Prominent Doctor Does his Part to Spread Panic

Yesterday, I used a differential equation to predict how the coronavirus epidemic would pan out, and it made the future look very good. Total predicted deaths by June 5: 150,000, give or take. That sounds bad until you consider how many people will die during that time from the flu, the common cold, pneumonia, car wrecks, tobacco-related diseases, and so on. You have to remember that the world is a very big place, and a disease that kills 150,000 people isn’t a big deal.

Today I found an article quoting a Johns Hopkins professor. He’s trying to panic people. He says the number of actual cases is much higher than what we’re seeing, because testing isn’t going well.

For a minute, I wondered if I was on the wrong track. After all, I can only rely on data that’s available to me, so if the data is no good, neither are my predictions.

I’m not on the wrong track. I realized that after a short period of thought. It’s unfortunate the the Johns Hopkins doctor didn’t say what I’m about to say.

What is it that matters during this epidemic? The number of actual cases? Not at all. That figure means nothing. No one cares how many people get sick, because the symptoms generally aren’t very bad. The only thing that matters is the death toll.

The death figures are very solid. Why? Because dead people can’t escape diagnosis. If you have mild symptoms and you decide not to bother with the major annoyance of dealing with the post-Obama healthcare system, no one will ever put your case in a database. If you die, it’s a different story. They will know you died, and they will know what killed you. We know how many people are dying, regardless of how bad the testing program is.

Here’s something that will make people mad: the more actual cases there are, the better the news is. It increases the ratio of infections to deaths, and the inescapable conclusion is that coronavirus isn’t as bad as we thought it was. The death toll is a solid figure, so changes in testing won’t change it. The case total can only go up as testing improves, because it’s a mathematical certainty that we are missing cases. If the case total goes up, the death rate will drop. Say the current death rate is 3%, to make up a figure. If the total case number doubles, the death rate goes to 1.5%.

They think the real death toll is around 1%. The doctor thinks the actual case number in the US is at least 50,000 and could be 500,000. The official figure is 1600, so if the doctor is right, there are 30 to 300 times as many cases as we thought. If that’s true, the death rate is 30 to 300 times lower, making coronavirus less lethal than the flu. The rate would be three thousandths to three hundredths of a percent. The latter figure would put the coronavirus well below the flu death rate.

Any way you slice it, unless the death figures are unbelievably wrong, this disease is much less of a problem than people think.

Interesting thing: preacher T.B. Joshua prophesied that rain would come to China and wash the epidemic away. Since he said that, the China numbers have been just about flat. Hmm.

Math v. Hysteria

In case anyone is interested, I constructed a differential equation to see if I could predict the spread of coronavirus over the next couple of months.

Is the equation right? Search me. If testing keeps improving, we will pick up a lot more cases mild and asymptomatic cases, and that will throw everything off. Also, I may not know what I’m doing.

I’m using a differential equation that predicts two things: the growth of bacteria in a culture, and the half-life of a radioactive substance. I’m assuming the human race will work like bacteria, and the world will be our Petri dish. I can’t even guess what kind of sophisticated equations epidemiologists use, and I’m not going to look it up. This is mostly for entertainment, although the message that the epidemic is overhyped is correct.

I hope I did this right. I’ve forgotten a huge percentage of what I used to know.

Anyway, here are some figures for the global totals. Two are rounded off. Sorry I can’t make it display as a nice table.

March 5: 90,000
March 14: 150,000
March 17: 177,845
March 21: 223,173
March 28: 332,040
30 days from 3/5: 494,013
60 days from 3/5: 2,711,653
90 days from 3/5: 14,884,355

I may be wrong about April 4. I didn’t do the math for the date. It’s whatever day is 3 weeks after March 14.

They’re talking about a possible death rate of 1% now, so 90 days out, I predict 148,884 or fewer deaths. Call it 150,000.

As detection gets better, the death rate (ratio) should plummet, as should the severity of the symptoms of average infections. It won’t mean fewer people will be dying. It will just mean they’re more exceptional than we thought.

The 90,000 and 150,000 figures from this month are known, and they are approximate.

I would expect this amateur equation to work reasonably well while the disease is still spreading rapidly. During that time, the transmission function should be pretty uniform. As we approach saturation, the curve will start to drop, and it will eventually go to zero. Far as I know, the only thing that can really throw the projection off is bad initial data.

I don’t know how long it will take for infection rates to drop. Maybe there is a big population of low-hanging fruit out there, and they will pump up the numbers very badly at first. Maybe dirty people will get hit very fast, and the rest of us will frustrate the disease by not living like monkeys. If this is how it works, maybe the transmission rate will drop off in a month or two. It seems to work that way with the flu. The infection rate shoots up fast, and then it drops fast.

If I had death figures from a couple of weeks ago, I could do much better, because death figures are reliable. We know when people die. It’s usually obvious without a test. A death equation would be more useful, because death is what worries people. We’re not that concerned about getting the sniffles.

In any case, I would expect to see about 600,000,000 global flu cases by the end of this season, and given a 0.01% death rate, that means 600,000 deaths.

I am too lazy to check the actual number of global flu deaths per year, but it should be somewhere close to 600,000, so probably somewhere between 400,000 and 800,000. In any case, a lot, compared to coronavirus.

Guess what? I decided to check after all. The correct figure is 650,000, so maybe I’m not so stupid.

Tobacco kills 8,000,000 people per year, according to WHO.

No one should be happy about 150,000 coronavirus deaths, but it’s important to know the difference between an epidemic and a plague. We don’t have a plague. It’s also important to realize that the death rate for healthy young people is miniscule. Kids are nearly immune.

Africa is a problem for anyone trying to predict what will happen. Health care there is abominable, as is hygiene, so maybe coronavirus will go nuts there and blow up the curve, just as AIDS did.

I can’t tell you my prediction is right, but I can tell you that coronavirus won’t even begin to rival the flu in number of infections, and it is extremely unlikely to kill as many people.

I wonder if anti-vaxxers are flipping out. That would be hypocritical, wouldn’t it? If you willingly expose your family to a known deadly disease every year, you shouldn’t be too concerned about a rarer and much less deadly disease.

What’s going to happen to the companies that make toilet paper when this is over? No one except me will buy it for at least a year. I guess I’ll get some bargains. I wish someone would tell me why people are buying toilet paper. I don’t get it at all. What is the connection between a respiratory infection and using 20 times as much toilet paper as usual?

It will be interesting to see how close my predictions are to the truth. They may be wrong by a wide margin, but the flu, which is something we can count on, will still beat coronavirus. That, you can bank on.

Before I quit, a question: why isn’t anyone talking about the flat transmission rate in China? Coronavirus is now at a near-standstill there, so why shouldn’t the same thing happen everywhere else?

Beretta’s Plagiarism Saves the Day

I thought I was going to get to put a new chain on a chainsaw and get rid of some annoying trees. Instead, I ended up taking over two hours getting auto-pay set up for some monthly obligations. The people I deal with use Revopay, which is a company that takes payments online. The pay site does not work. When you call the help number, you get someone who says he can’t help with website issues. He transfers your call to a web person who doesn’t answer, so you have to leave a voicemail. Then they don’t return calls.

Thinking of using Revopay? Reconsider.

Since it’s too late to cut trees, I’ll write about the Cold Woodsman pistol.

This week I picked up a gorgeous Woodsman I found on Gunbroker. While I was shooting it, I noticed a couple of odd things about the magazine. First, it only held 9 rounds. It was supposed to hold 10, but there was absolutely no way to get a 10th round into it. Second, the spring was way too strong. After reloading it a few times, my hand started to get sore.

You don’t need a super-strong spring in a box magazine. Other guns have weaker springs that work just fine.

I started looking for new magazines, and I found out I had stepped into a trap!

1. Colt stopped making replacement magazines about 20 minutes before I bought this gun, so now you can’t get one anywhere. Another customer relations triumph for Colt.

2. Typically, a used Colt magazine will sell for $85 or more, if you can find one.

3. Aftermarket magazines aren’t very good. I don’t know if this is true of all brands. Numrich (the gun parts people) makes a magazine, but I haven’t been able to find out whether it works. It’s not cheap. They cost $55.

4. Beretta makes a .22 pistol called the Neos, and Beretta cloned the Colt Woodsman magazine down to the last detail, except they put a plastic (Can we stop saying “polymer”?) base on it. To make the magazine work, you have to cut some material off the base. In the past, Numrich sold used Colt bases which fit in Beretta magazines, but they stopped…about 20 minutes before I bought this gun.

5. Colt made a gun called the Cadet or the Colt Target Model, and its magazines are identical to Woodsman magazines. Unfortunately, you can’t find one to buy. Believe me.

What’s the answer? You have to buy Beretta magazines for a little over $20 each and shave down the PLASTIC or make new bases for them from sheet metal.

I get tired of hearing people say “polymer.” It means the exact same thing as “plastic,” but it sounds more expensive. “Composite” also means “plastic,” except it’s plastic with fibers in it to make it stronger. If you have a Glock or any other polymer or composite gun, you have a plastic gun. Get over it.

If you have a second-generation Woodsman, you can make a Ruger MkII magazine work, but it will be too long for a third-generation model. You may be able to make a Browning Buckmark magazine work with a Woodsman, but you’ll be breaking new ground.

There is a site about Colt Woodsmans that has a magazine compatibility chart. Look up “Bob Rayburn.”

My magazine has a feature that makes it compatible with a second-generation Woodsman, so it may not be the original magazine. I suspect the spring is new, too.

My magazine problems are solved. I ordered some Beretta magazines. I plan to see if it’s possible to make new bases from steel, so they’ll look and feel more like Colt magazines.

