Turonistan

They've all been clean and re-vaulted. The Ruger is still the toughest to take down and re-assemble. The Astra is next, then the Kimber. The Sauer is dead simple.

And the Astra was fixed properly and no longer doubles. A tough slog, the gunsmith told me, since the serial numbers for the slide and frame didn't match. Live and learn.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Range Day

I took a day off and headed to the range to fire some .22s. I had a Ruger 22/45 with a Matchdot red-dot sight, a Marlin Papoose and a Kimber model 82 bolt-action rifle.

A couple of years ago I was able to lay in a supply of 22-LR from the CMP: 5,000 rounds of Remington government contract stuff, which has worked very well.

Sighting in the Matchdot scope took a few minutes, then the Papoose with its rudimentary sights. But the Kimber was a bit of a puzzle with a rear sight that just refused to lock down. I was just beginning to dial it in when I reached my 200-round limit for the day. But this is the justification I need for a follow-up visit to get it dialed in properly.

One of the Ruger magazines just would not snap into place. I put the mag aside and when I got home I examined it closely. That's it on the right. The cause is fairly obvious.

Then it was on to the theater where I saw "The Imitation Game" with Cumberbatch and Knightly. A great flick, although I thought it had been slightly "Americanized". For example, one of the characters announces that she arrived late because the bus had a "flat tire". Or "tyre". Either way, I think she meant "puncture". Maybe they filmed it both ways - just for that scene. At another point the term "Top Secret" was used; I think the Brits used the expression "Most Secret".

And now it's time for some therapeutic cleaning of the 22s.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

100-yard Indoor Range

Has closed-circuit video at 100 yards.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Magpul's Magic Bus

Tam Snaps a Tiny 1911

Roberta X Tries the Simulator

1952 Super-38 1911 NIB

Never unwrapped! At the Super-38 Collectors' booth.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Big Time!

Saturday, April 12, 2014

WaPo: "Justice Stevens - The Five Extra Words That Can Fix The Second Amendment"

This annoying piece of uninformed nonsense is poor even by the lamentable standards of the Washington Post. And I must come out of my comfortable retirement to object!

Quoting Justice Burger's article in Parade Magazine (although it is more impressive to quote his later appearance on MacNeil-Lehrer where he repeated his charge about "fraud")! Talk about grasping at straws.

Not only is this "stare decisis" after Heller and McDonald, but the Founders rejected the idea, too. I don't usually respond to these editorials, but after all of the meticulous scholarship of the last thirty years, have people forgotten? Here is what I said:

Justice Stevens' idea has already been tried and it has failed. On September 9, 1789 the U.S. Senate debated the Second Amendment, then known as Article Five of the Bill of Rights. A motion was made to add the phrase "for the common defence" after the words "bear arms". This motion was defeated on a voice vote. (Source: Senate Journal #1, page 77) The Second Amendment was then sent to a conference committee to resolve differences with the House version, and the Second Amendment was sent to the states for ratification in the form we know it today. If the Founders of this nation wanted the Second Amendment to be limited to the context of a militia, they had an excellent chance to do it then and it was rejected.

Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe summed up the ambiguity nicely when he said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that the Founders wanted to guarantee that the Federal gov't would never try to disband the state militias, but they did so NOT by protecting the militias, but by protecting the rights of individual Americans to keep and bear arms.