Friday's follies

So this morning, I'm on the way out to the range for (yet another) test-firing of a problem AR-15 that has been vexing me, and as I'm walking out of my coffee shop, I see a guy with his wife walking in and I notice that we're both wearing basically the same shirt. Mine is a red sweatshirt while his was gray, and both had the same nifty logo on them, this Uzi does it" logo, as shown here. I got mine as a gift from Aaron over at The Shekel, and I like to wear it out to the range.

Now had we been chicks, this would have been a pretty awkward fashion faux pas. But us being guys, we congratulated each other on our respective sweatshirts and started talking guns. His name of Paul, and while Paul doesn't have an Uzi, he likes them. Me having one, I did what any decent American gun guy would do--I gave him my number and invited him to call me when he's free and we'll go out and shoot mine. We're gun guys, and that's how we roll.

Eventually, his wife pried him away (some chicks get awfully jealous when guys talk guns and tune them out) and I resumed my trip to the range. I wasn't holding out too much hope for today since I'd already had this rifle out here four times, each time with different parts swapped out in unsuccessful attempts to get it to work right, but this time it fired flawlessly and put 120 rounds downrange without a single hiccup. The apparent culprit: a recoil spring installed in the buffer tube by Rock River Arms which was a trifle longer than any other CAR-style spring in my parts bin. I'd been having no end of troubles with the bolt hanging up on the magazine, and I'd been attributing it to insufficient gas flow back to the carrier but when I replaced the spring with one of the others, the rifle fired fine. Apparently the over-length spring had been retarding the carrier and preventing the action from cycling properly. Thanks, Rock River!This AR has been a project rifle of mine for a while. I'd purchased the lower receiver assembly a couple of years ago, and it had just been sitting in my safe unfinished until the election and the rise of Barack O'Gun Grabber. When that happened, I bought an upper receiver and mated it to a spare 14.5" heavy barrel with an AK-74-stle brake that I had lying around and mounted the Pentagon light to the fore-end. Eventually it'll have an Aimpoint ML2 holographic sight, but that's going to have to wait until I get a bit more money. Right now, it's fine with the ARMS back-up iron sight. And now that it's working, it can go back in the safe and I can concentrate on other projects, like the Model 1888 Mauser that I wrote about a few weeks back.

It's been cleaned up, and the new bolt arrived today. The BEFORE pictures show what I started with. Well in took many hours of cleaning with oil and steel wool to get the crud off of it, and considerable gentle finessing to get most of the screws and fittings loose--and I'm nowhere near done yet--but it's at least presentable and functional now. The new bolt has a bunch of Turkish crescent stamps all over it but it's otherwise fantastic.It slid right into place and the action seems to work. Next range trip, this one's coming out. But in the meantime, here are the latest pics.










As far as I can tell, the action functions and it'll chamber an 8mm cartridge. I guess we'll see if it still shoots the next time out. It's times like this that I wish I could find an illegal alien day laborer to take the first shot with it, just in case it does blow up. But absent any of them, maybe I can find a bench-rest shooter at the range and offer him the first shot. At least then if it blows up, we're only out a bench-rest shooter and that's not such a bad thing either.

What's that dog got, anyway?

I can't help but notice that everyone who comes here seems to stick up for Lagniappe no matter what he does, and express the attitude that he's never at fault for anything.

Well it would be nice if that were true, but I'm telling you all that it's not. Yeah, he can do a pretty good impersonation of a nice, mellow well-behaved dog sometimes--like he's doing here in front of the stove--but appearances can be deceiving and that's really not how he usually is.In fact, all you have to do is search this blog for other articles about him and you'll see that he's quite the hooligan.

I know that most readers recall how when I was stuck on the roof, he wouldn't help, but there was also the time that he kept messing with me when I was painting the Lair.

It also wasn't too long ago that he busted a hole in my plastic window covering because there was a cat in the yard. I'm still pissed about that one.

Now I will give him credit--he does help around the kitchen. But I suspect that it's more from a desire to get the food than from any sort of dog altruism. And I still don't trust him completely ever since I caught him trying to burn the Lair down.

But he's got other hobbies, too.

He flies.
He shoots cannon.
He vomits on people.

I'm telling ya, folks... life's never dull with a German Shepherd around. He's my buddy, but sometimes I'm tempted to trade him for a goldfish then flush the goldfish.

And I hope now that ya'll have seen what he's really like, you'll quit taking his side all the time.

Long-delayed justice in police shooting case

In 2006, a jury of a thug's peers awarded said thug 2.4 million dollars after police officers in Prince Georges County, MD shot him when they observed him arguing with another man and holding a gun.

The case stemmed from an incident in which Darron Shaw had argued with his then-girlfriend LaToya Dunn as they all left a party at around 4AM. Shaw walked away while Dunn rode off in a car, but eventually that car pulled up next to Shaw and Dunn stood up through the sun roof and began arguing with Shaw. This argument was still going on when police officers arrived, saw Shaw with a gun, ordered him to drop it, and shot him when he responded inappropriately. Shaw of course claimed that he wasn't armed, and he was backed by Dunn, who subsequently became his wife despite his conviction for assaulting her that night. A jury awarded Shaw nearly two and a half million dollars but the case was appealed by PG County and remanded back for a new trial, where a second jury, one that actually considered the facts rather than simply acting as hood-rat lottery paymasters. This jury determined that the officers did nothing wrong and sent Shaw packing with no award whatsoever. Apparently this jury found that Shaw was in fact armed that morning, and that after being shot, Shaw tossed the gun into the car, which then drove off with it. The gun was thrown from the car around the corner and recovered by the police shortly thereafter, repudiating Shaw's perjurious claims that he was unarmed and therefore did not pose a threat.

Call me biased if you like, but the fact is that I will always support police officers and give them the full benefit of the doubt until they are proven wrong. In this case, the county was quick to investigate and they determined that Officer David Coleman did everything correctly on that scene. It should have ended there, but there's always some ambulance-chasing scumbag lawyer out there willing to sue municipalities and innocent police officers in the hope of a big jury payout from cop-hating juries. Predictably that happened here, and it might have ended there had the county not had the stones to fight for their officer and appeal the case instead of settling it or paying out. But they fought it, and the appellate court ruled that there was enough wrong with the first trial to warrant a new trial, and this time a jury of citizens determined that the officer's actions in shooting Shaw were proper and justified and declined to award Shaw so much as bus fare home.