While I’m dealing with Woodsman-part logistics, I’m also thinking about other guns that were stolen from my grandparents’ estates. My grandfather had a Browning Hi-Power I liked. He also had an M1 Enforcer pistol, which is an M1 carbine with a short barrel and no buttstock. Terrible weapon, but very cool.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get an Enforcer, because I already have a good watermelon gun, but a Hi-Power would be nice. Guess when they stopped making them? About two years ago. They weren’t expensive then. Now? Different story. A good one will run you $1100 or more.

I found one online. I’m considering it. They may continue appreciating, and if so, buying now is the right move. On the other hand, Browning might start making them again. Who wants to pay $1100 for a used gun and then see new ones selling for $750? Browning won’t say the gun is gone for good. They’re leaving us to guess.

Here’s a tip for gun makers. You don’t say, “We just discontinued this model.” You say, “We are going to discontinue this model in two years.” Then everyone will flock to stores to buy anything you produce during that time. You make money, your customers get what they want…everyone’s happy. You don’t just pull the plug and force the public to play musical guns.

It’s amazing that I didn’t get a single decent gun when my grandmother died. If she hadn’t given my dad a shotgun, my haul would have been limited to a flintlock and an aluminum .22 with the bluing flaking off.

My grandfather had at least 20 good guns, and I got…one. Whoopee.

As noted in an earlier post, my steel gong targets arrived. I may try to hang them tomorrow. I should have gone to get steel today to build a stand. But I have surplus lumber lying around, so I guess I can improvise. I have two round gongs, a squirrel, and a hog.

In other news, it looks like coronavirus is going to plague me in spite of failing utterly as a true plague. I have started getting coronavirus emails from everyone I do business with. “We here at Burger King feel real bad about the pandemic, and we are doing everything possible to assure that your burger arrives with no more germs than usual. Our team of surly high school students and confused illegals will continue to uphold the hygiene standards fast-food consumers have grown used to.”

I’ve received 8 emails this afternoon. Thanks, Northern Tool, but I’m not really worried about getting sick when I dash in to get a box of welding rod, and frankly, I don’t think there is anything you could do to prevent it. Thanks, Consumer Reports. Thanks, electric company. I was really worried that viruses would sneak in through the cables.

I will not catch coronavirus, but it will still make me suffer. It’s good to be sane when everyone around you is wetting their pants over nothing, but a panic is still a considerable annoyance.

I own a rental home. The condo association sent me an email saying they’re sealing their office. If you want to pay them, you have to slide an envelope under the door. It must be like working in Al Capone’s vault. Total hysteria.

Let’s go back over the facts, not that it will help.

1. Coronavirus is barely infecting anyone compared to the flu.

2. The death rate is projected to be under 1%.

3. The symptoms, for the vast majority of people, are very mild.

It’s like we’re flipping out over chickenpox.

Obviously, after writing that, I had to look up chickenpox statistics. It kills between 5,000 and 10,000 people per year, and if you’re around a person who has it and you’re not immune, the odds are 10 to 1 that you’ll get sick. Then if you get well, you may go on to get shingles, which is one of the most painful diseases there is. Between 5,000 and 10,000 Americans are hospitalized because of chickenpox every year.

We’re terrified of coronavirus, but we snicker at chickenpox. Crazy.

I can’t wait for this epidemic to blow over. I’ll bet it ends in April, just like other cold-weather diseases. Trump suggested that might happen, and of course, the press treated him as though he had recommended torturing kittens, but what he said sounds reasonable to people who aren’t completely unable to set aside their hatred. What other respiratory disease continues spreading in warm months?

If this is how we act when confronted with the lamest pandemic in history, what will happen if a really serious threat pops up? I shudder to think. Maybe buying survival crackers isn’t a bad idea after all. What if I can’t get bread? What if I can’t get vegetables? What if I can’t get Twinkies, Chocodiles, Little Debbies, and Moon Pies?

It’s disgraceful to get this worked up over a feeble disease. Older Americans lived through polio, and they didn’t snowflake out.

It’s a good lesson. Now I know how people will react if a real plague occurs. The world will be paralyzed.

I should just go ahead and buy a hundred pounds of rice. And some milk of magnesia, because rice has almost no fiber.

Can someone explain the toilet paper fixation to me? Why are people hoarding it? What possible connection is there between a flu-like illness and a global toilet paper shortage? Are toilet paper factory workers especially susceptible?

The global total for confirmed cases is 142,000. Bad, but totally insignificant compared to the flu. Remember, America has to come up with 300,000 cases per day, all by itself, in order to get flu numbers.

I just got another panic email from a bank I only work with online. So inappropriate. They are working tirelessly to make sure I don’t get sick from looking at their website.

Maybe steaks will get cheap because people are buying things like crackers and rice. There has to be a silver lining in here somewhere.

I don’t have that much toilet paper, potential zombies. Don’t get yourselves shot coming here to take what I don’t have. You are welcome to clean your backsides using the garden hose in the pasture. Please face the road when you do it. Think of the kids.

About Those Blueberries Your Friends Ate…

A friend of mine can see blog posts but not SMS photos, so I am uploading this in order to get around the barrier.

I’m going to call him Sammy.

Screwball Squirrel fans will get it.

My Hypothetical Branch Office

Now that I’m shooting more, it’s time to confront a project I have been putting off: the shooting shack.

I shoot in a cow pasture. The shells go all over the place, and then I have to go find them. You can guess what they are likely to land in. I don’t want my brass disappearing, and I’m not crazy about handling it after it lands in poo. Another problem: there isn’t much shade out there. On bright days, the sun can be very uncomfortable, and it also makes it hard to see what I’m doing.

I came up with a plan a long time ago: build a three-sided shack with a metal roof and plywood floor. I could fix it so the floor was slightly raised, allowing me to move the shack around quickly using the forks on my tractor. My shells would always land right next to me, or on the person I was shooting with, and I could sit in the shade. I could make the shack 6 feet deep and 7 feet wide, to allow plenty of room for two people.

The project is intimidating for various reasons. I know a fair amount about building things with tools, but this knowledge doesn’t really extend to carpentry. I could weld a shack together pretty quickly, but making one from wood would be more challenging. The materials would be bulky and heavy, too, and I’m not anxious to handle them alone.

If I were to weld a steel frame together, I could save a lot of time. It would be hard attaching wood to it, however. I don’t think I could keep it from rusting. Even if I painted the steel, water would find a way to rest on it and create rust. This is my guess.

I had an epiphany that made the job less off-putting. I realized I did not need to have wooden sides on the shack. Screen or hardware cloth would be better because they would let the breeze through and they would weigh less. They would also be easy to install. I have to have plywood on the back to block the sun, however. On my property, I always shoot along an east-west axis, so the sun can’t really hit me from the side. I just have to protect my back.

Adding up all the materials, it looks like it’s around $240 before paint and fasteners. Not too bad. I have some materials lying around, so I should be able to cut the cost a little bit by scavenging.

I still have some engineering problems. For example, what would I use for a table? If I use a folding Home Depot table, it will pretty much fill the length of the 6′ by 7′ interior of the shack, making it hard to get to the chair. They make 5′ tables, but that would still be a little tight. Maybe I could make a permanent bench with one section that swings up to let people pass, or I could build two podiums.

Why not put wheels on it so I can keep it forever? Wheels would put the floor maybe 15″ off the ground. This is too high. I don’t want to shoot down at everything. With a wooden-framed base, I figure I can get down a lot lower.

Why not build it on four-by-fours in cement slugs in the ground? Because I don’t want to be forced to shoot at the same distance all the time. I can’t move my berm, so I have to be able to move the shack.

It’s doable. I have to make my mind up to do it.

In other news, the pandemic seems to be stuck in the mud. The total number of detected cases has not been able to break 130,000 yet, meaning transmission is slowing down or testing is not working. I saw an article today from a major newspaper, asking why people were so worried when the virus wasn’t all that scary. I’m not the only one who sees that the plague has no clothes.

Two American celebrities have COVID-19 now: Tom Hanks and his wife. They’re in Australia, quarantined. They’re both over 60, and Hanks says they’re not very sick. No shock there. It’s typically a mild disease. No one seems to understand that.

I should not be surprised to see people ignoring logic and falling apart under the influence of rumors that aren’t very credible. This is how humanity works. Logic is way down on the list of things that motivate us. On top of that, it’s a safe bet that spirits are behind the panic. Most people are not connected to the Holy Spirit, and he is the Spirit of truth. If you’re not full of the Holy Spirit (and maybe even if you are), you’re full of other spirits, and they run your life. You may think you’re steering your own ship. It’s a delusion.

It’s distressing to see how we’re allowing a mild disease to push us into very bad economic decisions. People are calling off events. Trump has banned travel from most of Europe. The Chinese have closed factories. It’s overkill, and the financial cost will be tremendous in view of the disease’s inability to cause a true plague.

Why are politicians and others doing these things? I’ve already mentioned the supernatural cause, but there are more-obvious reasons. Anyone who fails to panic and overreact will be held accountable by a public ruled by ignorance. People are covering their rear ends, at great expense.

Democracy is a bad thing. I have to say it. The public has extremely poor judgment. As Plato said, a wise king is much better. Here in America, we don’t see ourselves as leftists, but we are. The American Revolution was a leftist uprising, believe it or not. The term “leftist” comes from the French Revolution. Democracy is a leftist concept. No wonder it’s so dangerous.

A strong king could respond to the COVID-19 epidemic with common sense, but our politicians are at the mercy of people whose ignorance is astounding, so they have to do unwise things in order to stay in power.

