They move the crosshairs in your scope to the point where you expect your bullets to land. Most scopes have screw-on caps over the dials to keep them from getting banged up. A target turret–I am an expert after 15 minutes of Googling–is a big dial with large characters on it, and it’s not meant to be covered. If you’re a typical hunter, you don’t turn your dials much. You sight your scope in before you go hunting, and you cover the dials. If you’re a serious shooter, you want your dials–your turrets–available all the time so you can fiddle with them.

The teacher said I could rent a scope from the school, but then I would be paying someone to teach me how to set up a scope I would then remove and give back. That seems stupid. I want to set up my own scope.

I’m still not sure how turrets work, but it appears I can get aftermarket turrets to replace the ones that came on the Leupold. It’s very complicated, though. My existing turrets aren’t specific to any particular ammo, distance, or weather. Companies that sell turrets customize them to account for variables like these. I’ll bet that’s not necessary for what I want to do. I think the custom jobs are intended for people who want to be able to zip to predetermined settings for certain situations. There must be non-custom turrets out there for people who aren’t professional snipers and don’t mind doing more work.

This is my hope, anyway.

So this is where I am. If I can make the Leupold work, I will do just that. I know it can be done, because other people have done it. I just need to know what it will cost and whether it can be done in a time frame I can accept. I don’t want to wait for January to take a course.

While I’m figuring the scope out, I’m waiting on my LaRue AR triggers. Barring a negative miracle, they should fix my AR guns up so they shoot as well as possible for what they are. Both have free-floating barrels, so I don’t think I can improve them a whole lot after the triggers are installed. I may get a better buttstock for the LR-308B. The one that came with it is like the one on Elmer Fudd’s shotgun. A better buttstock will include some kind of riser for a better cheek weld.

I should bite the bullet and get a bipod for the AR15. I’m not a huge fan of rests. They always seem to be too low or too high, and for some reason, bipods have more range. Also, a bipod can’t fall off your shooting table.

I’ve been thinking of getting or making a dedicated shooting bench, but I have realized it’s a waste of time. I thought a dedicated bench would be lighter than my Home Depot folding table, but if it was, it wouldn’t be by much. Snob shooters may object to a table without a cutout, but the truth is that if you angle the table to the line of fire, it works just as well as a table with a cutout. On top of all this, it has a lot of extra area for ammunition and beverages. I would love to convince myself I need a new bench, but I can see that I don’t. I may need a new table, though, because I like having my only spare folding table in the house, and when I put it in the pasture for shooting, the cattle lick it and smear snot all over it.

What will I do with my long range shooting skills? Take a prairie-dog-killing vacation, maybe. I can shoot targets up to about 400 yards here at home.

The .204 Ruger is supposedly good for 500 yards with prairie dogs. That would be neat.

That’s a great caliber, because you can do match-grade shooting with cheap ammunition. I pay about 50 cents per round.

I think I’ve picked the final must-have caliber for my armory. Hornady just released something called the 6mm ARC. It’s blowing people away. You can shoot it from an AR15. It’s super-accurate, and at long distances, it outshines the .308. It doesn’t have much recoil. It’s supposed to be superior to other miracle cartridges like the 6.5 Grendel, to the point where some of them may be rendered obsolete. You can shoot big animals with it, so if I got one, I would no longer feel there was a gap in my capabilities. Right now, the only deer-worthy rifles I have are pretty strange.

If I can get 1 MOA from my CORE15 in .223, I’ll probably buy another one in 6mm ARC. I don’t know if CORE will offer it, but they’ll offer a lower and upper. I can get a barrel and scope myself.

I thought the CORE15 would be an entry-level weapon. I’m not so sure now. I keep learning whatever I can, and it appears that a suspicion I had is true: the guys who insist on $3000 AR15’s are buying flash, not function. My understanding is that an $800 rifle will do everything just as well, once you fix the trigger and possibly buy a barrel. If that’s true, do I really want to spend for something like a Daniel Defense? What do you really get? A prettier gun?

I saw a guy on Youtube going over an extremely expensive AR. It wasn’t available to the public, but it would have cost something like three grand. It had a weird bolt carrier with holes in it to lighten it, and everything was finished with some kind of space age stuff. He said it would cycle faster than a mid-tier AR. So what? A normal AR will do 600 rounds per minute if you can pull the trigger that fast. Am I missing something?

The lower on my AR is generally aluminum and plastic (“polymer”), so it should last 200 years. The barrel is a consumable item, easily replaced. The trigger I’m buying should be phenomenal. If there’s a good reason for moving to the top tier, I don’t see it. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

Let’s see. It looks like I can get most of a new AR for maybe $500. A precision barrel would probably run $200-$500. Trigger: $80. Then a minimum of $250 for glass. Not too bad, considering what a 1911 costs. And it would turn prairie dogs into vapor, if not plasma.

Know your enemy.

I think just about any gun purchase I make after 6mm ARC will have to fall under the heading “collecting.” I won’t be able to say I need anything else.

Well. Maybe a 12-gauge hunting shotgun, as contrasted with the video-game-looking semiauto I already have.

I’m going to try to get into a shooting class this summer. Thousands of miles away, prairie dogs are snickering at me, and I simply won’t have it.

Spiritual Blindness Pushed America to Communal Suicide

I am not doing a great job of avoiding reading the news. I’m doing a lot better than I was a week or two back, but I need to be more determined. I’m still reading a few things here and there.

Some of my friends are not helpful. They contact me with political messages, and they tell me about things that have happened in the outside world. Outside of my farm, I mean.