Sometimes these things do have happy endings. And Officer Coleman, those of us on the good-guy side who have been aware of your case never doubted you.

source

Lagniappe costs me a phone

So add a cell phone to the cost of owning a German Shepherd.

I just had to take my cell phone in for replacement after it suddenly quit working.

OK...it actually quit working after falling out of my shirt pocket and landing in the dog's water bowl while I was refilling it.

But that makes it Lagniappe's fault, because if I didn't have a dog, I wouldn't have been pouring water into a bowl on my kitchen floor.

Damn dog...

Another day at the range

Since I had a new ammo recipe to test out and the weather was halfway decent, I took to the range this morning with my trusty Israeli Mauser. Now this one has an interesting history to it.Originally manufactured as an 8mm rifle in 1935 at the Mauserwerke factory in Germany, this rifle undoubtedly saw service with Hitler's forces during World War Two. Eventually it almost certainly wound up in one of the large munitions dumps created at the war's end to store and eventually dispose of the large numbers of weapons left over. From that store, it was apparently transferred to the new Jewish state, Israel, and the Israelis eventually re-built it, refinishing it, replacing it's stock, removing the Nazi markings, and re-barreling and re-chambering it for the newer 7.62mm NATO standard cartridge.

As shown here, the receiver shows the original German manufacturing code "S/42 G" below the Israeli "7.62" stamp which indicates that it now fires the new cartridge. The rifle them soldiered on for an indeterminate period of time before it somehow wound up in the hands of a Virginia collector, and, following his death and the liquidation of his impressive collection, it became mine. This one, unlike most Israeli Mausers found today, is in pristine shape. Most of the ones that you find these days are beat to hell and past as they were sold again by Israel to a couple of South American countries and badly neglected in that humid environment before eventually coming up here for sale. But this rifle bears no importer's stamps, suggesting that it came here before the Gun Control Act of 1968 barred such imports. Guns brought in since that onerous act was modified must, by law, bear a stamp indicating which form imported it. Guns without such marks--like this one--are much less common and consequently bring a premium today.

Considering it's age and years of service, this one looks great and shoots as good as it looks. I mainly use it for testing 7.62mm ammunition when I work up new ammo loads because it's both sturdy and accurate enough to allow me to properly evaluate the new rounds.

In this case, it put every round onto a standard paper plate at 200M from a seated offhand position, allowing me to give the new rounds a stamp of approval. That done, I spent the next hour just enjoying the rifle. There's just something about an old wood-stocked .30 rifle that makes them so much most satisfying to shoot than, say, a plastic .223. Maybe it's that deep report, or the hearty thump of the buttplate against my shoulder, but I really enjoy the older rifles. And as far as this one goes, it's history only adds to the enjoyment. Once again, I wish that rifles could talk, because I'm sure that this one would have some interesting stories. As I sight it on the 200M targets, I can't help but wondering how many times there was an opposing soldier framed in it's sights like the plates are today. I'll never know, of course, but that doesn't stop me from wondering as I contemplate the mix of German and Israeli proofmarks on the receiver.
And of course the irony of a rifle that was built for use by the forces of a madman as part of his plan to take over Europe and wipe out the Jews finally ending up in the hands of those Jews and being used by them to safeguard the new Jewish state never ceases to amuse me.







Edited to add: You want more irony? I go to put this rifle back in the gun room and as I do, I look out the window and see six deer in the yard just outside. The herd is back! I'm holding a rifle not twenty feet and a pane of glass away, but all I can do is set this rifle aside and take their picture.

A little fresh pepper never hurt anyone

A recent post on Roanoke Cop's blog reminded me of a story from back in my paramedic days. Once, when I worked for a private ambulance service while going to school, I got stuck working with a partner named Vicki. (Last name withheld to avoid embarrassing Vicki Blackner.)
She was a rather nasty little person, and most people who worked there really didn't care for her. And typically, one of her things was to always try to show everyone that she was tough and could do or take anything that a guy could. (This of course did not seem to apply to actually doing her share of the lifting when there were heavy patients, but such is life.)

One of the ways that Vicki liked to show off her toughness was by always playing with a can of pepper spray that she carried. She always said that she was never going to be a victim or lose a fight but we all knew that the real reason that she carried it was because she mouthed off to so many people that it was only a matter of time before someone up and cleaned her clock. In fact, most of us were hoping that we'd be there when it happened.

Well one morning, a few of our crews had met up for breakfast at a local restaurant, and Vicki was being pretty much ignored as usual. So to get attention and show us how tough she was, she suddenly announced that her potatoes needed some hot sauce and she pulled out her can of pepper spray.

Someone asked her what the hell she thought that she was doing, and she replied that she always put pepper spray on bland food to spice it up, because real tabasco sauce wasn't hot enough for her and the pepper in the pepper spray was more to her liking. Most of us joined in, telling her to quit fooling with that stuff and put it away, but she told us that she did this all the time and went to spray some on her dish.

Now had she actually sprayed some of that capsicum pepper juice onto her food and eaten it, we'd all have probably been a little impressed. We'd have still thought that she was nuts and a bitch, but we'd have been impressed. However she blew her big moment when, in her rush to spritz her hash browns, she didn't check to make sure that the can was pointing in the correct direction. It wasn't, of course, and she ended up zapping herself almost square in the face with it.

She dropped the can and jumped to her feet, rubbing her eyes (and grinding the irritant in) and screaming "Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod..."over and over again as she staggered around the dining area bumping into damn near everything. We naturally all broke out laughing and just sat there howling as she careened around the room crashing into tables as she tried to find her way to the bathroom. Another diner took us to task for laughing and not helping. "What's wrong with you people? You're all paramedics!"
"That's ok," my pal Jim said. "She's one too."

I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt.

I ended up losing the last four hours pay for that shift when we wound up going out of service because she had to go home, and as expected, complaints were made to the company by at least one diner and by the restaurant, so we all got chewed out. But Vicki got a week's suspension for having the spray contrary to company policy, and I was able to hook up with a new partner in her absence (one who was actually pleasant to work with and did her share of the lifting) so it all worked out for the better. But every time pepper spray comes up for discussion, I can't help but remember that morning in that restaurant. And it still makes me snicker after all these years.