Airlines aren’t bringing enough sick people to America to make a big difference in the numbers, and closing businesses is not going to be all that helpful, because people will still spread disease while they’re off work. The best way to fight the disease, apart from supernatural means, is to wash your hands a lot and refrain from dirty practices like kissing everyone you greet. Dirty people will always be dirty, however, so most people will not change their behavior.

One of the nice things about leaving Miami is that I don’t have people I barely know kissing me all the time. Latin women feel like they have to kiss every person they meet, and it’s disturbing to a person who is used to cleaner, safer customs. I submitted to it while I lived there, because objecting offended people, but I’m glad it’s behind me.

Kissing may be a sign of affection, but that doesn’t take the microbes out of the spit. You really shouldn’t kiss people indiscriminately, and people shouldn’t hold onto backward customs.

If I were king, I’d say, “Stop being filthy. Quit kissing strangers. Avoid getting close to old people. Go to work and stop hoarding.”

I’m going to keep thinking about my shack design. I’ve waited way too long to get started.

Still no Plague

I feel obligated to post an update on COVID-19 and my continued opinion that it won’t amount to much.

The current number of known cases is still under 130,000, worldwide. No one with any degree of honesty could look at this figure and claim COVID-19 is in any way comparable to a real plague. It’s just not spreading fast enough to compare to things like smallpox, typhus, and the black death. The flu infects over 10% of Americans in a typical season, and COVID-19 will need a miracle to get anywhere close to that number. In addition to spreading very slowly, COVID-19 has a low death rate compared to real plagues.

I was under the impression that the death rate for those infected was going to be considerably lower than 3%, based on what I had read. Perhaps under 1%. Now they’re telling us 1% is the expected figure. Higher figures are coming in from some places, but it seems likely that these are skewed by terrible health care (China, Iran) and/or differing levels of disease detection. The 1% figure comes from the CDC, so evidently, they have seen through raw numbers such as the 7% we see in Italy. Apparently, Italians are failing to detect a high percentage of typical cases, which are mild, so the 7% that died are 7% of a group of atypical patients.

A 1% fatality rate is bad, but the overall infection rate is extremely low compared to the flu, and almost all of the dead will be older people who are already unhealthy, so it’s not like your neighborhood will be emptied of vigorous 40-year-olds and kids.

I’ll bet the rate drops below 1% as the disease spreads. We will get better at responding, and I’ve read that viruses usually become less lethal as epidemics progresses, so my money is on a lower rate.

Here’s what will happen. If you’re in America, you’re not going to get the disease unless you’re very unlucky. If you do get it, it will probably be so mild you won’t need a doctor. Unless you’re old and sick already, and then it could be bad, but in your case, a cold could easily be fatal. Not to rattle you. You’re probably more likely to die from a cold in 2020. And you’re not going to wear a mask to prevent that.

The youngest Italian who died was 60. That’s out of over 800 people. If you’re significantly younger than that, you should feel confident. If you’re 60, you should still feel pretty good. If you have kids, you should feel great, because this disease is barely touching them.

I still don’t get the panic. When my dad was alive, I knew he could die if he got the flu, and I knew flu shots weren’t 100% effective. I got him a shot every year, and we didn’t worry. We didn’t put on masks or hide in a plastic room. We didn’t buy a year’s worth of survival crackers and distilled water.

WHO is calling COVID-19 a pandemic. Does that mean I’m wrong? No, because a pandemic isn’t necessarily a plague, in the true sense of the word. Plagues cause a huge percentage of people to become infected, and a big percentage of those infected die. A pandemic is just a disease that spreads globally. It may or may not infect a high percentage of people, and it may not kill many.

I expect the panic to get worse, and I have a good reason: Trump is trying to calm people down. He’s downplaying the danger. If Trump says “black,” the press says “white,” so by trying to reassure us, Trump has spurred the press to fan the flames of cowardice. The best thing Trump could do to help us relax would be to have a screaming fit and run around the White House lawn in a surgical mask and a rubber suit. If Trump said COVID-19 was a deadly plague, the press would immediately start telling us he was hysterical over nothing, that it proved he was mentally unfit to serve, and that Nancy Pelosi should step in and take over. Rachel Maddow would run segments questioning the existence of COVID-19.

Look, look, look. If this was a plague, we would already know it. We can’t reserve judgment forever. The disease has had more than ample time to show us what it can do. It hasn’t lived up to the hype, and if it hasn’t happened by now, it never will.

Someone tried to scare me by saying crematoriums in Wuhan, China, were running around the clock. Okay, here is where being mathematically inclined and resistant to gossip comes in.

The Wuhan crematorium story emerged at a time when the China death toll stood at 490. You can talk about crematorium shifts all you want, but the number was 490, and the population is 11 million. Even if the story is true, which is extremely doubtful, it’s not like there are trains and trucks dumping bodies in the streets in front of crematoriums.

The death rate in New York City, which has around 8 million people, is about 420 per day. This is a statistic. It is a fact. It’s not a dodgy rumor I saw somewhere on the Internet. It’s the kind of thing you try to dig up when you hear a crazy story, instead of swallowing it headfirst.

Would it really be a problem if the rate went up to, say, 475 for a couple of months? No. It wouldn’t be a problem in China, either. The Wuhan story sounds pretty fishy.

It’s impossible to believe an area containing 11 million people can’t absorb 490 cremations over the course of several months. Did anyone ask how long the 24-hour burning lasted? Let’s pretend it actually happened and then look for an explanation. What if hospitals were holding bodies that died over several weeks, and the crematoriums were only overwhelmed briefly when the rule was made? Maybe hospitals dumped a large number of bodies over a couple of days, and then the stream leveled off. I would guess that any large city would be hard-pressed to deal with 490 bodies that arrived over a weekend. Even then, though, people wouldn’t have to work around the clock. Did they work around the clock for days after the mass shooting in Las Vegas?

The best reason for skepticism: the story came from The Epoch Times, which is a fringe-nut site known for conspiracy theories and propaganda. See if you can find a real news organization making the same claims. I think the story was a fable made up by a bored reporter. It makes no sense mathematically, it came from a source with no credibility, and it has not been corroborated by major news organizations.

I’m getting more confident by the hour. The facts keep rolling in to back me up.

Anyone who feels like giving me a condescending lecture should remember that a couple of months from now, the disease will have run its course. All the facts will be in, and you’ll have to own everything you said.

I may be wrong, but the chances of my being proven wrong, as Buck Turgidson would put it, are quickly being reduced to a very low order of probability.

If the plague does pan out, I sure hope we don’t have a mineshaft gap.

Magnum Research’s Synthetic Booger Lets me Down

I bought a Desert Eagle in .50 AE to support Israel. The gun was made by Israeli Military Industries. It was very expensive, and a .50 AE pistol has no legitimate use, but I thought it would be fun to shoot.

The other day, I took it out and shot a few rounds. I had some problems.

The gun failed to extract spent shells most of the time. When it did extract, the shells generally hit me in the face, leaving cuts and bruises. This is a known Desert Eagle issue. The manufacturer’s response is to tell people to hold the gun more firmly, which doesn’t actually work. At least not when your extractor spring is shot, which mine was.

I figured the problem out by Googling. Magnum Research does not put real springs in Desert Eagle extractors. They use little red plastic globs that look like tiny cherry Jujubes. The extractor mashes the glob, and the glob resists, behaving like a spring. This works great until oil or gun-cleaning solvent hits the glob. Then it starts to fall apart.

Yes, Magnum Research uses extractor springs that dissolve in products commonly applied to guns.

I learned that you can stick an AR15 spring (steel) in the Desert Eagle, so I ordered one. I also ordered two OEM Jujubes in case the AR15 spring failed. I knew my next Jujube would fail because that’s what they do, so I bought two in order to extend the time that would pass until I had to order more of them.

Today I got started on replacing the Jujube. I found some videos about Desert Eagles, and I tried to apply what I learned.

Ordinarily, you begin disassembling a Desert Eagle slide by removing the firing pin stop. You push a little button on the slide’s rear, and the stop slides out, releasing the pin so it can be removed. The video I watched showed one button. My manual showed one button. My gun had two buttons.

It turned out I had a California gun, even though I bought it new in Florida. Really embarrassing. It’s like thinking you’re a man and finding out you’re really a woman.

California forced Magnum Research to add a second button to the firing pin stop, for reasons no one seems to be able to figure out. You have to push both buttons a certain way, and it’s a pain.

Kahr (owner of Magnum Research) sells 49-state stops and pins for a total of about $50. I have these parts on the way. My gun is stainless, and the new stop is black. That doesn’t make me happy. It’s a simple part, however, so I should be able to fabricate one from stainless eventually.

When I got the bolt out of the gun and removed the extractor, I found the old Jujube sitting there, looking a little worn.

HA. Never happened. What I found was red grease, smeared on the extractor and the cavity where the spring should have been. The Jujube–the grease–had completely dissolved. If I hadn’t known what I was looking at, I would have thought the spring was missing and someone had lubricated the gun with red Mobil grease.

Here’s a photo of my Desert Eagle’s original extractor spring.

This is not good engineering. There is no way to justify making gun parts from materials that dissolve in oils and solvents. It’s like making a baking sheet that explodes in the presence of flour.

I stuck the DPMS spring in the bolt and put the gun back together. I have no faith at all in the Kahr “springs.”

I haven’t shot the gun yet. I’m hoping the tension on the extractor will help toss shells away from my forehead. That would be nice.

This is a fun firearm when it works, but I’m starting to think it’s fundamentally bad, like the Marlin Model 60 .22. There are bad products that bring people a lot of pleasure, so when I say the Desert Eagle is bad, I’m not saying I don’t want it. I’m just saying I know what it is.

