Random Shots At Moving Targets

What I am hoping is that when this Hasan clown comes out of his coma that they begin every period of questioning with Ha Ha, you were brought down by a woman! Given what we know about him, so far, that would be as effective as waterboarding.

I salute Officer Sergeant Munley of the Fort Hood Police Dept. Sergeant Munley did the old fashioned police work. Instead of getting near the scene of the shooting and then hanging around, establishing a chain of command and a communications net, all the things the corporate police administrators like to do while people are dieing, she charged. She ran in and shot the guy doing the shooting. She was shot herself but she still managed to put four rounds into this waterhead. Bravo Zulu! My prayers and hopes are for a full recovery and a long and happy life.

WE have hundreds, if not thousands of Muslims serving in the Armed Forces. The vast majority seem to be doing their jobs.Some have been wounded and killed, still others decorated for exceptional service, even heroism. And regular readers here know that hero is not a word I use lightly. Everyone wearing Uncle's suit is not a hero, just like every cop and fireman is not a hero. I know, I wore the uniform and, given the choice, I am quite timid. Few people in uniform ever need to be heroic, mostly it's just a matter of following the training.

Still, here is the problem. We need those Muslim men and women in the Services. we need the language skills and knowledge of the cultures. We do not, though, need more Ft. Hoods or that clown rolling grenades into tents a la Kuwait, 2003. So, how in God's name do we sort out the loyal American soldiers who happen to be Muslim from the self service Jihadis?

And until we figure out some form of sorting procedure, how about arming at least some of the troops. Perhaps everyone above the rank of E-5 could carry a handgun. I know the military is terrified of negligent discharges but a Sergeant has the power to make men and women risk, sometimes lose their lives. If you give someone that kind of power you ought to be able to trust them with a shootin' iron. If you can't, maybe we ought to just close the Armed Services down and surrender to the Confederate Air Force. Except they changed their name.

And it is more than just the Armed Services. We have Somewhere in the neighborhood of three million Muslims in the USA. I am sure that the vast majority want exactly what you and I want, the ability to make a living, raise our families and be left alone. Thing is, if only one percent of American Muslims decide to become wild eyed Jihadis, that's 30,000. If only five percent decide to become shootists and splodeydopes, that's a hundred and fifty thousand. Now I'm pretty sure that the American people would not put up with even 30,000 jihadis running around here, much less 150,000. Mosques would start burning down, stores run by Arab Americans would be exploding, it would get pretty ugly. And the PC types have have painted us into the corner here. They have so demonized the Japanese internment in WW2 that we certainly cannot simply round 'em up and, after carefully interrogating them, or maybe truth serum, decide "you are cool, you go back to the old country."

So, we can't do that. But look here. The safety of my grandchildren is non negotiable. I would smilingly operate the wood chipper and grind every Muslim in America into liquid fertilizer to prevent so much as a skinned knee on any of my grandchildren. This might be a black mark about getting into Heaven but my grandchildren did not start this fight. Nor did I. I am perfectly willing to help end it, though.

Again, someone figure out a way to separate the sheep from the goats. Again, I am perfectly willing to stipulate that the vast majority of Muslims are good, law abiding citizens. Okay, great. The vast Majority of the Germans in Hamburg in 1943 had nothing to do with the Nazi Party, either. Funny, it sure got hot there, thanks to the 8th Air Force dropping high explosives by day and the RAF dropping firebombs by night. I read that Germans jumped in the canals to escape the fires and that many died when the water got so hot it cooked them. Now the Germans were unusually stubborn and took a lot of convincing before they gave up the fight. I'm not sure it was really lucky for them that the Russians rolled into Berlin before we developed the A Bomb, though. Perhaps European and world history would be somewhat better had we dropped those bombs when the Russkies were a couple hundred miles east of Budapest.

Anyhow, pray for the souls of those killed down in Hood and that He comfort the wounded. Pray that we figure out a way to keep the loyal citizens and eliminate the Jihadis. If we don't it will eventually be a bloodbath.

In other news tomorrow is a sad day in the Poorfarm here. I am taking my target/varmint rifle to the gunshow to try to sell it. I have not had the courage to try to shoot it since my stroke, I just don't trust my kinda numb and jerky right hand on that twelve ounce trigger. And, since I can't shoot it, she might as well go somewhere where she'll be appreciated. I hate this, I had intended to spend my retirement really studying precision shooting.