Portland's new mayor: "Yeah, I lied to you all. But you might not have elected me if I didn't"

Well it looks like the lessons learned from the Clinton Administration continue to shape America. Apparently the idea that it's ok to lie if it gets you something that you really want has been substantiated again.

Portland's new mayor, Sam Adams--a Democrat--is now admitting that yes, the rumors that he'd denied for a year and a half about him having a homosexual relationship with a teenager are in fact true.

"I lied at the time because I was afraid that people would believe untrue rumors being circulated by an undeclared mayoral opponent that I had broken a law involving sexual relations with a minor. But this is not a good excuse," Adams said in his statement.Despite the rumors, Adams coasted to victory in his race, making Portland the largest U.S. city to ever elect an openly gay mayor. He was sworn in Jan. 1.

In his statement Monday, Adams apologized to the teen for making him lie about the relationship. He also apologized to colleagues and voters.

So once again, we see the double-standard and hypocrisy of the Dems. If it were someone like Mark Foley or Larry Craig, the Dems would be all over themselves calling for impeachment, resignation, jail, etc. And the Republicans, being the more honorable of the two parties, would have pressured him to step down.

But alas, even sex with a minor is apparently ok in this case, because Adams is a Democrat. Granted you would not know this from the AP story that I cited, because in keeping with the AP's policy of carrying the water for the Dems, nowhere in the story does it mention his political affiliation.

The real question now is what will happen next. I'm guessing nothing, since Dems lack the honor to either step down when they're caught doing wrong or to require that one of their own resign. As much as the Democrats would have jumped on this had Adams been a Republican, it's pretty much expected that they'll refuse to do a thing since he's one of theirs.

But for Adams' dishonesty, another man might deservedly be mayor of Portland today--a man who did not have sex with a teen boy and lie about it, then pressure the teen to lie as well.

Now setting Adams' predilection for pedophilia aside (Adams is 45; the boy was seventeen when they met), how can anyone trust this guy to run a city now that he's demonstrated that he'll lie whenever the heat's on or he thinks that he might not get his way?

The Honor Code that I and many other Americans live by is a simple one: "I will not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do." As a man who believes in that code, I'm calling on Portland Mayor Sam Adams to step down immediately.

credit source: Gateway Pundit

Kicking ass in the water.

Just for whoever cares, I got my mile swim down to under an hour. It took me just 57 minutes yesterday. Yay, me!

Free at last, free at last...Ramos and Compean are coming home!

Long overdue, but good news.

President Bush has finally done the right thing and commuted the sentences of former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

These men, as many of you doubtless will remember, were sent to prison for shooting a veteran drug smuggler in the ass when he resisted arrest and allegedly making false statements about what happened out there in the desert.

Ironically, that smuggler, Osvaldo Davila, was so repentant after this incident (for which he was not charged in return for his testimony against the agents) that he was caught smuggling half-ton loads of marijuana into our country on two more occasions! His no-good butt is finally in a US prison where it belongs, and for US Attorney Johnny Sutton to send agents into Mexico to find this scumbag and offer him immunity and a pass allowing him unrestricted border crossings into America, ostensibly for medical treatment, just so that he'd help nail two guys who were just doing their jobs and protecting America from Davila and other like him...well it boggles the mind.

Now this wasn't a full pardon. I have long argued that they should have been granted pardons. If I get to be President some day, they'll get pardons. (I'll also change the laws to allow our Border Protection forces to shoot ANY illegal border-crossers in the ass, but that's for another post.) But these guys should have got pardons, and they should have come two years ago, before they were even sent to prison for ridiculous terms. Where I come from, you don't crucify guys for doing a dirty, thankless and dangerous job just because they arguably make a minor mistake.

Kudos to President Bush for finally taking some action. His legacy would have been forever diminished in my opinion had he not done so. Granted, had he done the right thing two years ago, I'd have been lauding him ever since. As it was, much of my refusal to get involved in this past election to help McCain came from my disgust over his ignoring this matter. (The rest came from my disgust over McCain, but we can go there another time, too.)

Welcome home, my brothers. I know that it's too little, too late, but at least you're free.

And as to US Attorney Johnny Sutton... Well I don't usually resort to gutter talk, but in your case, it's appropriate: "Fuck you, you fucking fuck!"

Fun-filled Friday, part 2

Since I needed to work out some frustrations after dealing with that stove, and since a box had come from Surefire, Inc., containing the repair parts for my shotgun's tactical light, I decided that tonight would be a good night for a test of the shotgun, coupled with a night-firing session. Obviously with the temperature hovering around ten degrees, I could count on having the range to myself. And since both the shotgun and the AR-15 carbine needed function testing, why not make sure that they work in the cold?

I drove out to the range with the two weapons, arriving a bit after full dark.

Unfortunately, my primary tactical light was dead due to my using it to work on the stove. (DOH!) Since it's rechargeable, I couldn't just pop new batteries in it but had to leave it on the charger. I missed it immediately as I was forced to check and load the firearms by braille. But I suppose that's good practice, too. The only drawback was that I'd brought out about fifty shotgun shells of all different types, and I couldn't see them well enough to know what was what. Ah well...The cost of not bringing a back-up light was never knowing when I'd chambered a heavy slug until after I'd touched the trigger. That'll teach me.

I put up a police pistol silhouette on the 25m line and engaged it from different positions and locations on the range. I practiced speed-firing, including reloading from both the side-saddle carrier and my pocket, and feeding single rounds through the ejection port. Mr. silhouette bad guy didn't look too good when the firing stopped. In fact he seemed to be missing almost all of his center-mass five-ring. Oh well...I'll bet the next time that I tell him to show me his hands, he'll do it.

I did learn that my tactical gloves--work issue and therefore pretty damned cheap--were not a match for the shotgun, as the glove material kept getting caught up in between the shells and the magazine tube until finally I discarded them and shot with bare (and cold) hands.