The Desert Eagle is very heavy. The grip is huge. It shoots shells in people’s faces. It’s hard to break down and clean. It’s expensive. It serves no purpose. You can never really say, “I need a Desert Eagle.” All you can say is that you want one because it will be fun to shoot.

I know people love the Marlin Model 60, but it has the guts of a BB gun. Open one up and see. It can’t shoot hyper ammo. It’s hard to put a sling on it. The trigger is very bad. It’s a pretty gun, it feels good in the hand, and it’s accurate when it works. But a real rifle like the Savage A22 will outperform it in every way.

I’ll feel much better when the California parts on my Desert Eagle are at the landfill. I guess I should go out and shoot it. I’ll have to go find my face shield.

MORE

I got my face shield out, put 7 rounds in the Desert Eagle, and tried it out. As you can see from the photo, it’s working again. Only one of the casings hit the face shield as far as I know. I could be wrong. Your brain shuts down for an instant when you shoot this gun, so it’s impossible to know exactly what happens in that instant.

The gun shoots way high at this distance (7-8 yards). I can’t change that by adjusting the sights, because they’re fixed. I see that Kahr offers adjustable sights, but 1) they’re fiber optic, which is not good, and 2) they cost $234. Not a reasonable price for a $40 item. Williams sells sights for $65, full retail.

I adjusted the trigger while I was working on the gun, and it doesn’t help all that much. Still too hard to get it to go off.

I am not really in love with the Desert Eagle. I like it better as an idea and a pro-Israel statement than as a firearm. The trigger is still not good, it’s probably never going to completely stop firing casings backward, the sights need to be replaced, and because the blast and recoil are so strong, it’s only enjoyable to shoot for maybe 25 rounds. After that, you get tired of wrestling and having your wrists snapped. It’s not fun wearing a face shield, either. Maybe the .357 version works better. Of course, you can get an 8-shot .357 revolver for less, and it will be lighter and more like a serious firearm.

When someone says a revolver is lighter and more sensible in a certain caliber, while carrying nearly as much ammunition as a semiauto, it sounds impossible. But that’s what happens when you make a 4-pound pistol.

With the rounds I’m shooting, the Desert Eagle’s projectiles carry twice as much momentum as my 10mm carry handloads, and FBI agents’ complaints about the 10mm forced the agency to transition to .40 S&W, so obviously, the Desert Eagle is not user-friendly.

Whatever the gun’s virtues and flaws may be, at least it works now. I should send Magnum Research a bill for fixing their design.

The End of Cheap Target Practice?

I took my new Colt Woodsman pistol to the range today, which means I walked out of my house and fired it while the cows stared at me. It was a strange experience, and not just for the cows.

First strange thing…the gun has a 9-round magazine. That’s supposed to be an impossibility. The Colt Woodsman has always held 10 rounds. When I tried to load it for the first time, I thought maybe the magazine spring was stiff because it hadn’t been used much, but no, the magazine was full at 9 rounds. Bummer.

I looked at the magazine to see if it was some kind of Chinese fake. It looks like the real thing, and it has “Colt” stamped on it.

Oh, well.

I have a small variety of .22 shells. Some time ago, I bought a bucket of Remington Golden Bullets. They’re cheap. I figured they could not possibly be bad enough to affect my accuracy at 7 yards. I also have some CCI Mini-mag hollow points, and until today, I had 40-grain Mini-mag CPRN’s. The Woodsman is so nice, I don’t want to shoot Remingtons in it. They cover everything with black residue. I decided to stick with CCI.

When I tried to shoot Mini-mag HP’s, they did not eject. This was disturbing. I was picturing myself trying to find a new extractor for a 70-year-old gun. On top of this, the accuracy was not good. I was around 8 yards back, and I was getting about 2″ for 9 rounds, which is not good by my standards.

I stuck some CPRN’s in the gun, and lo and behold, they cycled perfectly. Problem: I kept missing the target entirely. Or so I thought. It turned out 7 rounds went through one hole. When I got close enough to look at the target, I saw that I had two flyers plus a hole big enough to stick your finger through. So…pretty accurate. Startlingly so.

In this photo, the surprising shots are in the top left bullseye. Those bullseyes are 4″ across, so the lines are 1/2″ apart.

I was disturbed. I’m out of practice, and I know I’m not able to shoot as well as I have in the past, but here I was, shooting .22’s into a single hole. I had to start thinking about things.

1. Am I a much better shot than I understood? If so, proceed to next question.

2. Have I been screwing up my shooting results by using cheap ammo? Maybe what I’ve been attributing to lack of skill and talent has actually been the result of using inexpensive ammunition.

3. Do I need to start buying or making better ammunition and working on my guns to make sure they’re functioning as well as they can?

Another question: what am I supposed to do with all my cheap ammo? I just ordered thousands of CCI Mini-mag CHOOT ‘EM HP’s. I can’t return them.

The Colt shot like a laser with the CCI CPRN’s, and the trigger felt the way the triggers in heaven feel. I was overwhelmed by the lightness of the pull and the total lack of creep. I’ve been dreaming of a trigger like this one. I was awed.

I was out of CPRN’s at this point because I only had a few on hand, so I drove around trying to find new ones. None of the local places had them. I found some lead CCI Select rounds that were pretty similar, and I bought a 100-round box. I also picked up some Aguila Super Extra, which is incredibly inexpensive yet gets very good reviews.

I got home, hosed the gun with Hornady One Shot, Boresnaked it, grabbed my Smith & Wesson Victory pistol for comparison, and went back to the pasture. The cows were happy to see me, as were their three new calves.

I shot some of the new CCI’s with the Colt, and again, I got fantastic results. I put up another 4-bullseye target. I shot the upper two bullseyes with the Colt, using CCI on one and Aguila on the other. I repeated the process on the lower bullseyes with the SW22.

I didn’t get the same fantastic results this time. Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was because the blazing sun was directly behind me, making the target harder to see. Both brands of ammo cycled perfectly, although I had a couple of FTF’s with the Aguila. I didn’t see a difference in accuracy.

Before I quit, I shot some Mini-mag HP’s at a metal target, and they cycled. I guess the cycling issue was caused by dried-up gunk in the Colt’s breech. Well and good. I was not going to have to pay a smith to fix it.

Until today, I loved my SW22, but now I’m souring on it a little. The trigger is utterly inferior to the Colt’s. Not in the same league; not in the same universe. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I shot the SW22 after the Woodsman. Now I feel like I have to get a new trigger.

I’m also unhappy with the SW22’s fiber optic sights. They’re hard to describe without photos, but you will see what they’re like if you Google. The black bits reflect a lot of sunlight, and the sight picture just seems loose. With the Cold, you know where you’re aiming. You may not know where your bullet will land, but you’ll know where it was supposed to land. With the SW22, the cone of uncertainty is somewhat larger. That’s okay for people who shoot 12″ groups, but I’m not one of those people.

Here’s my new take on the SW22. For what I paid–which was $319, if I recall–it’s a wonderful gun. If you want it to be a good gun compared to a more expensive .22 pistol, you’ll need to spend some money on it. You’ll want a $50 Tandemkross trigger (which I haven’t tried), Tandemkross Hive grips, and target sights.

Smith & Wesson now makes an SW22 with target sights. I emailed them to find out if I could put them on my gun. Hope so.

The Colt is unbelievable. It’s perfect. That’s all there is to it. All it needs are new magazines.

Now that I suspect I may be a better shot than I knew, I am going to have to start taking some measures. I’ll have to start using a grip exerciser, because if your hands aren’t in shape, they will shake a tiny bit after a few dozen shots. I’ll have to wear different shoes or work harder to get a stable stance, because wobbling around on work boot soles can open groups up; people argue with me about this, but I don’t think they know what they’re talking about, because they can’t shoot well enough to see the effect. I’ll need to compare types of ammunition and be willing to spend on whatever works. I’ll have to stop shooting when the sun is directly behind me. I’ll even have to clean my guns once in a while.

I’ll have to stop going 8 months without shooting.

If I do all or most of these things, and I don’t get consistent 1″ groups at 7-8 yards, I can quit and go back to junk ammo.

I’ve been thinking about getting a High-Standard pistol to replace the one that was stolen from my grandmother’s estate. I learned a lot about the High Standard line over the last few days. I’m pretty sure my grandfather had a Sport King, which is a cheap model. High Standard made top-notch target pistols that competed with Hammerli, so when you shoot a Sport King, you haven’t really had the High Standard experience.

I would like to get a Sport King or something very similar, simply because that’s what I shot with my grandfather on his farms, but I’m tempted to get something a little better. They’re not expensive. You can get a really nice High Standard target pistol for $800.

I’m considering getting a Field King, which is somewhat better than the Sport King, plus a Citation, which is a very accurate target gun. If I have a Citation, I should be able to shoot with complete confidence that nearly all of the variation in my groups is my fault. Once you take your gun’s failings out of the equation, you can see what you’re doing wrong, and you can work on it. If your gun shoots all over the place, you may try to correct technique problems you don’t actually have, making your shooting worse.

It’s good that I shot well. It’s good to know I may have more potential than I realized. It’s good to know my SW22 needs work. But now I have new work to do. Until today, I was content to let things go the way they were going. Now I may have to exert myself slightly.

Yesterday I saw some guys competing in an Olympic-style event. They used expensive semiauto pistols to fire at 4″ bullseyes about 80 feet away, and to win, they had to hit them most of the time. They were shooting with one hand, and they had to shoot 5 rounds in 4 seconds. That tells me the .22 can do some amazing things if you do your part and use the right equipment.

I don’t want to spend $20 for a box of .22 ammo, but maybe I can find something that will shoot into 1/4″ at 7 yards. That ought to be good enough. If I can put 20 rounds into 1/2″, I will probably be satisfied.