So, last chance to buy a Savage Model 12, with a stainless Douglas XX air gauged barrel, twist one turn in twelve inches, chambered in .223 Remington. This rifle has a target/varmint stock and a Burris Signature 8x32 power scope. The barrel was put on and the action truing work done by Fred Moreo, the Savage magician up at Sharp Shooter Supply in Ohio.

This rifle would, on a day when I had it together and the wind wasn't causing anvils to blow past, put five shots into a quarter inch group. Now that is not enough to win a real benchrest match but it's certainly good enough for varmints 'way out past Fort Mudge.

But wait! There is more! There is also the original barrel and stock, the barrel because one might want to shoot some of those long, heavy bullets and so would need the tighter one in nine twist, the lighter stock for if one would like to use this as a walking varmint rifle, a Savage barrel wrench for changing barrels, all the reloading dies and two boxes of one thousand each small rifle Benchrest primers, one thousand Federal, one thousand Remington. Don't even ask how much those primers are these days, plain vanilla primers are up to fifty bucks a thousand. The benchrest primers? Last seen around 2007 or so. Oh, and five hundred Sierra Matchking 53 grain flatbase hollowpoints and a slew of home moly coated fifty five grain bullets. Oh, yeah, and the original trigger.

Anyhow, I'm going to miss the old girl but if I can't shoot it, it might as well go somewhere where she can be shot. Maybe someplace in ground squirrel or prairie dog country. Maybe I'll be able to buy a couple seasons worth of cowboy action shooting with it.

A Waking Nightmare

It's a large room, deep in the heart of Texas. There is a large crowd of men and women on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan, many for their second, third or more tours. Suddenly shot ring out and men and women around you start to fall. You hit the deck and try to get behind something, anything. At the same time you try to shield someone, that's what you do when you're a warrior. And you start to pray and to curse the people who decided all the weapons need to be locked up, for safety. Safety.

This is what our bothers and sisters faced down in Fort Hood. A stateside military base is a gun free zone. The guns are kept locked up except when the brass want the troops to do something. And most of the time when the troops do have the shootin' irons, like when they get trained in marching around and such, the ammo is locked up. The Armed Forces are terrified of the idea that soldiers will go around shooting each other over two dollar bets and who gets first crack at that slightly overweight divorcee working the swing shift at the Dew Drop Inn.

The brass didn't think that an Army Major, a doctor who got all his training on the US taxpayers dime, would start shooting. The soldiers and the brass need to review and rethink the contract. Here is the deal...I sign up and agree to wear funny, unflattering clothes and get really bad haircuts. I agree to do what I'm told and go where I'm sent. I agree to put my life in danger getting into all sorts of really silly predicaments. I agree to go where a whole slew of complete strangers want to kill me for reasons I do not fully understand. I agree to try to kill or capture those strangers under rules of engagement that makes said killing more difficult.

Now you, the brass, agree to a few things, also. The most important is that you agree to not make my risks, and my life worthless. You also agree that, when you have me place my life in danger, I be the best armed, best equipped guy on the block. Now, brass, if you are going to put people like this Nidal Malik Hasan guy in the middle of the largest Army base on the continent, give me an effing gun! I would really prefer that, once you discover that Major Hasan is writing blog entries proud of what the homicide bombers are doing you let him practice his profession of Psychiatry in a slightly better place, one more suited to his talents. Like maybe inside the Federal Max Security Prison in Marion Illinois. Or perhaps on our government since it sure seems as if they need a shrink. Anyhow, brass, you are not supposed to put me, unarmed, into a big room with a nutcase armed with two pistols and God only knows how many loaded magazines and me and my pards nothing but our butts hanging in the breeze. Remember, brass, if my life doesn't mean much to you it still means a lot to my family.

Oh, and brass, please tell the FBI that it was too a terror incident. Okay, maybe this clown didn't belong to alQueda. It's quite probable he was acting alone. Please, brass, tell the FBI to look at the pictures of those wives and husbands waiting for word of their spouses and ask them again, was it terror? If they again say no, hit them in the face with a shovel and get some Federal cops with half a brain.