Then the AR carbine came out. I put sixty rounds into the target three rounds at a time, again moving rapidly between firing points and alternating between standing, kneeling and prone. It's Pentagon light worked well, other than it's tendency to flash whenever the rifle's bolt slams home on an empty chamber. (Yo, Pentagon...you need to fix that.) I was using the rifle' back-up iron sight (BUIS)--an ARMS 40L. I have to admit, I'm still not sold on the ARMS BUIS. It has no elevation adjustment, so the rifle's front sight post is the only means of adjusting it, and the long-range peep sight has to be folded down to allow use of the larger ghost ring CQB sight and then folded up again before the sight can be folded down and locked. That's not really instinctive and it seems a bit fragile. I guess time will tell.

The shotgun and it's Surefire light performed flawlessly, and if fifty rounds of heavy stuff didn't blow the bulb out, I think that I can conclude that the last problem was in the old bulb assembly. The AR still seems to have a quirk or two to work out, but it's getting there. That's what I get for cobbling my own rifle together instead of buying one that was completely assembled and factory tested. Still, it's coming along and I'm not unhappy with it, especially knowing that it won't be too long before B. Hussein Obama and his gun-hating allies in the Dem-controlled House and Senate push through another ban on so-called "assault weapons" like my AR's. It's reassuring to know that whatever happens in DC, I've already got mine.

Fun-filled Friday

Today started out with a trip to the gym and a nice six and a half mile run.

Now I really hadn't planned on doing six and a half miles, but when I flipped on the TV by the treadmill, I saw that one of the greatest war movies of all time, The Longest Day, was playing.

Of course I couldn't quit while that was playing, so I had to keep running for the next hour and a quarter. But it was worth it to watch John Wayne, Dean Martin, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Eddie Albert, Paul Anka, Robert Mitchum, George Stewart, Rod Steiger and a young (and uncredited) Richard Dawson defeat the Germans and take that first costly but crucial step towards freeing Europe.

This movie was an epic in it's day, with over 42 big name stars from four countries, including many people who were actually part of the real battle for Normandy. It was worth the long run and it's worth you renting it. They really don't make them like this one any more.

After the run and a few errands, I came home to...a cold house. Was ist los, I asked Lagniappe. I know that it was well below freezing today, but I also knew that I'd left the pellet stove on. A quick look revealed that it was not on, however. It was cold and dark. And during the worst cold snap of the winter. Joy.

So using an operator's manual that I found on line, I began to trouble shoot the stove.
When I tried to power it up, I could hear one of the two auger motors trying to turn. Obviously one of the augers was jammed. The remedy, per the manual, is to remove the auger and clear the blockage. OK. Sounds simple enough. (HA!)

First I emptied the pellet bin, scooping out nearly forty pounds of pellets by hand. Then I pulled the first auger's motor (there are two). I hooked up the power to that motor and it ran fine. But the auger that it powered was definitely jammed. Worse, the other motor for the other auger--the one that feeds the fire box--was the one that wasn't turning. So it turned out that both augers were clogged. Not exactly rocket science here. The bottom one obviously jammed first, and with no outlet for the pellets that the upper auger was trying to feed to the lower one, the upper one jammed too. That meant that they both had to come out.

Oh--and did I mention that the stove is in a corner? There's not much room to work back there, and what room there is is full of ash and soot and pellets.

Then it got really fun when I discovered that in order to remove the bottom auger motor, I had to loosen one set screw so that I could detach the motor from the shaft. Of course the auger had frozen in place with that set screw blocked by other pieces of the stove, so I couldn't get a damned tool on it. That meant that I had to take the whole auger housing out--a more involved job by far. And as luck would have it--the bolts securing that housing were blocked by...the motor!

I won't go into the details or the drama that followed, but by the time I got the whole damned thing apart nearly an hour later, I'd lost count of the number of times that I'd smashed or cut my hands on other pieces of the stove, and Lagniappe had learned several new words and phrases, most of which referred to the ham-fisted alcoholic crotch monkeys at the stove factory who's assembled this nightmare and torqued all of the essential bolts down to about eight hundred foot/pounds, clearly savoring the thought of someone like me trying to reach those bolts with a box wrench (because socket tools won't fit in there) and get enough leverage to enable me to turn each bolt about 1/32 of a turn at a time. To say the least, I was way beyond angry by the time I got it apart. And thanks to all of the soot and ash, I don't think that I've gotten so dirty in recent memory.

But I finally got it all cleaned out, then I carefully re-aligned the augers as I put them back in, and re-assembled the whole mess. In fairness, it went back together quickly and easily. And when I turned it back on...it worked! It even worked better than before, as apparently my re-alignment of the augers eliminated a persistent and annoying squeaking noise that the stove's made since day #1. Still...two hours blown on that stove today...and for what?

Oh yeah...
Without the nice warm stove, Lagniappe and his little buddy would have to lie on a cold rug all day.

Can't have that now, can we?

It's Tuesday...

A good day to get things done.

I started out on the range, where I adjusted the newly-installed sights on an AR-15 carbine. No pics of the gun at present, but if you've seen one, you've seen them all. Once the rifle was properly sighted, I took some liberties since no one else was present on this rather chilly morning and ran some training exercises. These exercises consisted of starting out at the firing line with the rifle on "safe", running down to the 50M target and back, then taking appropriate cover behind the range posts or benches, removing the safety, and putting five aimed shots onto the target. Safety on, turn and repeat.

Yeah, it sounds simple enough, and the first couple of times it is, but once you start breathing hard and perspiring, the shot groups tend to grow and sometimes even dissolve into virtual shotgun patterns. But it's a bit more realistic and practical than firing from a bench while rested and breathing normally. Reality isn't static--it involves movement, stress and adrenaline, and that's why the Biathalon is still an Olympic sport today.

I ended up fairly winded and sweaty, but it's all good; the more sweat on the training field, the less blood on the battlefield--or the street.

That wasn't the day's workout though. I got that next when I went to the gym. An hour's run on the treadmill--just over six miles--provided most of that. I then picked up a couple more sacks of deer food and headed home.

And it seems that I have a new "regular" deer coming around. He's a young six-point buck who has been coming around to dine. Like the others have been lately, he was really skittish at first, but he's getting better about me watching him. This is him.

This young fella's been coming around more and more lately. Nice to see at least one deer that isn't all schitzo like the rest of my former herd is.