I’ll shoot again in better light and see what happens.

GunBroker Exceeds Admittedly Low Expectations

I’m out of control. Third blog post today.

I picked up my new old Colt Woodsman pistol, which I found on Gunbroker. If you know anything about buying guns, you know Gunbroker’s reputation is not that great. There are a lot of overpriced things there, listed by opportunists. Nonetheless, if you watch and wait, you can do very well. I bought a brand-new AR10 for something like $200 below typical retail, and I got a very nice price on the Woodsman.

People are listing fairly nice Woodsmans for between 900 and 1000 dollars. If you go check Cabela’s Gun Library, you won’t find anything really nice for less. I paid $750.

When I saw my gun at the pawn shop, I almost wondered if they had sent the wrong pistol. It was so nice, I had to look at the breech to see if it had been fired.

It’s not perfect. The handles aren’t in mint condition, and there are one or two tiny (I mean tiny) areas where the bluing has been nicked. There is a trace of holster wear on the end of the barrel. That’s about it. For the most part, it looks new.

I was looking forward to picking it up, but I didn’t expect it to be this exciting. It always bothered me that someone stole my grandfather’s Woodsman (and his High Standard .22 semiauto pistol) without giving me a fair chance at it. Now I have a much nicer gun, and I didn’t get cheated on price.

As Jesus said, life doesn’t consist on the amount of possessions you have. Physical items aren’t that important. Nonetheless, I feel as though God made a kind gesture in helping me find this pistol.

I’ll post a photo, but it won’t do the gun justice. It can’t capture the near-mint look of the thing, and it can’t make you understand how elegant the design is. I love my S&W Victory .22, but it seems to weigh twice what this one does. John Moses Browning, who also designed the 1911 pistol and a bunch of other renowned firearms, knew how to make a gun light and pleasant to hold.

The pistol is so nice, I am reluctant to shoot it. I don’t want to get powder residue on it! But that’s silly. Firearms were made to be used.

I had thoughts about getting a holster. Not so sure now. A holster will rub against the bluing on the muzzle!

New Baby on the Way

I guess it’s silly to put up a blog post right after putting up a blog post, but my giddiness can’t be restrained. The USPS says my Colt Woodsman pistol has arrived at a local pawn shop.

Why send it to a pawn shop?

I used Gunbroker to find the gun, and Gunbroker connects buyers with dealers who have federal firearms licenses (“FFL’s”). The dealer I chose runs a pawn shop which is also a gun shop.

When you buy a gun, you have to do a federal background check, and you need a licensee for that.

I’m going to take my reading glasses this time. There is a long form to fill out, and a year or two ago, I checked the wrong box. I checked a box for something like, “I am buying this weapon so I can shoot up Congress.” There were two YES and NO boxes, and I checked the wrong one. Fortunately, a clerk corrected the error before the nerve gas drones and the guy wearing a single rubber glove arrived.

I’m not sure why the feds would write a form that allowed people to affirm that they were felons. What kind of idiot would do that?

Okay. I did it. But who would do it intentionally?

Now I remember what the form said. It said I was buying the gun for someone else, which is a felony. Slim chance of that happening. I want all the guns for myself.

If you use Gunbroker, and you choose one of their licensees, you need to put the seller and licensee together the day you buy the gun. Gunbroker is supposed to do it, but they screw up. Don’t wait like I did.

I think I’ve solved my .22 ammo problem for the short term, not that I really had a problem. A few years back, Obama’s amazing gun-selling skills resulted in a .22 drought that was unprecedented in scale. It seemed to be impossible to get .22 LR anywhere. I was scarred by the experience, so I always feel like I have a shortage.

Anyway, I found bulk CCI 36-grain Mini-mags on sale. The price wasn’t phenomenal, but I doubt I’ll see a better one.

CCI makes great stuff, even though their factory looks like it was set up in someone’s mom’s garage.

The ammo is signature ammo. It has a picture of reality star Troy something or other on the box. He’s a Cajun, and he has a side job shooting alligators. His show is called Swamp People. He zips around the swamps in a little boat, gathering gators that have bitten down on chicken legs on big shark hooks. The gators don’t like being pulled into the boat, so Troy and his pals shoot them in the head.

Troy yells, “Choot ‘im,” when it’s time to kill a gator. CCI has put “CHOOT ‘EM,” which isn’t really correct, on the boxes in big letters. So now I have a few thousand CHOOT ‘EMs on the way. Should keep me going for quite a while, and they’re not as dirty as the cheap Remington rounds I now shoot.

I’m hoping the CHOOT ‘EMs are more accurate than Remington Golden Bullets. If so, I can use up the Remingtons on close work where accuracy doesn’t matter, or I can make them my guest ammo.

I watched a little bit of the show last night. It’s a fun show, but how many times can you watch people go up to the bank of a swamp and shoot a gator in the head?

I felt bad for the gators. Fish are stupid and incrediby insensitive, so they don’t suffer a lot when they’re hooked or gaffed, but it’s disturbing to see a reptile with a big hook in its mouth or its side. They’re pretty tasty, though, and they make fantastic wallets.

Golden Bullets are perfectly okay, but the propellant is dirty, and they seem to misfire a lot. Maybe a couple of rounds out of a hundred. That’s just a guess.

MidwayUSA is selling CHOOT ‘EMs for 20% off, which is not bad.

The pawn shop called, and the gun has arrived, so color me happy. Next, I need a nickel-plated 1903 hammerless pistol in .32 ACP or .380, and then I need to put pearl grips on it, simply because George Patton didn’t like them.

I also have a bunch of pistol primers on the way. I remember how hard it was to get them when Obama was in office. What a horrible, incompetent president.

Can’t wait to see the Woodsman. Someone stole the one my grandfather and I used to shoot together, so this gun means closure.

All right, Mr. DeMille. I’m ready for my background check.

Coronavirus Pandemic Fizzling Nicely

Time for more annoying optimism RE the coronavirus outbreak.

Things continue to look bad for the nervous Nellies and tribulation fans. Right now, the number of detected cases, worldwide, is 111,362. This means we are detecting somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 cases per day, which appears to be a big drop from last week.

This is not how real plagues work. A real plague’s case total goes up exponentially until saturation is reached. UP. Not sort of sideways.

Will the picture change? What if a whole bunch of people have been exposed, and they’re going to develop symptoms and be reported in a nearly simultaneous statistical glob?

Doubtful. The average incubation period lasts 5 days. Assuming a reasonable distribution, that means around half of the cases pop up in 5 days or less. The virus has been in the US for a while now. We should have seen something by now. The US total is 565, which is probably lower than the number of Americans who found out they had tuberculosis last month.

Besides, how would a bunch of people get exposed all at once?

Maybe a bunch of Harbor Freight employees could cooperate to open a particularly nasty freight container.

I’m sticking to my prediction. The plague never happened, and it will not happen, barring a terrible mutation. Just guessing, but I’ve been right so far.

Does this mean COVID-19 won’t kill a bunch of people? No. Every year, trampolines kill a certain number of people. So do roller skates. So do coconuts, staplers, vacuum cleaners, and Beanie Babies. The world is a big place, and a lot of nutty things happen here, because that’s how probability works. Even a fairly tame epidemic like this one will take a toll when it has 7 billion people to work with. COVID-19 doesn’t have to be a plague to kill a few thousand elderly people. A real plague would infect millions or healthy people and kill a significant fraction of them.

I just read that the common cold kills 4500 people in the US every year. I’ll bet it’s true.

Now that I’m confident there will be no plague, I’m still annoyed, because there is no guarantee I won’t get sick. There are several cases in Florida, and I do not want to join them. I already had pink eye this year. That will suffice.

I don’t want to go on the cart. I feel happy.

Given the choice between the flu and COVID-19, I’d say COVID-19, all the way. The symptoms are typically much less unpleasant.

I read something interesting the other day, and it must be true, because it was on the Internet. I read that viruses tend to become less severe as they spread. I wonder if that explains what happened in Wuhan province, where COVID-19 was much worse than it is everywhere else. Maybe the disease changed, or maybe the dirty habits and poor response of the Chinese explain everything.

It’s not fashionable to say people in this country or that one are dirty, but–you know this–it’s frequently true. People in Arab countries are really dirty. The Germans are cleaner than the French. Hispanics tend to be less clean than other Americans. Black people seem to be cleaner than other Americans, as do Southerners. New Yorkers are really gross. A New Yorker will drop an ice cream cone on the sidewalk, pick it up, and eat it.

The Chinese are dirty. No two ways about it.

A friend of mine crossed China in 1983. He told of a horrifying experience there. He was on a riverboat, and meals were included with his ticket. He said there was a table, and at mealtimes, a big bowl would be placed on it. The passengers would then start grabbing food from the bowl, using chopsticks. One bowl. He said the toilet in his car on the Trans-Siberian railroad was a small hole in the floor of the restroom, and it was surrounded by rounds that had missed the target. Poo flyers. He also related a terrifying tale of a man who was employed by the state to clean people’s rear ends, with a giant swab, at a public toilet.

I hope things have improved, but current hygiene standards in China are still highly disturbing.

When I think about travel, I don’t worry about things like terrorism. I worry about encountering fecal material in every item of food and drink, and on every surface, I deal with. On the other hand, this is what happens whenever I visit someone who owns a cat.

I lived in Israel for 4 months, I visited Jerusalem maybe 3 times, and I got dysentery from Arab food twice. The Jewish food was awful; like prison food. But it was clean.

Jews can only make two things well: desserts and sandwiches. Steer clear of the other stuff. Even if it means dysentery.

I haven’t had a Nova bagel in ages. Man.