Can We Make It Two Thousand Pages?

So Pelosi and company have put out their 1990 page "health care" bill. Can Pelosi, Reid and Biden combined win a thinking contest with a rutabaga? It does not seem so.

Any dispassionate observer can look this bill over and see that it has nothing to do with "making healthcare affordable" This bill is, instead, all about power. This bunch simply thinks that Americans will fall into line and do what we're told when some unelected board of pencil necked geeks and ugly women in comfortable shoes can say "no, you voted wrong and now your grandson will not be treated for his expensive to treat condition".

Who will staff these boards after the first half dozen or so have been messily killed? It seems that this crowd of meatheads have lost touch with who lives in America. Here is the first clue, Nancy. We are the ones that didn't stay in Europe where we were all but slaves to an inept nobility.

We got here and found the folks that wouldn't, for whatever reason, stay in Siberia. It was a pretty good tussle for a couple-three hundred years but we finally ended up with the most fertile swath of the whole North American continent. It wasn't easy, there are untold thousands of unmarked graves spread all over this country. Why the Oregon Trail alone has an average of one grave every eighty yards from Independence MO to the Willamette Valley. And that was only one trail.

Nor are those of us who emigrated from Europe to come here unique. We have our Mexican Americans, most of whom cut ties with the old country, just the way we "Anglos" did. Although many, perhaps most, have kept in touch with their relatives better than most of us did still, they made a pretty big jump.

The Chinese, Japanese and Korean Americans took an even bigger leap, not to mention those who came from the Vietnamese Boat People.

Do those chowderhead Democrats, and their accomplices in the Washington Republicans really think the grandchildren of those who settled the west will put up with this nonsense?

Speaking of Washington Republicans, have you peabrained idiots learned anything? This Skuzzy person in NY-23 endorsed the Democrat after the conservatives in the District revolted and supported Hoffman. You Washington Republicans must have brains the size of walnuts. Y'all supported Ol' Arlen, to the tune of how many millions? You supported ol' Jumpin' Jim to the tune of how many millions? You supported this Skuzzy woman to the tune of most of a million, in a rural district, no less. And yet you keep crying that we must reach out to the moderates! And you wonder why your grassroots donations are drying up. Maybe you should stop sending boxcar loads of money to Democrats with an "R" behind their names, it ain't like they do any good and you can't even depend on them in things like votes for Speaker.

Just how many more elections to you clowns have to lose before you learn that Democrat-lite is not a winning strategy? Normally I wouldn't care but the clowns you idiots have allowed to "run" the country are running her off a cliff.

Dear Experts

Here is another thing I don't quite understand. The lamestream media rejoices in telling us that we must make accommodations with Islam because there is no real defense against terrorism. Then that same media gets all up in arms because we're offing alQueda types with Hellfire missiles from drones.

Y'all please forgive me for bein' a pore dumb redneck but since we've actually been doing a pretty fair job of handling terrorism "round here for about eight years now while the alQ types have managed to do absolutely nothing about the drones bringing death from above, doesn't it seem as if they should be trying to reach accommodations with us? Never mind, we all know it's the lamestream media playing head we win, tails America loses.

I'm reading about "experts" who are now telling us that having a dog is worse for the environment than a Toyota Land Cruiser. They say that we should not have any pets that can't be killed for food. Okay, I'm going to the pet store and buying a couple of experts.

Seriously, who elected these "experts"? Where does one go to become an expert of the relationship of dogs vs Toyota Land Cruiser and the environment? I have three dogs, one a young German Shepherd, with boundless energy. The next is an elderly Pug (mix?) with hardly any energy, who needs to be lifted on and off the couch or char that she used to be able to hop up on. The third is a young Pug with energy enough to run a small city. So, which one is the Land Cruiser? They can't all be. Or is the old girl a Land Cruiser, the young Pug a Greyhound Bus and the German Shepherd a long, full, freight train with a helper engine goin' over the high Sierras?

Or are these "experts" another bunch of power mad, people hating bozos? Most of the folks complaining about the environment say that the biggest problem is too many people. Um, for the folks that think that, there is a very simple solution. Yet they are always saying that it's MY children and grandchildren that are the problem.