I think I'll name him "Bucky".









My favorite doe came around with her two fawns at around dusk, but she wasn't having anything to do with me being visible in the house and she took them away again after they grazed a bit. I have three more does outside eating as I type this, but they're giving me the eye too. Wish I knew what--or who--got them all jacked out of shape a couple of weeks ago.

But I'll win 'em back over. I've got the corn.

A pleasant surprise

I stopped by an elderly neighbor's house today to see how he's doing and we got to be talking guns and hunting. As we talked, he showed me some of his gun collection, most of which were scattered about the house. (His house makes mine look neat. I must show Aaron of The Shekel's wife some day so she stops commenting on mine.) As we talked, he grabbed an old rifle out of the corner and said "here. You can have this one. I bought three of them at a flea market once for ten bucks each. It's just junk now."

Under all of the crud and grime, I recognized the vague outline of an 1888 Commission Rifle. Owing to the darkness in his house, I really couldn't see it that well. A cursory attempt to open the bolt showed me that it was frozen solid. It probably is junk, I figured. But to refuse it would be rude. After a while I came home and checked it out. It looked even worse in clear light.Yeah, it's pretty bad. I can't even make out the manufacturer and date. It looks like Spandau, Germany but the date's still covered with dried gunk. I know that the first two numbers are 18. It's old.
It's clearly pretty far gone. I was about to relegate it to the junk pile but as usually happens, I got to be looking at it and speculating as to it's history and the stories that it could tell.

The 1888 Commission rifle was Germany's first cartridge rifle designed around the then-new smokeless-propellant cartridge that had been developed. It got it's name because it was the result of a program undertaken by a commission of military experts. A five-shot repeater, like many other rifles of it's day it required special clips to hold the ammunition. These clips dropped free from the bottom of the rifle when the last round was fired. In later days, many of these rifles were modified to feed from traditional stripper clips and the hole on the bottom was sealed. This one is not one of those modified rifles. It's still clip-fed. These rifles were still front-line weapons used by the Germans and their Turkish allies in World War One and the Turks continued to use them until and through world War Two.

Once I started to work on it, the bolt eventually yielded to the subtle persuasion of a block of wood and a hammer. (Fortunately it was empty.) It's now off of the rifle. As expected, the bolt head is missing. This was a common problem with this design, as the bolt head was way too easy to remove from the bolt and frequently became lost. But the mainspring still functions and the bolt might be salvageable.

The bore is full of crud but still has some distinct rifling left. It's going to take a lot of scrubbing before I can tell how bad it is, but the preliminary evaluation looks promising.

The neighbor who gave me this doesn't even remember how long ago that he bought this rifle. He just knows that it was a long, long time ago. The sad thing is, other than the bolt head and a few minor parts, it looks complete and probably worked.

It didn't take long before I made the decision: I'm going to save and restore this rifle. I'm going to make it presentable, and I'm going to make it shoot again.

Right now it's caked in a dried substance which I think--and hope--is a type of preservative grease. But it's rock solid and I haven't quite figured out how to remove it without damaging whatever finish is left. My first job is going to be to disassemble the rifle completely and then clean the parts, both wood and metal. Then I'll look at the finish and decide whether or not to apply a new one or just try to preserve what's left. Eventually I hope to get it back together, replacing any missing or broken parts, and get it out to the range for a trial. It's going to take a while and a lot of elbow grease, but with old veterans like this, it's a labor of love. This will probably be the toughest restoration I've done thus far, but I'm confident that I can save this rifle.

Scratch that. I WILL save this rifle.

Nutty dog stunt for Sunday, Jan 11th.

So I stop at the grocery store to get a three items, and as I usually do when I go to get a few items, I return with six bags full of stuff. (And I forgot one of the three things, too.)

Hey, I'm a guy. That's how we buy groceries.

But anyway, one of the things I bought was a pig's ear for Lagnaippe. , He loves those, and he's been good, so I bought one. When I got home, I carried all of the bags into the house and set them down on the kitchen floor. As I walked in, Lagniappe met me at the door as he always does, and gave the bags a cursory sniff. I thought nothing of it until I set the bags down and began to unpack them. That's when Lagniappe came into the kitchen, walked over to the bags, then stuck his nose into one of them, withdrew the pig's ear, and without so much as a by-your-leave, walked out of the room with it.

Once again, I'm amazed at his powers of smell and deduction. How he found that one item that he knew was his in all those bags, while ignoring all of the steaks that he knew were mine, is just beyond me.

I'm a little irked at his cheekiness though. I hadn't given that pig's ear to him yet, and I probably should have taken it back and made him wait until I decided that he could have it, but damn--that was just so smooth. He walked in, picked the bag, reached in, took the ear, and walked out. He may have been wrong, but I can't say that he wasn't cool.
"Paul Newman ain't got nothing on me...I'se Cool Hand Lagniappe."

Duelling Destrys

What a great day for Cowboy movies.

This morning, AMC was running Destry Rides Again followed immediately by Destry. Both, of course, were the same story. The first was made in 1939 and starred James Stewart in the title role, and the second was done in 1954 and starred war hero-turned-actor Audie Murphy in the Destry role. Both were directed by George Marshall, and both were--and are--great movies.

The story deals with a rough-and-tumble town run by a rich and powerful bad guy. When the Sheriff disappears, the crooked mayor appoints the town drunk as Sheriff, figuring that he'll stay out of everyone's way. But the old drunk used to ride with frontier lawman legend Tom Destry back in the old days. That Destry--a fast and feared gunfighter--is dead, but he has a son, Tom Jr., played by Stewart and Murphy, who comes to town to help clean it up. But when Destry Jr. gets to town, the people are shocked and amused to find out that he doesn't even carry a gun! He quickly becomes the butt of a lot of jokes before the people start to realize that he doesn't need one.

In the first movie, Stewart has a great female lead in Marlene Dietrich. Murphy, fifteen years later, doesn't do too much worse when he gets paired off with Mari Blanchard, another big star from the 50's and 60's. But Dietrich definitely nailed the role, in my opinion.

Murphy did benefit from one other rising star in his version. The minor but important character of Jack Larson was played by a very young Alan Hale jr., a frequent bit player in old westerns later to become immortalized as The Skipper on Gilligan's Island.