I wonder what will happen with COVID-19 in Thailand, where nose-picking in public is acceptable. They need to cut that out.

If my sunny coronavirus predictions are giving you heartburn, you should probably go away until the hubbub is over, because I don’t see myself not writing about it while the story is still in the news.

Don’t despair if you spent a lot of money on useless surgical masks. They should work pretty well for protecting you from dust in your workshop. Also, Purell is flammable, so if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to use napalm, now you may get your chance.

As for me, I am not yet ready to go about in public in a face-burqa.

Burn the Optimism Boy! Pitchforks! Torches! PURELL!!!!

Because I live a hermit-like existence, I am out of touch with many common trends, and usually, that’s a blessing. Lately, I have been out of the hysteria loop with regard to the coronavirus epidemic. I have read a few stories about it, but I have only discussed it with one person.

I think the panic is worse than I realized. Last week, I noticed that my local Home Depot had packed its aisles with displays of bleach and santizing wipes. It wasn’t until the second time I saw this that I put two and two together.

Yesterday, I had a blast cutting up a huge oak that had fallen over, and at the end of the day, I went to buy a rib eye to celebrate. I saw a lady at the store walking around with a surgical mask.

Okay, that’s too much. They say a lie travels around the world while the truth is still getting out of bed, and now I’ve seen proof.

Health officals say a mask won’t protect you from a virus floating in the air. They’re made to keep tiny, germ-laden water droplets from falling into surgical patients. They don’t trap individual microbes. Look it up. It should be obvious that the holes in masks are enormous compared to airborne viruses.

I suppose a mask could prevent you from touching your mouth and nose while you’re out and about. That should be worth something.

Surgical equipment isn’t magical. Operating rooms aren’t really sterile, as in “100% free of microbes.” I have not looked this up, but I have common sense (a little). You can’t destroy every loose microbe in a room full of people. Even if you manage to sterilize the room and equipment, as soon as one person walks in, the room is no longer sterile. I used to brew my own beer, and brewers used better terminology. They say beer equipment is sanitized but not sterile. Sanitizing isn’t the destruction of every microbe; it’s a gross reduction in their numbers so they can’t breed fast enough to be a problem.

I’ll bet doctors have a standard for the application of the term “sterile,” defined in microbes per unit of volume or area or something. I’m sure they don’t seriously believe operating rooms are truly sterile, in the lay sense of the word.

Youtubers say Amazon is out of surgical masks. Is that true? I can understand wearing one if you’re sick, to reduce (but not eliminate) the microbes you give off in public, but if doctors are right, there is no point in wearing one to ward off COVID-19 or any similar illness.

I have seen complaints that medical people are having trouble getting masks, which they actually need.

Maybe I’m wrong about the lady at the grocery. Maybe she has an immune disorder, or maybe drugs are suppressing her immune system, or maybe she has the flu and wants to protect everyone else. Or she could be painfully shy. In the current social climate, however, my money is on hysteria.

She looked pretty sturdy.

I have written about the strange phenomenon of attacking helpful people like me, who refute rumors and choose optimism. Since then, I have experienced it. I really annoyed one person when I predicted that COVID-19 wasn’t going to amount to much. No point in going into it here, but I received an emotional response painted up to look like the result of rational analysis. It was full of errors. If I interacted with more people, I would be getting more of this.

How is my prediction panning out? Better than I expected. The epidemic was cranking out 5,000 cases per day until yesterday. Now it’s more like 3,000. As I noted the other day, China, all by itself, would have to generate 1.5 million cases per day in order to come up with an epidemic resembling a typical American flu season. The ratio of 1.5 million to 3,000 is pretty big. If I owed you 1.5 million dollars, and I gave you 3,000, you would be very upset.

Of course, the ~3,000 cases we accumulated over the last day include all new cases, worldwide. If you limit it to China, the number is smaller, making COVID-19 look even less threatening.

The graphs depicting the number of cases over time are still flattening out, and that’s not compatible with a major pandemic. The growth should be exponential, not arithmetic, and right now, we barely have arithmetic growth. The transmission rate is so low, the number of cases could be said to be nearly stable.

What about the disease itself? What if you get it? They are now telling us it’s usually a cough plus a mild fever and shortness of breath. Only 13% of victims even get a sore throat. That’s a lot better than the flu! Man, I hate the flu. Sore throat, high fever, dizziness, weakness, bone pain, stuffy nose, mucus…one year, it made pus come out of my eyes.

Why are people dying, if the disease is so mild? First, they’re not dying. Much. Second, Chinese health care. Third, there are a lot of people who are so weak they can be killed by a strong breeze or being Rick-rolled, and they’re the ones who die from COVID-19. If you die from COVID-19, you were probably not long for this world anyway. You’re the type of person who dies from the flu or getting overly excited while watching Antiques Roadshow.

There are many, many people who have had COVID-19 without even realizing it, and many get no symptoms at all. Is that how it worked with actual pestilences like the black plague or the Spanish flu? No.

I guess the best reason to fight transmission is the lack of a vaccine. Old people and AIDS patients can’t protect themselves with vaccinations, so it’s up to everyone else to try to keep the disease away from them. Truthfully, however, given the mathematics of the situation, it makes more sense to put barriers around the weak than around the rest of us. It would be easier and cheaper. It’s easier to finance a bubble boy than a bubble world.

In view of the disease’s failure to spread and kill the way it was expected to, I am quadrupling down on my irritating predictions of pandemic fail. Quadrupling! People who love misery are now in danger of COVID-19 symptoms plus, if they read my blog, having steam come out of their ears.

I may be wrong. I’m just a guy who blogs for fun, and I have zero training in epidemiology. But I feel pretty confident. In order for the pandemic to materialize, the transmission graphs would have to shoot up abruptly for no good reason.

If COVID-19 has a path to blowing up the graphs, it must surely lie in Africa, the poorest and most primitive continent. There are 1.3 billion people there, and their medical system is atrocious. However, as AIDS has shown us, a disease that causes a plague in Africa isn’t necessarily catastrophic in other countries.

The AIDS story is very interesting. People tried to tell us it was a big threat to heterosexuals, thinking this would motivate politicians to spend more money on it. Then it turned out it was impossible for heterosexual men to get it from sex, and then the medical authorities hushed this up. Then it turned out to be a plague in Africa, and that exposed the enormous homosexuality rate there. Men who claimed to be straight were not, and many who held themselves out as heterosexual got the disease from voodoo initiations in which they were sodomized by witch doctors.

I guess I shouldn’t make light of vile, humiliating rituals that give men a lethal illness which spreads to women, but it makes me feel a lot better about the things Christians have to put up with from pastors. Although there is the pedo-plague the Christian clergy can’t seem to shake.

Anyway, AIDS activists tried to tell us straights were going to get AIDS here, and they used Africa to prove their point, claiming straight male Africans were getting it. Not so.

You should really try not to be mad at helpful people who debunk the coronavirus hype. Instead, ask yourself why part of you is hoping for a catastrophe. That’s what’s going on inside you. It’s not healthy to feel that way.

As for me, my beautiful new welding mask has arrived, as have some gun things I needed. I am planning to fabricate, work on my plan to turn my dining room into a gun room, and install a new extractor spring on my Desert Eagle. If I feel like going to the store, I’ll go to the store. I won’t even wear a space suit.

Biggest Effect here: Empty Shelves at Harbor Freight

I decided to check the coronavirus situation before going out to cut trees. As you know if you read this blog regularly, I have expressed what could be called extreme skepticism regarding the impending extinction-level pandemic, as well as my amazement at the seeming ineptitude of the officials and medical people predicting a plague. Today, I see nothing that could change my mind.

To have an epidemic that compares numerically to a typical American flu season, China needs 1.5 million new COVID-19 cases PER DAY. When I checked yesterday, the global total–not just China–was increasing at a rate of about 5,000 per day. Today, there are about 5,000 more cases than yesterday. Nothing has changed.

I am still wondering how the medical establishment can be so wrong. Is it really possible for a guy who blogs from his couch, using fourth-grade math, to be right when doctors all over the world are wrong to the point of absurdity?

Sure looks like it. Maybe I will have to eat my words later, topped with Robitussin, but so far, my prediction looks solid, and theirs look insane.

Maybe I should not doubt myself. I’ve been right when I said the TV heads who predicted severe hurricane destruction at my locations were totally wrong. I was right when I told people home prices could not increase by 20% every year, forever. On the other hand, I was wrong when I said Obama’s economy would tank. I still can’t figure that out.

I was also wrong about Ebola, which looked pretty bad when it was starting to break out of Africa. Apparently, the African response, not the disease, was responsible for most of the transmission and lethality. I should have known. In Africa, people go blind needlessly because they don’t wash their hands and faces, so it’s not surprising that ebola patients would die in large numbers.

Every time I post things like this, I think about the bizarre mindset many people have toward misfortune. I can understand people who disagree when I say dire predictions are wrong. What I don’t understand is why so many people get angry with me. There is something seriously, deeply wrong with you if optimism makes you angry and worry makes you feel righteous.

Women are much more prone to this syndrome than men. My mother had three sisters, and they and their mother all savored talk of misfortune and suffering. They were not unusual at all. I think this is one reason why men are so much happier and less given to mental illness than women. It makes me wonder if the feminization of men is going to make men less happy. I dread the thought of large numbers of old queens sitting around, speaking almost longingly about things like cancer and infidelity.

It’s not fashionable to say women are more likely to be mentally ill than men, but it’s a fact borne out by statistics. I suppose it has something to do with the modern male’s failure to get God’s protection for his wife and daughters.

Worry and unbelief are sin. People forget that, and somehow, like pride, worry has been turned into a virtue.

