Month: January 2012

Holy Go Se!

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Barron Barnett emails with an interesting link. It seems like Adam Baldwin has read (and approved) of my überpost What We Got Here is…Failure to Communicate. (I wondered where all those Twitter hits were coming from!) He especially liked the Serenity quote at the end.

Yes, that Adam Baldwin – Jayne from Firefly.

Hey U.S. Citizen! Seems like Summer Glau is going to pass on the offer, how about we invite Adam Baldwin to the next Gun Blogger Rendezvous? I mean, how can you not like a man who has this picture on his Twitter feed?

Hell, that made my day, and it’s not even 7:00AM yet!

UPDATE: And he did it!

First Guffaw,

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…now Joe Huffman?

Apparently Joe’s blog is not available.  The Boomershoot site is still up, as is Joehuffman.org, but not The View from North Central Idaho. WTF?

UPDATE:  Aaaand now it’s back.  Weird.

So You Like RECOIL, Do You?

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The posts about the .700WTF and the .950JDJ drew a LOT of hits, so apparently this is a popular topic. On that last post, one commenter said:

Can we get a 1.000 OMG? Going once… going twice…

Which was followed by:

Screw round numbers.

Make it the 1.001 OMG just to break the barrier firmly.

Already been done, boys, in a rifle you actually fire from the shoulder, not off a bench. The 4-Bore double-rifle:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCsVHcJTcEw?rel=0]

According to Wikipedia:

The name derives out of an old English practice of bore measurements in gunmaking, meaning a perfectly round pure lead ball that exactly fits the bore of the weapon would weigh 1/4 lb — that is, 0.25 lb (0.11 kg) (see gauge). The 4 bore was made to fire roundballs of 1/4 pound lead, or approximately 1750 grains (1750 gr.) and approximately 1-inch (25 mm) calibre (more precisely, 1.053-inch (26.7 mm), when shooting pure lead bullets). This varied greatly as in muzzle loader days shotgun gauges were custom made and often differed from the actual bore measurements. Commonly, 4 gauges were closer to .935-.955 calibre, pertaining to a 1400 gr. alloyed lead ball and closer to 5 gauge.

So it’s hard to say without actually examining a 4-bore, but it could indeed be 1″ or greater. Continuing:

The cartridge brass case was around 4 inches (100 mm) long, and contained three types of loads: light at 12 drams, 14 drams at regular, and 16 drams of powder at heavy load. (Note: 1 dram = 27.34375 grains in the avoirdupois system, since 256 drams = 7000 grains = 1 pound of powder. Shotgun shells are still rated in terms of the same archaic dram measurements, relative to their equivalence of smokeless powder load to a blackpowder load weighed in drams.) John “Pondoro” Taylor mentioned in his book African Rifles and Cartridges that the 12 drams (328 gr., 3/4 oz.) charge would propel the projectile at around 1,330 ft/s (410 m/s). A double barreled rifle that would fire such a calibre would weight around 22-24 lb bare, while the single-barreled version would be around 17-18 lb.

John Ross, the author of Unintended Consequences has one of these beasts. Here’s a sample ballistics table:

With a “heavy” load of 440 grains of black powder under a 1743 grain projectile, the free recoil energy of 262ft-lbs. is very much in the same class as the .950JDJ, only the JDJ rifles weigh between 50 and 110 pounds and are fired off a bench. The 4-bore doubles weigh about 25 pounds and are fired standing, from the shoulder.

OUCH.

Quote of the Day – Vanderleun Edition

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…I went and signed up for gun training. After the training I felt I would be qualified to get a gun.  I would get it because it was my right to get it. I would get it because I could. I would get it because Washington, no matter how deeply mired in denial and dementia Seattle may become, Washington itself is still a “must issue” state. And how long that would last in the demented rush to disarm and make all citizens effective wards of the state for their “protection” was anybody’s guess.
Tracking the killings of over 30 unarmed, effectively disarmed and therefore helpless students, at Virginia Tech [in 2007] confirmed me in my decision. It took many bullets for this tragedy to unfold. It would have taken just one going the other way to stop it. That and the training to know what the situation was and how to react.

Unless you are morally, spiritually, and politically blind to human reality, you know that this is the truth. — American Digest, The Gun School

As the saying goes, RTWT™. It’s from 2007, but still fresh as a daisy!

Just Lay Back and Think of England

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The fallout of Weer’d’s “Do More Than Just Light a Candle” counterprotest is still pattering down all around. One piece I ran across today comes from the Florida Progressive Coalition Blog, Gun Free Zone Blog Celebrates Gun Violence.

No, I don’t think so.

I left a comment there, but it hasn’t been approved, nor do I expect it to be, but I do want to comment publicly on one point made by the author, Kenneth Quinnell. He is attempting to fisk the post I Lit My Candle For… from the blog Gun Free Zone. Here’s the particular portion I want to highlight from the whole thing:

Quote of the Day by Brigid: “but tomorrow is the day the Brady Bunch plan a light a candle to stop gun violence (that’s what I’m going to pull out when some potential gangbanger rapist confronts me in a parking lot, a f’ing candle.”)

First off, the chances of a “gangbanger rapist” attacking Brigid are almost nonexistent. Second off, pulling out the gun might help her, but statistically it’s more likely to increase her chances of dying.

Now the comment I attempted to leave was along the lines of ‘…pulling out the gun might help her, but statistically it’s more likely to increase her chances of dying.” Really? Got a citation to back that up? With a URL? Because I do and it disagrees with your assertion.

But the point I want to make here is a bit stronger.

Mr. Qusling, er, Quinnell blithely asserts that Brigid – and by extension, any woman – is statistically more likely to die if she attempts to defend herself from a rapist with a firearm.

The inference being that she should instead “lay back and think of England,” and she might not get killed.

A more textbook example of 

“Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.”

could not be found.

Let’s let Oleg Volk have a say:

And finally:

To quote AGirlandHerGun from Monday:

You, you who hate guns, you gave me nothing.

No hope.

No tools.

All that was offered me was a life of fear, of resentment, of bitterness, of dependance…

The gun community has offered me hope and strength, and courage.

They have taught me to have belief in myself.

Lie back and think of England?

Fuck THAT!