I liked being able to watch the two films back-to-back because it gave me the opportunity to compare the actors' performances against their peers playing the same roles in the same story. It was easy for me to prefer Dietrich playing Frenchy over Blanchard's portrayal of Brandy (different names, but same "bad girl" character otherwise) but Stewart v. Murphy....Wow. Tough call there. Both are favorites of mine.

I watched the first one while eating breakfast and playing with Lagniappe, and then I drove to the gym to work out while the second one was on. I caught most of that one while on the treadmill, thus ensuring that I got MY workout in while Destry solved the murder of the missing sheriff and cleaned up the town.

As for my pick of the better Destry character...as much as I like Audie Murphy in those old westerns, I have to give the nod to Stewart in this particular role.

But hey--don't take my word for it. watch 'em both yourself and tell me who you like better. It's not like it'll kill you to watch the same movie twice with different actors in each version. It's a good tale that moves along fast and you'll never be bored.

I'll state in closing--as I have before--that both of these movies starred real war heros. Jimmy Stewart was an Army Air Corps bomber pilot over Germany--he enlisted even though he didn't have to because he felt that it was his duty as an American. Likewise, Alan Hale joined the Coast Guard and served in the Pacific Theater.

Audie Murphy wasn't an actor before the war, but his military credentials as America's most decorated combat veteran are beyond dispute.

It's a damned shame that Hollywood took such a sharp left turn between those days and now. Back then, many of the silver screen's best and brightest rushed off to serve. Nowadays, we're stuck with punks like George Clooney and Sean Penn who are more than willing to pocket big buck pretending to be soldiers on screen but who not only refuse to serve like more talented and patriotic actors did in the 1940's, but openly criticize our military and our Commander-in-Chief during a time of war, and in the case of traitors like Penn, provide actual aide and comfort to our enemies.

Got a grill, Ma!

My wonderful mother wanted to get me a new grill for Christmas but couldn't arrange to pay for one down here for me to pick up, so she sent me a check and told me to get a grill and use whatever money was left over for guns.

Well Ma, I got a new grill. What do you think? It's a West Virginia special and I got a great deal on it from the guy that owns the local store.



Now I'm off to the gun shop!

A winter's day...

It was bright and sunny and in the low 30's today, so what better way to spend the day then hiking up to the old federal stone fort atop Maryland Heights with my four-legged buddy? we made it up to the fort proper in about an hour, only to find the area covered with ice that had formed on the trees during recent ice storms, then fallen to the ground when warmed by the sun, only to re-freeze there. Now the sun was starting to melt them again. It was beautiful, but it also made for some tricky walking. Just imagine dumping thousands of ice cubes on your floor then trying to walk on them after they'd melted just enough to be really slippery.Here's Lagniappe amidst the ice. It was literally a carpet--a slippery, treacherous carpet.

And there was plenty more ice where that came from, as you can see by looking at the trees. All of them were coated.
There's no ice or snow down there at the river level, or at the Lair for that matter, but there's sure plenty of it up here, a mere 2,000 feet above that river. Everything was coated. And I mean everything. It was on all of the rocks and steps that we had to climb to get up here. In fact, it was so slippery that I finally gave up on the loop trail and cut back down through the woods from the old 100-pounder battery site to the trail that we'd come up, which wasn't nearly as bad as the descent down towards the 30-pounder battery and the overlook trail below it promised to be. I'm generally not one to quit or pass up a challenge, but the reality of a slip and fall from some of those narrow and very icy trail spots onto the rocks below didn't seem worth it, especially as it was just Lagniappe and I up there and he's already demonstrated just how helpful he is in an emergency.

But as always, it was nice to get up and reflect on the work that went into building and manning these old fortifications, especially when you consider that every stone for building and every gallon of water for drinking had to be hauled op the side of this mountain from the river below, as did the massive cannon and every projectile for them.

And Lagniappe? Well as you can see, he's all set to man (or "dog") the breastworks and repel any attacking Confederates that try to come up.

Go git 'em, boy.



The only downside was when, after the hike, I took him into Harpers Ferry to stop by the Swiss Miss ice cream shop to see Sharon, the owner. Unfortunately she was not there and the place was closed. Well dogs do not understand "closed". All this one knew was that he was at his ice cream place and no one was opening the window to give him any. He scratched at the door then stood up and looked in the window but still no Sharon and no ice cream. Then he looked at me and whined.

Poor dog. I had to take him to 7-11 and buy him a beef jerky just to cheer him up.

Animals...

OK, first of all, when I was away last week, someone around here must have traumatized my deer herd. They used to spend a good part of the day here and didn't mind me watching them or even walking outside, especially if I was putting out corn.

But now they mostly come around after dark, and they're incredibly skittish. If they even see me moving inside the house, they run off. And today, when I saw my usually docile fawns in the back yard looking for corn, as soon as I went out to give them some, they bolted and didn't come back.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot--WTF?

And then there's Lagniappe, or as he is now known, the assdog.

This morning, I'm making breakfast and I'm putting bacon in the skillet. Lagniappe is sitting right next to me, watching and hoping that he'll get a scrap. Now I used to just throw him out of the kitchen or any room where I was eating, but I confess, I've been getting soft lately and letting him slide.

So how does he repay me?

As I'm peeling bacon slices off of the slab, suddenly his jaws snap shut on the slice in my hand.

And to make it really comical, the bacon doesn't tear, and he still won't actually pull the food away from me, so when I look down, he's just sitting there with half the slice of bacon in his mouth and the other half in my hand. And he's looking up at me like "Wow, this is awkward..."

Assdog. I don't want to reward him by letting him have the bacon, but to be honest, I don't want it back now either. What to do?

He's still staring at me...and holding onto the bacon.

So I do what I usually do when I can't think of anything else. I yell at him.

"DAMN YOU!"

He drops his end of the bacon and scurries off to watch me from a distance.

And not thinking, I almost toss the bacon strip into the pan with the others, but I catch myself at the last second. It goes up on the counter and he can have it later when he no longer associates it with his blatant act of thievery and his half-assed effort to momentarily assume the role of Alpha Dog.