Worry is a type of faith. It’s faith in Satan. Faith brings results. Something to think about.

FYI, T.B. Joshua, the African preacher I’ve been watching lately, says God has washed the epidemic away. He says God showed him this. If it ramps back up and billions die, we will know we shouldn’t pay any attention to Joshua!

I’m tripling down on my rosy forecast. I’ll keep following up on it, unless I turn out to be wrong, in which case I’ll delete all these posts and claim I expected a pandemic all along.

In other news, my new welding helmet and some gun stuff should be arriving today, so I should be able to repair my Desert Eagle and finish off my dry saw stand. I decided to turn my dining room into a mini-workshop/gun room, so I’m selling my mother’s gigantic china credenza to make room. A heterosexual male with no wife has no earthly use for a china cabinet.

Do I feel bad about selling an heirloom? A little, but this thing is 7 feet long and probably weighs 200 pounds, and I keep my mom’s china, which I will never use, in boxes in a storage room. Also, if I move to Tennessee, I will have to go through the misery of dealing with a giant piece of furniture I don’t like.

The other day I was talking with my friend Mike about all the things I’m putting on wheels in my workshop. He confirmed something I suspected. He said God was making it easier for me to move things to Tennessee.

The credenza is not a great heirloom. My mother knew an old lady in Miami who sold estate goods, and she bought the credenza from her. To me, the credenza shouts, “MIAMI! MIAMI! MIAMI!,” which is as comforting as, “FECES! VOMIT! INFECTED PAPER CUTS!”, and it also shouts, “YOUR DAD NEVER BOUGHT NICE FURNITURE FOR YOUR MOM! SHE NEVER GOT WHAT SHE WANTED IN LIFE!” She paid for the used credenza herself, but my dad bought expensive Scandinavian furniture for the girlfriend he lived with while he and my mother were divorced.

I have never used the dining room for anything but storage. My kitchen is so big I can have two dining tables in it, so the formal dining room is superfluous.

A consignment shop will pick the credenza up in a couple of weeks, unless I can sell it myself before they show up. Can’t wait to see it go.

I’ve learned something about selling junk. If you want a good price, you will probably have to hold onto it for a year. If you want it gone in a reasonable amount of time, you can expect to get about half of what it’s worth. I am okay with that. I have accepted it.

I think I’ll shove the credenza out of the way and move my indoor tool benches downstairs. I already raised the dining room chandelier so it won’t hit people in the head.

A single man is like a superhero. We can do stuff other men simply can’t do.

Time to saw some trees. I hope ethanol doesn’t thwart me.

Sticking to my Heuristic Guns

The other day, I predicted the coronavirus epidemic would fizzle. Time has passed, figures have changed, and now I have a chance to backpedal and save face. Here is my new prediction: the coronavirus epidemic will fizzle. In fact, I would say it HAS fizzled.

Let’s talk about a typical flu season in America. We can use 36,000,000 as a good typical number of cases, because it’s true. Let’s say the season lasts 4 months or 120 days, which is more or less true.

How many new cases do you need every day in order to maintain an epidemic? Here’s the answer: 300,000.

Per day.

In one country.

Which comprises about 1/20 of the world’s population.

COVID-19 is something like 90 days old, and it started in China, which has about 5 times America’s population. To have a typical American-style flu season–not exceptional or catastrophic–China would need 1.5 million new cases per day.

Per DAY.

As of this moment, the WORLDWIDE total for COVID-19 is about 95,000. Mind you, this is after the Chinese did everything they could to make it spread.

Am I missing something here? Did I drop a decimal point?

So, unless I made a howling error I can’t spot, COVID-19 is not doing well at all. China developed around 90,000 cases in 90 days, or…let’s do the math…1,000 per day. In America, this would correspond to 200 per day. So 24,000 per season. So imagine you went to one college basketball game, and everyone there got the flu. That’s what you’re panicking about.

I don’t get it. I’m actually using the Windows Calculator app to confirm obvious things like, “36,000,000 divided by 120 equals 300,000.” I can’t understand why people are panicking. How can the medical establishment be so wrong? How can I be right when they’re wrong? Is it really possible? Surely I’m overlooking something.

A commenter suggested the disease was underreported here. If it’s underreported, it sort of proves my point. If hundreds of thousands of Americans were down with a new bug with a high death rate, it would be impossible for it to be underreported. Doctors aren’t total idiots. They would figure it out, especially with “VIRUS” in the headlines every day.

You can say the cases weren’t reported because the symptoms were too mild. Again, I win. If the symptoms are too mild to drive people to doctors and spark record-keeping and investigation, then COVID-19 isn’t a major problem.

Today I saw a graph showing how the disease is doing. It flattens out toward the right. That means the rate of new infections isn’t going up. That’s not how an epidemic works. In an epidemic, you would expect a graph that keeps going upward until saturation is reached.

If you love worrying, and you get mad at people who discourage it, you have a common character flaw, and it will not surprise me if you get mad at me. That being said, I have to say something that will make you even madder. The epicenter of the epidemic is Wuhan, China, and Wuhan’s population is…take deep breaths…11 million. So even if every case in the world were in Wuhan, less than 1% of the residents would be affected.

You’re going to get REALLY mad when you read this next statistic. Guess what percentage of the world’s population caught the Spanish flu. Come on. Guess.

The number is…27.

Guess what percentage of the world’s population it killed. Unless you got so mad you left this page.

Here you go: 5%. Give or take.

That’s not the percentage of infected people who died. That’s the percentage of all humans on earth who died. The death rate for infected people would have been something like 20%. Again, for people who think looking up exact numbers is somehow indicative of a scientific mindset…it’s not. If the actual figure is 15% or 25%, I’m still really, really right. The Spanish flu was a bona fide plague, and so far, COVID-19 wouldn’t make a wart on its butt.

Things are looking worse and worse for people who find optimism hateful.

You can make really bad arguments like, “The actual number of flu cases in the US last year was 23,405,203, so YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID.” That won’t work. We’re not dealing with figures that have to be precise. If we’re within a factor of 10, I’m still way right. When the number you need to hit is 1.5 million or anything like 1.5 million, and the actual number, which is known, is 1000, you can’t fix it with corrections of 30% or 50%. You have failed by a factor of 1500. You can’t recover from that.

Look; imagine you went to the store to buy a jug of cheap wine, and the cashier asked you for $15, and you offered her one cent because it’s practically the same.

See what I mean?

What if it turned out you had a customer loyalty card, and the price was actually $5.00?

Nope. No wine for you.

When you couple this with the fact that COVID-19’s death rate is comparable with that of the flu, except for places where doctors are incompetent or restrained by face-obsessed Asian politicians, the hysteria looks even worse.

“Oh, no! You might get the flu, which has a low death rate that mainly affects people who are old or sick! Or you might get a somewhat similar but much rarer disease with the same kind of death rate, and which only causes minor symptoms in most people!”

That’s not scary.

Here’s something else: the spread of COVID-19 is slowing down in China. The Chinese are very dirty. Sorry to say it, but it’s true. They blow their noses in the street. They let their kids defecate in public. Their food markets are horrifying. On top of this, the Chinese have a culture of selfishness, so they’re not likely to do their best to protect each other from infection. Finally, the Chinese government has done all it could to promote the spread of the disease. Still, the rate of new infections is dropping. If the infection has been a total flop in the very place where it has the most chance of succeeding, how is it supposed to turn into a global plague?

I’m trying to find out how I can be wrong about this, but I can’t see it. I’m not a doctor, and many doctors are worried, so you would think they knew something I don’t. Where is it? How is a failed Chinese epidemic supposed to turn into a deadly worldwide epidemic?

As of today, I say the epidemic is going nowhere, barring an unforeseen mutation. This is just my common-sense guess based on a total of maybe 45 minutes of web surfing, so take it for what it’s worth. If I’m completely wrong, it will be interesting to find out what I failed to take into account.

New Colt Headed for the Barn

The news here is pretty bright.

First, I found myself a good deal on a beautiful Colt Woodsman.

Leftists like to say people who like guns like them because they’re racist or because they have problems with their genitals. These are amazing claims, given that guns have no race and that a gun makes a pretty poor substitute for sexual organs. Gun control, on the other hand, has racist roots. In America, gun control got much of its impetus in the post-Civil-War south, where authorities tried to prevent blacks from owning guns. We also saw race-based gun laws in the 20th century; the famous “Saturday Night Special” laws were aimed at blacks, who were less likely to be able to afford good firearms. In Nazi Germany, Hitler used gun control to subdue the citizenry and prevent them from defending themselves against tyranny. One of his gun laws has been used as a pattern for American gun control laws.

Anyway, I like guns mainly because they remind me of the best parts of my miserable childhood. My family was dysfunctional. My dad drank. He was verbally and physically abusive. He used to hit my mother. My sister and I were always unhappy. My mother’s parents lived in Kentucky, and I spent a lot of time with them. They had a beautiful house with 4 bedrooms. My grandfather had lots of guns, and we used to shoot together. I had access to his guns, and I could use them when I wanted.

I was his favorite grandchild. Some of my relatives would explode if they read that, but it’s true. I was the third oldest. My older sister was popular when she was very young, but after that, her star waned due to her unpleasant personality and her cruelty. I had a male cousin who was born on the same day as my sister, and he was a perfectly nice kid, but somehow, he and Gramps didn’t connect. I had a male cousin who was a year younger, and he was a terror. He was the only grandchild my grandfather ever spanked.

There were four younger grandchildren, and my grandfather loved them, but I was different. I was the one he threw in the truck when he wanted to go putter around on his farms. He bought two ponies for his grandkids, and he told my mother it was worth it as long as he got to see me ride once. I wish I had known how he felt, because I didn’t particularly like horses.