Dear Experts: You claim an emergency because there are too many people. The answer to that problem is simple. Go into the bathroom, fill the tub with nice hot water. Take a razor blade with you, or a nice sharp knife. Pour yourself a nice big glass of your favorite wine or spirits. Climb into the tub and take a nice deep sip out of your glass. Now if you are Charles Johnson or Andy Sullivan you can, instead, have a deep drink of your bathwater, instead.

Now, cut the wrist you aren't using for the glass. Be sure and make lengthwise cuts, crosswise cuts don't kill you very well, they just make for hard work for the doctors trying to repair those tendons and ligaments. Now, lie back and finish your drink and think about the great thing you're doing for Mother Gaia.

Funny, that trick would work for most Journalists, too.

Update: I just read, over at Tammi's World, that her mother, Mama Vi, is having a rough time. Good thoughts and earnest prayers needed.

Why This Fight?

So, I see the Obama Administration has picked a fight with Fox News. I don't remember who said never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Twain? Menken? I'm thinking Twain, Mark, not Shania. Although I'm pretty sure this Administration would also lose a fight with her.

Anyway, what is the point? There are about 12 bazillion lefty "newspeople" already toeing the Obama line. All the idiots in this Administration are doing is really ticking off the millions who watch Fox or listen to the radio friends of Fox. Worse, they are at risk of some real investigative reporting. I was over at the Puppyblender's site and he had linked to a little story of how someone went back and interviewed some four hundred members of Obama's graduating class at Columbia and no one, not one remembered him. Now Columbia is not like the University of Texas, the entire freshman class was some 1900 people. Now Obama was a transfer student, he only spent two years there but someone should have remembered him.

Anyhow, I think they'll really, really regret this, before it's over. Even the New York times and And the Alloboma Broadcasting Corporation, The Cooperatewithobama Broadcasting System and those other guys will have to at least mention it when Fox reporters actually dig out his grades or Perhaps, that there is no record of Obama's Mama ever being in a hospital in Hawaii. No, the Obama people just had to do it. Idiots.

ARRRGH!

Well, I worked long and hard on a follow up to my last post, only to have it disappear. So I went back to "edit posts and found the first three paragraphs. I know that this post was going to make me famous, too. I'd have Glen Reynolds sneaking around my puppies with his blender and an extension cord reaching back to Tennessee going "here Bingo, I have an Instanche for your daddy!" the post was going to be that good. But no, the post is mostly gone and I'm too tired to rewrite it now.

In other news, an old friend is visiting Monday, he's going to try to figure out why the plugs on the back side of the house quit working so I have to spend my life tripping over extension cords. Wish us luck.

Rush And Alleged Racism

I haven't commented on the attack on Rush Limbaugh that's been in the news lately because, frankly, I've been too angry. I started listening to Rush back before the '92 elections, I'm not exactly sure when. I do know that he had his TV show on, then and, since I didn't know who he was, I thought he was a televangelist. He was on the same station as many televangelists were and, like some, his program was repeated a couple of times every day. Then I happened to catch him in the car one day and I started listening to him every chance I got, then, every day for like twenty years. I don't listen every day anymore, my hearing has got so bad that when I try to listen to him it drives Linda Lou bonkers. And folks in Palestine call on the phone and say it's too loud. No, Palestine, right over there in east Texas.

Anyway, in somewhat over twenty years I never once heard Mr. Limbaugh utter a racist statement. Of course he didn't, he's a conservative. Something I never have understood is how the left, who attack any minority or women who strays from their plantation, manage to so often succeed in painting the right as racists. Leftists have to be racists, they do not look at people as individuals, they look at people as group members. Once a leftist assigns a person to a group if that person strays from that group it is officially a Bad Thing. Nor is a person allowed to choose his or her own group.

We saw that with Michael Steele in those blackface cartoons, from leftists and not a word said. We saw that with the appalling treatment of Sarah Palin while Biden went stumbling around making one idiot statement after the other. Palin is so dumb she didn't even have the sense to say, like Biden did, Three letters, jobs. Then he spelled it J-O-B-S. Biden is smart, though and Palin stupid. Oh, and Palin, married to a native American is a raaaaacist, just like Limbaugh. How do we know this? The leftists tell us so.