Still, I can't help but smile. He did hit that bacon fast. Now if he'd just done it to anyone but me...

Dems appear likely to seat "Senator Vote Fraud"

Well if at first you don't win an election, recount it over and over, adding "newly discovered" ballots (that are all coincidentally and quite improbably for one candidate) and let a bunch of openly partisan wonks handle the recount while excluding observers. If that doesn't do it, look at all of the improperly filled out ballots that were rejected and let those same wonks divine the intent of the voter.

That's what the Dems did in Washington State in 2004 to seat Governor Chris Gregoire and it's what they're doing now in Wisconsin to take the electoral victory away from Senator Norm Coleman and award it improperly to foul-mouthed jack-ass and Air America scam participant Al Franken.

The Wall Street Journal has a good run-down on it here. I'm going to re-print it entirely here just to make sure that it's always available, either as a reminder of what they tried to do, or, if they're successful, as a permanent indictment of the Democratic Party.

By TRENT ENGLAND
Olympia, Wash.

Sorry Minnesota, but the sequel is never as good as the original.

For those who watched the Washington State governor's race recounts in 2004, the ongoing recount drama in Minnesota is just another rehash of the same script -- albeit for a U.S. Senate seat that might put Democrats one vote away from a filibuster-proof majority.

Four years ago in Washington, Democratic Party candidate Christine Gregoire lost the first count, lost the recount, and then won a second, highly dubious recount by 133 votes. In Minnesota, where Sen. Norm Coleman is defending his seat against comedian-turned-candidate Al Franken, the first count showed Mr. Coleman up 725 votes. Today, thanks to another dubious recount, Mr. Franken is apparently in the lead.

Razor-thin margins like these put election systems to the test. As the old proverb goes, they are a crisis and an opportunity. Yet the crises keep coming and the opportunities continue to be squandered. It's time to learn the lessons of the recount wars and address the systemic flaws in our election processes. Indeed, the price of a continued decline in voter confidence is too troubling for most Americans to comprehend.

In Washington's 2004 gubernatorial election, at least 1,392 felons illegally voted, 252 provisional ballots were wrongly counted, and 19 votes were cast from beyond the grave, according to Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges's opinion in a case brought by Dino Rossi, Ms. Gregoire's Republican opponent.

Election workers in King County (where Seattle is located) "enhanced" 55,177 ballots to make it easier for tabulating machines to read them -- even though the county had failed to establish written procedures as required by state law. In some cases, individual election workers modified voted ballots using black felt markers and white-out tape while observers were kept at a distance that prevented meaningful observation. Nine separate times, King County "discovered" and counted unsecured ballots.

Nevertheless, Ms. Gregoire lost to Mr. Rossi by 261 votes.

An automatic recount reduced Mr. Rossi's lead to just 42 votes. The Gregoire campaign demanded a state-wide hand recount, a time-consuming and expensive process that state law says the challenger must pay for (if the result changes, the challenger is reimbursed). Big labor unions joined with far-left groups like MoveOn.org to put up the money for Ms. Gregoire's third-time's-the-charm ballot shuffle.

During the recount process, five counties found new, uncounted, unsecured ballots and added them into their totals. King County officials admitted publicly that ballot reconciliation reports were falsified in an attempt to conceal variations between the number of votes counted and the number of voters who voted (two elections workers were disciplined as a result).

By the end, 3,539 votes more than the number of voters who voted were tabulated. Four other swing counties provided an additional 4,880 mystery ballots. Ms. Gregoire was the victor by a margin of 133 votes.

That margin -- 133 votes -- happens to be the same number of ballots that Minneapolis election officials are currently missing. The initial vote tally in one Democrat-leaning precinct counted 133 more ballots than officials have been able to find for the Senate recounts. The Minnesota canvassing board decided on Dec. 12 to allow Minneapolis simply to ignore the recount and go with the original number. This provided a 46-vote boost for Mr. Franken, about the same as his current projected lead. The board also "requested" that counties reconsider rejected absentee ballots, a new and novel part of the recount procedure that is also expected to favor Mr. Franken.

Something is wrong when a victorious candidate owes more thanks to vote counters than to voters. Such was the case in Washington in 2004, and Minnesota is poised to follow in its footsteps in 2008.

It need not be this way. After 2004, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation produced a 42-page report offering a dozen solutions. While a few were implemented, most were simply ignored by officials content to cross their fingers and hope the next close election is in someone else's jurisdiction.

Some reforms are simply educational and cultural; others are fundamental and essential. Election officials need to understand current federal and state laws and regulations governing the entire election process, including recounts. Those responsible for elections must also inculcate a culture of compliance among election staff, including temporary staff hired at election time.

From the moment they are printed, ballots should be isolated and guarded and their chain of custody recorded. Officials with rule-making authority are responsible for establishing processes that clarify how ballots are to be handled, stored, counted, and, if necessary, recounted.

Most important to maintaining and increasing public faith in elections is improving openness, especially leveraging Internet technology to make anyone a potential election observer. The Minneapolis Star Tribune's project to put all 6,700 contested ballots in the Senate race on the Web, so people can compare their own judgments to those of the canvassing board, is but one example. Election officials who have nothing to hide should be putting as much as possible online as quickly as possible.

Citizens and the media might also take a closer look at some of the individuals and organizations involved in monkeying with and even overturning elections. Both Mr. Franken and Ms. Gregoire were endorsed by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- Acorn -- a group under investigation in several states for suspected voter registration chicanery.

The man overseeing the Senate recount, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, was also endorsed by Acorn, and his election campaign in 2006 was funded in part by something called "The Secretary of State Project." This latter group, founded by MoveOn.org's former grass-roots director, exists solely to install far-left candidates as secretaries of state in swing states.

Close elections will always stir controversy. They will often require recounts to validate the results. Yet the Washington and Minnesota recounts offer cautionary tales. The democratic process is too important to be disregarded until a virtual tie forces us to pay attention. Regardless of which candidates win our elections, the voters -- not the vote counters -- should win every time.