For the most part, I shot two guns with him. One was a cheesy 9-shot .22 revolver with an aluminum frame, and the other was a 3rd generation Colt Woodsman. I shot very well, which is strange, considering my age at the time. Maybe this is one of the reasons he favored me.

When you shoot a lot, you want someone to shoot with. Helping kids (or adults) shoot can be fun, but it can also be a pain in the butt. If their attitudes are bad, if they’re frivolous, if they’re whiny, if they refuse to listen, if they seem to be incurably helpless, it’s a real drag. I was not helpless. You could put a gun in my hand and watch me hit stuff with it.

When he died, I made a list of his guns and handed it over to the family. He had a Marlin lever action, a Remington 12 gauge, a Sweet Sixteen, two Smith & Wesson .357 Magnums, a commemorative Colt 1911, a .22 rifle, two small Smith & Wesson pocket revolvers, an M1 carbine pistol, and some other things, including the Woodsman. The guns stayed in his house until my grandmother died years later. When it came time to ask the lawyers for the guns we wanted, the Woodsman was gone, along with a lot of other things. No one ever offered an explanation. Someone stole the guns.

Was it a relative? Was it the lawyers? Was it the lady who cleaned my grandparents’ house? No idea. In the end, I got the aluminum .22, my grandfather’s father’s flintlock shotgun, and I Sweet Sixteen, which already belonged to my dad. My grandmother gave it to him before she died, so it was never part of either estate. Nobody else wanted the aluminum revolver or the shotgun.

In practical terms, I got just about nothing. The revolver and the flintlock were junk, and my dad owned the Sweet Sixteen. I didn’t get it until he died, 16 years after my grandmother.

Whoever took the Woodsman forgot the owner’s manual, which I now have. It would be a nice thing for that person to have, but they will never get it, because in order to get it, they have to confess.

It’s kind of sad that I didn’t get some guns. I’m the best shot in the family, and while I have one cousin who hunts, I know a lot more about firearms. My grandfather would have wanted me to have at least one decent pistol or rifle.

Some person got a whole bunch of guns. Two big revolvers, two small ones, the carbine, the 12 gauge, the .22 rifle…lots of things. I know what happened to the 1911. It went to my cousin, because his dad bought it for my grandfather. That was the right outcome, although I didn’t get the big Frederick Remington sculpture my mother went out and got for my grandfather.

Two people have told me that my grandmother’s father had a gold watch, and that my grandmother said it was to go to me. They say my aunt gave it to my cousin. I don’t know if that’s true. Some day I’ll ask. I don’t expect to get the watch, but it would be informative to see what she says.

For a long time, I wanted another Woodsman. It would not be the same as having the one I used to shoot in Kentucky, but it would still be a nice reminder. Yesterday, I found a very good deal online. I found a gun in better shape than my grandfather’s, and I jumped on it. It should be here in a few days.

Online gun sites get a lot of criticism, because a lot of the sellers are profiteers. Nonetheless, if you search and wait, sometimes you’ll get surprising deals. It has happened to me. People were trying to get a thousand dollars or more for a good Woodsman, and I paid a lot less.

They say living well is the best revenge, and that is particularly true for God’s children. People rob us all the time, and we’re not able to scrap with them the way other people are, so we lose things. God compensates us, and when he does, he gives us more than we lost. I may never see my grandfather’s pistol again, but God has been very generous and merciful with me, so if I feel like it, I can buy a bunch of pistols and rifles. Maybe I’ll start collecting Woodsmans. I could buy some that are much nicer than the one that was stolen.

You know what they say: God bless the child who’s got his own. I don’t have my grandfather’s gun, but when I look at the one I got, I will still think of him, and I’ll know I didn’t have to extend myself to get it. No one else will ever have a claim on it or any of the other guns I got myself.

In celebration, I decided to get some steel gongs. These are handy for people who like to shoot quickly and are not interested in precision. I’m going to hang them in the pasture by the berm. I got two round gongs, a hog-shaped gong, and another gong shaped like a squirrel.

I don’t know how my grandfather would feel about gongs. He was an exceptional shot. My father saw him shoot a grouse out of a tree with a rifled slug at 50 yards, without shouldering the gun. He also said my grandfather was the best wing shot he ever saw.

I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with a grouse that has been rearranged by a 12 gauge slug.

I like gongs, though. Sometimes you just want to relax. Besides, they’re good for rapid-fire practice, which is important for self-defense.

Second thing…new welding helmet.

I started welding with a helmet from Harbor Freight, which a reader recommended. I have no major problems with these helmets. I paid $40, and I didn’t even have to buy a battery. The helmet was powered by the light from the welding arc. It worked fine.

As time passed, I found I wanted a helmet with a bigger viewing area, so I bought a Hobart Hood when they were on sale at Northern Tool. This helmet has batteries. It’s not a cheap helmet, and it works pretty well.

As I got older, I found I wanted to weld better, and I got frustrated with the difficulty of seeing the weld puddle using the Hobart helmet. I Googled around, and I learned that I was using second-tier equipment. Expensive helmets give a better view. In particular, I learned that Lincoln Electric’s 3350 series helmets with 4C technology were much, much better than what I was using. My Hobart turns everything green, and it’s hard to see what I’m doing. Lincoln helmets don’t distort color as much, they’re much clearer, and you can turn the shade down as low as 5.

Last week, I ordered a Lincoln. I look forward to it. I have some welding jobs I’m keeping on hold until it arrives.

It should be a big blessing. I’ve improved my ability to see my work using bright lights and vitamin A, but based on what I’ve seen on the web, the Lincoln should take me to another level. It also has an external button to shut off the shade so I can wear the helmet while grinding metal. With the Hobart, I have to remove the helmet and use a face shield.

Now I’ll have three helmets. I can lend the Hobart to guests. Maybe I can do the same thing with the Harbor Freight helmet, if I can get it to work. The batteries eventually give out, and you can’t replace them without cutting the helmet up.

I have to hit Lowe’s and get some stuff to hang gongs. I’m planning to use garden crooks. I have a scheme for hanging the gongs so they tilt forward and direct bullet fragments toward the ground. It should work. I may use 1″ by 1/8″ steel bar to make straps for hanging the gongs. It won’t move around like chain or rope.

Flat bar is phenomenally useful.

I’m considering getting a couple of small semiauto pistols, just for fun. I found a pretty good deal on a Colt Model 1903 in .32 ACP with a nickel finish. I’m thinking I should put pimptastic pearl grips on it. Neat little gun. The one I’m looking at was made in 1911. I’m also thinking about buying a stainless Colt Mustang Plus II in .380 and using my buffer to give it a mirror finish.

I’m not in love with the calibers, but they would be fun projects and shooters.

A long time ago, I wrote about my desire to fix up a stainless gun I had, and someone who knew absolutely nothing informed me that polishing guns was highly skilled labor performed by people with years of training. It didn’t occur to me to check out this patently ridiculous claim. Since then, I’ve learned that putting a mirror finish on a brushed or satin stainless gun is so easy, you can do it with paper towels while sitting on your couch. I have a magnificent Baldor buffer, so for me, it will be even easier.

I don’t know why people say crazy, seemingly authoritative things about subjects they know nothing about.

One of the big problems with seeking advice on the Internet is that you will generally hear from ignoramuses who will assure you that you can’t do what you plan to do. It has happened to me over and over. The fact that someone else lacks ability doesn’t mean you or I do. The fact that someone else fails at simple tasks doesn’t mean you will.

I had a professional restaurant manager tell me I couldn’t make French fries in beef fat. What if I had listened? He could not have been more wrong. McDonald’s used to use pure beef fat, back when their fries were actually good. I was told I couldn’t use a TV as a computer monitor. I did it anyway, starting in about 2007, and it has been fantastic. People said putting a pistol in a pocket holster was stupid. Wrong. It’s way better than a belt holster or one of those ridiculous things people jam in their pants. Someone told me it was impossible to shoot a 12 gauge shotgun well from the hip. Wrong. Never let someone discourage you without looking into the facts.

I remember deciding I wanted to put a green laser on an assault rifle with a folding stock. My plan was to shoot from the hip. This provides huge advantages at indoor distances. People said I was nuts. I did it anyway. It works great, and I didn’t have to get an SBR stamp.

Point-shooting gives you an enormous advantage over people who use sights. Former SEAL Team 6 leader Richard Marcinko agrees with me. He obtained tremendous amounts of ammunition for his men, and he had them train without sights. When you shoot with sights, you’re lucky if you can get three shots off in two seconds. Without sights, you can shoot 10 rounds during that time. Believe me; unless you’re hopeless, you’re going to hit something.

I remember going on a church shooting outing. I showed a young man how to shoot a Glock. I talked to him about the sight picture. He didn’t listen. He held the gun out in front of him like a TV cop and blasted away from 7 yards. His shots went into an area about 6″ in diameter. Break into that kid’s house, and you are going to DIE. No two ways about it. He was right, and I was wrong.

We tend to train by squeezing shots off slowly, while trying our best to maintain 1″ groups. Try that with a burglar in your house. Seriously. Good luck.

An untrained burglar will empty 18 rounds from his stolen sideways gun while you’re playing around with your sight picture. Even an idiot can hit you 1/18 of the time without aiming.

Maybe we need to give up ideas we came up with when pistols only held 5 rounds.

Why do people say “revolvers and pistols”? A revolver IS a pistol. Dictionaries don’t lie. Much.

I’m on a tangent.

I have to go buy a gunsmith’s bench block so I can fix my Desert Eagle. Maybe while I’m at the store, I’ll check out a Glock 20.

I will definitely put up photos when I shoot the Woodsman.