One of my friends told me there were cities where antichristians were striving to defund police forces. It sounded disgraceful, but I didn’t think it would amount to anything. Leftism is all about posing and pretending. I thought it was just antichristian leftists huffing and puffing for Facebook and Instagram, and I didn’t think there was any possibility that it would go anywhere.

Today, sadly, I read that it’s a very serious movement with considerable support.

What can I say about that? Imagine life near a city without police. Do I have to explain what a bad idea that is? It’s like trying to make people understand that setting themselves on fire is stupid. If it’s not obvious to you already, there is no way to make you understand it.

I didn’t understand how far gone Minnesota was. Americans tend to think of midwesterners as solid people with conservative morals, but that’s apparently far from the truth.

The friend who shared the story said he hoped the police would be defunded. He was strongly in favor of it. He wanted people to find out what life without police was like.

I marvel at the poor judgment of those who want cities without police, but I don’t want to see them get what they want. Essentially, they’re in favor of taking a problem normally found only in certain minority ghettos and extending it to entire counties. In ghettos, people can get away with murder and other violent crimes, not to mention property crimes, because the residents refuse to cooperate with the police and because the police are reluctant to respond in the first place. As a result, ghettos are full of bullies who get their way every day. This is what the defunders want for their cities, except it will be worse, because the police won’t exist at all.

What would happen in a city with no police? Would the governor bulk up the state police and send them to take over? Would the National Guard take over? I don’t even know if these things could be done legally.

It’s obvious that gangs would fill the vacuum. There is no point in pretending it’s debatable. They would exert much more power in cities, and they would do as much as they could to take over affluent suburbs. That’s what gangs do.

I got up this morning and started looking at homes in Tennessee. Florida is going to be a blue state soon, and even though I live in the reddest county in the state, the thought of having leftists take my firearms, plunder the wealth I need for my old age, and force me into a lifestyle in which I am on trial every day simply for being a white male Christian is too much. I don’t think I could stand it.

I don’t know a single person in Tennessee, unless you count an uncle who is about as close to me as you are. I can’t tell the good places from the bad. If God doesn’t guide me, I could end up in a place where I couldn’t be happy. I love northern Florida. I love my house and my farm. I love the people. But if I stay here, I’ll just be waiting for the waters to rise and drown me. When it happens, I’ll have to say I was warned.

I always feel frustrated when I think of friends and relatives who live in godless areas. I warn them about the future, but I don’t think many of them take me seriously. As long as things are tolerable this week, they think the places where they live are acceptable. They don’t really believe antichristians are going to take over and torment them. They’re inviting disaster for themselves and their children, and I believe stubbornness is the reason.

How can I criticize people who won’t listen, if I won’t listen?

For years, I’ve been saying America was going to collapse and be taken over by antichristians, but it’s still shocking to see it happen. It’s shocking that we could be so stupid. How can anyone take white privilege seriously and view it as a valid reason to persecute and censor? How can anyone think it makes sense to burn his own neighborhood? How can anyone be enraged to the point of murder by a handful of police-on-black homicides while feeling virtually nothing about the thousands of black-on-black murders which are committed every year? How can people not see how wrong they are?

If black lives matter, why aren’t the rioters enraged by the fact that people in their ranks have murdered multiple black people during the riots? How is killing innocent black people a valid form of pro-black protest?

How can so many people who are not black or Hispanic participate so zealously in their own slander and destruction? The rioters can’t be won over or placated. They’re not interested in peace or justice. They just want to hurt the rest of us. Kissing up to them doesn’t work. They’re attacking liberals all over the country, including journalists they know to be with sympathetic outlets.

They’re not mistaking their allies for enemies. They just don’t care. The riots aren’t about justice or logic. They’re driven by racism and envy. If you’re not black or Hispanic, or if you’re successful, they want to take what you have, hurt you physically, humiliate you, and kill you.

The Bible says God gives persistent sinners over to sin. He stops trying to talk them out of it. When he stops talking to them, they develop a type of insanity, believing good is evil and evil is good. How true that is.

It’s terrible to see the truth die in America. Human beings can’t be saved without the truth that comes from God. There is no other way to be helped. Without God’s truth, we go to hell, plain and simple, and hell grows inside us while we live, preparing us for the destination where we fit in so well.

If I leave and go to a safer place, it won’t mean I’ve located a haven where the antichristians will never rule. They’ll take Tennessee over, too. They’ll take over the entire world eventually. I think God is just telling me to move so I’ll have more years of peace and victory. With any luck, I’ll be dead before the fleas and leeches show up on my doorstep with authority from the government.

How will I move all my things? It would take a month just to box things up. Should I have a sale and go with very little? I don’t think so. I believe God has a purpose in my tools and firearms and so on. I don’t have much furniture, so that won’t be a big problem. I would call the Salvation Army to get my mother’s remaining bedroom furniture and my dad’s coffee tables. I don’t like those things anyway.

I thought God might provide a wife by now, but that has not happened. Not even close. Moving by myself would be difficult. On the other hand, I moved once with no help while caring for a dementia patient, so maybe I’m concerned about nothing.

I wish the world would change, but it never will. Fitting in is an impossibility and not to be desired.

I may have 30 more years left. Argh. Experiencing old age on this deteriorating planet is not something I look forward to. It’s daunting to think there is so much time left in my tour of duty. God has kept me safe, comfortable, and prosperous, though, and I assume he will continue to do so. Surely I will have a purpose that will make staying in this place worth it. I don’t have a choice, so I have to make the best of things.