Mr. England is director of the Citizenship and Governance Center at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

If they get away with this again, it will repudiate the entire electoral system and show us all that the idea fair elections is a bygone concept. Hopefully the GOP will grow a spine and find some way to stop Franken from being seated, but failing that, the people of Minnesota should probably be barred from any more national elections until they can pull their heads out of their asses. Remember that these are the same idiot voters who thought that it would be funny to elect a pro wrestler as their governor. Clearly many of them don't take voting seriously, and the fact that they allowed the Democrats to put Franken on the ballot and push him into the Senate in their name indicates that the people in that state just can't be trusted with ballots any more.

And one thing is certain concerning Franken. I'll never call him "Senator".

More here at The Shekel.

A hidden gem reveals itself.

OK< it's long overdue, but I finally got this 1903 Springfield out to the range yesterday. A friend of mine had purchased an M-1 Garand from the CMP that he wanted to shoot, so I hosted him out to my club, and just for the heck of it, I brought the '03 along.Now I haven't shot this rifle in 14 or 15 years. It's been a wall-hanger and rack queen all that time, ignored as I shot other, usually newer rifles. This 1903 came to me as a rather shopworn rifle that appeared to have suffered from a fair bit of neglect, and back when I got it I was much more fond of modern semi-automatic rifles. I acquired the 1903 due to it's historical significance and, to be honest, as an impulse buy to save it from a moron who was going to chop it into a deer rifle. But I never really shot it, and by the time I came to appreciate bolt-action rifles, I'd acquired several other ones which appeared to be in better shape, including two more modern 1903A3s. The poor old 1903 was left to languish in the racks with the Arisakas and Carcanos as a display piece and relic of bygone days. This was, after all, the rifle that the US Marines took to Belleau Wood during World War One when they ignored the French suggestion that they join the retreat in the face of a German advance and began picking off startled Germans at distances exceeding 800 meters, a feat considered improbable if not impossible at that time. But that episode demonstrated what a good rifleman and a good rifle could do. The US Marines have typically exemplified that rifleman and the 1903 Springfield was definitely a good rifle. However over the years, while I've reflected back on such battles, I'd overlooked the fact that I had a 1903 in my own collection which was undoubtedly still up to such a task.

But all of that changed yesterday. I took this old rifle out to play with while teaching my friend how to load and fire his new Garand. Running the overly-complicated ladder sight up, I fired a five-round group at a plate a hundred yards out. Turned out that they all hit just off of the target, but wow--what a group! They were all within four inches of each other, and that was with me shooting seated off-hand and not taking any particular care.

I made the appropriate sight adjustments and immediately had no trouble repeatedly hitting a small 4"x4" block of wood that was down on the 100M line. 40 more rounds of .30 M2 ball quickly obliterated anything downrange that was big enough to see yet small enough to be challenging. The rifle kicks a bit harder than a ten pound Garand, but I don't mind the .30-06 recoil in either rifle and the 1903's light weight helps get it back on target quicker, IMHO. It also balances better, at least to me. I can see what Marine greats like Chesty Puller always preferred this rifle over the Garand even though the latter held more ammunition and offered an increase in firepower. It's definitely a rifleman's rifle.

Now this particular rifle's accuracy and consistency was a shock to me considering it's outward appearance and it's long period of dormancy on my rack. I had no idea that such a gem was just sitting there and I will be working up a load just for this rifle because I've just decided that this rifle will be coming to one of the big CMP matches with me in 2009. I'm just sorry that I've ignored it for so long. And no mor

New Year's Resolution FAIL

Seattle's Miles Murphy, 22 years old, stated on his list of resolutions that his goal for 2009 was "don't die". But according to the story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he blew that one less than an hour and a half into the new year, however, when he met police officers investigating a "shots fired" call with a rifle in his hands and refused their orders to drop it. When he instead pointed the rifle at the officers, they shot him.

According to police, officers were called to the 5200 block of 17th Avenue Northeast to investigate a report of two or three men firing weapons into the air. Officers say they fired on the man after he brandished what a witness described as a bolt-action rifle.

Kerlikowske offered more detail Friday. He said the four officers who responded were approaching Murphy's basement apartment when the young man came out of it. He was carrying the rifle, and it was pointed in the officers' direction.

They order him to drop it. He lowered the rifle, but as he climbed up the steps he raised the rifle, which was affixed with a bayonet, again in their direction.

Officers again order him to drop it, then two officers fired seven shots at him with their AR-15 rifles.

Darwin, table for one.

Making it even more surreal, Miles was dressed in a Nazi uniform--apparently something that he liked to wear for no real reason. The rifle was a vintage German Mauser, which, according to the news story, had been taken away from him by the police two years ago for unknown reasons. It was returned to him a couple of months later due to pressure from Miles' dad.

Good job there, dad. You really thought that one out, didn't you.

And at this time it appears that the shots that the police had been called to investigate were fired by Miles from that rifle because he wanted to make noise on New Years Eve. It apparently had blanks in it, but the police officers could not know that or assume such. They did what they had to do when Miles Murphy pointed the rifle at them. Now the kid is gone, and as the comments following the news story indicate, the predictable anti-police backlash from Seattle's loser community has begun.

My condolences go out to the police officers that were forced to go through this traumatic episode because a stupid kid didn't have the common sense that God gave a goose.

Lagniappe scores his first cat for 2009...and muffs it.

My, how the mighty has fallen.

I let Lagniappe out into his run this afternoon, and lo and behold, there was a cat in there, looking totally shocked to see a hundred pound German Shepherd come out the door. Before I saw the cat, Lagniappe did, and he was on it like Rosie O'Donnell on a piece of chocolate cake. I thought for sure that the cat was about to become an ex-cat as Lagniappe grabbed it, shook it and threw it, but as Lagniappe went in for a second hit, the cat swiped him right across the nose with a paw full of claws.

Damn, I knew that one had to hurt. Lagniappe backed off for just a split second, and it was just long enough for the cat to get out from in front of him. Both creatures disappeared around the corner in the run where I couldn't see them, and then I heard more scrabbling, but before I could get there, I saw the cat fly through the air over the fence. Not sure if it leaped or was flung (I suspect the latter) but it got to it's feet and ran off. A crestfallen Lagniappe returned to me, no doubt sad because his new toy was gone. I chided him for losing his touch as I took him inside to put Betadine on his cut nose. There was a time when that cat would not have gotten away.

Not a good start for 2009 there, fella.