Kind of like when the SEIU beat up the black guy they were standing strong against raaaaacists, just ask them. Somebody please let me know when I can finally start shooting at them. Lying sacks of dung, the whole crowd. Inventing quotes, knowing they are lies, and, I suppose, laughing in private. I used to just think leftists were wrong. Now I actively dislike them and call them things I do not want my grandchildren to hear.

I hope Limbaugh starts suing the lot of them. I don't know whether he'd win but it sure would be nice to see some of them paying thousands and thousands to lawyers. Kind of like why Palin had to resign. None of those "ethics" complaints stood, each had to be defended. And, unfortunately "are you out of your mind?" is not a valid defense. although it should be.

It sure would a nicer world if Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton could be slapped across the face with a glove and told "pistols at dawn, sir".

New Boots coming!

Something strange happened, Linda Lou finally let me spend a little money. It seems like I ought to declare three days feasting and celebration. So, anyhow I ordered a pair of Tony Lama boots from The Fort up there in Army Wife. Toddler Mom territory. Black Cherry is the color, and, oddly enough, this boot is discontinued and, even more odd, my boot size, which is very common, was still available. So I am getting some hundred and forty buck boots for ninety plus shipping.

Being old fashioned I also ordered some boot polish at the same time. Something I just flat do not understand is how all these folks buy expensive shoes and boots and don't bother to polish them. I mean I can polish every shoe and boot I own, and most of Linda Lou's while watching one old movie on the teevee. Two movies and the neighbor's shoes start to glisten! And yet it's hard to find a polished shoe until you get into the executive suites.

But wait! There's more! Before I turned my attention to Newbrasky City, Newbrasky, I had some business in tend to in Columbia MO. This fairly small city is known for several things, Before anyone ever heard of Carl Edwards of NASCAR there was Larry Potterfield. The Potterfields have a nice little business selling all kinds of gun related stuff, reloading supplies, gun parts, ammunition, cleaning gear, etcetera. This started off as a mail order business, now the lions share is done online with a little bit by phone. I suspect they are amazed now if they get an order by mail. Anyhow, if you need anything gun related, Midway USA probably has it.

Somehow my powder through expander die for reloading .38 and .357 ammo bit the dust, I'm not persactly sure why. So I ordered a new one of those, a new cleaning jag for my double barreled shotgun, an extra magazine for my .22 rifle and last but not least, a box of three hundred Hornady lead hollowpoint .38 bullets. I have about three bazillion hard cast bullets that might expand if I shot a bank vault with them. And I have plenty of jacketed hollowpoints, but, no soft lead HPs. Well, I will. And soon, my order has already been sent out.

I don't know excisely why Missou is such a place for mail order gun stuff businesses. In addition to Midway in Columbia, there is Graf and Sons in Mexico, MO. Between the two of them they have most of the mail order business sewn up. Of course for the precision shooters there is always Sinclair. They're someplace else, Indiana, someplace. Are the liberal nutcases going to make those folks change the name of the State to Native Americana?

Well, that's my exciting day, how about you?

Update: in the last money I will be allowed to spend until 2014 I ordered this belt. This is also Tony Lama, nicely hand stamped floral. The frightening thing is that in 1970 I still wore blue jeans with a 28 inch waist. They say that I should order a belt size two inches over my trouser size, so I ordered a size forty-two belt. Sigh. I blame Rhee Drummond. Oooh! She is going to be in Dallas on December first at the Borders on Preston Road at seven PM, signing her cookbook. Think I'll go up there and see if she'll take me for a pet. I'm housebroke! More Update: I just bemembered I finally know how to link stuff, Here are those boots. I hope I don't have to show boot polish, though.

The .351 Winchester Selfloading And Other Stories...........

Please don't ask me why I've been thinking about this obsolete carbine and load today, I just have. The .351 Winchester and the .401 Winchester were a couple of rounds put out in the early part of the 20th Century in the 07 and '10 Winchester Self Loading rifles.

The 351 might have well been the .357 Magnum of about 28 years later. It wasn't, of course, the .357 is rimmed, the .351 semirimmed, the .351 bullet is .006 inches skinnier than the .357. The ballistics are just about equal though, the .351 put a 180 grain bullet out at right around 1800 fps. The top loads in the .357 will do about the same from a rifle.

The semirimmed case of the .351 is just the thing for a self loading action's magazine, the rimmed case on the .357 is better for the lever actions.

The .351 had a nice run, from 1907 to 1957. The .401 was just a larger version, put in the 1910 Winchester, which was just the '07 on steroids. The .401 was a better hunting round, when those cartridges were new the velocity was limited and in that case, there is just no substitute for bullet weight. The .351 was a favorite of police forces, prison guards and, famously, the Border Patrol back when it was a gun fighting outfit.

When Frank Hamer and the rest of the posse helped Bonnie and Clyde assume room temperature the .351 helped poke some of the holes in the car and, perhaps, them. When the Feebs gunned down Dillinger they had the .351 as back up rifles. The tommy gun got all the publicity but on both sides of the law, the '07 Winchester was used far more.

The '07 Winchester was a short, handy shootin' iron, although fairly heavy. It had to be heavy because of it's straight blowback action. Most blowbacks are in cartridges like the .22 long rifle and the .32 acp handgun round. the more powerful the cartridge the heavier the breechblock needs to be. This is why my little .357 Mag Marlin lever action weighs six pounds and the '07 Winchester eight. They're both about thirty six inches long.

There is not much factory ammo made for the .351, nor for it's big brother the .401. There are loading dies, of course, and Buffalo Arms makes ammo, expensive enough stuff but it's there. I saw where someone is making a die to swage down .357 bullets to .351, this will work for both jacketed and cast. On cast bullets, though the lube grooves might be smushed down so much as to lose the ability to carry enough lube.

It's too bad no one will make a new model, gas operated to cut the weight of the carbine down. While it is true that, with enough practice, one can fire aimed shots with a lever action just as quickly as a semiauto, not many are willing to put in the practice.

There are many areas of the country where it's difficult for a person to own a handgun and, in spite of all the semiinformed lore, a shotgun is not always the best home defense arm. Shotguns have fairly high recoil, making a quick second or third shot difficult, especially for the smaller statured. Please note, the sound of a pump action shotgun being racked will not always make a bad guy run away, the bad guy just might peg a few shots at the noise. Please don't believe all the old wives tales.

A fast shooting carbine in the power range of the .351 or the .357 is plenty powerful enough for home defense, not to mention, just the sort of thing that could have kept that elderly woman from being half killed by that bunch of raccoons in Florida not long ago. Note: it's fine to want to shoo off wild critters from your porch. Just have a little something in your hands if they don't feel like shooing.

A lot of folks want to keep something along the lines of an AR-15 or an Ak clone or an SKS instead of a handgun. There are now some loads for the AR round, the .223 that are designed to not overpenetrate, they're very expensive but we can use regular ammo for practice. I would not take very many rounds of .223 going off inside the house before a lifetime of "what? I can't hear you" though. Which is better, of course than saying "you have to speak up because I'm dead" but, still.

If I were the president of Remington or Savage, Marlin or Colt or S&W I'd have my engineers design a carbine weighing about six pounds or so in a modernized form of the .351. I'd have them build it with a tube magazine so it would take the rimmed .38s and .357s, though and this would also get around the idiot politicians in places like California and Illinois. As long as the tube was able to take nine rounds, that's plenty for any gunfight a civilian would live through. My little .357 Marlin carbine takes nine .357 or ten .38s in the tube, I keep it loaded with seven around the house to not stress the magazine spring. It stays handy in case of rabid-y coyotes or tractor thieves.

If I lived in a city where handguns were a problem I'd load that carbine with the old FBI or Chicago Load in .38 Special. That soft lead hollowpoint bullet would clock a hundred or two hundred more feet per second out of the longer barrel or very close to what the .357 does out of a revolver.

Since nobody makes a good semi-auto .357 and the last .351 SL rolled out of the Winchester plant in 1957 I'll stick with the Marlin or the Brazilian or Italian clones of the 1892 Winchester. There is another added attraction to these, too. If you're ever unlucky enough to need to use it, the lever actions just scream cowboy and "good guy" to a jury.

Still, I'd love to have an '07 Winchester in .351. They were plumb cool.